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CONTRIBUTIONS 






TO THE 



EDINBURGH REVIEW. 



BY 



FRANCIS JEFFREY, 



OW ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE COURT OF SESSION IN SCOTLAND 



FOUR VOLUMES. 

COMPLETE IN ONE 



BOSTON: 
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY. 

NEW YORK: JAMES C. DERBY. 
1854. 



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^v^ 



FROM THE NEW YORK EVENING MIRROR. 

" The true Jeffrey whom we meet with In these volumes, presents a character somewhat of this sort :— 
" He was formed undoubtedly to be the first critic of the age : and of poetry, he was probably the best judge 
that ever lived. An intellect of the highest capacity and of a very rare order of completeness, — educated by a 
perfect acquaintance with the best systems of metaphysical philosophy, — is, in him, pervaded and informed by 
those moral perceptions which indeed form so invariable an adjunct of the highest kind of great understandings, 
that they ought perhaps to be treated as merely the loftiest 6ort of mental qualities. His perception of truth is 
almost an instinct, and his love of it truly conscientious. His objects, in taking up any work or subject, are to 
appreciate and to judge; his searching and sensitive intelligence makes him sure of the former, and the sound- 
ness of his views fits him for the other. His temper is admirable. He seems to have no prepossessions— to be 
free from all vanity and jealousy— to possess a tone of impartiality and generous candour, almost cavalier in its 
loftiness. He has not a particle of cant, none of the formality or pretension of professional style ; but on the con- 
trary, writes thoroughly like a gentleman, and with the air of perfect breeding. He inspires you with entire con- 
fidence and a cordial liking. All his own displays are in the truest good taste — simple, easy, natural, without 
ambition or effort. He has the powers, the morals, and the manners of the best style of writing. There are, 
however, hut two persons who stand so prominently before the world, that they deserve to be set for comparison 
with Jeffrey : they, of course are Carlyle and Macauley. We should distinguish them by saying that Macaulcy 
is a good reviewer, but a sorry critic; Carlyle an admirable critic, but a miserable reviewer ; while we look on 
Jeffrey as being at once the best critic and the best reviewer of the age. 

__JLWe-jm*st content ourselves with this brief note tending to propitiate the regard of the reader, in advance, 
for the Lord Jeffrey; for our limits forbid extracts. Else, we could show a specimen of the most exquisite beauty 
in composition, and of the noblest eloquence, that the literature of any age can furnish. But the strength of Jef- 
frey does not lie in a paragraph, and sentences; but in the vigour, soundness and candour of the whole criticism." 



By Transft* 
dUN # lift 



STEREOTYPED BY J. C. D. CHRISTKAr tt OCV 
C. SHERMAN * CO., PRINTERS. 



TO 

THE REVEREND SYDNEY SMITH, 

THE ORIGINAL PROJECTOR OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, 

LONG ITS BRIGHTEST ORNAMENT, 

AND ALWAYS MY TRUE AND INDULGENT FRIEND, 

Jf now JBthitatt tljis ^publication; 

FROM LOVE OF OLD RECOLLECTIONS, 

AND IN TOKEN 

OF UNCHANGED AFFECTION AND ESTEEM. 



P. JEFFREY. 



PREFACE. 



No reasonable man, I suppose, could contemplate without alarm, a project for reprint- 
ing, with his name, a long series of miscellaneous papers — written hastily, in the intervals 
of graver occupations, and published anonymously, during the long course of Forty preced- 
ing years ! — especially if, before such a suggestion was made, he had come to be placed in 
a Situation which made any recurrence to past indiscretions, or rash judgments, peculiarly 
unbecoming. I expect therefore to be very readily believed, when I say that the project of 
this publication did not originate, and never would have originated with me : And that I have 
been induced to consent to it, only after great hesitation ; and not without misgivings — 
which have not yet been entirely got over. The true account of the matter is this. 

The papers in question are the lawful property, and substantially at the disposal, of the 
publishers of the Edinburgh Review : And they, having conceived an opinion that such a 
publication would be for their advantage, expressed a strong desire that I should allow it to 
go out with the sanction of my name, and the benefit of such suggestions as I might be dis- 
posed to offer for its improvement : and having, in the end, most liberally agreed that I 
should have the sole power both of determining to what extent it shouldbe carried, and also 
of selecting the materials of which it should be composed, I was at last persuaded to agree 
to the proposition: and this the more readily, in consequence of intimation having been re- 
ceived of a similar publication being in contemplation in the United Slates of America;* — 
over which, of course, I could not, under any arrangements, expect to exercise the same 
efficient control. 

With all this, however, I still feel that I am exposed to the imputation, not only of greal 
presumption, in supposing that any of these old things could be worth reprinting, but of a 
more serious Impropriety, in thus openly acknowledging, and giving a voluntary sanction to 
the republication (of some at least) of the following pieces : And I am far from being sure 
that there may not be just grounds for such an imputation. In palliation of the offence, 
however — if such offence shall be taken — I would beg leave humbly to state, First, that\ 
what I now venture to reprint, is but a small part — less 1 believe than a third, — of what I 
actually contributed to the Review.;and, Secondly, that I have honestly endeavoured to select 
from that great mass — not those articles which I might think most likely still to attract notice, 
by boldness of view, severity of remark, or vivacity of expression — but those, much rather, 
which, by enforcing what appeared to me just principles and useful opinions, I really thought 
had a tendency to make men happier and better. 

I am quite aware of the arrogance which may be ascribed to this statement — and even 
of the ridicule which may attach to it. Nevertheless, it is the only apology which I now 
wish to make — or could seriously think of making, for the present publication : And if it 
should be thought utterly to fail me. I shall certainly feel that I have been betrayed into an 
act, not of imprudence merely, but of great impropriety. I trust, however, that I shall not 
be driven back on so painful a conviction. 

The Edinburgh Review, it is well known, aimed high from the beginning : — And, refus- 
ing to confine itself to the humble task of pronouncing on the mere literary merits of the 
works that came before it, professed to go deeply into the Principles on which its judgments 
were to be rested ; as well as to take large and Original views of all the important questions 
to which those works might relate. And, on the whole, I think it is now pretty generally 
admitted that it attained the end it aimed at. Many errors there were, of course — and some 
considerable blunders : — abundance of indiscretions, especially in the earlier numbers ; and 
far too many excesses, both of party zeal, overweening confidence, and intemperate blame. 
But with all these drawbacks. I think it must be allowed to have substantially succeeded — 
in familiarising the public mind (that is, the minds of very many individuals) with higher 

* Carey & Hart, Philadelphia, announced that a selection would be made from the Edin- 
burgh Review, at the time they first published a selection of Mr. Macauley's "Critical Miscel- 
lanies," and wrote to a friend of Lord Jeffrey, soliciting a list of that writer's articles. The pub- 
lishers of the Review afterwards concluded to print these "Contributions," and at the author's 
request, forwarded a copy of the work to C. & H., from which the present edition is printed, ver- 
batim, without abridgment. — [American Publishert.) 

A 2 Y 



n PREFACE. 

speculations, and sounder and larger views of the great objects of human pursuit, than had 
ever before been brought as effectually home to their apprehensions j and also, in perma- 
nently raising the standard, and increasing the influence of all such Occasional writings; not 
only in this country, but over the greater part of Europe, and the free States of America : 
While it proportionally enlarged the capacity, and improved the relish of the growing multi- 
tudes to whom such writings were addressed, for " the stronger meats" which were then 
first provided for their digestion. 

With these convictions and impressions, it will not I think be expected, or required of 
me, that I should look back — from any station — upon the part I took in originating and con- 
ducting such a work, without some mixture of agreeable feelings: And, while I seek not to 
decline my full share of the faults and follies to which I have alluded, I trust I may be al- 
lowed to take credit, at the same time, for some participation in the Merits by which these 
were, to a certain extent at least, redeemed or atoned for. 

If I might be permitted farther to state, in what particular department, and generally, 
on account of what, I should most wish to claim a share of those merits, I should certainly 
say, that it was by having constantly endeavoured to combine Ethical precepts with Literary 
Criticism, and earnestly sought to impress my readers with a sense, both of the close con- 
nection between sound Intellectual attainments and the higher elements of Duty and Enjoy- 
ment ; and of the just and ultimate subordination of the former to the latter. The praise in 
short to which I aspire, and to merit which I am conscious that my efforts were most con- 
stantly directed, is, that I have, more uniformly and earnestly than any preceding critic, made 
the Moral tendencies of the works under consideration a leading subject of discussion j and 
neglected no opportunity, in reviews of Poems and Novels as well as of graver productions, 
of elucidating the true constituents of human happiness and virtue : and combating those 
besetting prejudices and errors of opinion which appear so often to withhold men from the 
path of their duty — or to array them in foolish and fatal hostility to each otherJ I cannot, of 
course, do more, in this place, than intimate this proud claim : But for the proof — or at least 
the explanation of it, — I think I may venture to refer to the greater part of the papers that 
follow. 

I wrote the first article in the first Number of the Review, in October 1802 : — and sent 
my last contribution to it, in October 1840 ! It is a long period, to have persevered in well 
— or in ill doing ! But I was by no means equally alert in the service during all the inter- 
mediate time. I was sole Editor, from 1803 till late in 1829; and during that period was no 
doubt a large and regular contributor. In that last year, however, I received the great honour 
of being elected, by my brethren of the Bar, to the office of Dean of the Faculty of Advo- 
cates : — When it immediately occurred to me that it was not quite fitting that the official 
head of a great Law Corporation should continue to be the conductor of what might be fairly 
enough represented as, in many respects, a Party Journal: and I consequently withdrew at 
once and altogether from the management : # — which has ever since been in such hands, as 
can have left those who take an interest in its success, no cause to regret my retirement. 
But I should not have acted up to the spirit of this resignation, nor felt that I had redeemed 
the pledge of neutrality I meant to give by it, if I had not at the same time substantially 
ceased to contribute to, or to concern myself, in any way, with the conduct or future fortunes 
of the Review. I wrote nothing for it, accordingly, for a considerable time subsequent to 
1829 : and during the whole fourteen years that have since elapsed, have sent in all but 
Four papers to that work — none of them on political subjects. I ceased, in reality to be a 
contributor, in 1829. 

In a professed Reprint of former publications I did not of course think myself entitled to 
make (and accordingly I have not made) any change in the substance of what was originally 
published — nor even in the expression, except where a slight verbal correction seemed neces* 
sary, to clear the meaning, or to remedy some mere slip of the pen. I have not however 
held myself equally precluded from making occasional retrenchments from the papers as they 
first appeared ; though these are mostly confined to the citations that had been given from the 
books reviewed — at least in the three first of these volumes : But notice, I believe, is given 
of all the considerable omissions— (with some intimation of the reasons) — in the places where 
they occur. 

It will be observed that, in the Arrangement of the pieces composing this collection, I 
have not followed, in any degree, the Chronological order of the original publications: though 
the actual date of its first appearance is prefixed to each paper. The great extent and very 

* For my own sake in part, but principally for the honour of my Conservative Brethren who 
ultimately concurred in my appointmen-t, I think it right to state, that this resignation was in no 
degree a matter of compromise or arrangement, with a view to that appointment: — the fact be- 
ing, on the contrary, that I gave no hint of my purpose, in any quarter, till after the election was 
over — or at ail events till after the withdrawal of the learned and distinguished Person who had 
been put in nomination against me, had made it certain that my return would be unanimous. 
His perseverance, I doubt not, might have endangered that result : For, though considerably my 
junior, his eminence in the profession was, even then I believe, qui*e equal to mine. But h» 
generously deferred to my Seniority. 



PREFACE. vu 

miscellaneous nature of the subjects discussed, seemed to make such a course ineligible ; and 
rather to suggest the propriety of a distribution with reference to these subjects. I have now 
attempted therefore to class them under a few general Heads or titles, with a view to such a 
connection: And, though not very artificially digested, or strictly adhered to, I think the 
convenience of most readers will be found to have been consulted by this arrangement. The 
particular papers in each group or division, have also been placed in the order, rather of their 
natural dependence, or analogy to each other, than of the times when they were respectively 
written. I am now sensible that, by adopting this plan, I have brought more strikingly into 
view, the repetitions, as well as the discrepancies and small inconsistencies, which I take to 
be incident to this kind of writing. Bat this is a reproach, or disadvantage, to which I must 
be content to submit: and from which I do not apprehend that I shall have much to suffer, 
in the judgment of good-natured readers. There are many more important matters as to 
which I am conscious that I shall need all their indulgence : But to which I do not think it 
necessary, as I am sure it would not be prudent, now to direct their attention. 

Before closing this notice, there is a little matter as to which several of my friends have 
suggested that I ought to take this opportunity of giving an explanation. My own first 
impression was, that this was unnecessary; and. but for the illustrious name which is con- 
nected with the subject, I should still be of that opinion. As it is. I cannot now refuse to 
say a few words on it. 

In the second volume of Mr. Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, there are (at page 219) 
several extracts from a letter of Sir Walter to Mr. George Ellis, dated in December 1808, 
and referring among other things to the projected establishment of the Quarterly Review: in 
connection with which topic, the following passage occurs — "Jeffrey has offered terms of 
pacification — engaging that no party politics should again appear in his Review. I told him I 
thought it was now too late ; and reminded him that I had often pointed out to him the con- 
sequences of letting his work become a party tool. He said, he did not care for the conse- 
quences; They were but four men he feared as opponents, &c. All this was in great good 
humour. He has no suspicion of our Review whatever." 

Now though I have no particular recollection of the conversation here alluded to, and 
should never dream, at any rate, of setting up any recollection of so distant an occurrence in 
opposition to a contemporary record of it by such a man as Sir Walter Scott — I feel myself 
fully warranted in saying that the words I have put in italics are calculated to convey an 
inaccurate impression of any thing I could possibly have said on that occasion; — and that I 
am morally certain that I never offered to come under any such engagement as these words, 
in their broad and unqualified sense, would seem to imply. Of course, I impute no intentional 
misrepresentation to Sir Walter Scott. Of that he was as incapable, as I trust I am of the 
baseness of making the imputation. Neither can I think it possible that he should have 
misunderstood me at the time. But in hastily writing a familiar letter I am satisfied that he 
has expressed himself inaccurately — or at least imperfectly — and used words which convey 
a far larger and more peremptory meaning than truly belonged to any thing I could have 
uttered. My reasons for this conviction I think may be stated, to the satisfaction even of 
those to whom the circumstances of the parties may yet be unknown. 

My first reason is, that I most certainly had no power to come under any such engagement, 
without the consent of the original and leading Contributors, — from whom no such consent 
could then have been expected. I was not the Proprietor of the work — nor the representative, 
in any sense, of the proprietors — but merely the chosen (and removeable) manager for the 
leading contributors; the greater part of whom certainly then looked upon the Political 
influence of the Review, as that which gave it its chief value and importance. This con- 
dition of things was matter of notoriety at Edinburgh at the time. But at all events nobody 
was more thoroughly aware of it than Sir Walter Scott. He has himself mentioned, in the 
passage already quoted, that he had frequently before remonstrated with me on what he 
thought the intemperate tone of some our political articles: and though I generally made 
the best defence I could for them, I distinctly remember more than one occasion on which, 
after admitting that the youthful ardour of some of our associates had carried them farther 
than I could approve of, I begged him to consider that it was quite impossible for me always 
to repress this — and to remember that I was but a Feudal monarch, who had but a slender 
control over his greater Barons — and really could not prevent them from occasionally waging 
a little private war, upon griefs or resentments of their own. I am as certain of having 
repeatedly expressed this sentiment, and used this illustration to Sir Walter Scott, as I am 
of my own existence. 

But in the next place it requires no precise recollection of words or occasions, to enable 
me now to say, that, neither in 1808, nor for long periods before and after, did my party 
principles (or prejudices or predilections) sit so loosely upon me, as that I should ever have 
agreed to lay them aside, or to desist from their assertion, merely to secure the assistance 
of a contributor (however distinguished), to what would then have been a mere literary 
undertaking. For the value I then set on those principles I may still venture to refer to 
twenty-five years spent as their uncompromising advocate — at the hazard at least, if not to 
the injury, of my personal and professional interests. I have no wish at this moment to 
recall the particulars of that advocacy: But I think I may safely say that if, in December 



viii PREFACE. 

1808, 1 could have bargained to desist from it, and to silence the Edinburgh Review as an vrgan 
of party, I might have stipulated for somewhat higher advantages than the occasional co- 
operation of Sir Walter Scott (for he never was a regular contributor even to the Quarterly) m 
a work in which I had little interest beyond that of commanding a ready vehicle for the dis- 
semination of my own favoured opinions. 

All this rests, it will be observed, not upon the terms of any particular conversation, which 
might of course be imperfectly remembered — but upon my own certain knowledge of the 
principles by which I was actuated for a long course of years; and which I cannot but think 
were then indicated by a sufficient number of overt acts, to make it easy to establish the 
mastery they exercised over me, by extrinsic evidence, if necessary. If the prevalence of 
these principles, however, is plainly inconsistent with the literal accuracy of the passage in 
question, or the fact of my having actually made such an offer as is there mentioned, I think 
myself entitled to conclude that the statement in that passage is inaccurate; and that a care- 
less expression has led to an incorrect representation of the fact. 

And here also I hope I may be permitted to refer to a very distinct recollection of the 
tenor, not of one but of many conversations with Sir Walter, in which he was directly apprised 
of the impossibility (even if I could have desired it) of excluding politics (which of course 
could mean nothing but party politics) from the Review. The undue preponderance of such 
articles in that journal was a frequent subject of remonstrance with him : and I perfectly 
remember that, when urging upon me the expediency of making Literature our great staple, 
and only indulging occasionally in those more exciting discussions, I have repeatedly told 
him that, with the political influence we had already acquired, this was not to be expected — 
and that by such a course the popularity and authority of the Review would be fatally im- 
paired, even. for its literary judgments: — and upon one of these occasions, I am quite certain 
that I made use of this expression to him — "The Review, in short, has but two legs to stand 
on. Literature no doubt is one of them: But its Right leg is Politics.' 7 Of this I have the 
clearest recollection. 

I have dwelt too long, I fear, on this slight but somewhat painful incident of my early 
days. But I cannot finally take leave of it without stating my own strong conviction of what 
must have actually passed on the occasion so often referred to; and of the way in which 1 
conceive my illustrious friend to have been led to the inaccuracy I have already noticed, in 
his report of it. I have already said, that I do not pretend to have any recollection of this 
particular conversation: But combining the details which are given in Sir Walter's letter, 
with my certain knowledge of the tenor of many previous conversations on the same subject, 
I have now little doubt that, after deprecating his threatened secession from our ranks. I 
acknowledged my regret at the needless asperity of some of our recent diatribes on politics — 
expressed my own disapprobation of violence and personality in such discussions — and 
engaged to do what I could to repress or avoid such excesses for the future. It is easy, I 
think, to see how this engagement, — to discourage, so far as my influence went, all violent 
and unfair party politics, — might be represented, in Sir Walter's brief and summary report, 
as an engagement to avoid party politics altogether: — the inaccuracy amounting only to the 
omission of a qualification, — to which he probably ascribed less importance than truly 
belonged to it. 

Other imputations, lam aware, have been publicly made against me, far heavier than this 
which has tempted me into so long an explanation. But with these I do not now concern 
myself: And, as they never gave me a moment's anxiety at the time, so I am now contented 
to refer, for their refutation, to the tenor of all I have ever written, and the testimony of all 
to whom I have been personally known. With any thing bearing the name of Sir Walter 
Scott, however, the case is different : And -when, from any statement of his, I feel that I may 
be accused, even of the venial offences of assuming a power which did not truly belong to 
me — or of being too ready to compromise my political opinions, from general love to litera- 
ture or deference to individual genius, I think myself called upon to offer all the explanations 
in my power: — While I do not stoop to meet, even with a formal denial, the absurd and 
degrading charges with which I have been occasionally assailed, by persons of a different 
-description. 

F. JEFFREY. 

Craigcrookj 10th November ', 1843. 



CONTENTS. 



rjfec 

Preface. . . v 

GENERAL LITERATURE AND LITERARY BIOGRAPHY. 

Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste. By Archibald Alison, LL. B., F.R. S., ^- 

Prebendary of Sarum „ 13 - 

De la Litterature considered dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales. Par Mad. 

de Stael-Holstein. Avec un Precis de la Vie et les Ecrits de PAuteur 40 

The Complete Works, in Philosophy, Politics, and Morals, of the late Dr. Benjamin 
Franklin. Now first collected and arranged. With Memoirs of his Early Life, 
written by Himself 60 

The Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Containing Additional 
Letters, Tracts, and Poems, not hitherto published. With Notes, and a Life of the 
Author, by Walter Scott, Esq 6$ 

Correspondance inedite de Madame du Deffand, avec D'Alembert, Montesquieu, le Pre- 
sident Henault, La Duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Choiseul. De Staal, &c. &c. . ' 93 

Lettres de Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, ecrites depuis PAnnee 1773 jusqu' a PAnnee 

1776, &c ib. 

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship : a Novel. From the German of Goethe 104 

The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles 
Grandison j selected from the original Manuscripts bequeathed to his Family. To 
which are prefixed, a Biographical Account of that Author, and Observations on his 
Writings. By Anna Letitia Barbauld 121 

Correspondance, Litteraire, Philosophique et Critique. Adressee a un Souverain d'AUe- 

magne, depuis 1770 jusqu'a 1782. Par le Baron de Grimm, et par Diderot 129 

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Victor Alfieri. Written by Himself 143 

The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, Esq. With an Introductory- 
Letter to the Right Honourable Earl Cowper. By William Hayley, Esq 154, 163 

HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Town, 
Representative of the County of Nottingham in the Long Parliament, and of the 
Town of Nottingham in the First Parliament of Charles II. &c; with Original Anec- 
dotes of many of the most distinguished of his Contemporaries, and a summary 
Review of Public Affairs : Written by his Widow, Lucy, daughter of Sir Alien Apsley, 
Lieutenant of the Tower, &c. Now first published from the Original Manuscript, 
by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson, &c. &c. To which is prefixed the Life of Mrs. 
Hutchinson, written by Herself, a Fragment 168 

Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, Wife of the Right Honourable Sir Richard Fanshawe, 
Baronet, Ambassador from Charles the Second to the Court of Madrid in 1665. 
Written by Herself. To which are added, Extracts from the Correspondence of Sir 
Richard Fanshawe 179 

Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F. R. S.. Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of 
Charles II. and James II., comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by 
the Rev. John Smith, A . B., of St. John's College, Cambridge, from the original Short- 
hand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. 
Edited by Richard Lord Braybrooke 183 

A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second ; with an Introductory 
Chapter. By the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. To which is added an 

Appendix 197 

2 ix 



T CONTENTS. 

PA08. 

Memoires d'un Temoin de Ja Revolution; ou Journal des faits qui se sont passe sous ses 
yeux. et qui ont prepare et fixe la Constitution Franchise. Ouvrage Posthume de 
Jean Sylvain Bailly, Premier President de l'Assemblee Nationale Constituant, 
Premier Maire de Paris, et Membre des Trois Academies 210 

Considerations sur les Principaux Evenemens de la Revolution Francaise. Ouvrage 
Posthume de Madame la Baronne de Stael. Publie par M. le Due De Broglie et 
M. le Baron A. De Stael 216 

Memoires de Madame la Marquise de Larochejaquelein ; avec deux Cartes du Theatre 

de la Guerre de La Vendee 234 

Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Scour de 

Frederic le Grand. Ecrits de sa Main 249 

History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. By Washington Irving. . . . 259 

Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din Muhammed Baber. Emperor of Hindustan, written by Himself, 
in the Jaghatai Turki, and translated partly by the late John Leyden, Esq. M. D., 
partly by William Erskine, Esq. With Notes and a Geographical and Historical 
Introduction: together with a Map of the Countries between the Oxus and Jaxartes, 
and a Memoir regarding its Construction, by Charles Waddington, Esq., of the 
East India Company's Engineers ." . . . . t 272 

POETRY. 

Specimens of the British Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices, and an Essay on 

English Poetry. By Thomas Campbell 286 

l/The Dramatic Works of John Ford; with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By 

Henry Weber, Esq. . . .. 299 

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. By William Hazlitt 309 

Sardanapalus, a Tragedy. The Two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery. By Lord 

Byron 316 

Manfred ; a Dramatic Poem. By Lord Byron 330 

Reliques of Robert Burns, consisting chiefly of Original Letters, Poems, and Critical 

Observations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. Cromek 335 

Gertrude of Wyoming, a Pennsylvania tale ; and other Poems. By Thomas Campbell, 

author of "The Pleasures of Hope," &c 347 

Theodrie, a Domestic Tale : with other Poems. By Thomas Campbell 354 

1 The Lay of the Last Minstrel : a Poem. By Walter Scott 359 

The Lady of the Lake : a Poem. By Walter Scott 367 

Poems. By the Reverend George Crabbe 380 

The Borough: a Poem, in Twenty-four Letters. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL.B.. 387 

Tales. By the Reverend George Crabbe 396 

Tales of the Hall. By the Reverend George Crabbe. 405 

Endymion : a Poetic Romance. By John Keats 413 

Lamia, Isabella. The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. By John Keats, author of 

" Endymion" ib. 

Human Life : a Poem. By Samuel Rogers 419 

Roderick : The Last of the Goths. By Robert Southey, Esq., Poet-Laureate, and Mem- 
ber of the Royal Spanish Academy 424 

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third. By Lord Bvron 434 

— "The Prisoner of Chillon, and other Poems. By Lord Byron ib. 

Lalla Rookh ; an Oriental Romance. By Thomas Moore 446 

The Excursion; being a Portion of the Recluse, a Poem. By William Wordsworth.. 457 
The White Doe of Rylstone ; or the Fate of the Nortons: a Poem. By William Words- 
worth 469 

Records of Women : with other Poems. By Felicia Hemans 473 

The Forest Sanctuary : with other Poems. By Felicia Hemans ib. 

PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIND, METAPHYSICS, AND JURISPRUDENCE. 

Traites de Legislation Civile et Penale; precedes de Principes Generaux de Legislation, 
et d'une Vue d'un Corps complet de Droit; termines par un Essai sur l'influence 
des Tems et des Lieux relativement aux Lois. Par M. Jeremie Bentham, Juriscon- 
sulte Anglois. Publies en Francois par M. Dumont de Geneve, d'apres les Manu- 
scrits confies par l'Auteur. , 479 






CONTENTS. xi 

PA.QB. 

Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid, D.D., F.R.S. Edinburgh, late Professor 

of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. By Dugald Stewart, F.R.S. . 486 

Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the Year 1795, written by rnmself : With a Continua- 
tion to the Time of his Decease, by his Son Joseph Priestley; and Observations on 
his Writings. By Thomas Cooper, President Judge of the Fourth District of Penn- 
sylvania, and the Reverend William Christie 49? 

Academical Questions. By the Right Honourable William Drummond, K.C., F.R.S., 

F.R.S.E. Author of a Translation of Persius 496 

An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D., late Professor of Moral 
Philosophy and Logic in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen : includ- 
ing many of his original Letters. By Sir W. Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet, one of the 
Executors of Dr. Beattie 501 

Philosophical Essays. By Dugald Stewart, Esq., F.R.S. Edinburgh, Emeritus Pro- 
fessor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, &c. &c 504 

NOVELS, TALES, AND PROSE WORKS OF FICTION. 

Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss Edgeworth, Author of "Practical Education," 

"Belinda." " Castle Rackrent," &c 512. 517 

■--Waverley, or >Tis Sixty Years Since 523 

Tales of My Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster 

and Parish Clerk of the Parish of Gandercleugh 528 

Rob Roy. By the Author of " Waverley," " Guy Mannering," and " The Antiquary" 535 

Ivanhoe. A Romance. By the Author of " Waverley," &c 537 

The Novels and Tales of the Author of "'Waverley;" comprising "Waverley," "Guy 
Mannering," "Antiquary," "Rob Roy," "Tales of My Landlord, First, Second, and 

Third Series ;" New Edition, with a copious Glossary ib. 

The Fortunes of Nigel. By the Author of "Waverley," " Kenilworth," &c 543 

Annals of the Parish, or the Chronicles of Dalmailing, during the Ministry of the Rev. 

Micah Balwhidder. Written by Himself 548 

The Ayrshire Legatees, or the Pringle Family. By the Author of "Annals of the 

Parish," &c ib. 

The Provost. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "'Ayrshire Legatees," &c ib. 

Sir Andrew Wyllie of that Ilk. By the Author of "'Annals of the Parish," &c ib, 

The Steam Boat. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c ib. 

The Entail, or the Lairds of Grippy. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "Sir 

Andrew Wyllie," &c ib. 

Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. . . ib. 

Valerius, a Roman Story ib. 

Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life ib. 

Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle. . ib. 
The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. By the Author of "Lights and Shadows of Scottish 

Life". ...... T. ib. 

Reginald Dalton. By the Author of " Valerius," and " Adam Blair" ib. 

m 

GENERAL POLITICS. 

Essay on the Practice of the British Government, distinguished from the abstract The- 
ory on which it is supposed to be founded. By Gould Francis Leckie 564 

A Song of Triumph. By W. Sotheby, Esq 577 

L'Acte Constitutionnel, en la Seance du 9 Avril, 1814 ib. 

Of Bonaparte, the Bourbons, and the Necessity of rallying round our legitimate Princes 

for the Happiness of France and of Europe. By F. Chateaubriand i'6. 

Speech of the Right Hon. William Windham, in the House of Commons, May 26, 1809, 
on Mr. Curwen's Bill, " for better securing the Independence and Purity of Par- 
liament, by Preventing the procuring or obtaining of Seats by corrupt Practices" . . 594 

Short Remarks on the State of Parties at the Close of the Year 1809 604 

The History of Ireland. By John O'Driscol 610 

Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By Thomas 
Moore 616 



ta CONTENTS. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. 
Part First. Containing an Historical Outline of their Merits and Wrongs as Colonies, 
and Strictures on the Calumnies of British Writers. By Robert Walsh, Esq 621 

Bracebridge Hall j or, the Humourists. By Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Author of " The 

Sketch Book," &c 637 

A Portraiture of Quakerism, as taken from a View of the Moral Education, Discipline, 
Peculiar Customs, Religious Principles, Political and Civil Economy, and Character 
of the Society of Friends. By Thomas Clarkson, M. A., Author of several Essays 
on the Subject of the Slave Trade , 643 

Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn. By Thomas Clarkson, M. A. 651 

A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Colling- 
wood : interspersed with Memoirs of his Life. By G. L. Newnham Collingwood, 
Esq., F. R. S .659 

Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 
1824, 1825 (with Notes upon Ceylon); an Account of a Journey to Madras and the 
Southern Provinces, 1826 ; and Letters written in India. By the late Right Rever- 
end Reginald Heber, Lord Bishop of Calcutta 666 

Sketches of India. Written by an Officer, for Fire-Side Travellers at Home 674 

Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and in Italy. By the Author of "Sketches of India," 

and " Recollections of the Peninsula" ib. 

Letters from a late eminent Prelate to one of his Friends 683 

Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of James Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont, Knight 
of St. Patrick, &c. &c. By Francis Hardy, Esq., Member of the House of Com- 
mons in the three last Parliaments of Ireland 693 

An Inquiry whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented by our present Sys- 
tem of Prison discipline. Illustrated by Descriptions of the Borough Compter, Tot- 
hill Fields Prison, the Jail at St. Albans, the Jail at Guilford, the Jail at Bristol, the 
Jails at Bury and Ilchester, the Maison de Force at Ghent, the Philadelphia Prison, 
the Penitentiary at Millbank, aud the Proceedings of the Ladies' Committee at 
Newgate. By Thomas Fowell Buxton 700 

Memoirs of Richard Cumberland : written by Himself. Containing an Account of his 
Life and Writings, interspersed with Anecdotes and Characters of the most distin- 
guished Persons of his Time with whom he had Intercourse or Connection 707 

The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Including her Cor- 
respondence, Poems, and Essays 711 

The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ire- . 
land. By his Son, William Henry Curran, Barrister-at-Law 717 

Switzerland, or a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country in the Years 1817, 
1818, 18 19. Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of An- 
cient and Modem Helvetia, in which the Events of our own Time are fully De- 
tailed; together with the Causes to which they may be referred. By L. Simond, 
Author of "Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 
and 1811" 725 

Rejected Addresses ; or the New Theatrum Poetarum 732 

ffiuvres Inedites de Madame la Baronne de Stael, publiees par sonFils; precedees d'une 
Notice sur le Caractere et les Ecrits de M. de Stael. Par Madame Necker Saus- 
sure ] 737 

Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by his Son, 

Robert James Mackintosh, Esq 742 

Notice of the Honourable Henry Erskine 756 

Notice and Character of Professor Playfair 757 

^Notice and Character of James Watt 760 



GENERAL LITERATURE 



AND 



LITERARY BIOGRAPHY. 



(IH a & 1811.) 

Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste. — By Archibald Alison, L L. B.. F. R. S., 
Prebendary of Sarum,* &c. 2 vols. 8vo. 



There are few parts of our nature which 
have given more trouble to philosophers, or 
appeared more simple to the unreflecting, 
than the perceptions we have of Beauty, and 
the circumstances under which these are pre- 
sented to us. If we ask one of the latter (and 
larger) class, what beauty is? we shall most 
probably be answered, that it is what makes 
things pleasant to look at; and if we remind 
him that many other things are called and 
perceived to be beautiful, besides objects of 
sight, and ask hew, or by what faculty he 
supposes that we distinguish such objects, we 
must generally be satisfied with hearing that 
it has pleased God to make us capable of such 
a perception. The science of mind may not 
appear to be much advanced by these re- 
sponses ; and yet, if it could be made out, as 
some have alleged, that our perception of 
beauty was a simple sensation, like our per- 
ception of colour, and that the faculty of taste 
was an original and distinct sense, like that 
of seeing or hearing; this would be truly the 
only account that could be given, either of the 
sense or of its object; — and all that we could 
do, in investigating the nature of the latter, 
would be to ascertain and enumerate the cir- 
cumstances under which it was found to indi- 
cate itself to its appropriate organ. All that 
we can say of colour, if we consider it very 
strictly, is, that it is that property in objects 
by which they make themselves known to 
the faculty of sight ; and the faculty of sight 
can scarcely be defined in any other way than 
as that by which we are enabled to discover 
the existence of colour. When we attempt 
to proceed farther, and, on being asked to 



* The greater part of this paper was first printed 
in the Edinburgh Review for May 1811 ; but was 
afterwards considerably enlarged, and inserted as a 
separate article (under the word Bfauty) in the 
supplement to the Encyclopedia Briltannica, pub- 
lished in 1824, and subsequently incorporated into 
the new edition of that great work in 1841, from 
which it is now reprinted in its complete form, by 
tbe liberal allowance of the proprietors. 



define what green or red is, say that green ii 
the colour of grass, and red of roses or of 
blood, it is plain that we do not in any respect 
explain the nature of those colours, but only 
give instances of their occurrence; and that 
one who had never seen the objects referred 
to could learn nothing whatever from these 
pretended definitions. Complex ideas, on the 
other hand, and, compound emotions, may al- 
ways be defined, and explained to a certain 
extent, by enumerating the parts of which 
they are made up, or resolving them into the 
elements of which they are composed : and 
we may thus acquire, not only a substantial, 
though limited, knowledge of their nature, 
but a practical power in their regulation or 
production. 

It becomes of importance, therefore, in the 
very outset of this inquiry, to consider whether 
our sense of beauty be really a simple sen- 
sation, like some of those we have enume- 
rated, or a compound or derivative feeling, 
the sources or elements of which may be in- 
vestigated and ascertained. If it be the 
former, we have then only to refer it to the 
peculiar sense or faculty of which it is the 
object ; and to determine, by repeated obser- 
vation, under what circumstances that sense 
is called into action : but if it be the latter, 
we shall have to proceed, by a joint process 
of observation and reflection, to ascertain what 
are the primary feelings to which it may be 
referred; and by what peculiar modification 
of them it is produced and distinguished. We 
are not quite prepared, as yet, to exhaust the 
whole of this important discussion, to which 
we shall be obliged to return in the sequel of 
our inquiry; but it is necessary, in order to 
explain and to set forth, in their natural order, 
the difficulties with which the subject is sur- 
rounded, to state here, in a very few words, 
one or two of the most obvious, and, as we 
think, decisive objections against the notion 
of beauty being a simple sensation, or the 
object of a separate and peculiar faculty. 

The first, and perhaps the most consider- 
B 13 



14 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



able, is the want of agreement as to the 
presence and existence of beauty in particular 
objects, among men whose organization is 
perfect, and who are plainly possessed of the 
faculty, whatever it may be, by which beauty 
is discerned. Now, no such thing happens, 
we imagine, or can be conceived to happen, 
in the case of any other simple sensation, or 
the exercise of any other distinct faculty. 
Where one man sees light, all men who have 
eyes see light also. All men allow grass to 
be green, and sugar to be sweet, and ice to be 
cold; and the unavoidable inference from any 
apparent disagreement in such matters neces- 
sarily is, that the party is insane, or entirely 
destitute of the sense or organ concerned in 
the perception. With regard to beauty, how- 
ever, it is obvious, at first sight, that the case 
is entirely different. One man sees it per- 
petually, where to another it is quite invisible, 
or even where its reverse seems to be con- 
spicuous. Nor is this owing to the insensi- 
bility of either of the parties ; for the same 
contrariety exists where both are keenly alive 
to the influences of the beauty they respect- 
ively discern. A Chinese or African lover 
would probably see nothing at all attractive 
in a belle of London or Paris ; and, undoubt- 
edly, an elegansformarum spectator from either 
of those cities would discover nothing but de- 
formity in the Venus of the Hottentots. A 
little distance in time often produces the 
same effects as distance in place ; — the gar- 
dens, the furniture, the dress, which appeared 
beautiful in the eyes of our grandfathers, are 
odious and ridiculous in oars. Nay, the dif- 
ference of rank, education, or employments, 
gives rise to the same diversity of sensation. 
The little shop-keeper sees a beauty in his 
roadside box, and in the staring tile roof, 
wooden lions, and clipped boxwood, which 
strike horror into the soul of the student of 
the picturesque; while he is transported in 
surveying the fragments of ancient sculpture, 
which are nothing but ugly masses of mould- 
ering stone, in the judgment of the admirer 
of neatness. It is needless, however, to mul- 
tiply instances, since the fact admits of no 
contradiction. But how can we believe that 
beauty is the object of a peculiar sense or 
faculty, when persons undoubtedly possessed 
of the faculty, and even in an eminent degree, 
can discover nothing of it in objects where it 
is distinctly felt and perceived by others with 
the same use of the faculty 1 

This one consideration, we confess, appears 
to us conclusive against the supposition of 
beauty being a real property of objects, ad- 
dressing itself to the power of taste as a sepa- 
rate sense or faculty ; and it seems to point 
•irresistibly to the conclusion, that our sense 
of it is the result of other more elementary 
feelings, into which it may be analysed or 
resolved. A second objection, however, if 
possible of still greater force, is suggested, by 
considering the prodigious and almost infinite 
variety of things to which this property of 
beauty is ascribed ; and the impossibility of 
imagining any one inherent quality which 
can belong to them all, and yet at the same 



time possess so much unity as to pass univer- 
sally by the same name, and be recogniseu 
as the peculiar object of a separate sense or 
faculty. All simple qualities that are perceived 
in any one object, are immediately recognised 
to be the same, when they are again perceived 
in another ; and the objects in which they are 
thus perceived are at once felt so far to re- 
semble each other, and to partake of the same 
nature. Thus snow is seen to be white, and 
chalk is seen to be white; but this is no 
sooner seen, than the two substances, how- 
ever unlike in other respects, are felt at once 
to have this quality in common, and to re- 
semble each other completely in all that re- 
lates to the quality of colour, and the sense 
of seeing. But is this felt, or could it even be 
intelligibly asserted, with regard to the quality 
of beauty? Take even a limited and specific sort 
of beauty — for instance, the beauty of form. 
The form of a fine tree is beautiful, and the 
form of a fine woman, and the form of a column, 
and a vase, and a chandelier. Yet how can it 
be said that the form of a woman has any 
thing in common with that of a tree or a tem- 
ple ? or to which of the senses by which forms 
are distinguished can it be supposed to appear 
that they have any resemblance or affinity? 

The matter, however, becomes still more 
inextricable when we recollect that beauty 
does not belong merely to forms or colours, 
but to sounds, and perhaps to the objects of 
other senses; nay, that in all languages and 
in all nations, it is not supposed to reside ex- 
clusively in material objects, but to belong 
also to sentiments and ideas, and intellectual 
and moral existences. Not only is a tree 
beautiful, as well as a palace or a waterfall ; 
but a poem is beautiful, and a theorem in 
mathematics, and a contrivance in mechanics. 
But if things intellectual and totally segre- 
gated from matter may thus possess beauty, 
how can it possibly be a quality of material 
objects'? or what sense or faculty can that be, 
whose proper office it is to intimate to us the 
existence of some property which is common 
to a flower and a demonstration, a valley and 
an eloquent discourse 1 ? 

The only answer which occurs to this is 
plainly enough a bad one ; but the statement 
of it, and of its insufficiency, will serve better, 
perhaps, than any thing else, to develope the 
actual difficulties of the subject, and the true 
state of the question with regard to them. It 
may be said, then, in answer to the questions 
we have suggested above, that all these ob- 
jects, however various and dissimilar, agree 
at least in being agreeable, and that this 
agreeablenessj which is the only quality they 
possess in common, may probably be the 
beauty which is ascribed to them all. Now, 
to those Mho are accustomed to such discus- 
sions, it would be quite enough to reply, that 
though the agreeableness of such objects de- 
pend plainly enough upon their beauty, it by 
no means follows, but quite the contrary, that 
their beauty depends upon their agreeable- 
ness; the latter being the more comprehensive 
or generic term, under which beauty must 
rank as one of the species. Its nature, there • 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



IS 



fore, is m more explained, nor is less ab- 
surdity substantially committed, by saying 
that things are beautiful because they are 
agreeable, than if we were to give the same 
explanation of the sweetness of sugar; for no 
one, we suppose, will dispute, that though it 
be very true that sugar is agreeable because 
it is sweet, it would be manifestly prepos- 
terous to say that it was sweet because it was 
agreeable. For the benefit, however, of those 
who wish or require to be more regularly 
initiated in these mysteries, we beg leave to 
add a few observations. 

In the first place, then, it seems evident, 
that agreeableness, in general, cannot be the 
same with beauty, because there are very 
many things in the highest degree agreeable, 
that can in no sense be called beautiful. 
Moderate heat, and savoury food, and rest, 
and exercise, are agreeable to the body; but 
none of these can be called beautiful; and 
among objects of a higher class, the love and 
esteem of others, and fame, and a good con- 
science, and healtl^ and riches, and wisdom, 
are all eminently agreeable; but none at all 
beautiful, according to any intelligible use of 
the word. It is plainly quite absurd, therefore, 
to say that beauty consists in agreeableness. 
without specifying in consequence of what it 
is agreeable — or to hold that any thing what- 
ever is taught as to its nature, by merely 
classing it among our pleasurable emotions. 

In the second place, however, we may re- 
mark, that among all the objects that are 
agreeable, whether they are also beautiful or 
not, scarcely any two are agreeable on account 
of the same qualities, or even suggest their 
agreeableness to the same faculty or organ. 
Most certainly there is no resemblance or 
affinity whatever between the qualities which 
make a peach agreeable to the palate, and a 
beautiful statue to the eye; which soothe us 
in an easy chair by the fire, or delight us in a 
philosophical discovery. The truth is, that 
agreeableness is not properly a quality of any 
object whatsoever, but the effect or result of 
certain qualities, the nature of which, in every 
particular instance, we can generally define 
pretty exactly, or of which we know at least 
with certainty that they manifest themselves 
respectively to some one "particular sense or 
faculty, and to no other; and consequently it 
would be just as obviously ridiculous to sup- 
pose a faculty or organ, whose office it was to 
perceive agreeableness in general, as to sup- 
pose that agreeableness was a distinct quality 
that could thus be perceived. 

The class of agreeable objects, thanks to 
the bounty of Providence, is exceedingly large. 
Certain things are agreeable to the palate, and 
others to the smell and to the touch. Some 
again are agreeable to our faculty of imagina- 
tion, or to our understanding, or to our moral 
feelings; and none of all these we call beau- 
tiful. But there are others which we do call 
beautiful ; and those we say are agreeable to 
our faculty of taste ; — but when we come to 
ask what is the faculty of taste, and what are 
the qualities which recommend the subjects 
to that faculty ? • -we have no such answer tc 



give ; and find ourselves just wnere we were* 
at the beginning of the discussion, and em- 
barrassed with all the difficulties arising from 
the prodigious diversity of objects which seem 
to possess these qualities. 

We know pretty well what is the faculty 
of seeing or hearing; or, at least, we know 
that what is agreeable to one of those facul- 
ties, has no effect whatever on the other. We 
know that bright colours afford no delight to 
the ear, nor sweet tones to the eye ; and are 
therefore perfectly assured that the qualities 
which make the visible objects agreeable, 
cannot be the same with those which give 
pleasure to the ear. But it is by the eye and 
by the ear that all material beauty is per- 
ceived ; and yet the beauty which discloses 
itself to these two separate senses, and conse- 
quently must depend upon qualities which 
have no sort of affinity, is supposed to be one 
distinct quality, and to be perceived by a pe- 
culiar sense or faculty! The perplexity be- 
comes still greater when we think of the 
beauty of poems or theorems, and endeavour 
to imagine what qualities they can possess ir 
common with the agreeable modifications oi 
light or of sound. 

It is in these considerations undoubtedly 
that the difficulty of the subject consists. The 
faculty of taste, plainly, is not a faculty like 
any of the external senses, the range of whose 
objects is limited and precise, as well as the 
qualities by which they are gratified or of- 
fended ; and beauty, accordingly, is discovered 
in an mfinite variety of objects, among which 
it seems, at first sight, impossible to discover 
any other bond of connexion. Yet boundless 
as their diversity may appear, it is plain that 
they must resemble each other in something, 
and in something more definite and definable 
than merely in being agreeable ; since they 
are all classed together, in every tongue and 
nation, under the common appellation of beau- 
tiful, and are felt indeed to produce emotions 
in the mind that have some sort of kindred or 
affinity. The words beauty and beautiful, in 
short, do and must mean something; and are 
universally felt to mean something much 
more definite than agreeableness or gratifica- 
tion in general : and while it is confessedly 
by no means easy to describe or define what 
that something is, the force and clearness of 
our perception of it is demonstrated by the 
readiness with which we determine, in any 
particular instance, whether the object of a 
given pleasurable emotion is or is not prop- 
erly described as beauty. 

What we have already said, we confess, 
appears to us conclusive against the idea of 
this beauty being any fixed or inherent prop- 
erty of the objects to which it is ascribed, or 
itself the object of any separate and inde- 
pendent faculty ; and we will no longer con- 
ceal from the reader what we take to be the 
true solution of the difficulty. In our opinion, 
then, our sense of beauty depends entirely on 
our previous experience of simpler pleasures 
or emotions, and consists in the suggestion of 
agreeable or interesting sensations with which 
we had formerly been made familiar by the 



16 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



direct and intelligible agency of our common I to imagine, that recollections thus strikingly 
sensibilities; and that vast variety of objects, j suggested by some real and present existence, 
to which we give the common name of beau- should present themselves under a different 
tiful, become entitled to that appellation, aspect, and move the mind somewhat differ- 
merely because they all possess the power of ' ently from those which arise spontaneously in 
recalling or reflecting those sensations of I the ordinary course of our reflections, and do 
which they have been the accompaniments, \ not thus grow out of a direct, present, and 
or with which they have been associated in 'peculiar impression. 



our imagination by any other more casual 
bond of connection. According to this view 
of the matter, therefore, beauty is not an in- 
herent property or quality of objects at all, 



The whole of this doctrine, however, we 
shall endeavour by and bye to establish upon 
more direct evidence. But having now ex- 
plained, in a general way, both the difficulties 



but the result of the accidental relations in j of the subject, and our suggestion as to their 
which they may stand to our experience of j true solution, it is proper that we should take a 
pleasures or emotions ; and does not depend ' short review of the more considerable theories 
upon any particular configuration of parts, that have been proposed for the elucidation 
proportions, or colours, in external things, nor of this curious question; which is one of the 
upon the unity, coherence, or simplicity of | most delicate as well as the most popular in 
intellectual creations — but merely upon the the science of metaphysics — was one of the 
associations which, in the case of every indi- earliest which exercised the speculative inge- 
vidual, may enable these inherent, and other- nuity of philosophers — and has at last, we 
wise indifferent qualities, to suggest or recall think, been more successfully treated than 
to the mind emotions of a pleasurable or in- any other of a similar description, 
teresting description. It follows, therefore, In most of these speculaHous we shall find 



that no object is beautiful in itself, or could 
appear so antecedent to our experience of di- 
rect pleasures or emotions; and that, as an 
infinite variety of objects may thus reflect in- 
teresting ideas, so all of them may acquire 
the title of beautiful, although utterly diverse 
and disparate in their nature, and possessing 
nothing in common but this accidental power 
of reminding us of other emotions. 

This theory, which, we believe, is now very 
generally adopted, though under many need- 
less qualifications, shall be farther developed 
and illustrated in the sequel. But at present 
we shall only remark, that it serves, at least, 
to solve the great problem involved in the 
discussion, by rendering it easily conceivable 
how objects which have no inherent resem- 
blance, nor, indeed, any one quality in com- 
mon, should yet be united in one common 
relation, and consequently acquire one com- 
mon name ; just as all the things that belonged 
to a beloved individual may serve to remind 
us of him, and thus to awake a kindred class 
of emotions, though just as unlike each other 
as any of the objects that are classed under 
the general name of beautiful. His poetry, 
for instance, or his slippers — his acts of bounty 
or his saddle-horse — may lead to the^same 
chain of interesting remembrances, and thus 



rather imperfect truth than fundamental error; 
or, at all events, such errors only as arise natu- 
rally from that peculiar difficulty which we 
have already endeavoured to explain, as con- 
sisting in the prodigious multitude and di- 
versity of the objects in which the common 
quality of beauty was to be accounted for. 
Those who have not been sufficiently aware 
of the difficulty have generally dogmatised 
from a small number of instances, and have 
rather given examples of the occurrence of 
beauty in some few classes of objects, than 
afforded any light as to that upon which it 
essentially depended in all ; while those who 
felt its full force have very often found no 
other resource, than to represent beauty as 
consisting in properties so extremely vague 
and general, (such, for example, as the power 
of exciting ideas of relation,) as almost to 
elude our comprehension, and, at the same 
time, of so abstract and metaphysical a de- 
scription, as not to be very intelligibly stated, 
as the elements of a strong, familiar, and 
pleasurable emotion. 

This last observation leads us to make one 
other remark upon the general character of 
these theories ; and this is, that some of them, 
though not openly professing that doctrine, 
seem necessarily to imply the existence of a 



agree in possessing a power of excitement, ; peculiar sense or faculty for the perception 
for the sources of which we should look in of beauty ; as they resolve it into properties 



vain through all the variety of their physical 
or metaphysical qualities 



that are not in any way interesting or agree- 
able to any of our known faculties. Such 



By the help of the same consideration, we are all those which make it consist in propor- 
get rid of all the mystery of a peculiar sense ; tion — or in variety, combined with regular- 
or faculty, imagined for the express purpose ity — or in waving lines — or in unity — or in 
of perceiving beauty; and discover that the the perception of relations — without explain- 
power of taste is nothing more than the habit ing, or attempting to explain, how any of these 
of tracing those associations, by which almost ! things should, in any circumstances, affect us 
all objects maybe connected with interesting with delight or emotion. Others, again, do 
emotions. It is easy to understand, that the not require the supposition of any such sepa- 
recollection of any scene of delight or emotion j rate faculty; because in them the sense of 
must produce a certain agreeable sensation, 'beauty is considered as arising from other 
and that the objects which introduce these more simple and familiar emotions, which 
recollections should not appear altogether in- are in themselves and beyond all disputo 
different to us: nor is it, perhaps, very difficult | agreeable. Such are those which teach that 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



rteauly depends on the perception of utility, 
or of design, or fitness, or in tracing associa- 
tions between its objects and the common 
joys or emotions of our nature. Which of 
these two classes of speculation, to one or 
other of which, we believe, all theories of 
beauty may be reduced, is the most philo- 
sophical in itself, we imagine can admit of 
no question ; and we hope in the sequel to 
leave it as little doubtful, which is to be con- 
sidered as most consistent with the fact. In 
the mean time, "we must give a short account 
of some of the theories themselves. 

The most ancient of which it seems neces- 
sary to take any notice, is that which may be 
traced in the Dialogues of Plato — though we 
are very far from pretending that it is possible 
to give any intelligible or consistent account 
of its tenor. It should never be forgotten, 
however, that it is to this subtle and inge- 
nious spirit that we owe the suggestion, that 
it is mind alone that is beautiful ; and that, 
in perceiving beauty, it only contemplates 
the shadow of its own affections; — a doctrine 
which, however mystically unfolded in his 
writings, or however combined with extrava- 
gant or absurd speculations, unquestionably 
carries in it the the germ of all the truth that 
has since been revealed on the subject. By 
far the largest dissertation, however, that this 
great philosopher has left upon the nature of 
beauty, is to be found in the dialogue entitled 
The Greater Hippias, which is entirely de- 
voted to that inquiry. We do not learn a 
great deal of the author's own opinion, in- 
deed, from this performance; for it is one of 
the dialogues which have been termed Ana- 
leptic, or confuting — in which nothing is 
concluded in the affirmative, but a series of. 
sophistical suggestions or hypotheses are suc- 
cessively exposed. The plan of it is to lead 
on Hippias, a shallow and confident sophist, 
to make a variety of dogmatical assertions as 
to the nature of beauty, and then to make 
him retract and abandon them, upon the 
statement of some obvious objections. So- 
crates and he agree at first in the notable 
proposition, "that beauty is that by which 
all beautiful things are beautiful ;" and then, 
after a great number of suggestions, by far 
too childish and absurd to be worthy of any 
notice — -such as, that the beautiful may per- 
adventure be gold, or a fine woman, or a 
handsome mare — they at last get to some 
suppositions, which show that almost all the 
theories that have since been propounded on 
this interesting subject had occurred thus 
early to the active and original mind of this 
keen and curious inquirer. Thus, Socrates 
first suggests that beauty may consist in the 
fitness or suitableness of any object to the 
place it occupies: and afterwards, more gen- 
erally and directly, that it may consist in 
utility — a notion which is ultimately reject- 
ed, however, upon the subtle consideration 
that the useful is that which produces good, 
and that the producer and the product being 
necessarily different, it would follow, upon 
that supposition, that beauty could not be 
good, nor good beautiful. Finally, h-3 sug- 
\ 3 



gests that beauty may be the mere organic 
delight of the eye or the ear; to which, after 
stating very slightly the objection, that it 
would be impossible to account upon this 
ground for the beauty of poetry or eloquence, 
he proceeds to rear up a more refined and 
elaborate refutation, upon such grounds as 
these : — If beauty be the proper name of thai 
which is naturally agreeable to the sight and 
hearing, it is plain, that the objects to which 
it is ascribed must possess some common and 
distinguishable property, besides that of being 
agreeable, in consequence of which they are 
separated and set apart from objects that are 
agreeable to our other senses and faculties, 
and, at the same time, classed together Under 
the common appellation of beautiful. Now ; 
we are not only quite unable to discover what 
this property is, but it is manifest, that objects 
which make themselves known to the ear, 
can have no property as such, in common 
with objects that make themselves known to 
the eye; it being impossible that an object 
which is beautiful by its colour, can be beau- 
tiful, from the same quality, with another 
which is beautiful by its sound. From all 
which it is inferred, that as beauty is admitted 
to be something real, it cannot be merely what 
is agreeable to the organs of sight or hearing. 

There is no practical wisdom, we admit, in 
those fine-drawn speculations ; nor any of that 
spirit of patient observation by which alone 
any sound view of such objects can ever 
be attained. There are also many marks 
of that singular incapacity to distinguish 
between what is absolutely puerile and 
foolish, and what is plausible, at least, and 
ingenious, which may be reckoned among 
the characteristics of "the divine philoso- 
pher," and in some degree of all the philoso- 
phers of antiquity: but they show clearly 
enough the subtle and abstract character of 
Greek speculation, and prove at how early 
a period, and to how great an extent, the 
inherent difficulties of the subject were felt ? 
and produced their appropriate effects. 

There are some hints on these subjects in 
the works of Xenophon ; and some scattered 
observations in those of Cicero ; who was the 
first, we believe, to observe, that the sense 
of beauty is peculiar to man ; but nothing 
else, we believe, in classical antiquity, which 
requires to be analysed or explained. It ap- 
pears that St. Augustin composed a large 
treatise on beauty ; and it is to be lamented, 
that the speculations of that acute and ardent 
genius on such a subject have been lost. We 
discover, from incidental notices in other parts 
of his writings, that he conceived the beauty 
of all objects to depend en their unity, or on 
the perception of that principle or design 
which fixed the relations of their various 
parts, and presented them to the intellect or 
j imagination as one harmonious whole. It 
j would not be fair to deal very strictly with 
| a theory with which we are so imperfectly 
' acquainted : but it may be observed, that, 
i while the author is so far in the right as to 
| make beauty consist in a relation to mind, 
i and not in any physical quality, he has taken 
b2 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



far too narrow and circumscribed a view of 
the matter, and one which seems almost ex- 
clusively applicable to works of human art; 
Jt being plain enough, we think, that a beau- 
tiful landscape, or a beautiful horse, has no 
more unity, and no more traces of design, 
than one which is not beautiful. 

We do not pretend to know what the 
schoolmen taught upon this subject during the 
dark ages; but the discussion does not seem 
to have been resumed for long after the re- 
vival of letters. The followers of Leibnitz 
were pleased to maintain that beauty con- 
sisted in perfection ; but what constituted 
perfection (in this respect) they did not at- 
tempt to define. M. Crouzas wrote a long 
essay, to show that beauty depended on these 
five elements, variety, unity, regularity, order, 
and proportion ; and the Pere Andre, a still 
longer one to prove, that, admitting these to 
be the true foundations of beauty, it was still 
most important to consider, that the beauty 
which results from them is either essential, 
or natural, or artificial — and that it may be 
greater or less, according as the character- 
istics of each of these classes are combined 
or set in opposition. 

Among ourselves, we are not aware of any 
considerable publication on the subject till 
the appearance of Lord Shaftesbury's Charac- 
teristics; in which a sort of rapturous Platonic 
doctrine is delivered as to the existence of a 
primitive and Supreme Good and Beauty, and 
of a certain internal sense, by which both 
beauty and moral merit are distinguished. 
Addison published several ingenious papers 
in The Spectator, on the pleasures of the 
imagination, and was the first, we believe, 
who referred them to the specific sources of 
beauty, sublimity, and novelty. He did not 
enter much, however, into the metaphysical 
discussion of the nature of beauty itself; and 
the first philosophical treatise of note that ap- 
peared on the subject, may be said to have 
been the Inquiry of Dr. Hucheson, first pub- 
lished, we believe, in 1735. 

In this work, the notion of a peculiar in- 
ternal sense, by which we are made sensible 
of the existence of beauty, is very boldly pro- 
mulgated, and maintained by many ingenious 
arguments : Yet nothing, we conceive, can be 
more extravagant than such a proposition; 
and nothing but the radical faults of the other 
parts of his theory could possibly have driven 
the learned author to its adoption. Even 
after the existence of the sixth sense was as- 
sumed, he felt that it was still necessary that 
he should explain what were the qualities by 
which it was gratified ; and these, he was 
pleased to allege, were nothing but the com- 
binations of variety with uniformity; all ob- 
jects, as he has himself expressed it, which 
are equally uniform, being beautiful in pro- 
portion to their variety — and all objects 
equally various being beautiful in proportion 
to their uniformity. Now, not to insist upon 
the obvious and radical objection that this is 
not true in fact, as to flowers, landscapes, or 
indeed of any thing but architecture, if it be 
true of that — it could not fail to strike the 



ingenious author that these qualities of uni- 
formity and variety were not of themselves 
agreeable to any of our known senses or facul- 
ties, except when considered as symbols of 
utility or design, and therefore could not in- 
telligibly account for the very lively emotions 
which we often experience from the percep- 
tion of beauty, where the notion of design or 
utility is not at all suggested. He was con- 
strained, therefore, either to abandon this view 
of the nature of beauty altogether, or to ima- 
gine a new sense or faculty, whose only func- 
tion it should be to receive delight from the 
combinations of uniformity and variety, with- 
out any consideration of their being significant 
of things agreeable to our other faculties; and 
this being accomplished by the mere force 
of the definition, there was no room for farther 
dispute or difficulty in the matter. 

Some of Hucheson's followers, such as Ge- 
rard and others, who were a little startled at 
the notion of a separate faculty, and yet 
wished to retain the doctrine of beauty de- 
pending on variety and uniformity, endea- 
voured, accordingly, to show that these quali- 
ties were naturally agreeable to the mind, and 
were recommended by considerations arising 
from its most familiar properties. Uniformity 
or simplicity, they observed, renders our con* 
ception of objects easy, and saves the mind 
from all fatigue and distraction in the con- 
sideration of them ; whilst variety, if circum- 
scribed and limited by an ultimate uniformity, 
gives it a pleasing exercise and excitement, 
and keeps its energies in a state of pleasur- 
able activity. Now, this appears to us to be 
mere trifling. The varied and lively emotions 
which we receive from the perception of 
beauty, obviously have no sort of resemblance 
to the pleasure of moderate intellectual exer- 
tion ; nor can any thing be conceived more 
utterly dissimilar than the gratification we 
have in gazing on the form of a lovely woman, 
and the satisfaction we receive from working 
an easy problem in arithmetic or geometry. 
If a triangle is more beautiful than a regular 
polygon, as those authors maintain, merely be- 
cause its figure is more easily comprehended, 
the number four should be more beautiful 
than the number 327, and the form of a gibbet 
far more agreeable than that of a branching 
oak. The radical error, in short, consists in 
fixing upon properties that are not interesting 
in themselves, and can never be conceived, 
therefore, to excite any emotion, as the foun- 
tain-spring of all our emotions of beauty : and 
it is an absurdity that must infallibly lead to 
others — whether these take the shape of a 
violent attempt to disguise the truly different 
nature of the properties so selected, or of the 
bolder expedient of creating a peculiar faculty, 
whose office it is to find them interesting. 

The next remarkable theory was that pro- 
posed by Edmund Burke, in his Treatise of 
the Sublime and Beautiful. But of this, in 
spite of the great name of the author, we can- 
not persuade ourselves that it is necessary to 
say much. His explanation is founded upon 
a species of materialism — not much to have 
been expected from the general character of 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



19 



his genius, or the strain of his other specula- 1 
tions — for it all resolves into this — that all 
objects appear t»eautiful, whieii have the 
power of producing a peculiar relaxation of 
our nerves and fibres, and thus inducing a 
certain degree of bodily languor and sinking. 
Of all the suppositions that have been at any 
time hazarded to explain the phenomena of 
beauty, this, we think, is the most unfortu- 
nately imagined, and the most weakly sup- 
ported. There is no philosophy in the doctrine 
— and the fundamental assumption is in every 
way contradicted by the most familiar expe- 
rience. There is no relaxation of the fibres 
in the perception of beauty — and there is no 
pleasure in the relaxation of the fibres. If 
there were, it would follow, that a warm bath 
would be by far the most beautiful thing in 
the world — and that the brilliant lights, and 
bracing airs of a fine autumn morning, would 
be the very reverse of beautiful. Accordingly, 
though the treatise alluded to will always be 
valuable on account of the many fine and just 
remarks it contains, we are not aware that 
there is any accurate inquirer into the subject 
(with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Price, in 
whose hands, however, the doctrine assumes 
a new character) by whom the fundamental 
principle of the theory has not been expli- 
citly abandoned. 

A yet more extravagant doctrine was soon 
afterwards inculcated, and in a tone of great 
authority, in a long article from the brilliant 
pen of Diderot, in the French Encyclopedic ; 
and one which exemplifies, in a very striking 
manner, the nature of the difficulties w-ith 
which the discussion is embarrassed. This 
ingenious person, perceiving at once, that the 
beauty which we ascribe to a particular class 
of objects, could not be referred to any pecu- 
liar and inherent quality in the objects them- 
selves, but depended upon their power of 
exciting certain sentiments in our minds ; and 
being, at the same time, at a loss to discover 
what common power could belong to so vast 
a variety of objects as pass under the general 
appellation of beautiful, or by what tie all the 
various emotions which are excited by the 
perception of beauty could be united, w r as at 
last driven, by the necessity of keeping his 
definition sufficiently wide and comprehen- 
sive, to hazard the strange assertion, that all 
objects were beautiful which excite in us the 
idea of relation ; that our sense of beauty con- 
sisted in tracing out the relations which the 
object possessing it might have to other ob- 
jects; and that its actual beauty was in pro- 
portion to the number and clearness of the 
relations thus suggested and perceived. It is 
scarcely necessary, we presume, to expose by 
any arguments the manifest fallacy, or rather 
the palpable absurdity, of such a theory as 
this. In the first place, we conceive it to be 
obvious, that all objects whatever have an 
infinite, and consequently, an equal number 
of relations, and are equally likely to suggest 
them to those to whom they are presented j — 
or. at all events, it is certain, that ugly and 
disagreeable objects have just as many rela- 
tions as those that are agreeable, and ought, 



therefore, to be just as beautiful, if the sense 
of beauty consisted in the perception of rela- 
tions. In the next place, it seems to be suffi- 
ciently certain, from the experience and com- 
mon feelings of all men, that the perception of 
relations among objects is not in itself accom- 
panied by any pleasure whatever ; and in par- 
ticular has no conceivable resemblance to the 
emotion we receive from the perceplion of 
beauty. When we perceive one ugly old 
woman sitting exactly opposite to two other 
ugly old women, and observe, at the same 
moment, that the first is as big as the other two 
taken together, we humbly conceive, that this 
clear perception of the relations in which these 
three Graces stand to each other, cannot well 
be mistaken for a sense of beaut}', and that it 
does not in the least abate or interfere with our 
sense of their ugliness. Finally, we may ob- 
serve, that the sense of beauty results instanta- 
neously from the perception of the object ; 
whereas the discovery of its relations to other 
objects must necessarily be a work of time and 
reflection, in the course of which the beauty of 
the object, so far from being created or brought 
into notice, must, in fact, be lost sight of and 
forgotten. 

Another more plausible and ingenious theory 
was suggested by the Pere Buffier, and after- 
wards adopted and illustrated with great talent 
in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Ac- 
cording to this doctrine, beauty consists, as 
Aristotle held virtue to do, in mediocrity, or 
conformity to that which is most usual. Thus 
a beautiful nose, to make use of Dr. Smith's 
very apt, though homely, illustration of this 
doctrine, is one that is neither very long nor 
very short — very straight nor very much 
bent — but of an ordinary form and proportion, 
compared with all the extremes. It is the 
form, in short, which nature seems to have 
aimed at in all cases, though she has more 
frequently deviated from it than hit it ; but 
deviating from it in all directions, all her de- 
viations come nearer to it than they ever do 
to each other. Thus the most beautiful in 
every species of creatures bears the greatest 
resemblance to the whole species, while mon- 
sters are so denominated because they bear 
the least ; and thus the beautiful, though in 
one sense the rarest, as the exact medium' is 
but seldom hit. is invariably the most common, 
because it is the central point from which all 
the deviations are the least remote. This 
view of the matter is adopted by Sir Joshua in 
its full extent, and is even carried so far by 
this great artist, that he does not scruple to 
conclude, " That if we were more used to de- 
formity than beauty, deformity would then 
lose the idea that is now annexed to it, and 
take that of beauty; — just as we approve and 
admire fashions in dress, for no other reason 
than that we are used to them." 

Now, not to dwell upon the very startling 
conclusion to which these principles must 
lead, viz. that things are beautiful in propor- 
tion as they are ordinary, and that it is 
merely their familiarity which constitutes 
their beauty, we would observe, in the first 
place, that the whole theory seems to have 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



been suggested by a consideration of animal 
foims, or perhaps of the human figure exclu- 
sively. In these forms, it is quite true that 
great and monstrous deviations from the usual 
proportions are extremely disagreeable. But 
this, we have no doubt, arises entirely from 
some idea of pain or disaster attached to their 
existence ; or from their obvious unfitness for 
the functions they have to perform. In vege- 
table forms, accordingly, these irregularities 
excite no such disgust ; it being, in fact, 
the great object of culture, in almost all the 
more beautiful kinds, to produce what may 
be called monstrosities. And, in mineral sub- 
stances, where the idea of suffering is still 
more completely excluded, it is notorious that, 
so far from the more ordinary configurations 
being thought the most beautiful, this epithet 
is scarcely ever employed but to denote some 
rare and unusual combination of veins, colours, 
or dimensions. As to landscapes, again, and 
almost all the works of art, without exception, 
the theory is plainly altogether incapable of 
application. In what sense, for example, can 
it be said that the beauty of natural scenery 
consists in mediocrity : or that those landscapes 
are the most beautiful that are the most com- 
mon 1 or what meaning can we attach to the 
proposition, that the most beautiful building, 
or picture, or poem, is that which bears the 
nearest resemblance to all the individuals of 
its class, and is, upon the whole, the most 
ordinary and common % 

To a doctrine which is liable to these obvi- 
ous and radical objections, it is not perhaps 
necessary to make any other ; but we must 
remark farther, first, that it necessarily sup- 
poses that our sense of beauty is, in all cases, 
preceded by such a large comparison between 
various individuals of the same species, as 
may enable us to ascertain that average or 
mean form in which beauty is supposed to 
consist; and, consequently, that we could 
never discover any object to be beautiful an- 
tecedent to such a comparison j and, secondly, 
that, even if we were to allow that this theory 
afforded some explanation of the superior 
beauty of any one object, compared with 
others of the same class, it plainly furnishes 
no explanation whatever of the superior 
beauty of one class of objects compared with 
another. We may believe, if we please, that 
one peacock is handsomer than another, be- 
cause it approaches more nearly to the ave- 
rage or mean form of peacocks in general ; 
but this reason will avail us nothing whatever 
in explaining why any peacock is handsomer 
than any pelican or penguin. We may say, 
without manifest absurdity, that the most 
beautiful pig is that which has least of the 
extreme qualities that sometime^occur in the 
tribe j but it would be palpably absurd to give 
this reason, or any tiling like it, for the superior 
beauty of the tribe of antelopes or spaniels. 

The notion, in short, seems to have been 
hastily adopted by the ingenious persons who 
have maintained it, partly upon the narrow 
•ground of the disgust produced by monsters 
in the animal creation, which has been already 
sufficiently explained — and partly in conse- 



quence of the fallacy which lurks h. the vague 
and general proposition of those things being 
beautiful which are neither too big nor too lit 
tie, too massive nor too slender, &c. • from 
which it was concluded, that beauty must con- 
sist in mediocrity : — not considering that the 
particle too merely denotes those degrees 
which are exclusive of beauty, without in any 
way fixing what those degrees are. For the 
plain meaning of these phrases is, that the re- 
jected objects are too massive or too slender 
to be beautiful ; and, therefore, to say that an 
object is beautiful which is neither too big nor 
too little, &c. is really saying nothing more 
than that beautiful objects are such as are not 
in any degree ugly or disagreeable. The il- 
lustration as to the effects of use or custom in 
the article of dress is singularly inaccurate 
and delusive ; the fact being, that we never 
admire the dress which Ave are most accus- 
tomed to see — which is that of the common 
people — but the dress of the few who are dis- 
tinguished by rank or opulence ; and that we 
require no more custom or habit to make us 
admire this dress, whatever it may be, than is 
necessary to associate it in our thoughts with 
the wealth, and dignity, and graceful manners 
of those who wear it. 

We need say nothing in this place of the 
opinions expressed on the subject of beauty by 
Dr. Gerard, Dr. Blair, and a whole herd of rhe- 
toricians; because none of them pretend to 
have any new or original notions with regard 
to it, and, in general, have been at no pains to 
reconcile or render consistent the various ac- 
counts of the matter, which they have con- 
tented themselves with assembling and laying 
before their readers all together, as affording 
among them the best explanation that could 
be offered of the question. Thus they do not 
scruple to say, that the sense of beauty is 
sometimes produced by the mere organic af- 
fection of the senses of sight or hearing; at 
other times, by a perception of a kind of re- 
gular variety : and in other instances by the 
association of interesting conceptions; — th.ua 
abandoning altogether any attempt to answer 
the radical question — how the feeling of 
beauty should be excited by such opposite 
causes— and confounding together, without any 
attempt at discrimination, those theories which 
imply the existence of a separate sense — or 
faculty, and those which resolve our se»ise 
of beauty into other more simple or familiar 
emotions. 

Of late years, however, we have had three 
publications on the subject of a far higher 
character — we mean, Mr. Alison's Essays on 
the Nature and Principles of Taste — Mr. Payne 
Knight's Analytical Inquiry into the same sub- 
jects — and Mr. Dugal Stewart's Dissertations 
on the Beautiful and on Taste, in nib volume 
of Philosophical Essays. All these works pos- 
sess an infinite deal of merit, and hare among 
them disclosed almost all the truth that is to be 
known on the subject : though, as it seems to 
us, with some little admixture of error, from 
which it will not, however, be difficult to sepa- 
rate it. 

Mr. Alison maintains, that all beauty, or at 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



least that 1 11 the beauty of material objects, 
depends on the associations that may have 
connected them with the ordinary affections 
f>r emotions of our nature; and in this, which 
is the fundamental point of his theory, we 
conceive him to be no less clearly right, than 
he is convincing and judicious in the copious 
and beautiful ii lustrations by which he has 
sought to establish its truth. When he pro- 
ceeds, however, to assert, that our sense of 
beauty consists not merely in the suggestion 
t>f ideas of emotion, but in the contemplation 
•of a connected series or train of such ideas, and 
indicates a state of mind in which the facul- 
ties, half active and half passive, are given up 
to a sort of reverie or musing, in which they 
may wander, though among kindred impres- 
sions, far enough from the immediate object 
of perception, we will confess that he not only 
seems to us to advance a very questionable 
proposition, but very essentially to endanger 
the evidence, as well as the consistency, of 
his general doctrine. We are far from deny- 
ing, that, in minds of sensibility and of reflect- 
ing habits, the contemplation of beautiful ob- 
jects will be apt, especially in moments of 
leisure, and when the mind is vacant, to give 
rise to such trains of thought, and to such pro- 
tracted meditations ; but we cannot possibly 
admit that their existence is necessary to the 
perception of beauty, or that it is in this state 
of mind exclusively that the sense of beauty 
exists. The perception of beauty, on the con- 
trary, we hold to be, in most cases, quite in- 
stantaneous, and altogether as immediate as 
the perception of the external qualities of the 
object to which it isaseribed. Indeed, it seems 
only necessary to recollect, that it is to a pre- 
sent material object that we actually ascribe 
and refer this beauty, and that the only thing 
to be explained is, how this object comes to 
appear beautiful. In the long train of inter- 
esting meditations, however, to which Mr. 
Alison refers — in the delightful reveries in 
which he would make the sense of beauty 
consist — it is obvious that we must soon lose 
sight of the external object which gave the 
first impulse to our thoughts ; and though we 
may afterwards reflect upon it, with increased 
interest and gratitude, as the parent of so 
many charming images, it is impossible, we 
conceive, that the perception of its beauty can 
ever depend upon a long series of various and 
shifting emotions. 

It likewise occurs to us to observe, that if 
every thing was beautiful, which was the oc- 
casion of a train of ideas of emotion, it is not 
easy to see why objects that are called ugly 
should not be entitled to that appellation. If 
they are sufficiently ugly not to be viewed 
with indifference, they too will give rise to 
ideas of emotion, and those ideas are just as 
likely to run into trains and series, as those of 
a more agreeable description. Nay, as con- 
trast itself is one of the principles of associa- 
tion, it is not at all unlikely, that, in the train 
of impressive ideas which the sight of ugly 
objects may excite, a transition may be ulti- 
mately made to such as are connected with 
pleasure ; and, therefore, if the perception of 



the beauty of the object which first suggest- 
ed them depended on its having produced a 
series of ideas of emotion, or even of agreea- 
ble emotions, there seems to be no good rea- 
son for doubting, that ugly objects may thus 
be as beautiful as any other, and that beauty 
and ugliness may be one and the same thing. 
Such is the danger, as it appears to us, of de- 
serting the object itself, or going beyond its 
immediate effect and impression, in order to 
discover the sources of its beauty. Our view 
of the matter is safer, we think, and far more 
simple. We conceive the object to be asso- 
ciated either in our past experience, or by 
some universal analogy, with pleasures, or 
emotions that upon the whole are pleasant ; 
and that these associated pleasures are instan- 
taneously suggested, as soon as the object is 
presented, and by the first glimpse of its phy- 
sical properties, with which, indeed, they are 
consubstantiated and confounded in our sen- 
sations. 

The work of Mr. Knight is more \tve\f. va- 
rious, and discursive, than Mr. Alison's— but 
not so systematic or conclusive. It is the 
cleverer book of the two — but not the most 
philosophical discussion of the subject. He 
agrees with Mr. Alison in holding the most 
important, and, indeed, the only considerable 
part of beauty, to depend upon association; 
and has illustrated this opinion with a great 
variety of just and original observations. But 
he maintains, and maintains stoutly, that there 
is a beauty independent of association — prior 
to it, and more original and fundamental — the 
primitive and natural beauty of colours and 
sounds- Now, this we look upon to be a 
heresy; and a heresy inconsistent with the 
very first principles of Catholic philosophy. 
We shall not stop at present to give our rea- 
sons for this opinion, which we shall illustrate 
at large before we bring this article to a close ; 
— but we beg leave merely to suggest at pre- 
sent, that if our sense of beauty be confess- 
edly, in most cases, the mere image or reflec- 
tion of pleasures or emotions that have been 
associated with objects in themselves indiffer- 
ent, it cannot fail to appear strange that it 
should also on some few occasions be a mere 
organic or sensual gratification of these par- 
ticular organs. Language, it is believed, 
affords no other example of so whimsical a 
combination of different objects under one ap- 
pellation; or of the confounding of a direct 
physical sensation with the suggestion of a 
social or sympathetic moral feeling. We 
would observe also, that while Mr. Knight 
stickles so violently for this alloy of the senses 
in the constitution of beauty, he admits, un- 
equivocally, that sublimity is, in every in- 
stance, and in all cases, the effect of associa- 
tion alone. Yet sublimity and beauty, in any 
just or large sense, and with a view to the 
philosophy of either, are manifestly one and 
the same ; nor is it conceivable to us, that, if 
sublimity be always the result of an associa- 
tion with ideas of power or danger, beauty 
can possibly be, in any case, the result of a 
mere pleasurable impulse on the nerves of the 
eye or the ear. We shall return, however, to 



22 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



this discussion hereafter. Of Mr. Knight we i 
have only further to observe, that we think 
he is not less heretical in maintaining, that 
we have no pleasure in sympathising with 
distress or suffering, but only with mental 
energy j and that, in contemplating the sub- 
lime, we are moved only with a sense of 
power and grandeur, and never with any feel- 
ing of terror or awe. — These errors, however, 
are less intimately connected with the subject 
of our present discussion. 

With Mr. Stewart we have less occasion for 
quarrel : chiefly, perhaps, because he has 
made fewer positive assertions, and entered 
less into the matter of controversy. His Essay 
on the Beautiful is rather philological than 
metaphysical. The object of it is to show by 
what gradual and successive extensions of 
meaning the word, though at first appropri- 
ated to denote the pleasing effect of colours 
alone, might naturally come to signify all the 
other pleasing things to which it is now ap- 
plied. In tins investigation he makes many 
admirable remarks, and touches, with the 
hand of a master, upon many of the disputa- 
ble parts of the question ; but he evades the 
particular point at issue between us and Mr. 
Knight, by stating, that it is quite immaterial 
to his purpose, whether the beauty of colours 
be supposed to depend on their organic effect 
on the eye, or on some association between 
them and other agreeable emotions — it being 
enough for his purpose that this was probably 
the first sort of beauty that was observed, and 
that to which the name was at first exclusively 
applied. It is evident to us, however, that he 
leans to the opinion of Mr. Knight, as to this 
beauty being truly sensual or organic. In ob- 
serving, too, that beauty is not now the name 
of any one thing or quality, but of very many 
different qualities — and that it is applied to 
them all, merely because they are often united 
in the same objects, or perceived at the same 
time and by the same organs — it appears to us 
that he carries his philology a little too far, 
and disregards other principles of reasoning of 
far higher authority. To give the name of 
beauty, for example, to every thing that in- 
terests or pleases us through the channel of 
sight, including in this category the mere im- 
pulse of light that is pleasant to the organ, 
and the presentment of objects whose whole 
charm consists in awakening the memory of 
social emotions, seems to us to be confound- 
ing things together that must always be sepa- 
rate in our feelings, and giving a far greater 
importance to the mere identity of the organ 
by which they are perceived, than is warrant- 
ed either by the ordinary language or ordinary 
experience of men. Upon the same principle 
we should give this name of beautiful, and no 
other, to all acts of kindness or magnanimity, 
and, indeed, to every interesting occurrence 
which took place in our sight, or came to our 
knowledge by means of the eye : — nay, as the 
ear is also allowed to be a channel for impres- 
sions of beauty, the same name should be 
given to any interesting or pleasant thing that 
we hear — and good news read to us from the 
gazette should be denominated beautiful, 



just as much as a fine composition of music. 
These things, however, are never called beau- 
tiful, and are felt, indeed, to afford a gratifica 
tion of quite a different nature. It is no doubt 
true, as Mr. Stewart has observed, that beauty 
is not one thing, but many — and does not 
produce one uniform emotion, but an infinite 
variety of emotions. But this, we conceive, 
is not merely because many pleasant things 
may be intimated to us by the same sense, 
but because the things that are called beauti- 
ful may be associated with an infinite variety 
of agreeable emotions of the specific character 
of which their beauty will consequently par- 
take. Nor does it follow, from the fact of this 
great variety, that there can be no other prin- 
ciple of union among these agreeable emo- 
tions, but that of a name, extended to them all 
upon the very slight ground of their coming 
through the same organ ; since, upon Our the- 
ory, and indeed upon Mr. Stewart's, in a vast 
majority of instances, there is the remarkable 
circumstance of their being all suggested by 
association with some present sensation, and 
all modified and confounded, to our feelings, 
by an actual and direct perception. 

It is unnecessary, however, to pursue these 
criticisms, or, indeed, this hasty review of the 
speculation of other writers, any farther. The 
few observations we have already made, will 
enable the intelligent reader, both to under- 
stand in a general way what has been already 
done on the subject, and in some degree pre- 
pare him to appreciate the merits of that 
theory, substantially the same with Mr. Ali- 
son's, which we shall now proceed to illus- 
trate somewhat more in detail. 

The basis of it is, that the beauty which 
we impute to outward objects, is nothing 
more than the reflection of our own inward 
emotions, and is made up entirely of certain 
little portions of love, pity, or other affections, 
which have been connected with these ob- 
jects, and still adhere as it were to them, and 
move us anew whenever they are presented to 
our observation. Before proceeding to bring 
any proof of the truth of this proposition, 
there are two things that it may be proper to 
explain a little more distinctly. First, What 
are the primary affections, by the suggestion 
of which we think the sense of beauty is 
produced ? And, secondly, What is the na- 
ture of the connection by which we suppose 
that the objects we call beautiful are enabled 
to suggest these affections ? 

With regard to the first of these points, it for- 
tunately is not necessary either to enter into any 
tedious details, or to have recourse to any nice 
distinctions. All sensations that are not ab- 
solutely indifferent, and are, at the same time, 
either agreeable, when experienced by our- 
selves, or attractive when contemplated in 
others, may form the foundation of the emo- 
tions of sublimity or beauty. The love of 
sensation seems to be the ruling appetite of 
human nature; and many sensations, in which 
the painful may be thought to predominate, 
are consequently sought for with avidity, and 
recollected with interest, even in our own 
persons. In the persons of others, emotion* 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



23 



still more painful are contemplated with ea- 
gerness and delight : and therefore we must 
not be surprised to find, that many of the 
pleasing sensations of beauty or sublimity re- 
aolve themselves ultimately into recollections 
of feelings that may appear to have a very 
opposite character. The sum of the whole 
is, that every feeling which it is agreeable to 
experience, to recal, or to witness, may be- 
come the source of beauty in external objects, 
when it is so connected with them as that 
their appearance reminds us of that feeling. 
Now. in real life, and from daily experience 
and observation, we know that it is agreeable, 
in the first place, to recollect our own pleasur- 
able sensations, or to be enabled to form a 
lively conception of the pleasures of other 
men, or even of sentient beings of any de- 
scription. We know likewise, from the same 
sure authority, that there is a certain delight 
in the remembrance of our past, or the con- 
ception of our future emotions, even though 
attended with great pain, provided the pain 
be not forced too rudely on the mind, and be 
softened by the accompaniment of any milder 
feeling. And finally, we know, in the same 
manner, that the spectacle or conception of 
the emo.tions of others, even when in a high 
degree painful, is extremely interesting and 
attractive, and draws us away, not only from 
the consideration of indifferent objects, but 
even from the pursuit of light or frivolous 
enjoyments. All these are plain and familiar 
facts ; of the existence of which, however 
they may be explained, no one can entertain 
the slightest doubt — and into which, there- 
fore, we shall have made no inconsiderable 
progress, if we can resolve the more myste- 
rious fact, of the emotions we receive from 
the contemplation of sublimity or beauty. 

Our proposition then is, that these emotions 
are not original emotions, nor produced di- 
rectly by any material qualities in the objects 
which excite them; but are reflections, or 
images, of the more radical and familiar 
emotions to which we have already alluded ; 
and are occasioned, not by any inherent virtue 
in the objects before us, but by the accidents, 
if we may so express ourselves, by which 
these may have been enabled to suggest or 
recal to us our own past sensations or sympa- 
thies. We might almost venture, indeed, to 
lay it down as an axiom, that, except in the 
plain and palpable case of bodily pain or 
pleasure, we can never be interested in any 
thing but the fortunes of sentient beings; — 
and that ev^ry thing partaking of the nature of 
mental emotion, must have for its object the 
feelings, past, present, or possible, of something 
capable of sensation. Independent, therefore, 
of all evidence, and without the help of any 
explanation, we should have been apt to con- 
clude, that the emotions of beauty and sub- 
limity must have for their objects the suffer- 
ings or enjoyments of sentient beings ; — and 
to reject, as intrinsically absurd and incredi- 
ble, the supposition, that material objects, 
which obviously do neither hurt nor delight 
the body, should yet excite, by their mere 
physical qualities, the very powerful emotions 



i which are sometimes excited b\ the spectacle 
of beauty. 

Of the feelings, by their connection with 
which external objects become beautiful, we 
do not think it necessary to speak more mi- 
nutely; — and, therefore, it only remains, under 
this preliminary view of the subject, to ex- 
plain the nature of that connection by which 
we conceive this effect to be produced. Here, 
also, there is but little need for minuteness, 
or fulness of enumeration. Almost every tie, 
by which two objects can be bound together 
in the imagination, in such a manner as that 
the presentment of the one shall recal the 
memory of the other; — or, in other words, 
almost every possible relation which can 
subsist between such objects, may serve to 
connect the things we call sublime and beau- 
tiful, with feelings that are interesting or de- 
lightful. It may be useful, however, to class 
these bonds of association between mind and 
matter in a rude and general way. 

It appears to us, then, that objects are 
sublime or beautiful, first, when they are the 
natural signs, and perpetual concomitants of 
pleasurable sensations, or, at any rate, of some 
lively feeling or emotion in ourselves or in 
some other sentient beings; or, secondly, when 
they are the arbitrary or accidental concomi- 
tants of such feelings; or, thirdly, when they 
bear some analogy or fanciful resemblance to 
things with which these emotions are neces- 
sarily connected. In endeavouring to illus- 
trate the nature of these several relations, we 
shall be led to lay before our readers some 
proofs that appear to us satisfactory of the 
truth of the general theory. 

The most obvious, and the strongest asso- 
ciation that can be established between in- 
ward feelings and external objects is, where 
the object is necessarily and universally con- 
nected with the feeling by the law of nature, 
so that it is always presented to the senses 
when the feeling is impressed upon the mind 
— as the sight or the sound of laughter, with 
the feeling of gaiety — of weeping, with dis- 
tress — of the sound of thunder, with ideas 
of danger and power. Let us dwell for a 
moment on the last instance. — Nothing, per- 
haps, in the whole range of nature, is more 
strikingly and universally sublime than the 
sound we have just mentioned ; yet it seems 
obvious, that the sense of sublimity is pro- 
duced, not by any quality that is perceived 
by the ear, but altogether by the impression 
of power and of danger that is necessarily, 
made upon the mind, whenever that sound is 
I heard. That it is not produced by any pecu- 
liarity in the sound itself, is certain, from the 
mistakes that are frequently made with re- 
gard to it. The noise of a cart rattling over 
the stones, is often mistaken for thunder; and 
as long as the mistake lasts, this very vulgar 
and insignificant noise is actually felt to bo 
prodigiously sublime. It is so felt, however, 
it is perfectly plain, merely because it is then 
associated with ideas of prodigious power and 
undefined danger; — and the sublimity is ac- 
cordingly destroyed, the moment the asso- 
ciation is dissolved, though the sound itself 



24 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



and its effect on the organ, continue exactly 
the same. This, therefore, is an instance in 
which sublimity is distinctly proved to con- 
sist, not in any physical quality of the object 
to which it is ascribed, but in its necessary 
connection with that vast and uncontrolled. 
Power which is the natural object of awe and 
veneration. 

We may now take an example a little less 
plain and elementary. The most beautiful 
object in nature, perhaps, is the countenance 
of a young and beautiful woman ; — and we 
are apt at first to imagine, that, independent 
of all associations, the form and colours which 
it displays are, in themselves, lovely and en- 
gaging; and W'Ould appear charming to all 
beholders, w 7 ith whatever other qualities or 
impressions they might happen to be con- 
nected. A very little reflection, however, 
will probably be sufficient to convince us of 
the fallacy of this impression : and to satisfy 
us. that what we admire is not a combination 
of forms and colours, (which could never ex- 
cite any mental emotion,) but a collection of 
signs and tokens of certain mental feelings 
and affections, which are universally recog- 
nised as the proper objects of love and sym- 
pathy. Laying aside the emotions arising 
from difference of sex, and supposing female 
beauty to be contemplated by the pure and 
unenvying eye of a female, it seems quite 
obvious, that, among its ingredients, we should 
trace the signs of two different sets of quali- 
ties, that are neither of them the object of 
sight, but of a far higher faculty; — in the first 
place, of youth and health ; and in the second 
place, of innocence, gaiety, sensibility, intel- 
ligence, delicacy or vivacity. Now, without 
enlarging upon the natural effect of these 
suggestions, we shall just suppose that the 
appearances, which must be admitted at 
all events to be actually significant of the 
qualities w r e have enumerated, had been by 
the law of nature attached to the very oppo- 
site qualities; — that the smooth forehead, the 
firm cheek, and the full lip, which are now 
so distinctly expressive to us of the gay and 
vigorous periods of youth — and the clear and 
blooming complexion, which indicates health 
and activity, had been in fact the forms and 
colours by which old age and sickness were 
characterised ; and that, instead of being found 
united to those sources and seasons of enjoy- 
ment, they had been the badges by which 
nature pointed out that state of suffering and 
decay which is now signified to us by the 
,-ivid and emaciated face of sickness, or the 
»vrinkled front, the quivering lip, and hollow 
cheek of age ; — If this were the familiar law 
of our nature, can it be doubted that we should 
look upon these appearances, not with rapture, 
but with aversion — and consider it as abso- 
lutely ludicrous or disgusting, to speak of the 
beauty of what was interpreted by every one 
as the lamented sign of pain and decrepitude'? 
Mr. Knight himself, though a firm believer in 
the intrinsic beauty of colours, is so much of 
this opinion, that he thinks it entirely owing 
to those associations that we prefer the tame 
smoothness, and comparatively poor colours 



of a youthful face, to the richly fretted and 
variegated countenance of a pimpled drunk 
aid! 

Such, we conceive, would be the inevita- 
ble effect of dissolving the subsistingconnect- 
ion between the animating ideas of hope and 
enjoyment, and those visible appearances 
which are now significant of those emotions, 
and derive their whole beauty from that 
signification. But the effect would be stili 
stronger, if we could suppose the moral ex- 
pression of those appearances to be reversed 
in the same manner. If the smile, which 
now enchants us, as the expression of inno- 
cence and affection, were the sign attached 
by nature to guilt and malignity — if the blush 
which expresses delicacy, and the glance that 
speaks intelligence, vivacity, and softness, had 
always been found united with brutal passion 
or idiot moodiness ; is it not certain, that the 
w T hole of their beauty would be extinguished, 
and that our emotions from the sight of them 
would be exactly the reverse -of what they 
now are? 

That the beauty of a living and sentient 
creature should depend, in a great degree, 
upon qualities peculiar to such a creature, 
rather than upon the mere physical attributes 
which it may possess in common with the 
inert matter around it, cannot indeed appear 
a very improbable supposition to any one. 
But it may be more difficult for some persons 
to understand how the beauty of mere dead 
matter should be derived from the feelings 
and sympathies of sentient beings. It is ab- 
solutely necessary, therefore, that we should 
give an instance or two of this derivation 
also. 

ft is easy enough to understand how the 
sight of a picture or statue should affect us 
nearly in the same way as the sight of the 
original : nor is it much more difficult to con- 
ceive, how the sight of a cottage should give 
us something of the same feeling as the sight 
of a peasant's family ; and the aspect of a town 
raise many of the same ideas as the appear- 
ance of a multitude of persons. We may 
begin, therefore, with an example a little 
more complicated. Take, for instance, the 
case of a common English landscape — green 
meadows with grazing and ruminating cattle 
— canals or navigable rivers — well fenced, 
well cultivated fields — neat, clean, scattered 
cottages — humble antique churches, with 
church-yard elms, and crossing hedgerows — 
all seen under bright skies, and in good wea- 
ther : — There is much beauty, as* every one 
will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in 
what does the beauty consist ? Not certainly 
in the mere mixture of colours and forms ; for 
colours more pleasing, and lines more grace- 
ful, (according to any theory of grace that 
maybe preferred,) might be spread upon a 
board, or a painter's pallet, without engaging 
the eye to a second glance, or raising the 
least emotion in ihe mind ; but in the picture 
of human happiness that is presented to our 
imaginations and affections — in the visible 
and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheer- 
ful and peaceful enjoyment — and of that se* 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



25 



d*re and taccessful industry that ensures its 
continuance — and of the piety by which it is 
exalted — and of the simplicity by which it is 
contrasted with the guilt and the fever of a 
city life ;— in the images of health and tem- 
perance and plenty which it exhibits to every 
eye — and in the glimpses which it affords to 
warmer imaginations, of those primitive or 
fabulous times, when man was uncorrupted 
by luxury and ambition, and of those humble 
retreats in which we still delight to imagine 
that love and philosophy may find an unpol- 
luted asylum. At all events, however, it is 
human feeling that excites our sympathy, and 
forms the true object of our emotions. It is 
man, and man alone, that we see in the beau- 
ties of the earth which he inhabits ; — or, if a 
more sensitive and extended sympathy con- 
nect us with the lower families of animated 
nature, and make us rejoice with the lambs 
that bleat on the uplands, or the cattle that 
repose in the valley, or even with'the living 
plants that drink the bright sun and the 
balmy air beside them, it is still the idea of 
enjoyment — of feelings that animate the ex- 
istence of sentient beings — that calls forth all 
our emotions, and is the parent of all the 
beauty with which we proceed to invest the 
inanimate creation around us. 

Instead of this quiet and tame English 
landscape, let us now take a Welch or a 
Highland scene ; and see whether its beau- 
ties will admit of being explained on the 
same principle. Here, we shall have lofty 
mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses — 
tufted woods hung over precipices — lakes 
intersected with castled promontories — am- 
ple solitudes of unploughed and untrodden 
valleys — nameless and gigantic ruins — and 
mountain echoes repeating the scream of the 
eagle and the roar of the cataract. This, 
too. is beautiful; — and, to those who can 
interpret the language it speaks, far more 
beautiful than the prosperous scene with 
which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as 
it is, it is to the recollection of man and the 
suggestion of human feelings that its beauty 
also is owing. The mere forms and colours 
that compose its visible appearance, are no 
more capable of exciting any emotion in the 
mind, than the forms and colours of a Turkey 
carpet. It is sympathy with the present or 
the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such 
a region, that alone gives it either interest or 
beauty ; and the delight of those who behold 
it, will always be found to be in exact pro- 
portion to the force of their imaginations, and 
the warmth of their social affections. The 
leading impressions, here, are those of ro- 
mantic seclusion, and primeval simplicity; 
lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, 
" from towns and toils remote," — and rustic 
poets and philosophers communing with na- 
ture, and at a distance from the low pursuits 
and selfish malignity of ordinary mortals ; — 
then there is the sublime impression of the 
Mighty Power which piled the massive cliffs 
upon each other, and rent the mountains 
asunder, and scattered their giant fragments 
at their base ; — and all the images connected 



with the monuments of ancient magnificence 
and extinguished hostility — the feuds, and 
the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and 
primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the 
stillness and desolation of the scenes where 
they lie interred ; — and the romantic ideas 
attached to their ancient traditions, and the 
peculiarities of the actual life of their des- 
cendants — their wild and enthusiastic poetry 
— their gloomy superstitions — their attach- 
ment to their chiefs — the dangers, and the 
hardships and enjoyments of their lonely 
huntings and fishings — their pastoral shielings 
on the mountains in summer — and the tales 
and the sports that amuse the little groups 
that are frozen into their vast and trackless 
valleys in the winter. Add to all this, the 
traces of vast and obscure antiquity that are 
impressed on the language and the habits of 
the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, and 
gulfy torrents of the land; and the solemn 
and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, 
of the weakness and insignificance of perish- 
able man, whose generations thus pass away 
into oblivion, with all their toils and ambi- 
tion ; while nature holds on her unvarying 
course, and pours out her streams, and* re- 
news her forests, with undecaying activity, 
regardless of the fate of her proud and perish- 
able sovereign. 

je^We have said enough, we believe, to let 
our readers understand what we mean by 
external objects being the natural signs or 
concomitants of human sympathies or emo- 
tions. Yet we cannot refrain from adding 
one other illustration, and asking on what 
other principle we can account for the beauty 
of Spring? Winter has shades as deep, and 
colours as brilliant; and the great forms of 
nature are substantially the same through all 
the revolutions of the year. We shall seek 
in vain, therefore, in the accidents of mere 
organic matter, for the sources of that "ver- 
nal delight and joy," which subject all finer 
spirits to an annual intoxication; and strike 
home the sense of beauty even to hearts that 
seem proof against it -under all other aspects. 
And it is not among the Dead but among the 
Living, that this beauty originates. It is the 
renovation of life and of joy to all animated 
beings, that constitutes this great jubilee of 
nature ; — the young of animals bursting into 
existence — the simple and universal pleasures 
which are diffused by the mere temperature 
of the air, and the profusion of sustenance — 
the pairing of birds — the cheerful resumption 
of rustic toils — the great alleviation of all the 
miseries of poverty and sickness — our sym- 
pathy with the young life, and the promise 
and the hazards of the vegetable creation — 
the solemn, yet cheering, impression of the 
constancy of nature to her great periods of 
renovation — and the hopes that dart sponta- 
neously forward into the new circle of exer- 
tions and enjoyments that is opened up by her 
hand and her example. Such are some of 
the conceptions that are forced upon us by 
the appearances of returning spring; and that 
seem to account for the emotions of delight 
with which these appearances are hailed, by 



26 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



every mind endowed with any degree of sen- 
sibility, somewhat better than the brightness 
of the colours, or the agreeableness of the 
smells that are then presented to our senses. 

They are kindred conceptions that consti- 
tute all the beauty of childhood. The forms 
and colours that are peculiar to that age, are 
not necessarily or absolutely beautiful in 
themselves ; for, in a grown person, the same 
forms and colours would be either ludicrous 
or disgusting. It is their indestructible con- 
nection with the engaging ideas of innocence 
— of careless gaiety — of unsuspecting confi- 
dence ; — made still more tender and attract- 
ive by the recollection of helplessness, and 
blameless and happy ignorance — of the anx- 
ious affection that watches over all their ways 
— and of the hopes and fears that seek to 
pierce futurity, for those who have neither 
fears nor cares nor anxieties for themselves. 

These few illustrations will probably be 
sufficient to give our readers a general con- 
ception of the character and the grounds of 
that theory of beauty which we think affords 
the only true or consistent account of its na- 
ture. They are all examples, it will be ob- 
served, of the First and most important con- 
nection which we think may be shown to 
exist between external objects and the senti- 
ments or emotions of the mind ; or cases, in 
which the visible phenomena are the natural 
and universal accompaniments of the emo- 
tion, and are consequently capable of reviving 
that emotion, in "some degree, in the breast 
of every beholder. If the tenor of those 
illustrations has been such as to make any 
impression in favour of the general theory, 
we conceive that it must be very greatly con- 
firmed by the slightest consideration of the 
Second class of cases, or those in which the 
external object is not the natural and neces- 
sary, but only the occasional or accidental 
concomitant of the emotion which it recals. 
In the former instances, some conception of 
beauty seems to be inseparable from the ap- 
pearance of the objects ; and being impressed, 
in some degree, upon all persons to whom 
they are presented, there is evidently room 
for insinuating that it is an independent and 
intrinsic quality of their nature, and does not 
arise from association with any thing else. 
In the instances, however, to which we are 
now to allude, this perception of beauty is 
not universal, but entirely dependent upon 
the opportunities which each individual has 
had to associate ideas of emotion with the 
object to which it is ascribed : — the same 
thing appearing beautiful to those who have 
been exposed to the influence of such asso-^ 
ciations, and indifferent to those who have* 
not. Such instances, therefore, really afford 
an experimentum cruris as to the truth of the 
theory in question ; nor is it easy to conceive 
any more complete evidence, both that there 
is no such thing as absolute or intrinsic beauty, 
and that it depends altogether on those asso- 
ciations with which it is thus found to come 
and to disappear. 

The accidental or arbitrary relations that 
may thus be established between natural 



i sympathies or emotions, and external objects, 
may be either such as occur to whole classes 
of men, or are confined to particular indi- 
viduals. Among the former, those that ap 
ply to different nations or races of men, are 
the most important and remarkable ; and con- 
stitute the basis of those peculiarities by 
which national tastes are distinguished. — 
Take again, for example, the instance of fe- 
male beauty — and think what different and 
inconsistent standards would be fixed for it 
in the different regions of the world; — in 
Africa, in Asia, and in Europe ; — in Tartary 
and in Greece ; in Lapland, Patagonia, and 
Circassia. If there was any thing absolutely 
or intrinsically beautiful, in any of the forms 
thus distinguished, it is inconceivable that 
men should differ so outrageously in their 
conceptions of it : if beauty were a real and 
independent quality, it seems impossible that 
it should be distinctly and clearly felt by one 
set of persons, where another set. altogether 
as sensitive, could see nothing but its oppo- 
site ; and if it were actually and inseparably 
attached to certain forms, colours, or propor- 
tions, it must appear utterly inexplicable that 
it should be felt and perceived in the most 
opposite forms and proportion, in objects of 
the same description. On the other hand, if 
all beauty consist in reminding us of certain 
natural sympathies and objects of emotion, 
with which they have been habitually con- 
nected, it is easy to perceive how the most 
different forms should be felt to be equally 
beautiful. If female beauty, for instance, 
consist in the visible signs and expressions 
of youth and health, and of gentleness, vi- 
vacity, and kindness; then it will necessarily 
happen, that the forms, and colours and pro- 
portions which nature may have connected 
with those qualities, in the different climates 
or regions of the world, will all appear equally 
beautiful to those who have been accustomed 
to recognise them as the signs of such quali- 
ties; while they will be respectively indif- 
ferent to those who have not learned to inter- 
pret them in this sense, and displeasing to 
those whom experience has led to consider 
them as the signs of opposite qualities. 

The case is the same, though, perhaps to a 
smaller degree, as to the peculiarity of national 
taste in other particulars. The style of dress 
and architecture in every nation, if not adopted 
from mere want of skill, or penury of mate- 
rials, always appears beautiful to the natives, 
and somewhat monstrous and absurd to 
foreigners; — and the general character and 
aspect of their landscape, in like manner, if 
not associated with substantial evils and in- 
conveniences, always appears more beautiful 
and enchanting than the scenery of any other 
region. The fact is still more striking, per- 
haps, in the case of music ; — in the effects of 
those national airs, with which even the most 
uncultivated imaginations have connected so 
many interesting recollections ; and in the de- 
light with which all persons of sensibility 
catch the strains of their native melodies in 
strange or in distant lands. It is owing chiefly 
to the same sort of arbitrary and national as* 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



27 



Hociation, that white is thought a gay colour i 
in Europe, where it is used at weddings — | 
and a dismal colour in China, where it is used i 
for mourning ; — that we think yew-trees | 
gloomy, because they are planted in church- 
yards — and large masses of powdered horse- 
hair majestic, because we see them on the 
heads of judges and bishops. 

Next to those curious instances of arbitrary 
or limited associations that are exemplified in 
the diversities of national taste, are those that 
are produced by the differences of instruction 
or education. If external objects were sublime 
and beautiful in themselves, it is plain, that 
they would appear equally so to those who 
were acquainted with their origin, and to those 
to whom it was unknown. Yet it is not easy, 
perhaps, to calculate the degree to which our 
notions of beauty and sublimity are now influ- 
enced, over all Europe, by the study of clas- 
sical literature ; or the number of impressions 
of this sort which the well-educated conse- 
quently receive, from objects that are utterly 
indifferent to uninstructed persons of the same 
natural sensibility. We gladly avail ourselves, 
upon this subject, of the beautiful expressions 
of Mr. Alison. 

u The delight which most men of education 
receive from the consideration of antiquity, 
and the beauty that they discover in every 
object which is connected with ancient times, 
is, in a great measure, to be ascribed to the 
same cause. The antiquarian, in his cabinet, 
surrounded by the relics of former ages, seems 
to himself to be removed to periods that are 
long since past, and indulges in the imagina- 
tion of living in a world, which, by a very 
natural kind of prejudice, we are always wil- 
ling to believe was both wiser and better than 
the present. All that is venerable or laudable 
in the history of these times, present them- 
selves to his memory. The gallantry, the 
heroism, the patriotism of antiquity, rise again 
before his view, softened by the obscurity in 
which they are involved, and rendered more 
seducing to the imagination by that obscurity 
itself, which, while it mingles a sentiment of 
regret amid his pursuits, serves at the same 
time to stimulate his fancy to fill up, by its 
own creation, those long intervals of time of 
which history has preserved no record. 

"And what is it that constitutes that emotion 
of sublime delight, which every man of com- 
mon sensibility feels upon the first prospect of 
Rome ? It is not the scene of destruction which 
is before him. It is not the Tiber, diminished 
in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing 
amid the ruins of that magnificence which it 
once adorned. It is not the triumph of super- 
stition over the wreck of human greatness, 
and its monuments erected upon the very 
spot where the first honours of humanity have 
been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills 
his imagination. It is the country of Caesar, 
and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. 
It is the Mistress of the world which he sees, 
fend who seems to him to rise again from her 
tomb, to give laws to the universe. All that 
the labours of his youth, or the studies of his 
maturer age have acquired, with regard to the 



history of this great people, open at once be- 
fore his imagination, and present him with a 
field of high and solemn imagery, which can 
never be exhausted. Take from him these 
associations — conceal from him that it is 
Rome that he sees, and how different would 
be his emotion!" 

The influences of the same studies may be 
traced, indeed, through almost all our impres- 
sions of beauty — and especially in the feelings 
which we receive from the contemplation of 
rural scenery; where the images and recol- 
lections which have been associated with such 
objects, in the enchanting strains of the poets, 
are perpetually recalled by their appearance, 
and give an interest and a beauty to the pros- 
pect, of which the uninstructed cannot have 
the slightest perception. Upon this subject, 
also, Mr. Alison has expressed himself with 
his usual warmth and elegance. After ob- 
serving, that, in childhood, the beauties of 
nature have scarcely any existence for those 
who have as yet but little general sympathy 
with mankind, he proceeds to state, that they 
are usually first recommended to notice by 
the poets, to whom we are introduced in the 
course of education; and who, in a manner, 
create them for us, by the associations which 
they enable us to form with their visible ap- 
pearance. 

w How different, from this period, become 
the sentiments with which the scenery of 
nature is contemplated, by those who have 
any imagination ! The beautiful forms of an- 
cient mythology, with which the fancy of 
poets peopled every element, are now ready 
to appear to their minds, upon the prospect 
of every scene. The descriptions of ancient 
authors, so long admired, and so deserving of 
admiration, occur to them at every moment, 
and with them, all those enthusiastic ideas of 
ancient genius and glory, which the study of 
so many years of youth so naturally leads 
them to form. Or, if the study of modern 
poetry has succeeded to that of the ancient, a 
thousand other beautiful associations are ac- 
quired, which, instead of destroying, serve 
easily to unite with the former, and to afford 
a new source of delight. The awful forms 
of Gothic superstition, the wild and romantic 
imagery, which the turbulence of the middle 
ages, the Crusades, and the institution of 
chivalry have spread over every country of 
Europe, arise to the imagination in every 
scene; accompanied with all those pleasing 
recollections of prowess, and adventure, and 
courteous manners, which distinguished those 
memorable times. With such images in their 
minds, it is not common nature that appears 
to surround them. It is nature embellished 
and made sacred by the memory of Theocritus 
and Virgil, and Milton and Tasso ; their ge- 
nius seems still to linger among the scenes 
which inspired it, and to irradiate every object 
■where it dwells; and the creation of their 
fancy seem the fit inhabitants of that nature> 
which their descriptions have clothed with 
beauty." 

It is needless, for the purpose of mere illus- 
tration, to pursue this subject of arbitrary or 



28 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



accidental association through all the divisions 
of which it is susceptible ; and, indeed, the 
task would be endless : since there is scarcely 
Buy class in society which may not be shown 
10 have peculiar associations of interest and 
emotion with objects which are not so con- 
nected in the minds of any other class. The 
3 r oung and the old — the rich and the poor — 
the artist and the man of science — the in- 
habitant of the city and the inhabitant of the 
country — the man of business and the man 
of pleasure — the domestic and the dissipated, 
— nay, even the followers of almost every 
different study or profession, have perceptions 
of beauty, because they nave associations 
with external objects, which are peculiar to 
themselves, and have no existence for any 
other persons. But, though the detail of such 
instances could not fail to show, in the clear- 
est and most convincing manner, how directly 
the notion of beauty is derived from some 
more radical and familiar emotion, and how 
many and various are the channels by which 
such emotions are transmitted, enough, per- 
haps, has been already said, to put our readers 
in possession of the principles and general 
bearings of an argument which we must not 
think of exhausting. 

Before entirely leaving this branch of the 
subject, however, let us pause for a moment 
on the familiar but very striking and decisive 
instance of our varying and contradictory 
. judgments, as to the beauty of the successive 
fashions of dress that have existed within our 
own remembrance. All persons who still 
continue to find amusement in society, and 
are not old enough to enjoy only the recollec- 
tions of their youth, think the prevailing 
fashions becoming and graceful, and the 
fashions of twenty or twenty-five years old 
intolerably ugly and ridiculous. The younger 
they are, and the more they mix in society, 
this impression is the stronger; and the fact 
is worth noticing; because there is really no 
one thing as to which persons judging merely 
from their feelings, and therefore less likely 
to be misled by any systems or theories, are 
so very positive and decided, as that estab- 
lished fashions are beautiful in themselves; 
and that exploded fashions are intrinsically 
and beyond all question preposterous and 
ugly. We have never yet met a young lady 
or gentleman, who spoke from their hearts 
and without reserve, who had the least doubt 
on the subject; or could conceive how any 
person could be so stupid as not to see the 
intrinsic elegance of the reigning mode, or 
not to be struck with the ludicrous awkward- 
ness of the habits in which their mothers 
were disguised. Yet there can be no doubt, 
that if these ingenuous critics had been born, 
with the same natural sensibility to beauty, 
but twenty years earlier, they would have 
joined in admiring what they now laugh at ; 
as certa'nly as those who succeed them twenty 
years hereafter will laugh at them. It is plain, 
then, and we think scarcely disputed, out 01 
the circles to which we have alluded, that 
there is, in the general case, no intrinsic 
beauty or deformity in any of those fashions; 



!and that the forms, and colours, and materials, 
that are. we may say, universally and very 
strongly felt to be beautiful while they are 
; in fashion, are sure to lose all their beauty as 
soon as the fashion has passed away. Now 
the forms, and colours, and combinations re 
main exactly as they were ; and, therefore, 
it seems indisputable, that the source of their 
successive beauty and ugliness must be sought 
in something extrinsic, and can only be found 
in the associations which once exalted, and 
ultimately degraded them in our estimation. 
While they were in fashion, they were the 
forms and colours which distinguished the 
rich and the noble — the eminent, the envied, 
the observed in society. They were the forms 
and the colours in which all that was beauti- 
ful, and admired, and exalted, were habitually 
arrayed. They were associated, therefore, 
with ideas of opulence, and elegance, and 
gaiety, and all that is captivating and bewitch- 
ing, in manners, fortune, and situation — and 
derived the whole of their beauty from those 
associations. By and bye, however, they were 
deserted by the beautiful, the rich, and the 
elegant, and descended to the vulgar and de- 
pendent, or were only seen in combination 
with the antiquated airs of faded beauties or 
obsolete beaux. They thus came to be asso- 
ciated with ideas of vulgarity and derision, 
and with the images of old and decayed per- 
sons, whom it is difficult for their juniors to 
believe ever to have been young or attractive ; 
— and the associations being thus reversed, in 
which all their beauty consisted, the beauty 
itself naturally disappeared. 

The operation of the same causes is dis- 
tinctly visible in all the other apparent irreg- 
ularities of our judgments as to this descrip- 
tion of beauty. Old people have in general 
but little toleration for the obsolete fashions 
of their later or middle years ; but will gene- 
rally stickle for the intrinsic elegance of those 
which were prevalent in the bright days of 
their early youth — as being still associated 
in their recollections, with the beauty with 
which they were first enchanted, and the gay 
spirits with which they were then inspired. 
In the same way, while we laugh at the fash- 
ions of which fine ladies and gentlemen were 
proud in the days of our childhood, because 
they are now associated only with images of 
decrepitude and decay, we look with some 
feelings of veneration on the habits of more 
remote generations, the individuals of which 
are only known to us as historical persons; 
and with unmingled respect and admiration 
on those still more ancient habiliments which 
remind us either of the heroism of the feudal 
chivalry, or the virtue and nobleness of clas- 
sical antiquity. The iron mail of the Gothic 
knight, or the clumsy shield and naked arms 
of the Roman warrior, strike us as majestic 
and graceful, merely because they are asso- 
ciated with nothing but tales of romantic dar 
ing or patriotic prowess — while the full-bot- 
tomed periwigs that were added to the sol- 
dier's equipment in the days of Lewis XIV. 
and King William — and no doubt had a no- 
ble effect in the eyes of that generation— 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



29 



now appea» \ ) us equally ridiculous and un- 
becoming; merely because such appendages 
are no longer to be seen, but upon the heads 
of sober and sedentary lawyers, or in the pic- 
tures of antiquated esquires. 

We cannot afford, however, to enlarge any 
farther upon these considerations, and are in- 
clined indeed to think, that what has been 
already said on the subject of associations, 
which, though not universal, are common to 
whole classes of persons, will make it unne- 
cessary to enlarge on those that are peculiar 
to each individual. It is almost enough, in- 
deed, to transcribe the following short pas- 
sage from Mr. Alison. 

" There is no man, who has not some inter- 
esting associations with particular scenes, or 
airs, or books; and who does not feel their 
beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such 
connections. The view of the house where 
one was bom, of the school where one was 
educated, and where the gay years of infancy 
were passed, is indifferent to no man. There 
are songs also, which we have heard in our 
infancy, which, when brought to our remem- 
brance in after years, raise emotions for which 
we cannot well account ; and which, though 
perhaps very indifferent in themselves, still 
continue from this association, and from the 
variety of conceptions which they kindle in 
our minds, to be our favourites through life. 
The scenes which have been distinguished 
by the residence of any person, whose mem- 
ory we admire, produce a similar effect. 
Movemur enim, nescio quo pacto, locis ipsis, in 
quibus eorum. quos diligimus, out admiramur 
adsunt vestigia. The scenes themselves may 
be little beautiful ; but the delight with which 
we recollect the traces of their lives, blends 
itself insensibly with the emotions which the 
scenery excites; and the admiration which 
these recollections afford, seems to give a kind 
of sanctity to the place where they dwelt, and 
converts every tiling into beauty which ap- 
pears to have been connected with them." 

There are similar impressions — as to the 
sort of scenery to which we have been long- 
accustomed — as to the style of personal beau- 
ty by which we were first enchanted — and 
even as to the dialect, or the form of versifi- 
cation which we first began to admire, that 
bestow a secret and adventitious charm upon 
all these objects, and enable us to discover 
in them a beauty which is invisible, because 
it is non-existent to every other eye. 

In all the cases we have hitherto consid- 
ered, the external object is supposed to have 
acquired its beauty by being actually connec- 
ted with the causes of our natural emotions, 
either as a constant sign of their existence, 
or as being casually present on the ordinary 
occasions of their excitement. There is a re- 
lation, however, of another kind, to which 
also it is necessary to attend, both to eluci- 
date the general grounds of the theory, and 
to explain several appearances that might 
otherwise expose it to objections. This is the 
relation which external objects may bear to 
our internal feelings, and the power they may 
cousequen% acquire of suggesting them, in 



consequence of a sort of resemblance or an- 
alogy which they seem to have to their natu- 
ral and appropriate objects. The language 
of Poetry is founded, in a great degree, upon 
this analogy; and all language, indeed, is full 
of it; and attests, by its structure, both the 
extent to which it is spontaneously pursued, 
and the effects that are produced by its sug- 
gestion. We take a familiar instance from 
the elegant writer to whom we have already 
referred. 

" What, for instance, is the leading impres- 
sion we receive from the scenery of spring'? 
The soft and gentle green wilh which the 
earth is spread, the feeble texture of the 
plants and flowers, and the remains of winter 
yet lingering among the woods and hills — 
all conspire to infuse into our minds some- 
what of that fearful tenderness with which 
infancy is usually beheld. With such a sen- 
timent, how innumerable are the ideas which 
present themselves to our imagination ! ideas, 
it is apparent, by no means confined to the 
scene before our eyes, or to the possible deso- 
lation which may yet await its infant beauty, 
but which almost involuntarily extend them- 
selves to analogies with the life of man I and 
bring before us all those images of hope or 
fear, which, according to our peculiar situa- 
tions, have the dominion of our hearts! The 
beauty of autumn is accompanied with a 
similar exercise of thought : the leaves begin 
then to drop from the trees; the flowers and 
shrubs, with which the fields were adorned 
in the summer months, decay; the woods 
and groves are silent ; the sun himself seems 
gradually to withdraw his light, or to become 
enfeebled in his power. Who is there, who, 
at this season, does not feel his mind impres- 
sed with a sentiment of melancholy'? or who 
is able to resist that current of thought, 
which, from such appearances of decay, so 
naturally leads him to the solemn imagina- 
tion of that inevitable fate, which is to bring 
on alike the decay of life, of empire^ and of na- 
ture itself?" 

A thousand such analogies, indeed, are sug- 
gested to us by the most familiar aspects of 
nature. The morning and the evening pre- 
sent the same ready picture of youth and of 
closing life, as the various vicissitudes of the 
year. The withering of flowers images out 
to us the langour of beauty, or the sickness of 
childhood. The loud roar of troubled waters 
seems to bear some resemblance to the voice 
of lamentation or violence ; and the softer 
murmur of brighter streams, to be expressive 
of cheerfulness and innocence. The purity 
and transparency of watei or of sir, indeed, 
is universally itself felt to be expressive of 
mental purity and gaiety; and their darkness 
or turbulence, of mental gloom and dejection. 
The genial warmth of autumn suggests to us 
the feeling of mild benevolence : — the sunny 
gleams and fitful showers of early spring, re- 
mind us of the waywardness of infancy ; — 
flowers waving on their slender stems, im- 
press us with the notion of flexibility and 
lightness of temper. All fine and delicate 
forms are typical of delicacy and gentleness 
c 2 



30 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



01 character; and almost all forms, bounded 
by waving or flowing lines, suggest ideas of 
easy movement, social pliability, and ele- 
gance. Rapid and impetuous motion seems 
to be emblematical of violence and passion ; 
— slow and steady motion, of deliberation, 
dignity, and resolution; — fluttering motion, of 
inconstancy or terror; — and waving motion, 
according as it is slow or swift, of sadness or 
playfulness. A lofty tower, or a massive 
building, gives us at once trie idea of firm- 
ness and elevation of character; — a rock bat- 
tered by the waves, of fortitude in adversity. 
Stillness and calmness, in the water or the air, 
seem to shadow out tenderness, indolence, 
and placidity; — moonlight we call pensive 
and gentle; — and the unclouded sun gives us 
an impression of exulting vigour, and domi- 
neering ambition and glory. 

It is not difficult, with the assistance which 
language affords us, to trace the origin of all 
these, and a thousand other associations. In 
many instances, the qualities which thus sug- 
gest mental emotions, do actually resemble 
their constant concomitants in human nature ; 
as is obviously the case with the forms and 
motions which are sublime and beautiful: 
and, in some, their effects and relations bear 
so obvious an analogy to those of human con- 
duct or feeling, as to force itself upon the no- 
tice of the most careless beholder. But, what- 
ever may have been their original, the very 
structure of language attests the vast extent 
to which they have been carried, and the na- 
ture of the suggestions to which they are in- 
debted for their interest or beauty. Since we 
all speak familiarly of the sparkling of wit — 
and the darkness of melancholy — can it be 
any way difficult to conceive that bright light 
may be agreeable, because it reminds us of 
gaiety — and darkness oppressive, because it 
is felt to be emblematical of sorrow ? It is 
very remarkable, indeed, that, while almost 
all the words by which the affections of the 
mind are expressed, seem to have been bor- 
rowed originally from the qualities of matter, 
the epithets by which we learn afterwards to 
distinguish such material objects as are felt 
to be sublime or beautiful, are all of them 
epithets that had been previously appropri- 
ated to express some quality or emotion of 
mind. Colours are thus familiarly said to be 
gay or grave — motions to be lively, or delib- 
erate, or capricious — forms to be delicate or 
modest — sounds to be animated or mournful 
—prospects to be cheerful or melancholy — 
rocks to be bold — waters to be tranquil — and 
a thousand other phrases of the same import ; 
all indicating, most unequivocally, the sources 
from which our interest in matter is derived, 
and proving, that it is necessary, in all cases, 
to confer mind and feeling upon it, before it 
can be conceived as either sublime or beauti- 
ful. The great charm, indeed, and the great 
secret of poetical diction, consists in thus 
lending life and emotion to all the objects it 
embraces; and the enchanting beauty which 
we sometimes recognise in descriptions of 
very ordinary phenomena, will be found to 
arise from the force of imagination, by which 



the poet has connected with human emotions, 
a variety of objects, to which common minds 
could not discover such a relation. What the 
poet does for his readers, however, by his 
original similes and metaphors, in these high- 
er cases, even the dullest of those readers do, 
in some degree, every day, for themselves ; 
and the beauty which is perceived, when 
natural objects are unexpectedly vivified b) 
the glowing fancy of the former, is precisely 
of the same kind that is felt when the close- 
ness of the analogy enables them to force hu- 
man feelings upon the recollection of all man- 
kind. As the poet sees more of beauty in 
nature than ordinary mortals, just because 
he perceives more of these analogies and 
relations to social emotion, in which all 
beauty consists; so other men see more or 
less of this beauty, exactly as they hap- 
pen to possess that fancy, or those habits, 
which enable them readily to trace out these 
relations. 

From all these sources of evidence, then, 
we think it is pretty well made out, that the 
beauty or sublimity of external objects is no- 
thing but the reflection of emotions excited 
by the feelings or condition of sentient be- 
ings ; and is produced altogether by certain 
little portions, as it were, of love, joy. pity, 
veneration, or terror, that adhere to the ob- 
jects that were present on the occasions oT 
such emotions. — Nor, after what we have al- 
ready said, does it seem necessary to reply 
to more than one of the objections to which 
we are aware that this theory is liable. — If 
beauty be nothing more than a reflection of 
love, pity, or veneration, how comes it, it may 
be asked, to be distinguished from these sen- 
timents ? They are never confounded with 
each other, either in our feelings or our lan- 
guage : — Why, then, should they all be con- 
founded under the common name of beauty? 
and why should beauty, in all cases, affect us 
in a way so different from the love or com- 
passion of which it is said to be merely the 
reflection ? 

Now, to these questions, we are somewhat 
tempted to answer, after the manner of our 
country, by asking, in our turn, whether it be 
really true, that beauty always affects us in 
one and the same manner, and always in a 
different manner from the simple and ele- 
mentary affections which it is its office to 
recal to us ? In very many cases, it appear 
to us, that the sensations which we receive 
from objects that are felt to be beautiful, and 
that in the highest degree, do not differ at all 
from the direct movements of tenderness or 
pity towards sentient beings. If the epithet 
of beauty be correctly (as it is universally) ap- 
plied to many of the most admired and en- 
chanting passages in poetry, which consist 
entirely in the expression of affecting senti- 
ments, the question would be speedily de- 
cided; and it is a fact, at all events, too 
remarkable to be omitted, that some of the 
most powerful and delightful emotions that 
are uniformly classed under this name, arise 
altogether from the direct influence of such 
pathetic emotions, without the Wtervention 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



of any material imagery. We do not wish, 
however, to dwell upon an argument, which 
certainly is not applicable to all parts of the 
question; and, admitting that, on many oc- 
casions, the feelings which we experience 
from beauty, are sensibly different from the 
primary emotions in which we think they 
originate, we shall endeavour in a very few 
words, to give an explanation of this differ- 
ence, which seems to be perfectly consist- 
ent with the theory we have undertaken to 
illustrate. 

In the first place, it should make some dif- 
ference on the primary affections to which 
we have alluded, that, in the cases alluded to, 
they are reflected from material objects, and 
not directly excited by their natural causes. 
The light of the moon has a very different 
complexion from that of the sun; — though it 
is in substance the sun's light : and glimpses 
of interesting, or even of familiar objects, 
caught unexpectedly from a mirror placed at 
a distance from these objects, will affect us, 
like sudden allusions in poetry, very differ- 
ently from the natural perception of those ob- 
jects in their ordinary relations. In the next 
place, the emotion, when suggested in the 
shape of beauty, comes upon us, for the most 
part, disencumbered of all those accompani- 
ments which frequently give it a peculiar and 
less satisfactory character, when it arises from 
direct intercourse with its living objects. The 
compassion, for example, that is suggested by 
beauty of a gentle and winning description, is 
not attended with any of that disgust and un- 
easiness which frequently accompany the 
spectacle of real distress; nor with that im- 
portunate suggestion of the duty of relieving 
it, from which it is almost inseparable. Nor 
does the temporary delight which we receive 
from beauty of a gay and animating charac- 
ter, call upon us for any such expenditure of 
spirits, or active demonstrations of sympathy, 
as are sometimes demanded by the turbu- 
lence of real joy. In the third place, the 
emotion of beauty, being partly founded upon 
illusion, is far more transitory in its own na- 
ture, and is both more apt to fluctuate and 
vary in its character, and more capable of 
being dismissed at pleasure, than any of the 
primary affections, whose shadow and repre- 
sentative it is. In the fourth place, the per- 
ception of beauty implies a certain exercise 
of the imagination that is not required in the 
case of direct emotion, and is sufficient, of it- 
self, both to give a new character to every 
emotion that is suggested by the intervention 
of such an exercise, and to account for our 
classing all the various emotions that are so 
suggested under the same denomination of 
beauty. When we are injured, we feel in- 
dignation — when we are wounded, we feel 
pain— when we see suffering, we feel com- 
passion — and when we witness any splendid 
act of heroism or generosity, we feel admira- 
tion — without any effort of the imagination, 
or the intervention of any picture or vision in 
the mind. But when we feel indignation or 
pity, or admiration, in consequence of seeing 
some piece of inanimate matter that merely 



suggests or recals to us the ordinary causes 
or proper objects of these emotions, it is evi- 
dent that our fancy is kindled by a sudden 
flash of recollection; and that the effect is 
I produced by means of a certain poetical crea- 
i tion that is instantly conjured up in the mind. 
j It is this active and heated state of the ima- 
j gination, and this divided and busy occupa- 
; tion of the mind, that constitute the great 
l peculiarity of the emotions we experience 
j from the perception of beauty. 

Finally, and this is perhaps the most im- 
• portant consideration of the whole, it should 
be recollected, that, along with the shadow or 
suggestion of associated emotions, there is 
always present a real and direct perception, 
which not only gives a force and liveliness to 
all the images which it suggests, but seems 
to impart to them some share of its own 
reality. That there is an illusion of this kind 
in the case, is sufficiently demonstrated by 
the fact, that we invariably ascribe the inter- 
est, which Ave think has been proved to arise 
wholly from these associations, to the object 
itself, as one of its actual and inherent quali- 
ties; and consider its beauty as no less a prop- 
erty belonging to it, than any of its physical 
attributes. The associated interest, there- 
fore, is beyond all doubt confounded with the 
present perception of the object itself; and a 
livelier and more instant impression is accord- 
ingly made upon the mind, than if the inter- 
esting conceptions had been merely excited 
in the memory by the usual operation of re- 
flection or voluntary meditation. Something 
analogous to this is familiarly known to occur 
in other cases. When we merely think of an 
absent friend, our emotions are incomparably 
less lively than when the recollection of him 
is suddenly suggested by the unexpected 
sight of his picture, of the house where he 
dwelt, or the spot on which we last parted 
from him — and all these objects seem for the 
moment to wear the colours of our own asso- 
ciated affections. When Captain Cook's com- 
panions found, in the remotest corner of the 
habitable globe, a broken spoon with the word 
London stamped upon it — and burst into tears 
at the sight ! — they proved how differently we 
may be moved by emotions thus connected 
with the real presence of an actual percep- 
tion, than by the mere recollection of the ob- 
jects on which those emotions depend. Every 
one of them had probably thought of London 
every day since he left it; and many of them 
might have been talking of it with tranquilli- 
ty, but a moment before this more effectual 
appeal was made to their sensibility. 

If we add to all this,*that there is necessa- 
rily something of vagueness and variableness 
in the emotions most generally excited by the 
perception of beauty, and that the mind wan- 
ders with the eye, over the different objettfs 
which may supply these emotions, with a 
degree of unsteadiness, and half voluntary 
half involuntary fluctuation, we may come to 
understand how the effect not only should be 
essentially different from that of the simple 
presentment of any one interesting concep- 
tion, but should acquire a peculiarity which 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



entitle.? it to a different denomination. Most 
of the associations of which we have been last 
speaking, as being founded on the analogies 
or fanciful resemblances that are felt to exist 
between physical objects and qualities, and 
the interesting affections of mind ; are intrin- 
sically of this vague and wavering descrip- 
tion — and when we look at a fine landscape, 
or any other scene of complicated beauty, a 
great variety of such images are suddenly 
presented to the fancy, and as suddenly suc- 
ceeded by others, as the eye ranges over the 
different features of which it is composed, and 
feeds upon the charms which it discloses. 
Now. the direct perception, in all such cases, 
not only perpetually accompanies the asso- 
ciated emotions, but is inextricably con- 
founded with them in our feelings, and is 
even recognised upon reflection as the cause, 
not merely of their imusual strength, but of 
the several peculiarities by which we have 
shown that they are distinguished. It is not 
wonderful, therefore, either that emotions so 
circumstanced should not be classed - along 
with similar affections, excited'under different 
circumstances, or that the perception of pre- 
sent existence, thus mixed up, and indissolu- 
bly confounded with interesting conceptions, 
should between them produce a sensation of 
so distinct a nature as naturally to be distin- 
guished by a peculiar name — or that the 
beauty which results from this combination 
should, in ordinary language, be ascribed to 
the objects themselves — the presence and 
perception of which is a necessary condition 
of its existence. 

What we have now said is enough, we be- 
lieve, to give an attentive reader that general 
conception of the theory before us, w r hich is 
all that we can hope to give in the narrow 
limits to which we are confined. It may be 
observed, however, that we have spoken only 
of those sorts of beauty which we think capa- 
ble of being resolved into some passion, or 
emotion, or pretty lively sentiment of our na- 
ture ; and though these are undoubtedly the 
highest and most decided kinds of beauty, it 
is certain that there are many things called 
beautiful which cannot claim so lofty a con- 
nection. It is necessary, therefore, to observe, 
that, though every thing that excites any feel- 
ing worthy to be called an emotion j by its 
beauty or sublimity, will be found to be re- 
lated to the natural objects of human passions 
or affections, there are many things which are 
pleasing or agreeable enough to be called 
beautiful, in consequence of their relation 
merely to human convenience and comfort; — 
many others that please by suggesting ideas 
of human skill and ingenuity; — and many 
that obtain the name of beautiful, by being- 
associated with human fortune, vanity, or 
splendour. After what has been already said, 
it will not be necessary either to exemplify or 
explain these subordinate phenomena. It is 
enough merely to suggest, that they all please 
upon the same great principle of sympathy with 
human feelings; and are explained by the 
simple and indisputable fact, that we are 
pleased with the direct contemplation of 



human comfort, ingenuity, and fortune All 
these, indeed, obviously resolve themselves 
into the great object of sympathy — human 
enjoyment. Convenience and comfort is but 
another name for a lower, but very indispen- 
sable ingredient of that emotion. Skill and 
ingenuity readily present themselves as means 
by which enjoyment may be promoted ; and 
high fortune, and opulence, and splendour, 
pass, at least at a distance, for its certain 
causes and attendants. The beauty of fitness 
and adaptation of parts, even in the works of 
nature, is derived from the same fountain — 
partly by means of its obvious analogy to 
works of human skill, and partly by sugges- 
tions of that Creative power and wisdom, to 
which all human destiny is subjected. The 
feelings, therefore, associated with all those 
qualities, though scarcely rising to the height 
of emotion, are obviously in a certain degree 
pleasing or interesting; and when several of 
them happen to be united in one object, may 
accumulate to a very great degree of beauty. 
It is needless, we think, to pursue these gene- 
ral propositions through all the details to 
which they so obviously lead. We shall con- 
fine ourselves, therefore, to a very few remarks 
upon the beauty of architecture — and chiefly 
as an illustration of our general position. 

There are few things, about which men of 
virtu are more apt to rave, than the merits of 
the Grecian architecture; and most of those 
who affect an uncommon purity and delicacy 
of taste, talk of the intrinsic beauty of its pro- 
portions as a thing not to be disputed, except 
by barbarian ignorance and stupidity. Mr. 
Alison, we think, was the first who gave a 
full and convincing refutation of this myste- 
rious dogma; and, while he admits, in the 
most ample terms, the actual beauty of the 
objects in question, has shown, we think, in 
the clearest manner, that it arises entirely 
from the combination of the following asso- 
ciations: — 1st, The association of utility, con- 
venience, or fitness for the purposes of the 
building; 2d, Of security and stability, with a 
view to the nature of the materials; 3d, Of 
the skill and power requisite to mould such 
materials into forms so commodious; 4th, Of 
magnificence, and splendour, and expense; 
5th, Of antiquity; and, 6thly, Of Roman and 
Grecian greatness. His observations are sum- 
med up in the following short sentence. 

"The proportions," he observes, "of these 
orders, it is to be remembered, are distinct 
subjects of beauty, from the ornaments with 
which they are embellished, from the magni- 
ficence with which they are executed, from 
the purposes of elegance they are intended to 
serve, or the scenes of grandeur they are des- 
tined to adorn. It is in such scenes, however, 
and with such additions, that we are acc\is- 
tomed to observe them; and, while we feel 
the effect of all these accidental associations, 
we are seldom willing to examine what are 
the causes of the complex emotion we feel, 
and readily attribute to the nature of the ar- 
chitecture itself, the whole pleasure which we 
enjoy. But, besides these, there are othei 
associations we have with these forms, that 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



33 



utill more ] o we vfully serve to command our 
admiration; for they are the Grecian orders; 
ihey derive their origin from those times, and 
wore the ornament of those countries which 
are most hallowed in oar imaginations; and it 
is difficult for us to see them, even in their 
modern copies, without feeling them operate 
upon our minds as relics of those polished 
naiious where they first, arose, and of that 
greater people by whom they were afterwards 
borrowed." 

This analysis is to us perfectly satisfactory. 
But, indeed, we cannot conceive any more 
complete refutation of the notion of an in- 
trinsic and inherent beauty in the proportions 
of the Grecian architecture, than the fact of 
the admitted beauty of such very opposite 
proportions in the Gothic. Opposite as they 
are, however, the great elements of beauty 
are the same in this style as in the other — 
the impressions of religious awe and of chi- 
valrous recollections, coming here in place of 
the classical associations which constitute so 
great a share of the interest of the former. It 
is well observed too by Mr. Alison, that the 
great dm ability and costliness of the produc- 
tions of this art, have had the effect, in almost 
all regions of the world, of rendering their 
Fashion permanent, after it had once attained 
such a degree of perfection as to fulfil its 
substantial purposes. 

" Buildings," he observes, "may last, and 
are intended to last for centuries. The life 
of man is very inadequate io the duration of 
such productions ; and the present period of 
the world, though old with respect to those 
arts which are employed upon perishable sub- 
jects, is yet young in relation to an art, which 
is employed upon so durable materials as 
those of architecture. Instead of a few years, 
therefore, centuries must probably pass before 
such productions demand to be renewed; 
and, long before that period is elapsed, the 
sacredness of antiquity is acquired by the 
subject itself, and a new motive given for the 
preservation of similar forms. In every coun- 
try, accordingly, the same, effect has taken 
place : and the same causes which have thus 
served to produce among us, for so many 
years, an uniformity of taste with regard to 
the style of Grecian architecture, have pro- 
duced also among the nations of the East, for 
a much longer course of time, a similar uni- 
formity of taste with regard to their orna- 
mental style of architecture ; and have per- 
petuated among them the same forms which 
were in use among their forefathers, before 
the Grecian orders were invented." 

It is not necessary, we think, to carry these 
illustrations any farther : as the theory they 
are intended to explain, is now, we believe, 
universally adopted, though with some limita- 
tions, which we see no reason to retain. Those 
suggested by Mr. Alison, we have already en- 
deavoured to dispose of in the few remarks 
we have made upon his publication; and it 
only remains to say a word or two more upon 
Mr. Knight's doctrine as to the primitive and 
independent beauty of colours, upon which 
we liave a; ready hazarded some remarks. 



Agreeing as he does with Mr. Alison, and 
all modern inquirers, that the whole beauty 
of objects consists, in the far greater number 
of instances, in the associations to which we 
have alluded, he still maintains, that some 
few visible objects affect us with a sense of 
beauty in consequence of the pleasurable im- 
pression they make upon the sense — and that 
our perception of beauty is, in these instances, 
a mere organic sensation. Now, we have 
already stated, that it would be something 
quite unexampled in the history either of 
mind or of language, if certain physical and 
bodily sensations should thus be confounded 
with moral and social feelings with which 
they had no connection, and pass familiarly 
under one and the same name. Beauty con- 
sists confessedly, in almost all cases, in the 
suggestion of moral or social emotions, mixed 
up and modified by a present sensation or 
perception ; and it is this suggestion, and this 
identification with a present object, that con- 
stitutes its essence, and gives a common 
character to the whole class of feelings it 
produces, sufficient to justify their being de- 
signated by a common appellation. If the 
word beauty, in short, must mean something, 
and if this be very clearly what it means, in 
all the remarkable instances of its occurrence, 
it is difficult to conceive, that it should occa- 
sionally mean something quite different,- and 
denote a mere sensual or physical gratifica- 
tion, unaccompanied by the suggestion of any 
moral emotion whatever. According to Mr. 
Knight, however, and, indeed, to many other 
writers, this is the case with regard to the 
beauty of colours; which depends altogether, 
they say, upon the delight which the eye 
naturally takes in their contemplation — this 
delight being just as primitive and sensual as 
that which the palate receives from the con- 
tact of agreeable flavours. 

It must be admitted, we think, in the first 
place, that such an allegation is in itself ex- 
tremely improbable, and contrary to all anal- 
ogy, and all experience of the structure of 
language, or of the laws of thought. It is 
farther to' be considered, too, that if the plea- 
sures of the senses are ever to be considered 
as beautiful, those pleasures which are the 
most lively and important would be the most 
likely to usurp this denomination, and to take 
rank with the higher gratifications that result 
from the perception of beauty. Now, it ad- 
mits of no dispute, that the mere organic 
pleasures of the eye (if indeed they have any 
existence) are far inferior to those of the 
palate, the touch, and indeed almost all the 
other senses — none of which, however, are in 
any case confounded with the sense of beauty. 
In the next place, it should follow, that if 
what affords organic pleasure to the eye be 
properly called beautiful, what offends or 
gives pain to it, should be called ugly. Now, 
excessive or dazzling light is offensive to the 
eye — but, considered by itself, it is never 
called ugly, but only painful or disagreeable. 
The moderate excitement of light ? on the 
other hand, or the soothing of certain bright 
but temperate colours, when considered in 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



this primary aspect, are not called beautiful, 
but only agreeable or refreshing. So far as 
the direct offence or comfort of the organ, in 
short, is referred to, the language which we 
use relates strictly to physical or bodily sensa- 
tion, and is not confounded with that which 
relates to mental emotion; and we really see 
no ground for supposing that there is any ex- 
ception to this rule. 

It is very remarkable, indeed, that the 
sense whose organic gratification is here sup- 
posed to constitute the primary feeling of 
beauty, should be one, in the first place, 
whose direct organic gratifications are of very 
little force or intensity; — and, in the next 
place, one whose office it is, almost exclu- 
sively, to make us acquainted with the exist- 
ence and properties of those external objects 
which are naturally interesting to our inward 
feelings and affections. This peculiarity 
makes it (at the very least) extremely proba- 
ble, that ideas of emotion should be associated 
with the perceptions of this sense; but ex- 
tremely improbable, that its naked and unas- 
sociaied sensations should in any case be 
classed with such emotions. If the name of 
beauty were given to what directly gratifies 
any sense, such as that of tasting or smelling, 
which does not make us acquainted with the 
nature or relations of outward objects, there 
would be less room for such an explanation. 
But when it is the business of a particular 
sense or organ to introduce to our knowledge 
those objects which are naturally connected 
with ideas of emotion, it is easy to understand 
how its perceptions should be associated with 
these emotions, and an interest and impor- 
tance thus extended to them, that belong to 
the intimations of no other bodily organ. But, 
for those very reasons, we should be prepared 
to suspect, that all the interest they possess 
is derived from this association ; and to dis- 
trust the accuracy of any observations that 
might lead us to conclude that its mere or- 
ganic impulses ever produced any thing akin 
to those associated emotions, or entitled to 
pass under their name. This caution will 
appear still more reasonable, when it is con- 
sidered, that all the other qualities of visible 
objects, except only their colours, are now 
admitted to be perfectly indifferent in them- 
selves, and to possess no other beauty than 
they may derive from their associations with 
our ordinary affections. There are no forms. 
for example, even in Mr. Knight's opinion, 
that have any intrinsic beauty, or any power 
of pleasing or affecting us, except through 
their associations, or affinities to mental affec- 
tions, either as expressive of fitness and utility, 
or as types and symbols of certain moral or 
intellectual qualities, in which the sources of 
our interest are obvious. Yet the form of an 
object is as conspicuous an ingredient of its 
beauty as its colour; and a property, too, 
which seems at first view to be as intrinsic- 
ally and independently pleasing. Why, then, 
should we persist m holding that colours, or 
combinations of colours, please from being 
nuturaUy agreeable to the organ of sight, when 
it is admitted that other visible qualities, 



which seem to possess the same power of 
pleasing, are found, upon examination, to owe 
it entirely to the principle of association ? 

The only reason that can be assigned, or 
that actually exists for this distinction, is. that 
it has been supposed more difficult to ace )unt 
for the beauty of colours, upon the principles 
which have accounted for other beauties, or 
to specify the particular associations by virtue 
of which they could acquire this quality. 
Now, it appears to us that there is no such 
difficulty ; and that there is no reason what- 
ever for holding that one colour, or combina- 
tion of colours, is more pleasing than another, 
except upon, the same grounds of association 
which recommend particular forms, motions, 
or proportions. It appears to us, that the or- 
ganic pleasures of the eye are extremely few 
and insignificant. It is hurt, no doubt, by an 
excessive glare of light; and it is in some de- 
gree gratified, perhaps, by a moderate degree 
of it. But it is only by the quantity or in- 
tensity of the light, we think, that it is so 
affected. The colour of it, we take it, is, in 
all cases, absolutely indifferent. But it is the 
colour only that is called beautiful or other- 
wise ; and these qualities we think it very 
plainly derives from the common fountain of 
association. 

In the first place, we would ask, whether 
there is any colour that is beautiful in all 
situations'? and, in the next place, whether 
there is any colour that is not beautiful in 
some situation 1 With regard to the first, take 
the colours that are most commonly referred 
to as intrinsically beautiful — bright and soft 
green — clear blue — bright pink, or vermilion. 
The first is unquestionably beautiful in vernal 
woods and summer meadows ;--and, we 
humbly conceive, is beautiful, because it ia 
the natural sign and concomitant of those 
scenes and seasons of enjoyment. Blue, again, 
is beautiful in the vernal sky; — and, as we be- 
lieve, for the sake of the pleasures of which 
such skies are prolific ; and pink is beautiful 
on the cheeks of a young woman or the leaves 
of a rose, for reasons too obvious to be stated. 
We have associations enough, therefore, tu 
recommend all those colours, in the situations 
in which they are beautiful : But, strong as 
these associations are, they are unable to 
make them universally beautiful — or beauti- 
ful, indeed, in any other situations. Green 
w r ould not be beautiful in the sky — nor blue 
on the cheek — nor vermilion on the grass. It 
may be said, indeed, that, though they are 
always recognised as beautiful in themselves, 
their obvious unfitness in such situations coun- 
teracts the effect of their beauty, and make 
an opposite impression, as of something mon» 
strous and unnatural; and that, accordingly, 
they are all beautiful in indifferent situations, 
where there is no such antagonist principle— 
in furniture, dress, and ornaments. Now the 
fact, in the first place, is not so ; — these bright 
colours being but seldom and sparingly ad- 
mitted in ornaments or works of art; and no 
man, for example, choosing to have a blue 
house, or a green ceiling, or a pink coat. But, 
in the second place, if the facts were admitted 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



we think it obvious, that the general beauty of 
those colours would be sufficiently accounted 
for by the very interesting and powerful asso- 
ciations under which all of them are so fre- 
quently presented by the hand of Nature. 
The interest we take in female beauty. — in 
venial delights, — in unclouded skies, — is far 
too lively and too constantly recurring, not to 
stamp a kindred interest upon the colours 
that are naturally associated with such ob- 
jects ; and to make us regard with some affec- 
tion and delight those hues that remind us of 
them, although we should only meet them 
upon a fan, or a dressing-box, the lining of a 
curtain, or the back of a screen. Finally, we 
beg leave to observe, that all bright and clear 
colours are naturally typical of cheerfulness 
and purity of mind, and are hailed as em- 
blems of moral qualities, to which no one can 
be indifferent. 

With regard to ugly colours again, we really 
are not aware of any to which that epithet 
can be safely applied. Dull and dingy hues 
are usually mentioned as in themselves the 
least pleasing. Yet these are the prevailing 
tints in many beautiful landscapes, and many 
admired pictures. The)- are also the most 
common colours that are chosen for dress 
(male dress at least), — for building, — for fur- 
niture, — where the consideration of beauty is 
the only motive for the choice. In fact, the 
shaded parts of all coloured objects pass into 
tints of this description : — nor can we at pre- 
sent recollect any one colour, which we could 
specify as in itself disagreeable, without run- 
ning counter to the feelings and the practice of 
the great mass of mankind. If the fact, how- 
ever, were otherwise, and if certain muddy 
and dull colours were universally allowed to 
be disagreeable, we should think there could 
be no difficulty in referring these, too, to na- 
tural associations. Darkness, and all that ap- 
proaches it, is naturally associated with ideas 
of melancholy, — of helplessness, and danger ; 
— and the gloomy hues that remind us of it, 
or seem to draw upon it, must share in the 
same associations. Lurid skies, too, it should 
be observed, and turbid Avaters, and unfruitful 
swamps, and dreary morasses, are the natural 
and most common wearers of these dismal 
liveries. It is from these that we first become 
acquainted with them: and it is needless, 
therefore, to say, that such objects are neces- 
sarily associated with ideas of discomfort, and 
sadness, and danger j and that the colours that 
remind us of them, can scarcely fail to recal 
some of the same disagreeable sensations. 

Enough, however, and more than enough, 
has been said about the supposed primitive 
and in dependant beauty of separate colours. 
It is chiefly upon the intrinsic beauty of their 
mixture or combinations that Mr. Knight and 
his adherents have insisted; — and it is no 
doubt quite true, that, among painters and 
connoisseurs, we hear a great deal about the 
hannony and composition of tints, and the 
charms and difficulties of a judicious colour- 
ing. In all this, however, we cannot help sus- 
{)ecting that there is no little pedantry, and no 
ittle jargon; and that these phrases, when 



used without reference to the practical diffi- 
culties of the art, which must go for nothing 
in the present question, really mean little more 
than the true and natuial appearance of co- 
loured objects, seen through the same tinted 
or partially obscure medium that commonly 
constitutes the atmosphere : and for the actual 
optical effects of which but few artists know 
how to make the proper allowance. In na- 
ture, we know of no discordant or offensive 
colouring, except what may be referred to 
some accident or disaster that spoils the moral 
or sentimental expression of the scene, and 
disturbs the associations upon which all its 
beauty, whether of forms or of hues, seems 
to us very plainly dependent. We are per- 
fectly aware, that ingenious persons have been 
disposed to dogmatize and to speculate very 
confidently upon these subjects ; and have 
had the benefit of seeing various learned trea- 
tises upon the natural gamut of colours, and 
the inherent congruity of those that are called 
complementary, with reference to the pris- 
matic spectrum. But we confess we have no 
faith in any of those fancies; and believe, 
that, if all these colours were fairly arranged 
on a plain board, according to the most rigid 
rules of this supposed harmony, nobody, but 
the author of the theory, would perceive the 
smallest beauty hi the exhibition, or be the 
least offended by reversing their collocation. 

We do not mean, however, to dispute, that 
the laws of colouring, insisted on by learned 
artists, will produce a more pleasing effect 
upon trained judges of the art, than a neglect 
of these laws ; because we have little doubt 
that these combinations of colour are recom- 
mended by certain associations, which render 
them generally pleasing to persons so trained 
and educated ; — all that we maintain is, that 
there are no combinations that are originally 
and universally pleasing or displeasing to the 
eye, independent of such associations; and it 
seems to us an irresistible proof of this, that 
these laws of harmonious colouring are per- 
petually and deliberately violated by great 
multitudes of persons, who not only have the 
perfect use of their sight, but are actually be- 
stowing great pains and expense in providing 
for its gratification, in the very act of this vio- 
lation. The Dutch trader, who paints over the 
outside of his country-house with as many 
bright colours as are to be found in his tulip- 
bed, and garnishes his green shutters with 
blue facings, and his purple roof with lilac 
ridges, not only sees as well as the studied co- 
lourist, who shudders at the exhibition, but 
actually receives as much pleasure, and as 
strong an impression of beauty, from the fin- 
ished lusthaus, as the artist does from one of 
his best pictures. It is impossible, then, that 
these combinations of colours can be naturally 
or intrinsically offensive to the organ of sight ; 
and their beauty or ugliness must depend upon 
the associations which different individuals 
may have happened to form with regard to 
them. We contend, however, for nothing 
more; and are quite willing to allow that the 
associations which recommend his staring 
tawdriness to the burgomaster, are such aa 



36 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



could not easily have been formed in the mind 
of a diligent and extensive observer of nature, 
and that they would probably be reversed by 
habits of reflection and study. But the same 
thing, it is obvious, may be said of the notions 
of beauty of any other description that pre- 
vail among the rude* the inexperienced, and 
uninstructed ; — though, in all other instances, 
we take it for granted, that the beauty which 
is perceived depends altogether upon associa- 
tion, and in no degree on its power of giving 
a pleasurable impulse to the organ to which 
it addresses itself. If any considerable num- 
ber of persons, with the perfect use of sight, 
actually take pleasure in certain combinations 
of colours — that is complete proof that such 
combinations are not naturally offensive to the 
organ of sight, and that the pleasure of such 
persons, exactly like that of those who disa- 
gree with them, is derived not from the sense, 
but from associations with its perceptions. 

With regard, again, to the effect of broken 
masses of light and shadow, it is proper, in 
the first place, to remember, that by the eye 
we see colour only : and that lights and sha- 
dows, as far as the mere organ is concerned, 
mean nothing but variations of tint. It is 
very true, no doubt, that we soon learn to refer 
many of those variations to light and shade, 
and that they thus become signs to us of 
depth, and distance, and relief. But, is not 
this, of itself, sufficient to refute the idea of 
their affording any primitive or organic plea- 
sure ? In so far as they are mere variations 
cf tints, they may be imitated by unmeaning 
daubs of paint on a pallet j — in so far as they 
are signs, it is to the mind that they address 
themselves, and not to the organ. They are 
signs, too, it should be recollected, and the 
only signs we have, by which we can receive 
any correct knowledge of the existence and 
condition of all external objects at a distance 
from us, whether interesting or not interest- 
ing. Without the assistance of variety of tint, 
and of lights and shadows, we could never 
distinguish one object from another, except by 
the touch. These appearances, therefore, are 
the perpetual vehicles of almost all our inter- 
esting perceptions ; and are consequently as- 
sociated with all the emotions we receive from 
visible objects. It is pleasant to see many 
things in one prospect, because some of them 
are probably agreeable ; and it is pleasant to 
know the relations of those things, because 
the qualities or associations, by means of 
which they interest us, generally depend upon 
that knowledge. The mixture of colours and 
shades, however, is necessary to this enjoy- 
ment, and consequently is a sign of it, and a 
source of associated interest or beauty. 

Mr. Knight, however, goes much farther 
than this; and maintains, that the beauty 
which is so distinctly felt in many pictures of 
objects in themselves disagreeable, is to be 
ascribed entirely to the effect of the brilliant 
and harmonious tints, and the masses of light 
and shadow that may be employed in the re- 
presentation. The filthy and tattered rags of 
a beggar, he observes, and the putrifying con- 
tents of a dunghill, may fonn beautiful objects 



in a picture; because, considered as mere 
objects of sight, they may often present beau- 
tiful effects of colouring and shadow; and 
these are preserved or heightened in the imi- 
tation, disjointed from all their offensive ac- 
companiments. Now, if the tints and shades 
were the exclusive sources of our gratification , 
and if this gratification was diminished, hi' 
stead of being heightened, by the suggestion 
which, however transiently, must still intrude 
itself, that they appeared in an imitation of 
disgusting objects, it must certainly follow, 
that the pleasure and the beauty Mould be 
much enhanced if there was no imitation of 
any thing whatever, and if the canvas merely 
presented the tints and shades, unaccompa- 
nied with the representation of any particular 
object. It is perfectly obvious, however, that 
it would be absurd to call such a collection of 
coloured spots a beautiful picture ; and that a 
man would be laughed at who should hang, 
up such a piece of stained canvas among the 
works of the great artists. Again, if it were 
really possible for any one, but a student of 
art, to confine the attention to the mere co- 
louring and shadowing of any picture, there 
is nothing so disgusting but what might form 
the subject of a beautiful imitation. A piece 
of putrid veal, or a cancerous ulcer, or the 
rags that are taken from it, may display the 
most brilliant tints, and the finest distribution 
of light and shadow. Does Mr. Knight, hew- 
ever, seriously think, that either of these ex- 
periments would succeed'? Or are there, in 
reality, no other qualities in the pictures in 
question, to which their beauty can be as- 
cribed, but the organic effect of their colours 1 
We humbly conceive that there are ; and that 
far less ingenuity than his might have been 
able to detect them. 

There is, in the first place, the pleasing as- 
sociation of the skill and power of the artist 
— a skill and power which we know may be 
employed to produce unmingled delight; 
whatever may be the character of the parti- 
cular effort before us : and with the pride of 
whose possessors we sympathise. But, in the 
second place, we do humbly conceive that 
there are many interesting associations con- 
nected with the subjects which have been re- 
presented as purely disgusting. The aspect 
of human wretchedness and decay is not, at 
all events, an indifferent spectacle; and, if 
presented to us without actual offence to our 
senses, or any call on our active beneficence, 
may excite a sympathetic emotion, which is 
known to be far from undelightful. Many an 
attractive poem has been written on the mise 
ries of beggars ; and why should painting be 
supposed more fastidious? Besides, it will 
be observed, that the beggars of the painter 
are generally among the most interesting of 
that interesting order; — either young and 
lovely children, whose health and gaiety, and 
sweet expression, form an affecting contrast 
with their squalid garments, and the neglect 
and misery to which they seem to be destin- 
ed — or old and venerable persons, mingling 
something of the dignity and reverence of age 
with the broken spirit of their condition, and 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



37 



■eeming to reproach mankind for exposing 
Heads so old and white to the pelting of the 
pitiless storm. While such pictures suggest 
images so pathetic, it looks almost like a wil- 
ful perversity, to ascribe their beauty entirely 
o the mixture of colours which they display. 
&ud to the forgetfulness of these images. 
Even for the dunghill, we think it is possible 
to say something, — though, we confess, we 
have never happened to see any picture, of 
which that useful compound formed the pe- 
culiar subject. There is the display of the 
painters art and power here also ; and the 
dunghill is not only useful, but is associated 
with many pleasing images of rustic toil and 
occupation, and of the simplicity, and comfort, 
and innocence of agricultural life. We do not 
know that a dunghill is at all a disagreeable 
object to look at, even in plain reality — pro- 
vided it be so far off as not to annoy us with 
its odour, or to soil us with its effusions. In 
a picture, however, we are safe from any of 
these disasters- and, considering that it is 
usually combined, in such delineations, with 
other more pleasing and touching remem- 
brancers of humble happiness and content- 
ment, w r e really do not see that it was at all 
necessary to impute any mysterious or intrin- 
sic beauty to its complexion, in order to ac- 
count for the satisfaction with which we can 
then bear to behold it. 

Having said so much with a view to reduce 
to its just value, as an ingredient of beauty, 
the mere organ ical delight which the eye 
i> supposed to derive from colours, we really 
have not patience to apply the same consider- 
ations to the alleged beauty of Sounds that are 
supposed to be insignificant. Beautiful sounds, 
in general, we think, are beautiful from as- 
sociation only, — from their resembling the 
natural tones of various passions and affec- 
tions, — or from their being originally and most 
frequently presented to us in scenes or on 
occasions of natural interest or emotion. W T ith 
regard, again, to successive or coexistent 
sounds, we do not, of course, mean to dispute, 
that there are such things as melody and har- 
mony; and that most men are offended or 
gratified by the violation or observance of 
those laws upon which they depend. This, 
however, it should be observed, is a faculty 
quite unique, and unlike anything else in our 
constitution: by no means universal, as the 
sense of beauty is, even in cultivated societies; 
and apparently withheld from whole commu- 
nities of quick-eared savages and barbarians. 
Whether the kind of gratification, which re- 
sults from the mere musical arrangement of 
sounds, would be felt to be beautiful, or would 
pass under that name, if it could be presented 
entirely detached from any associated emo- 
tions, appears to us to be exceedingly doubtful. 
Even with the benefit of such combinations, 
we do not find, that every arrangement which 
merely preserves inviolate the "rules of com- 
position, is considered as beautiful ; and we 
do not think that it would be consonant, either 
with the common feeling or common language 
of mankind, to bestow this epithet upon pieces 
that had no other merit. At all events, and 



whatever may be thought of tr;e proper name 
of this singular gratification, of a musical ear, 
it seems to be quite certain, that all that rises 
to the dignity of an emotion in the pleasure we 
receive from sounds, is as clearly the gift of 
association, as in the case of visible beaut}', — 
of association with the passionate tones and 
modulations of the human voice, — with the 
scenes to which the interesting sounds are 
native, — with the poetry to which they have 
been married. — or even with the skill and 
genius of the artist by whom they have been 
arranged. 

Hitherto we have spoken of the beauty of 
external objects only. But the whole diffi- 
culty of the theory consists in its application 
to them. If that be once adjusted, the beauty 
of immaterial objects can occasion no per- 
plexity. Poems and other compositions in 
words, are beautiful in proportion as they are 
conversant with beautiful objects — or as they 
suggest to us, in a more direct way, the moral 
and social emotions on which the beauty of 
all objects depends. Theorems and demon- 
strations again are beautiful, according as they 
excite in us emotions of admiration for the 
genius and intellectual power of their invent- 
ors, and images of the magnificent and bene- 
ficial ends to which such discoveries may be 
applied ; — and mechanical contrivances are 
beautiful when they remind us of similar 
talents and ingenuity, and at the same time 
impress us with a more direct sense of their 
vast utility to mankind, and of the great ad- 
ditional conveniences with which life is con- 
sequently adorned. In all cases, therefore, 
there is the suggestion of some interesting 
conception or emotion associated with a pre- 
sent perception, in which it is apparently 
confounded and embodied — and this, accord- 
ing to the whole of the preceding deduction, 
is the distinguishing characteristic of beauty. 

Having now explained, as fully as we think 
necessary, the grounds of that opinion as to 
the nature of beauty which appears to be most 
conformable to the truth — we have only to 
add a word or two as to the necessary conse- 
quences of its adoption upon several other 
controversies of a kindred description. 

In the first place, then, we conceive that it 
establishes the substantial identity of the 
Sublime, the Beautiful, and the Picturesque j 
and, consequently, puts an end to all contro- 
versy that is not purely verbal, as to the dif- 
ference of those several qualities. Every 
material object that interests us, without ac- 
tually hurting or gratifying our bodily feelings, 
must do so, according to this theory, in one 
and the same manner, — that is, by suggesting 
or recalling some emotion or affection of our- 
selves, or some other sentient being, and pre- 
senting, to our imagination at least, some 
natural object of love. pity, admiration, or awe. 
The interest of material objects, therefore, is 
always the same; and arises, in every case, 
not from any physical qualities they may 
possess, but from their association with some 
idea of emotion. But, though material objects 
have but one means of exciting emoHon, the 
emotions they do excite are infinite. They 



38 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



are mirrors that may reflect all shades and all 
colours ; and, in point of fact, do seldom reflect 
the same hues twice. No two interesting 
objects, perhaps, whether known by the name 
of Beautiful, Sublime, or Picturesque, ever 
produced exactly the same emotion in the 
oeholder ; and no one object, it is most pro- 
bable, ever moved any two persons to the 
very same conceptions. As they may be as- 
sociated with all the feelings and affections 
of which the human mind is susceptible, so 
they may suggest those feelings in all their 
variety, and, in fact, do daily excite ail sorts 
of emotions — running through every gradation, 
from extreme gaiety and elevation, to the 
borders of horror and disgust. 

Now, it is certainly true, that all the variety 
of emotions raised in this way, on the single 
basis of association, may be classed, in a rude 
way, under the denominations of sublime, 
beautiful, and picturesque, according as they 
partake of awe, tenderness, or admiration : 
and we have no other objection to this nomen- 
clature, except its extreme imperfection, and 
the delusions to which we know that it has 
given occasion. If objects that interest by 
their association with ideas of power, and 
danger, and terror, are to be distinguished by 
the peculiar name of sublime, why should 
there not be a separate name also for objects 
that interest by associations of mirth and 
gaiety — another for those that please by sug- 
gestions of softness and melancholy — another 
for such as are connected with impressions 
of comfort and tranquillity — and another for 
those that are related to pity, and admiration, 
and love, and regret, and all the other distinct 
emotions and affections of our nature 1 These 
are not in reality less distinguishable from 
each other, than from the emotions of awe 
and veneration that confer the title of sublime 
on their representatives; and while all the 
former are confounded under the comprehen- 
sive appellation of beauty, this partial attempt 
at distinction is only apt to mislead us into an 
erroneous opinion of our accuracy, and to 
make us believe, both that there is a greater 
conformity among the things that pass under 
the same name, and a greater difference be- 
tween those that pass under different names, 
than is really the case. We have seen already, 
that the radical error of almost all preceding 
inquirers, has lain in supposing that every 
.hing that passed under the name of beautiful, 
nust have some real and inherent quality in 
common with every thing else that obtained 
that name : And it is scarcely necessary for 
us to observe, that it has been almost as gene- 
ral an opinion, that sublimity was not only 
something radically different from beauty, 
but actually opposite to it; whereas the fact 
is, that it is far more nearly related to some 
sorts of beauty, than many soits of beauty are 
to each other; and that both are founded ex- 
actly upon the same principle of suggesting 
some past or possible emotion of some sentient 
being. 

Upon this important point, we are happy to 
find our opinions confirmed by the authority 
of Mr. Stewart, who, in his Essay on the 



Beautiful, already referred to, has observed, 
not only that there appears to him to be no 
inconsistency or impropriety in such expres- 
sions as the sublime beauties of nature, or of 
the sacred Scriptures; — but has added, in ex- 
press terms, that, "to oppose the beautiful to 
the sublime, or to the picturesque, strikes him 
as something analogous to a contrast between 
the beautiful and the comic — the beautiful 
and the tragic — the beautiful and the pathetic 
— or the beautiful and the romantic." 

The only other advantage which we shall 
specify as likely to result from the general 
adoption of the theory we have been endea- 
vouring to illustrate is, that it seems calcu- 
lated to put an end to ail these perplexing 
and vexatious questions about the standard 
of taste, which have given occasion to so 
much impertinent and so much elaborate dis- 
cussion. If things are not beautiful in them- 
selves, but only as they serve to suggest in- 
teresting conceptions to the mind, then every 
thing which does in point of fact suggest such 
a conception to any individual, is beautiful to 
that individual ; and it is not only quite true 
that there is no room for disputing about 
tastes, but that all tastes are equally just and 
correct, in so far as each individual speaks 
only of his own emotions. When a man calls 
a thing beautiful, however, he may indeed 
mean to make two very different assertions; 
— he may mean that it gives him pleasure by 
suggesting to him some interesting emotion ; 
and, in this sense, there can be no doubt that, 
if he merely speak truth, the thing is beauti- 
ful ; and that it pleases him precisely in the 
same way that all other things please those 
to whom they appear beautiful. But if he 
mean farther to say that the thing possesses 
some .quality which should make it appear 
beautiful to every other person, and that it is 
owing to some prejudice or defect in them if 
it appear otherwise, then he is as unreasona- 
ble and absurd as he would think those who 
should attempt to convince him that he felt 
no emotion of beauty. 

All tastes, then, are equally just and true, 
in so far as concerns the individual whose 
taste is in question ; and what a man feels 
distinctly to be beautiful, is beautiful to him, 
whatever other people may think of it. All 
this follows clearly from the theory now in 
question : but it does not follow, from it, that 
all tastes are equally good or desirable, 01 
that there is any difficulty in describing tha-S 
which is really the best, and the most to bo 
envied . The only use of the faculty of taste 
is to afford an innocent delight, and to assist 
in the cultivation of a finer morality ; and thai 
man certainly will have the most dglight from 
this faculty, who has the most numerous and 
the most powerful perceptions of beauty. 
But, if beauty consist in the reflection of our 
affections and s}'mpathies, it is plain that het 
will always see the most beauty whose affec- 
tions are the warmest and most exercised — 
whose imagination is the most powerful, and 
who has most accustomed himself to attend to 
the objects by which he is surrounded. In so 
far as mere feeling and enjoyment are con- 



ALISON ON TASTE. 



eerned, therefore, it seems evident, that the 
best taste must be that which belongs to the 
best affections, the most active fancy, and the 
most attentive habits of observation. It will 
follow pretty exactly too. that all men's per- 
ceptions of beauty will be nearly in proportion 
to ihe degree of their sensibility and social 
sympathies; and that those who have no af- 
fections towards sentient beings, will be as 
certainly insensible to beauty in external ob- 
jects, as he, who cannot hear the sound of 
liis friend's voice, must be deaf to its echo. 

In so far as the sense of beauty is regarded 
as a mere source of enjoyment, this seems to 
be the only distinction that deserves to be 
attended to; and the only cultivation that 
taste should ever receive, with a view to the 
gratification of the individual, should be 
through the indirect channel of cultivating 
the affections and powers of observation. If 
we aspire, however, to be creators, as well as 
observers of beauty, and place any part of 
our happiness in ministering to the gratifica- 
tion of others — as artists, or poets, or authors 
of any sort — then, indeed, a new distinction 
of tastes, and a far more laborious system of 
cultivation, will be necessary. A man who 
pursues only his own delight, will be as much 
charmed with objects that suggest powerful 
emotions in consequence of personal and ac- 
cidental associations, as with those that intro- 
duce similar emotions by means of associa- 
tions that are universal and indestructible. 
To him, all objects of the former class are 
really as beautiful as those of the latter — and 
for his own gratification, the creation of that 
sort of beauty is just as important an occupa- 
tion : but if he conceive the ambition of cre- 
ating beauties for the admiration of others, he 
must be cautious to employ only such objects 
as are the natural signs, or the inseparable 
concomitants of emotions, of which the greater 
part of mankind are susceptible; and his 
taste will then deserve to be called bad and 
false, if he obtrude upon the public, as beau- 
tiful, objects that are not likely to be associa- 
ted in common minds with any interesting- 
impressions. 

For a man himself, then, there is no taste 
that is either bad or false; and the only dif- 
ference worthy of being attended to, is that 
between a great deal and a very little. Some 
who have cold affections, sluggish imagina- 
tions, and no habits of observation, can with 
difficulty discern beauty in any thing; while 
others, who are full of kindness and sensi- 
bility, and who have been accustomed to at- 
tend to all the objects around them, feel it 
almost in every thing. It is no matter what 
other people may think of the objects of their 
admiration; nor ought it t> be any concern 



of theirs that ihe public would be astonished 
or offended, if they were called upon to join 
in that admiration. So long as no such call 
is made, this anticipated discrepancy of feel- 
ing need give them no uneasiness; and the 
suspicion of it should produce no contempt in 
any other persons. It is a strange aberration 
indeed of vanity that makes us despise per- 
sons for being happy — for having sources of 
enjoyment in which we cannot share: — and 
yet this is the true source of the ridicule, 
which is so generally poured upon individuals 
who seek only to enjoy their peculiar tastes 
unmolested: — for, if there be any truth in the 
theory we have been expounding, no taste is 
bad for any other reason than because it is 
peculiar — as the objects in which it delights 
must actually serve to suggest to the indi- 
vidual those common emotions and universal 
affections upon which the sense of beauty is 
every where founded. The misfortune is, 
however, that we are apt to consider all per- 
sons who make known their peculiar relishes, 
and especially all who create any objects for 
their gratification, as in some measure dic- 
tating to the public, and setting up an idol for 
general adoration; and hence this intolerant 
interference with almost all peculiar percep- 
tions uf beauty, and the unsparing derision 
that pursues all deviations from acknowledged 
standards. This intolerance, we admit, is often 
provoked by something of a spirit of •prosclyU 
ism and arrogance, in those who mistake their 
own casual associations for natural or univer- 
sal relations; and the consequence is, that 
mortified vanity ultimately dries up, even for 
them, the fountain of their peculiar enjoy- 
ment; and disenchants, by a new association 
of general contempt or ridicule, the scenes 
that had been consecrated by some innocent 
but accidental emotion. 

As all men must have some peculiar asso- 
ciations, all men must have some peculiar 
notions of beauty, and, of course, to a certain 
extent, a taste that the public would be en- 
titled to consider as false or vitiated. For 
those who make no demands on public admi- 
ration, however, it is hard to be obliged to 
sacrifice this source of enjoyment; and, even 
for those who labour for applause, the wisest 
course, perhaps, if it were only practicable, 
would be, to have two tastes — one to enjoy, 
and one to work by — one founded upon uni- 
versal associations, according- to wh.eh they 
finished those performances for which they 
challenged universal praise — andanotker guid- 
ed by all casual and individual associations, 
through which they might still look fondly 
upon nature, and upon the objects of theif 
secret admiration. 



40 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



(Navtmbev, 1812.) 



De la Litterature consideree dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales. Par JVIad. e« 
Stael-Holstein. Avec un Precis de la Vie et les Ecrits de PAuteur. 2 tomes. 12ma. 
pp. 600. London: 1812.* 



When we say that Madame de Stael is de- 
cidedly the most eminent literary female of 
her age, we do not mean to deny that there 
may be others whose writings are of more di- 
rect and indisputable utility — who are distin- 
guished by greater justness and sobriety of 
thinking, and may pretend to have conferred 
more practical benefits on the existing genera- 
tion. But it is impossible, we think, to deny, 
that she has pursued a more lofty as well as 
a more dangerous career ;= — that she has treat- 
ed of subjects of far greater difficulty, and far 
more extensive interest; and, even in her 
failures, has frequently given indication of 
greater powers, than have sufficed for the 
success of her more prudent contemporaries. 

While other female writers have contented 
themselves, for the most part, with embel- 
lishing or explaining the truths which the 
more robust intellect of the other sex had 
previously established — in making knowledge 
more familiar, or virtue more engaging — or, 
at most, in multiplying the finer distinctions 
which may be detected about the boundaries 
of taste or of morality — and in illustrating the 
importance of the minor virtues to the general 
happiness of life — this distinguished person 
has not only aimed at extending the bounda- 
ries of knowledge, and rectifying the errors of 
received opinions upon subjects of the greatest 
importance, but has vigorously applied her- 
self to trace out the operation of general 
causes, and. by combining the past with the 
present, and pointing out the connection and 
reciprocal action of all coexistent phenomena, 
to develope the harmonious system which ac- 
tually prevails in the apparent chaos of human 
afTairs ; and to gain something like an assur- 
ance as to the complexion of that futurity to- 
wards which our thoughts are so anxiously 
driven, by the selfish as well as the generous 
principles of our nature. 

We are not acquainted, indeed, with any 
writer who has made such bold and vigorous 
attempts to carry the generalizing spirit of 
true philosophy into the history of literature 

* I reprint this paper as containing a more com- 
prehensive view of the progress of Literature, es- 
pecially in the ancient world, than any oiher from 
which I could mnke the selection ; and also, in 
some degree, for the sake of the general discussion 
on Perfectibility, which I si ill think satisfactorily 
conducted. I regret that, in the body of the article, 
the portions that are taken from Madame de Stael 
are not better discriminated from those for which I 
only am responsible. The reader, however, will 
not go far wrong, if he attribute to that distinguished 
person the greater part of what may strike him as 
bold, imaginative, and original ; and leave to me 
the humbler province of the sober, corrective, and 
distrustful. 



and manners ; or who has thrown so strong a 
light upon the capricious and apparently un- 
accountable diversities of national taste, ge- 
nius, and morality — by connecting them with 
the political structure of society, the accidents 
of climate and external relation, and the va- 
riety of creeds and superstitions. In her lighter 
works, this spirit is indicated chiefly by the 
force and comprehensiveness of those general 
observations with which they abound ; and 
which strike at once, by their justness and 
novelty, and by the great extent of their ap- 
plication. They prove also in how remark- 
able a degree she possesses the rare talent 
of embodying in one luminous proposition 
those sentiments and impressions which float 
unquestioned and undefined over many an 
understanding, and give a colour to the cha- 
racter, and a bias to the conduct, of multitudes, 
who are not so much as aware of their exist- 
ence. Besides all this, her novels bear 
testimony to the extraordinary accuracy and 
minuteness of her observation of human cha- 
racter, and to her thorough knowledge of 
those dark and secret workings of the heart, 
by which misery is so often elaborated from 
the pure element .of the affections. Her 
knowledge, however, we must say, seems to 
be more of evil than of good : For the pre- 
dominating sentiment in her fictions is, despaii 
of human happiness and human virtue ; and 
their interest is founded almost entirely on 
the inherent and almost inevitable heartless- 
ness of polished man. The impression which 
they leave upon the mind, therefore, though 
powerfully pathetic, is both painful and hu- 
miliating ; at the same time that it proceeds, 
we are inclined to believe, upon the double 
error of supposing that the bulk of intelligent 
people are as selfish as those splendid victims 
of fashion and philosophy from whom her cha- 
racters are selected ; and that a sensibility to 
unkindness can long survive the extinction 
of all kindly emotions. The work before 
us, however, exhibits the fairest specimen 
which we have yet seen of the systematizing 
spirit of the author, as well as of the moral 
enthusiasm by which she seems to be pos- 
sessed. 

The professed object of this work is to show 
that all the peculiarities in the literature of 
different ages and countries, may be explained 
by a reference to the condition of society, and 
the political and religious institutions of each; 
— and at the same time, to point out in what 
way the progress of letters has in its turn 
modified and affected the government and 
religion of those nations among whom they 
have flourished. All this, however, is bot- 
tomed upon the more fundamental and fa- 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



41 



vourite proposition, that there is a progress, to 
produce these effects — that letters and intelli- 
gence are in a state of constant, universal, and 
irresistible advancement — in other words, that 
human nature is tending, by a slow and inter- 
minable progression, to a state of perfection. 
This fascinating idea seems to have been kept 
constantly in view by Madame de Stael, from 
the beginning to the end of the work before 
us ; — and though we conceive it to have been 
pursued with far too sanguine and assured a 
spirit, and to have led in this way to most of 
what is rash and questionable in her conclu- 
sions, it is impossible to doubt that it has also 
helped her to many explanations that are 
equally solid and ingenious, and thrown a 
light upon many phenomena that would other- 
wise have appeared very dark and unac- 
countable. 

In the range which she here takes, indeed, 
she has need of all the lights and all the aids 
that can present themselves ; — for her work 
contains a critique and a theory of all the 
literature and philosophy in the world, from 
the days of Homer to the tenth year of the 
French revolution. She begins with the early 
learning and philosophy of Greece ; and* after 
characterizing the national taste and genius 
of that illustrious people, in all its depart- 
ments, and in the different stages of their 
progress, she proceeds to a similar investi- 
gation of the literature and science of the 
Romans ; and then, after a hasty sketch of 
the decline of arts and letters in the later 
days of the empire, and of the actual progress 
of the human mind during the dark ages, 
when it is supposed to have slumbered in 
complete inactivity, she enters upon a more 
detailed examination of the peculiarities, and 
the causes of the peculiarities, of all the dif- 
ferent aspects of national taste and genius that 
characterize the literature of Italy, Spain, 
England, Germany, and France — entering, as 
to each, into a pretty minute exposition of its 
general merits and defects — and not only of 
the circumstances in the situation of the coun- 
try that have produced those characteristics, 
but even of the authors and productions, in 
which they are chiefly exemplified. To go 
through all this with tolerable success, and 
without committing any very gross or ridicu- 
lous blunders, evidently required, in the first 
place, a greater allowance of learning than 
has often fallen to the lot of persons of the 
learned gender, who lay a pretty bold claim 
to distinction upon the ground of their learn- 
ing alone : and, in the next place, an extent 
of general knowledge, and a power and com- 
prehensiveness of thinking, that has still more 
rarely been the ornament of great scholars. 
Madame de Stael maybe surpassed, perhaps, 
in scholarship (so far as relates to accuracy at 
least, if not extent,) by some — and in sound 
philosophy by others. But there are few in- 
deed who can boast of having so much of 
both; and no one, so far as we know, who 
has applied the one to the elucidation of the 
other with so much boldness and success. 
But it is time to give a little more particular 
account of her lucubrations. 



There is a very eloquent and high-toned 
Introduction, illustrating, in a general way, 
the influence of literature on the morals, the 
glory, the freedom, and the enjoyments of the 
people among whom it flourishes. It is full 
of brilliant thoughts and profound observa- 
tions; but we are most struck with those 
sentiments of mingled triumph and mortifi- 
cation by which she connects these magnifi- 
cent speculations with the tumultuous aspect 
of the times in which they were nourished. 

" Que ne puis-je rappeler tous leseeprits eclaires 
a la jouissance des meditations philosophiques ! Lea 
contemporains d'une Revolution perdent souvent 
tout interet a la recherche de la verite. Tant d'eve- 
nemens decides par la force, tant de crimes absous 
par le succes, tant de vertus fletries par le blame, 
tant d'infortunes insultees par le pouvoir, tant de 
sentimens genereux devenus 1'objet de la moquerie, 
tantde vilscalculs philosophiquement comrnentes; 
tout la?se de 1'esperance le6 hommes les plus fideles 
au culte de la raison. Neanmoins ils doivent se 
ranimer en observant, dans Thistoire de 1'esprit 
humain, qn'il n'a existe ni une pensee utile, ni ur.e 
verite profunda qui n'ait trouve son siecle et sea 
admirateurs. C'est sans doute un triste effort que 
de transporter son interet, de reposer son attente, a 
tr-ivers l'avenir, sur nos successeurs, sur les Gran- 
gers bien loin de nous, sur les inconnus, sur tous 
les hommes enfin dont le souvenir et I'image ne 
peuvent se ret racer a. notre esprit. Mais, helas ! si 
i'on en excepte quelques amis inalterables, la plu- 
part de ceux qu'on se rappclle apres dix annees de 
revolution, contristent votre cceur, etouffent vos 
mouvemens. enimposent a voire talent meme, non 
par leur superiorite, maispar cette malveillance qui 
ne cause de ia douleur qu'aux ames douces, et ne 
fait souffrir que ceux qui ne la merilent pas." — Torn, 
i. p. 27, 28. 

The connection between good morals and 
that improved state of intelligence which 
Madame de Stael considers as synonymous 
with the cultivation of literature, is too obvi- 
ous to require any great exertion of her talents 
for its elucidation. She observes, with great 
truth, that much of the guilt and the misery 
which are vulgarly imputed to great talents, 
really arise from not having talent enough — 
and that the only certain cure for the errors 
which are produced by superficial thinking, 
is to be found in thinking more deeply: — At 
the same time it ought not to be forgotten, 
that all men have not the capacity of think- 
ing deeply — and that the most general culti- 
vation of literature will not invest every one 
with talents of the first order. If there be a 
degree of intelligence, therefore, that is more 
unfavourable to the interests of morality and 
just opinion, than an utter want of intelli- 
gence, it may be presumed, that, in very en- 
lightened times, this will be the portion of 
the greater multitude — or at least that nations 
and individuals will have to pass through this 
troubled and dangerous sphere, in their way 
to the loftier and purer regions of perfect un- 
derstanding. The better answer therefore 
probably is, that it is not intelligence that 
does the mischief in any case whatsoever, 
but the presumption that sometimes accom- 
panies the lower degrees of it; and which is 
best disjoined from them, by making the 
higher degrees more attainable. It is quite 
true, as Madame de Stael observe^ that the 
d2 



42 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



power of public opinion, which is the only 
sure and ultimate guardian either of freedom 
or of virtue, is greater or less exactly as the 
public is more or less enlightened ; and that 
this public can never be trained to the habit 
of just and commanding sentiments, except 
under the influence of a sound and progressive 
literature. The abuse of power, and the 
abuse of the means of enjoyment, are the 
great sources of misery and cbpravity in an 
advanced stage ~of society. Both originate 
with those who stand on the highest stages 
of human fortune ; and the cure is to be found. 
in both cases, only in the enlightened opinion 
of those who stand a little lower. 

Liberty, it will not be disputed, is still 
more clearly dependent on intelligence than 
morality itself. When the governors are ig- 
norant, they are naturally tyrannical. Force 
is the obvious resource of those who are inca- 
pable of convincing: and the more unworthy 
any one is of the power with which he is in- 
vested, the more rigorously will he exercise 
that power. But it is in the intelligence of 
the people themselves that the chief bulwark 
of their freedom will be found to consist, and 
all the principles of political amelioration to 
originate. This is true, however, as Madame 
de Stael observes, only of what she terms 
u la haute litterature ;''' or the general cultiva- 
tion of philosophy, eloquence, history, and 
those other departments of learning which 
refer chiefly to the heart and the understand- 
ing, and depend upon a knowledge of human 
nature, and an attentive study of all that 
contributes to its actual enjoyments. What 
is merely for delight, again, and addresses 
itself exclusively to the imagination, has 
neither so noble a genealogy, nor half so 
illustrious a progeny. Poetry and works of 
gaiety and amusement, together with music 
and the sister arts of painting and sculpture, 
have a much slighter connection either with 
virtue or with freedom. Though among their 
most graceful ornaments, they may yet flour- 
ish under tyrants, and be relished in the midst 
of the greatest and most debasing corruption 
of manners. It is a fine and a just remark 
too, of Madame de Stael, that the pursuits 
which minister to mere delight, and give to 
life its charm and voluptuousness, generally 
produce a great indifference about dying. 
They supersede and displace all the stronger 
passions and affections, by which alone we 
are bound very closely to existence ; and, 
while they habituate the mind to transitory 
and passive impressions, seem naturally con- 
nected with those images of indolence and 
intoxication and slumber, to which the idea 
of death is so readily assimilated, in charac- 
ters of this description. When life, in short. 
is considered as nothing more than an amuse- 
ment, its termination is contemplated with 
far less emotion, and its course, upon the 
whole, is overshadowed with deeper clouds 
of ennui, ihan when it is presented as a scene 
of high duties and honourable labours, and 
holds out to us at every turn — not the perish- 
able pastimes of the passing hour, but the 
fixed and distant objects of those serious and 



lofty aims which connect us with a long 
futurity. 

The introduction ends with an eloquent 
profession of the author's unshaken faith in 
the philosophical creed of Perfectibility : — 
upon which, as it does not happen to be our 
creed, and is very frequently brought into 
notice in the course of the work, we must 
here be indulged wdth a few preliminary 
observations. 

This splendid illusion, which seems to have 
succeeded that of Optimism in the favour of 
philosophical enthusiasts, and rests, like it, 
upon the notion that the whole scheme of a 
beneficent Providence is to be developed in 
this world, is supported by Madame de Stael 
upon a variety of grounds: and as, like most 
other illusions, it has a considerable admix- 
ture of truth, it is supported, in many points, 
upon grounds that are both solid and ingeni- 
ous. She relies chiefly, of course, upon the 
experience of the past; and, in particular, 
upon the marked and'decided superiority of 
the modems in respect of thought and reflec- 
tion — their more profound knowledge of hu- 
man feelings, and more comprehensive views 
of human affairs. She ascribes less import- 
ance than is usually done to our attainments 
in mere science, and the arts that relate to 
matter; and augurs less confidently as to the 
future fortune of the species, from the exploits 
of Newton, W r att, and Davy, than from those 
of Bacon, Bossuet, Locke, Hume, and Voltaire. 
In eloquence, too, and in taste and fancy, she 
admits that there has been a less conspicuous 
advancement; because, in these things, there 
is a natural limit or point of perfection, which 
has been already attained : But there are no 
boundaries to the increase of human know- 
ledge, or to the discovery of the means of hu- 
man happiness ; and every step that is gained 
in those higher walks, is gained, she conceives, 
for posterity, and for ever. 

The great objection derived from the signal 
check which the arts and civility of life re- 
ceived from the inroads of the northern bar- 
barians on the decline of the Roman power, 
and the long period of darkness and degrada- 
tion which ensued, she endeavours to obviate, 
by a very bold and ingenious speculation. It 
is her object here to show that the invasion 
of the northern tribes not only promoted their 
own civilization more effectually than any 
thing else could have done, but actually im- 
parted to the genius of the vanquished, a 
character of energy, solidity, and seriousness, 
which could never have sprung up of itself 
in the volatile regions of the South. The 
amalgamation of the two races, she thinks, 
has produced a mighty improvement on both; 
and the vivacity, the elegance and versatility 
of the warmer' latitudes, been mingled, in- 
finitely to their mutual advantage, with the 
majestic melancholy, the profound thought, 
and the sterner morality of the North. This 
combination, again, she conceives, could have 
been effected in no way so happily as by the 
successful invasion of the ruder people ; and 
the conciliating influence of that common 
faith, which at once repressed the frivolous, 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



43 



and mollified the ferocious tendencies of our 
nature. The temporary disappearance there- 
fore of literature and politeness, upon the first 
shock of this mighty collision, was but the 
subsidence of the sacred flame under the 
heaps of fuel which were thus profusely 
provided for its increase ; and the seeming 
waste and sterility that ensued, was but the 
first aspect of the fertilizing flood and accu- 
mulated manure under which vegetation was 
buried for a while, that it might break out 
at last with a richer and more indestructible 
luxuriance. The human intellect was neither 
dead nor inactive, she contends, during that 
long slumber, in which it was collecting vig- 
our for unprecedented exertions ; and the 
occupations to which it was devoted, though 
not of the most brilliant or attractive descrip- 
tion, were perhaps the best fitted for its ul- 
timate and substantial improvement. The 
subtle distinctions, the refined casuistry, and 
ingenious logic of the school divines, were 
all favourable to habits of careful and accu- 
rate thinking j and led insensibly to a far 
more thorough and profound knowledge of 
human nature — the limits of its faculties and 
the grounds of its duties — than had been 
attained by the more careless inquirers of 
antiquity. When men, therefore, began again 
to reason upon human affairs, they were found 
to have made an immense progress during the 
period when all appeared to be either retro- 
grade or stationary; and Shakspeare, Bacon, 
Machiavel, Montaigne, and Galileo, who ap- 
peared almost at the same time, in the most 
distant countries of Europe, each displayed a 
reach of thought and a power of reasoning 
which we should look for in vain in the elo- 
quent dissertaions of the classical ages. To 
them succeeded such men as Jeremy Taylor, 
Moliere, Pascal, Locke, and La Bruyere — all 
of them observers of a character, to which 
there is nothing at all parallel in antiquity; 
and yet only preparing the way, in the suc- 
ceeding age, for Montesquieu. Hume, Voltaire. 
Smith, Burke, Bentham, Mai thus, and so many- 
others; who have made the world familiar 
with truths, which, however important and 
demonstrable at all times, certainly never 
entered into the conception of the earlier in- 
habitants of the world. Those truths, and 
others still more important, of which they 
are destined to be the parents, have already, 
according to Madame de Stael, produced a 
prodigious alteration, and an incalculable im- 
provement on the condition of human nature. 
Through their influence, assisted no doubt by 
that of the Gospel, slavery has been abolished, 
trade and industry set free from restriction, 
and war disarmed of half its horrors; while^ 
m private life, women have been restored to 
their "just rank in society; sentiments of jus- 
tice and humanity have been universally cul- 
tivated, and public opinion been armed with 
a power which renders every other both safe 
and salutary. 

Many of these truths, which were once the 
doubtful or derided discoveries of men of 
original genius, are now admitted as elemen- 
tary principles in the reasonings of ordinary 



people; and are every day extending their 
empire, and multiplying their progeny. Mav 
dame de Stael sees no reason to doubt, there- 
fore, that they will one day inherit the whole 
earth ; and, under their reign, she takes it to 
be clear, that war, and poverty, and all the 
misery that arises from vice and ignorance, 
will disappear from the face of society; ana 
that men, universally convinced that justice 
and benevolence are the true sources of en- 
joyment, will seek their own happiness in a 
constant endeavour to promote that of their 
neighbours. 

It would be very agreeable to believe all 
this — in spite of the grudging which would 
necessarily arise, from the reflection that we 
ourselves were born so much too soon for vir- 
tue and enjoyment in. this world. But it is 
really impossible to overlook the manifold 
imperfections of the reasoning on which this 
splendid anticipation is founded ; — though it 
may be worth while to ascertain, if possible, 
in what degree it is founded in truth. 

The first thing that occurs to a sober-mind- 
ed listener to this dream of perfectibility, is 
the extreme narrowness of the induction from 
which these sweeping conclusions are so con- 
fidently deduced. A progress that is in its 
own nature infinite and irresistible, must 
necessarily have been both universal and 
unremitting ; and yet the evidence of its ex- 
istence is founded, if we do not deceive our- 
selves, upon the history of a very small por- 
tion of the human race, for a very small num- 
ber of generations. The proposition is, that 
the human species is advancing, and has al- 
ways been advancing, to a state of perfection, 
by a law of their nature, of the existence of 
which their past history and present stat9 
leave no room to doubt. But when we cast 
a glance upon this high destined species, 
we find this necessary and eternal progress 
scarcely begun, even now, in the old inhabi- 
ted continent of Africa — stationary, as far 
back as our information reaches, in China — 
and retrograde, for a period of at least twelve 
centuries, and up to this day, in Egypt, India, 
Persia, and Greece. Even in our own Europe, 
which contains probably less than one tenth 
part of our kind, it is admitted, that, for up- 
wards of a thousand years, this gre<^ work of 
moral nature not only stood still, but went 
visibly backwards, over its fairest regions; 
and though there has been a prodigious pro- 
gress in England and France and Germany 
during the last two hundred years, it may be 
doubted whether any thing of this sort can 
be said of Spain or Italy; or various other 
portions, even of this favoured quarter of the 
world. It may be very natural for Madame 
de Stael, or for us, looking only to what has 
happened in our own world, and in our own 
times, to indulge in those dazzling views of 
the unbounded and universal improvement 
of the whole human race; but such specu- 
lations would appear rather wild, we suspect, 
to those whose lot it is to philosophize among 
the unchanging nations of Asia : and would 
probably carry even something of ridicule 
with them, if propounded upon the rums of 



44 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



Thebes or Babylon, or even among the pro- 
faned relics of Athens or Rome. 

We are not inclined, however, to push this 
very far. The world is certainly something 
the wiser for its past experience ; — and there is 
an accumulation of useful knowledge, which 
we think likely to increase. The invention 
of printing and fire-arms, and the perfect 
communication that is established over all 
Europe, insures us, we think, against any 
considerable falling back in respect of the 
sciences; or the arts and attainments that 
minister to the conveniences of ordinary life. 
We have no idea that any of the important 
discoveries of modern times will ever again 
be lost or forgotten ; or that any future gene- 
ration will be put to the trouble of inventing, 
for a second time, the art of making gunpow T - 
der or telescopes — the astronomy of Newton, 
or the mechanics of Watt. All knowledge 
which admits of demonstration will advance, 
; we have no doubt, and extend itself; and all 
processes will be improved, that do not inter- 
fere with the passions of human nature, or 
the apparent interests of its ruling classes. 
But with regard to every thing depending on 
probable reasoning, or susceptible of debate, 
and especially with regard to every thing- 
touching morality and enjoyment, we really 
are not sanguine enough to reckon on any 
considerable improvement ; and suspect that 
men will go on blundering in speculation, 
and transgressing in practice, pretty nearly as 
they do at present, to the latest period of their 
history. 

In the nature of things, indeed, there can 
be no end to disputes upon probable, or what 
is called moral evidence ; nor to the contra- 
dictory conduct and consequent hostility and 
oppression, which must result from the oppo- 
site views that are taken of such subjects ; — 
and this, partly, because the elements that 
enter into the calculation are so vast and nu- 
merous, that many of the most material must 
always be overlooked by persons of ordinary 
talent and information; and partly because 
there not only is no standard by wh ; ch the 
value of those elements can be ascertained 
and made manifest, but that they actually 
have a different value for almost every dif- 
ferent individual. With regard to all nice, 
and indeed all debateable questions of happi- 
ness or morals, therefore, there never can be 
any agreement among men ; because, in re- 
ality, there is no truth in which they can 
agree. All questions of this kind turn upon 
a comparison of the opposite advantages and 
disadvantages of any particuliar course of con- 
duct or habit of mind : but these are really 
of very different magnitude and importance to 
different persons ; and their decision, there- 
fore, even if they all saw the whole con- 
sequences, or even the same set of conse- 
quences, must be irreconcileably diverse. If 
the matter in deliberation, for example, be, 
whether it is better to live without toil or ex- 
ertion, but, at the same time, without wealth 
or glory, or to venture for both upon a scene 
of labour and hazard — it is easy to see, that 
the determination which would be wise and 



expedient for one individual, might be just 
the reverse for another. Ease and obscurity 
are the sinnmum bonwn of one description of 
men ; while others have an irresistible voca- 
tion to strenuous enterprise, and a positive 
delight in contention and danger. Nor is the 
magnitude of our virtues and vices referable* 
to a more invariable standard. Intemperance 
is less a vice in the robust, and dishonesty 
less foolish in those who care but little for 
the scorn of society. Some men find their 
chief happiness in relieving sorrow — some in 
sympathizing with mirth. Some, again, de- 
rive most of their enjoyment from the exer- 
cise of their reasoning faculties — others from 
that of their imagination ; — while a third sort 
attend to little but the gratification of their 
senses, and a fourth to that of their vanity. 
One delights in crowds, and another in soli- 
tude ; — one thinks of nothing but glory, and 
another of comfort ; — and so on, through all 
the infinite variety, and infinite combinations, 
of human tastes, temperaments, and habits. 
Now, it is plain, that each of those persons 
not only will, but plainly ought to pursue a 
different road to the common object of hap- 
piness ; and that they must clash and conse- 
quently often jostle with each other, even if 
each were fully aware of the peculiarity of 
his own notions, and of the consequences of 
all that he did in obedience to their impulses. 
It is altogether impossible, therefore, we 
humbly conceive, that men should ever set- 
tle the point as to what is, on the whole, the 
wisest course of conduct, or the best dispo- 
sition of mind; or consequently take even 
the first step towards that perfection of moral 
science, or that cordial concert and co-opera- 
tion in their common pursuit of happiness, 
which is the only alternative to their fatal 
opposition. 

This impossibility will become more appa- 
rent when it is considered, that the only in r 
strument by which it is pretended that this 
moral perfection is to be attained, is such a - 
general illumination of the intellect as to make 
all men fully aware of the consequences of 
their actions ; while the fact is, that it is not, 
in general, through ignorance of their conse- 
quences, that actions producing misery are 
actually performed. When the misery is in- 
flicted upon others, the actors most frequently 
disregard it, upon a fair enough comparison 
of its amount with the pain they should in- 
flict on themselves by forbearance ; and even 
when it falls on their own heads, they will 
generally be found rather to have been un- 
lucky in the game, than to have been truly 
unacquainted with its hazards ; and to have 
ventured with as full a knowledge of the 
risks, as the fortunes of others can ever im- 
press on the enterprizing. There are many 
men, it should always be recollected, to v^riom 
the happiness of others gives very little satis- 
faction, and their sufferings very little pain, 
— and who would rather eat a luxurious meal 
by themselves, than scatter plenty and grati- 
tude over twenty famishing cottages. No 
enlightening of the understanding will make 
such men the instruments of general happi- 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



45 



ness : and wherever there is a competition — 
wherever the question is stirred as to whose 
claims shall be renounced or asserted, we are 
all sucfi men, we fear, in a greater or a less 
degree. There are others, again, who pre- 
sume upon their own good fortune, with a de- 
gree of confidence that no exposition of the 
chances of failure can ever repress; and in 
all cases where failure is possible, there must 
be a risk of suffering from its occurrence, 
however prudent the venture might have ap- 
peared . These, however, are the chief sources 
of all the unhappiness which results from the 
conduct of man ; — and they are sources which 
we do not see that the improved intellect, or 
added experience of the species, is likely to 
close or diminish. 

Take the case, for example, of War — by 
far the most prolific and extensive pest of the 
human race, whether we consider the suffer- 
ings it inflicts, or the happiness it prevents — 
and see whether it is likely to be arrested by 
the progress of intelligence and civilization. 
In the first place, it is manifest, that instead 
of becoming less frequent or destructive, in 
proportion to the rapidity of that progress, 
our European wars have, in point of fact, been 
incomparably more constant, and more san- 
guinary, since Europe became signally en- 
lightened and humanized — and that they 
have uniformly been most obstinate and most 
popular, in its most polished countries. The 
brutish Laplanders, and bigoted and profli- 
gate Italians, have had long intervals of re- 
pose ; but France and England are now pretty 
regularly at war, for about fourscore years out 
of every century. In the second place, the 
lovers and conductors of war are by no means 
the most ferocious or stupid of their species 
— but for the most part the very contrary ; — 
and their delight in it, notwithstanding their 
compassion for human suffering, and their 
complete knowledge of its tendency to pro- 
duce suffering, seems to us sufficient almost 
of itself to discredit the confident prediction 
of those who assure us, that when men have 
attained to a certain degree of intelligence, 
war must necessarily cease among all the 
nations of the earth. There can be no better 
illustration indeed, than this, of the utter fu- 
tility of all those dreams of perfectibility; 
which are founded on a radical ignorance of 
what it is that constitutes the real enjoyment 
of human nature, and upon the play of how 
many principles and opposite stimuli that hap- 
piness depends, which, it is absurdly ima- 
gined, would be found in the mere negation 
of suffering, or in a state of Quakerish pla- 
cidity, dulness. and uniformity. Men delight 
in war, in spite of the pains and miseries 
which they know it entails upon them and 
their fellows, because it exercises all the 
talents, and calls out all the energies of their 
nature — because it holds them out conspicu- 
ously as objects of public sentiment and gene- 
ral sympathy — because it gratifies their pride 
of art, and gives them a "lofty sentiment of 
their own power, worth and courage — but 
principally because it sets the game of exist- 
ence upon a higher stake, and dispels, by its 



powerful interest, those feelings of ennui 
which steal upon every condition from which 
hazard and anxiety are excluded, and drive 
us into danger and suffering as a relief. While 
human nature continues to be distinguished by 
those attributes, we do not see any chance of 
war being superseded by the increase of wis- 
dom and morality. 

We should be pretty well advanced in the 
career of perfectibility, if all the inhabitants 
of Europe were as intelligent, and upright, 
and considerate, as Sir John Moore, or Lord 
Nelson, or Lord Collingwood, or Lord Wel- 
lington — but we should not have the less 
war, we take it, with ajl its attendant mise- 
ries. The more wealth and intelligence, and 
liberty, there is in a country indeed, the 
greater love we fear there will always be for 
war; — for a gentleman is uniformly a more 
pugnacious animal than a plebeian, and a free 
man than a slave. The case is the same, 
with the minor contentions that agitate civil 
life, and shed abroad the bitter Maters of po- 
litical animosity, and grow up into the ran- 
cours and atrocities of faction and cabal. The 
leading actors in those scenes are not the 
lowest or most debased characters in the 
country — but. almost without exception, of 
the very opposite description. It Mould be 
too romantic to suppose, that the M r hole popu- 
lation of any country should ever be raised to 
the level of our Fox and Pitt, Burke. Wind- 
ham, or Grattan : and yet if that miraculous 
improvement M T ere to take place, we know 
that they would be at least as far from agree« 
ing, as they are at present; and may fairly 
conclude, that they M 7 ould contend with far 
greater warmth and animosity. 

For that great class of evils, therefore, 
M'hich arise from contention, emulation, and 
diversity of opinion upon points which admit 
of no demonstrative solution, it is evident that 
the general increase of intelligence Mould 
afford no remedy ; and there even seems to 
be reason for thinking that it would increase 
their amount. If we turn to the other great 
source of human suffering, the abuse of power 
and wealth, and the other means of enjoy- 
ment, we suspect we shall not find any ground 
for indulging in more sanguine expectations. 
Take the common case of youthful excess and 
imprudence, for example, in which the evil 
commonly rests on the head of the trans- 
gressor — fhe injury done to fortune, by 
thoughtless expense — to health and character, 
by sensual indulgence, and to the M'hole feli- 
city of after life, by rash and un sorted mar- 
riages. The whole mischief and hazard of 
such practices, we are persuaded, is just as 
thoroughly known and understood at present, 
as it will be when the world is five thousand 
years older ; and as much pains are now 
taken to impress the ardent spirits of youth 
M T ith the belief of those hazards, as can well 
be taken by the monitors who may discharge 
that office in the most remote futurity. But 
the truth is, that the offenders do not offend 
so much in ignorance, as in presumption. 
They know very well, that men are oftener 
ruined than enriched at the gaming table; 



46 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



and that love marriages, clapt up under age, 
tire frequently followed by divorces : But 
they know too, that this is not always the 
case ; and they flatter themselves that their 
good luck, and good judgment, will class them 
among the exceptions, and not among the 
ordinary examples of the rule. They are told 
well enough, for the most part, of the excess- 
ive folly of acting upon such a presumption, 
in matters of such importance : — But it is the 
nature of youth, to despise much of the wis- 
dom that is thus pressed upon them ; and to 
think well of their fortune and sagacity, till 
they have actually had experience of their 
slipperiness. We really have no idea that 
their future teachers will be able to change 
this nature : or to destroy the eternal distinc- 
tion between the character of early and mature 
life- and therefore it is, that we despair of 
the cure of the manifold evils that spring from 
this source ; and remain persuaded, that young 
men will be nearly as foolish, and as incapa- 
ble of profiting by the experience of their 
seniors, ten thousand years hence, as they are 
at this moment. 

With regard to the other glittering curses 
of life — the heartless dissipations — the cruel 
seductions — the selfish extravagance — the re- 
jection of all interesting occupation or serious 
affection, which blast the splendid summit 
of human fortune with perpetual barrenness 
and discomfort — we can only say, that as 
they are miseries which now exist almost 
exclusively among the most polished and in- 
telligent of the species, we do not think it 
very probable, at least, that they will be eradi- 
cated by rendering the species in general 
more polished and intelligent. They are not 
occasioned, we think, by ignorance or im- 
proper education ; but by that eagerness for 
strong emotion and engrossing occupation, 
which still proclaim it to be the irreversible 
destiny of man to earn his bread by the sweat 
of his brows. It is a fact indeed rather per- 
plexing and humiliating to the advocates of 
perfectibility, that as soon as a man is de- 
livered from the necessity of subsisting him- 
self, and providing for his family, he gene- 
rally falls into a state of considerable unhap- 
piness; and if some fortunate anxiety, or 
necessity for exertion, does not come to his 
relief, is commonly obliged to seek for a 
slight and precarious distraction in vicious 
and unsatisfactory pursuits. It is not for 
want of knowing that they are unsatisfactory 
that he persists in them, nor for want of 
being told of their folly and criminality; — for 
moralists and divines have been occupied 
with little else for the best part of a century; 
and writers of all descriptions, indeed, have 
charitably expended a good part of their own 
ennui in copious directions for the innocent 
and effectual reduction of that common ene- 
my. In spite of all this, however, the malady 
has increased with our wealth and refine- 
ment; and has brought along with it the 
increase of all those vices and follies in which 
its victims still find themselves constrained 
to seek a temporary relief. The truth is, 
that military and senatorial glory is neither 



within the reach, nor suited to the taste, of 
any very great proportion of the sufferers; 
and that the cultivation of waste lands, and 
the superintendence of tippling-houses and 
charity schools, have not always been found 
such effectual and delightful remedies as the 
inditers of godly romances have sometimes 
represented. So that those whom fortune 
has cruelly exempted from the necessity of 
doing any thing, have been led very generally 
to do evil of their own accord ; and have 
fancied that they rather diminished than 
added to the sum of human misery, by en- 
gaging in intrigues and gaming-clubs, and 
establishing coteries for detraction or sen- 
suality 

The real and radical difficulty is to find 
some laudable pursuit that will permanently 
interest — some worthy object that will con- 
tinue to captivate and engross the faculties: 
and this, instead of becoming easier in pro- 
portion as our intelligence increases, obvious- 
ly becomes more difficult. It is knowledge 
that destroys enthusiasm, and dispels all those 
prejudices of admiration which people sim- 
pler minds with so many idols of enchant- 
ment. It is knowledge that distracts by its 
variety, and satiates by its abundance, and 
generates, by its communication, that dark 
and cold spirit of fastidiousness and derision 
which revenges on those whom it possesses, 
the pangs which it inflicts on those on whom 
it is exerted. Yet it is to the increase of 
knowledge and talents alone, that the prophets 
of perfectibility look forward for the cure of 
all our vices and all our unhappiness ! 

Even as to intellect, and the pleasures that 
are to be derived from the exercise of a vigor- 
ous understanding, we doubt greatly whether 
we ought to look forward to posterity with 
any very lively feelings of envy or humilia- 
tion. More knowledge they probably will 
have — as we have undoubtedly more know- 
ledge than our ancestors had two hundred 
years ago; but for vigour of understanding, 
or pleasure in the exercise of it, we must beg ' 
leave to demur. The more there is already 
known, the less there remains to be discover- 
ed; and the more time a man is obliged to 
spend in ascertaining what his predecessors 
have already established, the less he will 
have to bestow in adding to its amount. — 
The time, however, is of less consequence ; 
but the habits of mind that are formed by 
walking patiently, humbly, and passively in 
the paths that have been traced by ottiers, 
are the very habits that disqualify us for 
vigorous and independent excursions of our 
own. There is a certain degree of knowledge 
to be sure, that is but wholesome aliment to 
the understanding — materials for it to work 
upon — or instruments to facilitate its labours: 
— but a larger quantity is apt to oppress and 
encumber it; and as industry, which is ex- 
cited by the importation of the raw material, 
may be superseded and extinguished by the 
introduction of the finished manufacture, so 
the minds which are stimulated to activity 
by a certain measure of instruction may, 
unquestionably, be reduced to a state of pas- 



MALAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



47 



sive and languid acquiescence, by a more 
profuse and redundant supply. 

Madame de Stael, and the other advocates 
of her system, talk a great deal of the pro- 
digious advantage of having the results of the 
laborious discoveries of one generation made 
matters of familiar and elementary know- 
ledge in another; and for practical utility, it 
may be so : but nothing, we conceive, can 
be so completely destructive of all intellec- 
tual enterprise, and all force and originality 
of thinking, as this very process, of the re- 
duction of knowledge to its results, or the 
multiplication of those summary and accessi- 
ble pieces of information in which the stu- 
dent is saved the whole trouble of investiga- 
tion, and put in possession of the prize, with- 
out either the toils or the excitement of the 
contest. This, in the first place, necessarily 
makes the prize much less a subject of ex- 
ultation or delight to him ; for the chief plea- 
sure is in the chase itself, and not in the ob- 
ject which it pursues ; and he who sits at 
home, and has the dead game brought to the 
side of his chair, will be very apt, we be- 
lieve, to regard it as nothing better than an 
unfragrant vermin. But, in the next place, it 
does him no good ; for he misses altogether 
the invigorating exercise, and the invaluable 
training to habits of emulation and sagacity 
and courage, for the sake of which alone the 
pursuit is deserving of applause. And, in 
the last place, he not only fails in this way 
to acquire the qualities that may enable him 
to run down knowledge for himself, but nec- 
essarily finds himself without taste or induce- 
ment for such exertions. He thinks, and in 
one sense he thinks justly, that if the proper 
object of study be to acquire knowledge, he 
can employ his time much more profitably 
in implicitly listening to the discoveries of 
others, than in a laborious attempt to discover 
something for himself. It is infinitely more 
fatiguing to think, than to remember; and 
incomparably shorter to be led to an object, 
than to explore our own way to it. It is in- 
conceivable what an obstruction this fur- 
nishes to the original exercise of the under- 
standing in a certain state of information ; and 
how effectually the general diffusion of easily 
accessible knowledge operates as a bounty 
upon indolence and mental imbecility. — 
Where the quantity of approved and collected 
knowledge is already very great in any coun- 
try, it is naturally required of ail well edu- 
cated persons to possess a considerable share 
of it ; and where it has also been made very 
accessible, by being reduced to its summary 
and ultimate results, an astonishing variety 
of those abstracts may be stowed away in 
the memory, with scarcely any fatigue or 
exercise to the other faculties. The whole 
mass of attainable intelligence, however, must 
still be beyond the reach of any individual; 
and he may go on, therefore, to the end of a 
long and industrious life, constantly acquir- 
ing knowledge in this cheap and expeditious 
manner. But if, in the course of these pas- 
sive and humble researches, he should be 
tempted to inquire a little for himself, he 



cannot fail to be struck with the prodigious 
waste of time, and of labour, that is neces- 
sary for the attainment of a very inconsider- 
able portion of original knowledge. His pro- 
gress is as slow as that of a man who is 
making a road, compared with that of those 
who afterwards travel over it ; and he feels, 
that in order to make a very small advance 
in one department of study, he must consent 
to sacrifice very great attainments in others. 
He is disheartened, too, by the extreme in- 
significance of any thing that he can expect 
to contribute, when compared with the great 
store that is already in possession of the pub- 
lic ; and is extremely apt to conclude, that it 
is not only safer, but more profitable to fol- 
low, than to lead ; and that it is fortunate for 
the lovers of wisdom, that our ancestors have 
accumulated enough of it for our use. as .well 
as for their own. 

But while the general diffusion of know- 
ledge tends thus powerfully to repress all 
original and independent speculation in indi- 
viduals, it operates still more powerfully in 
rendering the public indifferent and unjust to 
their exertions. The treasures they have in- 
herited from their predecessors are so ample, 
as not only to take away all disposition to 
labour for their farther increase, but to lead 
them to undervalue and overlook any little 
addition that may be made to them by the 
voluntary offerings of individuals. The works 
of the best models are perpetual}}* before their 
eyes, and their accumulated glory in their re- 
membrance ; the very variety of the sorts of 
excellence which are constantly obtruded on 
their notice, renders excellence itself cheap 
and vulgar in their estimation. As the mere 
possessors or judges of such things, they are 
apt to ascribe to themselves a character of 
superiority, which renders any moderate per- 
formance "unworthy of their regard; and their 
cold and languid familiarity with what is best, 
ultimately produces no other effect than to 
render them insensible to its beauties, and at 
the same time intolerant of all that appears to 
fall short of it. 

In such a condition of societ)*-, it is obvious 
that men must be peculiarly disinclined from 
indulging in those bold and original specula- 
tions, for which their whole training had pre- 
viously disqualified them; and we appeal to 
our readers, whether there are not, at this day, 
apparent symptoms of such a condition of so- 
ciety. A childish love of novelty may indeed 
give a transient popularity to works of mere 
amusement; but the age of original genius, 
and of comprehensive and independent rea- 
soning, seems to be over. Instead of such 
works as those of Bacon, and Shakspeare, and 
Taylor, and Hooker, we have Encyclopaedias, 
and geographical compilations, and county 
histories, and new editions of black letter au- 
thors — and trashy biographies and posthumous 
letters — and disputations upon prosody — and 
ravings about orthodoxy and methodi sm . Men 
of general information and curiosity seldom 
think of adding to the knowledge that is 
already in the world ; and the inferior persons 
upon whom that task is consequently devolved, 



48 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



carry it on, for the most part, by means of that 
minute subdivision of labour which is the 
great secret of the mechanical arts, but can 
never be introduced into literature without 
depriving its higher branches of all force, dig- 
nity, or importance. One man spends his life 
in improving a method of dyeing cotton red; 
— another in adding a few insects to a cata- 
logue which nobody reads; — a third in settling 
ths metres of a few Greek Choruses ; — a 
fourth in deciphering illegible romances, or 
old grants of farms; — a fifth in picking rotten 
bones out of the earth ; — a sixth in describing- 
all the old walls and hillocks in his parish ; — 
and five hundred others in occupations equal- 
ly liberal and important : each of them being, 
for the most part, profoundly ignorant of every 
thing out of his own narrow department, ancl 
very generally and deservedly despised, by 
his competitors for the favour of that public — 
which despises and supports them all. 

Such, however, it appears to us, is the state 
of mind that is naturally produced by the 
great accumulation and general diffusion of 
various sorts of knowledge. Men learn, in- 
stead of reasoning. Instead of meditating, 
they remember; and, in place of the glow of 
inventive genius, or the warmth of a generous 
admiration, nothing is to be met with, in so- 
ciety, but timidity on the one hand, and fas- 
tidiousness on the other — a paltry accuracy, 
and a more paltry derision — a sensibility to 
small faults, and an incapacity of great merits 
— a disposition to exaggerate the value of 
knowledge that is not to be used, and to un- 
derrate the importance of pow r ers which have 
ceased to exist. If these, however, are the 
consequences of accumulated and diffused 
knowledge, it may well be questioned whether 
the human intellect will gain in point of dig- 
nity and energy by the only certain acquisi- 
tions to which we are entitled to look forward. 
For our own part, we will confess we have no 
such expectations. There will be improve- 
ments, we make no doubt, in all the mechani- 
cal and domestic arts; — better methods of 
working metal, and preparing cloth; — more 
commodious vehicles, and more efficient im- 
plements of war. Geography will be made 
more complete, and astronomy more precise ; 
— natural history will be enlarged and di- 
gested; — and perhaps some little improve- 
ment suggested in the forms of administering 
laW. But as to any general enlargement of 
the understanding, or more prevailing vigour 
of judgment, we will own, that the tendency 
seems to be all the other way ; and that we 
think strong sense, and extended views of 
human affairs, are more likely to be found, 
and to be listened to at this moment, than 
two or three hundred years hereafter. The 
truth is, we suspect, that the vast and endur- 
ing products of the virgin soil can no longer 
be -reared in that factitious mould to which 
cultivation has since given existence ; and that 
its forced and deciduous progeny will go on 
degenerating, till some new deluge shall re- 
store the vigour of the glebe by a temporary 
destruction of all its generations. 

Hitherto we have spoken only of the higher 



and more instructed classes of society, — to 
whom it is reasonable to suppose that the per- 
fection of wisdom and happiness will come 
first, in their progress through the whole race 
of men; and we have seen what reason the.e 
is to doubt of their near approach. The 
lower orders, however, we think, have still 
less good fortune to reckon on. In the whole 
history of the species, there has been nothing 
at all comparable to the improvement of Eng- 
land within the last century ; never any w here 
was there such an increase of wealth and lux- 
ury — so many admirable inventions in the 
arts — so many works of learning and inge- 
nuity — such a progress in cultivation — such 
an enlargement of commerce: — and yet, in 
that century, the number of paupers in Eng- 
land has increased fourfold, and is now rated 
at one tenth of her whole population ; and, 
notwithstanding the enormous sums that are 
levied and given privately for their relief, and 
the multitudes that are drained off by the 
waste of war, the peace of the country is per- 
petually threatened by the outrages of fam- 
ishing multitudes. This fact of itself is deci- 
sive, we think, as to the effect of general 
refinement and intelligence on the condition 
of the lower orders; but it is not difficult to 
trace the steps of its operation. 

Increasing refinement and ingenuity lead 
naturally to the establishment of manufac- 
tures; and not only enable society to spare a 
great proportion of its agricultural labourers 
for this purpose, but actually encourage the 
breeding of an additional population, to be 
maintained out of the profits of this new oc- 
cupation. For a time, too, this answers; and 
the artisan shares in the conveniences to which 
his labours have contributed to give birth ; 
but it is in the very nature of the manufac- 
turing system, to be liable to great fluctuation, 
occasional check, and possible destruction ; 
and at all events, 'it has a tendency to produce 
a greater population than it can permanently 
support in comfort or prosperity. The average 
rate of wages, for the last forty years, has 
been insufficient to maintain a labourer with 
a tolerably large family ; — and yet such have 
been the occasional fluctuations, and such the 
sanguine calculations of persons incapable of 
taking a comprehensive view of the whole, 
that the manufacturing population has been 
prodigiously increased in the same period. It 
is the interest of the manufacturer to keep 
this population in excess, as the only sure 
means of keeping wages low r ; and wherever 
the means of subsistence are uncertain, and 
liable to variation, it seems to be the general 
law of our nature,' that the population should 
be adapted to the highest, and not to the 
average rate of supply. In India, v here a dry 
season used to produce a failure of the crop, 
once in every ten or twelve years, the popu 
lation was always up to the measure of the 
greatest abundance ; and in manufacturing 
countries, the miscalculation is still more san- 
guine and erroneous. Such countries, there- 
fore, are always overpeopled; and it seems to 
be the necessary effect of increasing talent and 
refinement, to convert all countries into thi* 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



4* 



denomination. China, the oldest manufacturing 
nation in the world, and by far the greatest that 
ever existed with the use of little machinery, 
has always suffered from a redundant popula- 
tion, and has always kept the largest part of 
its inhabitants in a state of the greatest poverty. 

The effect then which is produced on the 
lower orders of society, by that increase of 
industry and refinement, and that multiplica- 
tion of conveniences which are commonly 
looked upon as the surest tests of increasing- 
prosperity, is to convert the peasants into 
manufacturers, and the manufacturers into 
paupers; while the chance of their ever 
emerging from this condition becomes con- 
stantly less, the more complete and mature 
the system is which had originally produced 
it. When manufactures are long established, 
and thoroughly understood, it will always be 
found, that persons possessed of a large capi- 
tal, can carry them on upon lower profits than 
persons of any other description ; and the 
natural tendency of this system, therefore, is 
to throw the whole business into the hands 
of great capitalists; and thus not only to render 
it next to impossible for a common workman 
to advance himself into the condition of a 
master, but to drive from the competition the 
greater part of those moderate dealers, by 
whose prosperity alone the general happiness 
of the nation can be promoted. The state of 
the oj erative manufacturers, therefore, seems 
every day more hopelessly stationary: and 
that great body of the people, it appears to 
us, is likely to grow into a fixed and degraded 
caste, out of which no person can hope to es- 
cape, who has once been enrolled among its 
members. They cannot look up to the rank 
of master manufacturers: because, without 
considerable capital, it will every day be more 
impossible to engage in that occupation — and 
back they cannot go to the labours of agricul- 
ture, because there is no demand for their 
services. The improved system of farming, 
furnishes an increased produce with many 
fewer hands than were formerly employed in 
procuring a much smaller return ; and besides 
ail this, the lower population has actually in- 
creased to a far greater amount than ever was 
at any time employed in the cultivation of the 
ground. 

To remedy all these evils, which are likely, 
as we conceive, to be aggravated, rather than 
relieved, by the general progress of refinement 
and intelligence, we have little to look to but 
the beneficial effects of this increasing intelli- 
gence upon the lower orders themselves; — 
and we are far from undervaluing this influ- 
ence. By the universal adoption of a good 
system of education, habits of foresight and 
self-control, and rigid economy, may in time 
no doubt be pretty generally introduced, in- 
stead of the improvidence and profligacy 
which too commonly characterize the larger 
assemblages of our manufacturing population ; 
and if these lead, as they are likely to do, to 
the general institution of Friendly Societies 
and banks for savings among the workmen, a 
great palliative will have been provided for 
the -disadvantages of a situation, which must 
7 



always be considered as 'ne of the least for- 
tunate which Providence has assigned to any 
of the human race, x 

There is no end, however, we find, to these 
speculations; and we must here close our re- 
marks on perfectibility, without touching upon 
the Political changes which are likely to be 
produced by a long course of progressive re- 
finements and scientific improvement — though 
we are afraid that an enlightened anticipation 
would not be much more cheering in this 
view, than in any of those we have hitherto 
considered. Luxury and refinement have a 
tendency, we fear, to make men sensual and 
selfish; and, in that state, increased talent 
and intelligence is apt only to render them 
more mercenary and servile. Among the 
prejudices which this kind of philosophy roots 
out, that of patriotism, we fear, is generally 
among the first to be surmounted ; — and then, 
a dangerous opposition to power, and a sacri- 
fice of interest to affection, speedily come to 
be considered as romantic. Arts are discov- 
ered to palliate the encroachments of arbitrary 
power; and a luxurious, patronizing, and 
vicious monarchy is firmly established amidst 
the adulations of a corrupt nation. But we 
must proceed at last to Madame de Stael's 
History of Literature. 

Not knowing any thing of the Egyptians 
and Phoenicians, she takes the Greeks i'6r the 
first inventors of literature — and explains 
many of their peculiarities by that supposition. 
The first development of talent, she says, is 
in Poetry ; and the first poetry consists in the 
rapturous description of striking objects in na- 
ture, or of the actions and exploits that are 
then thought of the greatest importance. 
There is little reflection — no nice development 
of feeling or character — and no sustained 
strain of tenderness or moral emotion in this 
primitive poetry ; which charms almost en- 
tirely by the freshness and brilliancy of its 
colouring — the spirit and naturalness of its 
representations — and the air of freedom and 
facility with which every thing is executed. 
This, was the age of Homer. After that, 
though at a long interval, came the age of 
Pericles : — When human nature was a little 
more studied and regarded, and poetry re- 
ceived accordingly a certain cast of thought- 
fulness, and an air of labour — eloquence began 
to be artful, and the rights and duties of men 
to be subjects of meditation and inquiry. 
This, therefore, was the era of the tragedians, 
the orators, and the first ethical philosophers. 
Last came the age of Alexander, when science 
had superseded fanc) r , and all the talent of 
the country was turned to the pursuits of 
philosophy. This, Madame de Stael thinks. 
is the natural progress of literature in all 
countries ; and that of the Greeks is only dis- 
tinguished by their having been the first that 
pursued it, and by the peculiarities of their 
mythology, and their political relations. It is 
not quite clear indeed that they were the fir6t ; 
but Madame de Stael is very eloquent upon 
that supposition. 

The state of society, however, in those early 
times, was certainly such as to impress ve *y 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



strongly on the mind those objects and occur- 
rences which formed the first materials of 
poetry. The intercourse with distant coun- 
tries being difficult and dangerous, the legends 
of the traveller were naturally invested with 
more than the modern allowance of the mar- 
vellous. The smallness of the civilized states 
connected every individual in them with its 
leaders, and made him personally a debtor for 
the protection which their prowess afforded 
from the robbers and wild beasts which then 
infested the unsubdued earth. Gratitude and 
terror, therefore, combined to excite the spirit 
of enthusiasm ; and the same ignorance which 
imputed to the direct agency of the gods, the 
more rare and dreadful phenomena of nature, 
gave a character of supernatural greatness to 
the reported exploits of their heroes. Philoso- 
phy, which has led to the exact investigation 
of causes, has robbed the world of much of 
its sublimity; and by preventing us from be- 
lieving much, and from wondering at any 
thing, has taken away half our enthusiasm, 
and more than half our admiration. 

The purity of taste which characterizes the 
very earliest poetry of the Greeks, seems to us 
more difficult to be accounted for. Madame 
de Stael ascribes it chiefly to the influence 
of their copious mythology ; and the eternal 
presence of those Gods — which, though al- 
ways about men, were always above them, 
and gave a tone of dignity or elegance to the 
whole scheme of their existence. Their tra- 
gedies were acted in temples — in the sup- 
posed presence of the Gods, the fate of whose 
descendants they commemorated, and as a 
part of the religious solemnities instituted in 
their honour. Their legends, in like manner, 
related to the progeny of the immortals : and 
their feasts — their dwellings— their farming — 
their battles — and every incident and occupa- 
tion of their daily life being under the imme- 
diate sanction of some presiding deity, it was 
scarcely possible to speak of them in a vulgar 
or inelegant manner; and the nobleness of 
their style therefore appeared to result natu- 
rally from the elegance of their mythology. 

Now, even if we could pass over the ob- 
vious objection, that this mythology was itself 
a creature of the same poetical imagination 
which it is here supposed to have modified, 
it is impossible not to observe, that though 
the circumstances now alluded to may ac- 
count for the raised and lofty tone of the Gre- 
cian poetry, and for the exclusion of low or 
familiar life from their dramatic representa- 
tions, it will not explain the far more substan- 
tial indications of pure taste afforded by the 
absence of all that gross exaggeration, violent 
incongruity, and tedious and childish extrava- 
gance which are found to deform the primi- 
tive poetry of most other nations. The Hin- 
doos, for example, have a mythology at least 
as copious, and still more closely interwoven 
with every action of their lives : But their le- 
gends are the very models of bad taste ; and 
unite all the detestable attributes of obscurity, 
puerility, insufferable tediousness, and the 
most revolting and abominable absurdity. 
The poetry of the northern bards is not much 



more commendable : But the Greeks are won- 
derfully rational and moderate in all theij 
works of imagination; and speak, for the most 
part, with a degree of justness and brevity 
which is-only the more marvellous, when it is 
considered how much religion had to do in tho 
business. A better explanation, perhaps, of 
their superiority, may be derived from recol- 
lecting that the sins of affectation, and inju- 
dicious effort, really cannot be committed 
where there are no models to be at once co- 
pied and avoided. The first writers naturally 
took possession of what was most striking, 
and most capable of producing effect, in na- 
ture and in incident. Their successors con- 
sequently found these occupied; and were 
obliged, for the credit of their originality, to 
produce something which should be different, 
at least, if not better, than their originals. 
They had not only to adhere to nature, there- 
fore, but to-avoid representing her exactly as 
she had been represented by their predeces- 
sors; and when they could not accomplish 
both these objects, they contrived, at least, to 
make sure of the last. The early Greeks had 
but one task to perform: they were in no 
danger of comparisons, or imputations of pla- 
giarism; and wrote down whatever struck 
them as just and impressive, without fear of 
finding that they had been stealing from a 
predecessor. The wide world, in short, was 
before them, unappropriated and unmarked 
by any preceding footstep; and they took their 
way. without hesitation, by the most airy 
heights and sunny valleys; while those who 
came after, found it so seamed and crossed 
with tracks in which they were forbidden to 
tread, that they were frequently driven to 
make the most fantastic circuits and abrupt 
descents to avoid them. 

The characteristic defects of the early 
Greek poetry are all to be traced to the same 
general causes, — the peculiar state of society, 
and that newness to which they were indebt- 
ed for its principal beauties. They describe 
every thing, because nothing had been pre- 
viously described; and incumber their whole 
diction with epithets that convey no informa- 
tion. There is no reach of thought, or fine- 
ness of sensibility, because reflection had not 
yet awakened the deeper sympathies of their 
nature ; and we are perpetually shocked with 
the imperfections of their morality, and the 
indelicacy of their affections, because society 
had not subsisted long enough in peace and 
security to develop those finer sources of 
emotion. These defects are most conspicuous 
in every thing that relates to women. They 
had absolutely no idea of that mixture of 
friendship, veneration, and desire, which is 
indicated by the word Love, in the modern 
languages of Europe. The love of the Greek 
tragedians, is a species of insanity or frenzy, — 
a blind and ungovernable impulse inflicted by 
the Gods in their vengeance, and leading its 
humiliated victim to the commission of all 
sorts of enormities. Racine, in his Ph&dre, 
has ventured to exhibit a love of this descrip- 
tion on a modern stage ; but the softenings of 
delicate feeling — the tenderness and profound 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



51 



affliction which he has been forced to add to 
the fata) impulse of the original character, 
show, more strongly than any thing else, the 
radical difference between the ancient and 
the modern conception of the passion. 
' The Political institutions of Greece had also 
a remarkable effect on their literature; and 
nothing can show this so strongly as the strik- 
ing contrast between Athens and Sparta — 
placed under the same sky — with the same 
language and religion — and yet so opposite in 
their government and in their literary pur- 
suits. The ruling passion of the Athenians 
was that of amusement; for, though the 
emulation of glory was more lively among 
them than among any other people, it was still 
subordinate to their rapturous admiration of 
successful talent. Their law of ostracism is 
a proof, how much they were afraid of their 
own propensity to idolize. They could not 
trust themselves in the presence of one who 
had become too popular. This propensity 
also has had a sensible effect upon their 
poetry ; and it should never be forgotten, that 
it was not composed to be read and studied 
and criticized in the solitude of the closet, 
like the works that have been produced since 
the invention of printing; but to be recited to 
music, before multitudes assembled at feasts 
and high solemnities, where every thing fa- 
voured the kindling and diffusion of that en- 
thusiasm, of which the history now seems to 
us so incredible. 

There is a separate chapter on the Greek 
drama — which is full of brilliant and original 
observations ; — though we have already antic- 
ipated the substance of many of them. The 
great basis of its peculiarity, was the constant 
interposition of the Gods. Almost all the 
violent passions are represented as the irre- 
sistible inspirations of a superior power; — 
almost all their extraordinary actions as the 
fulfilment of an oracle — the accomplishment 
of an unrelenting destiny. This probably 
added to the awfulness and terror of the rep- 
resentation, in an audience which believed 
implicitly in the reality of those dispensations. 
But it has impaired their dramatic excellence, 
by dispensing them too much from the ne- 
cessity of preparing their catastrophes by a 
gradation of natural events, — the exact de- 
lineation of character, — and the touching rep- 
resentation of those preparatory struggles 
which precede a resolution of horror. Orestes 
kills his mother, and Electra encourages him 
to the deed, — without the least indication, in 
either, of that poignant remorse which after- 
wards avenges the parricide. No modern 
dramatist could possibly have omitted so im- 

Eoitant and natural a part of the exhibition ; — 
ut the explanation of it is found at once in 
the ruling superstition of the age. Apollo had 
commanded the murder — and Orestes could 
not hesitate to obey. When it is committed, 
the Furies are commissioned to pursue him ; 
and the audience shudders with reverential 
awe at the torments they inflict on their victim. 
Human sentiments, and human motives, have 
but little to do in bringing about these catas- 
trophes. They are sometimes suggested by 



fehfl Chorus; — but the heroes themselves act 
always by the order of the Gods. Accord- 
ingly, the authors of the most atrocious actions 
are seldom represented in the Greek tragedies 
as properly guilty, but only aspiacular; — and 
their general moral is rather, that the God? 
are omnipotent, than that crimes should give 
rise to punishment and detestation. 

A great part of the effect of these represen- 
tations must have depended on the exclusive 
nationality of their subjects, and the extreme 
nationality of their auditors: though it is a 
striking remark of Madame de Stael, that the 
Greeks, after all. were more national than re- 
publican, — and were never actuated with that 
profound hatred and scorn of tyranny which 
afterwards exalted the Roman character. Al- 
most all their tragic subjects, accordingly, are 
taken from the misfortunes of kings ; — of kings 
descended from the Gods, and upon whose 
genealogy the nation still continued to pride 
itself. The fate of the Tarquins could never 
have been regarded at Rome as a worthy oc- 
casion either of pity or horror. Republican 
sentiments are occasionally introduced into 
the Greek Choruses; — though we cannot agree 
with Madame de Stael in considering these mu- 
sical bodies as intended to represent the people. 

It is in their comedy, that the defects of the 
Greek literature are most conspicuous. The 
world was then too young to supply its mate- 
rials. Society had not existed long enough, 
either to develop the finer shades of character 
in real life, or to generate the talent of ob- 
serving, generalizing, and representing them. 
The national genius, and the form of govern- 
ment, led them to delight in detraction and 
popular abuse ; for though they admired and 
applauded their great men, they had not in 
their hearts any great respect for them ; and 
the degradation or seclusion in which they 
kept their women, took away almost all inte- 
rest or elegance from the intercourse of private 
life, and reduced its scenes of gaiety to those 
of coarse debauch, or broad and humourous de- 
rision. The extreme coarseness and vulgarity 
of Aristophanes, is apt to excite our wonder, 
when we first consider him as the contempo- 
rary of Euripides, and Socrates, and Plato ; — 
but the truth is, that the Athenians, after all, 
were but an ordinary populace as to moral 
delicacy and social refinement. Enthusiasm, 
and especially the enthusiasm of superstition 
and nationality, is as much a passion of the 
vulgar, as a delight in ribaldry and low buf- 
foonery. The one was gratified by their 
tragedy; — and the comedy of Aristophanes 
was exactly calculated to give delight to the 
other. In the end, however, their love of 
buffoonery and detraction unfortunately proved 
too strong for their nationality. When Philip 
was at their gates, all the eloquence of Demos- 
thenes could not rouse them from their the- 
atrical dissipations. The great danger which 
they always apprehended to their liberties, 
was from the excessive power and popularity 
of one of their own great men; and, by a 
singular fatality, they perished, from a piofli- 
gate indifference and insensibiKty to tne 
charms of patriotism and greatness. 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



In philosophy, Madame de Stael does not 
rank the Greeks very high. The greater part 
01 them, indeed, were orators and poets, 
rather than profound thinkers, or exact in- 
quirers. They discoursed rhetorically upon 
vague and abstract ideas ; and, up to the time 
of Aristotle, proceeded upon the radical error 
of substituting hypothesis for observation. 
That eminent person first showed the use and 
the necessity of analysis ; and did infinitely 
more for posterity than all the mystics that 
went before him. As their states were small, 
and their domestic life inelegant, men seem 
to have been considered almost exclusively 
in their relations to the public. There is, 
accordingly, a noble air of patriotism and de- 
votedness to the common weal in all the mo- 
rality of the ancients ; and though Socrates 
set the example of fixing the principles of 
virtue for private life, the ethics of Plato, and 
Xenophon, and Zeno, and most of the other 
philosophers, are little else than treatises of 
political duties. In modern times, from the 
prevalence of monarchical government, and 
the great extent of societies, men are very 
generally loosened from their relations with 
the public, and are but too much engrossed 
with their private interests and affections. 
This may be venial, when they merely forget 
the state, — by which they are forgotten; but 
it is base and fatal, when they are guided by 
those interests in the few public functions they 
have still to perform. After all, the morality 
of the Greeks was very clumsy and imperfect. 
In political science, the variety of their govern- 
ments, and the perpetual play of war and nego- 
tiation, had made them more expert. Their 
historians narrate with spirit and simplicity; 
and this is their merit. They make scarcely 
any reflections: and are marvellously indiffer- 
ent as to vice or virtue. They record the most 
atrocious and most heroic actions — the most 
disgusting crimes and most exemplary gener- 
osity — with the same tranquil accuracy with 
which they would describe the succession of 
storms and sunshine. Thucydides is some- 
what of a higher pitch ; but the immense dif- 
ference between him and Tacitus proves, 
better perhaps than any general reasoning, the 
progress which had been made in the interim 
in the powers of reflection and observation ; 
and how near the Greeks, with all their 
boasted attainments, should be placed to the 
intellectual infancy of the species. In all 
their productions, indeed, the fewness of their 
ideas is remarkable ; and their most impres- 
sive writings may be compared to the music 
of certain rude nations, Avhich produces the 
most astonishing effects by the combination 
of not more than four or five simple notes. 

Madame de Stael now proceeds to the Ro- 
mans — who will not detain us by any means 
bo long. Their literature was confessedly 
borrowed from that of Greece; for little is 
ever invented, where borrowing will serve the 
purpose : But it was marked with several dis- 
tinctions, to which alone it is now necessary 
to attend. In the first place — and this is very 
remarkable — the Romans, contrary to the 
custom of all other nations, began their career 



of letters with philosophy ; and the cause of 
this peculiarity is very characteristic of the 
nation. They had subsisted longer, and ef- 
fected more, without literature, than any other 
people on record. They had become a great 
state, wisely constituted and skilfully admin- 
istered, long before any one of their citizens 
had ever appeared as an author. The )ova 
of their country was the passion of each indi- 
vidual — the greatness of the Roman name the 
object of their pride and enthusiasm. Studies 
which had no reference to political objects, 
therefore, could find no favour in their eyes; 
and it was from their subserviency to popular 
and senatorial oratory, and the aid which they 
promised to afford in the management of fac- 
tions and national concerns, that they were 
first led to listen to the lessons of the Greek 
philosophers. Nothing else could have in- 
duced Cato to enter upon such a study at such 
an advanced period of life. Though the Ro- 
mans borrowed their philosophy from the 
Greeks, however, they made much more use 
of it than their masters. They carried into 
their practice much of what the others con- 
tented themselves with setting down in their 
books ; and thus came to attain much more 
precise notions of practical duty, than could 
ever be invented by mere discoursers. The 
philosophical writings of Cicero, though in- 
cumbered with the subtleties of his Athen- 
ian preceptors, contain a much more complete 
code of morality than is to be found in all the 
volumes of the Greeks — though it may be 
doubted, whether his political information and 
acuteness can be compared with that of Aris- 
totle. It was the philosophy of the Stoics, 
however, that gained the hearts of the Ro- 
mans ; for it was that which fell in with theii 
national habits and dispositions. 

The same character and the same national 
institutions that led them to adopt the Greek 
philosophy instead of their poetry, restrained 
them from the imitation of their theatrical 
excesses. As their free government was 
strictly aristocratical, it could never permit 
its legitimate chiefs to be held up to mockery 
on the stage, as the democratical licence of 
the Athenians held up the pretenders to their 
favour. But, independently of this, the severer 
dignity of the Roman character, and the deeper 
respect and prouder affection they entertained 
for all that exalted the glory of their country, 
would at all events have interdicted such in- 
decorous and humiliating exhibitions. The 
comedy of Aristophanes never could have 
been tolerated at Rome; and though Plautus 
and Terence were allowed to imitate, or rather 
to translate, the more inoffensive dramas of a 
later age, it is remarkable, that they seldom 
ventured to subject even to that mitigated 
and more general ridicule any one invested 
with the dignity of a Roman citizen. The man- 
ners represented are almost entirely Greek 
manners; and the ridiculous parts are almost 
without any exception assigned to foreigners, 
and to persons of a servile condition. Women 
were, from the beginning, of more account in 
the estimation of the Romans than of the 
1 Greeks — though their province was still strict* 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



53 



ly domestic, and did not extend to what, in 
modern times, is denominated society. With 
all the severity of their character, the Romans 
bad much more real tenderness than the 
Greeks, — though they repressed its external 
indications, as among those marks of weak- 
ness which were unbecoming men intrusted 
with the interests and the honour of their 
country. Madame de Stael has drawn a 
pretty picture of the parting of Brutus and 
Portia; and contrasted it, as a specimen of 
national character, with the Grecian group of 
Pericles pleading for Aspasia. The general 
observation, we are persuaded, is just ; but 
the examples are not quite fairly chosen. 
Brutus is a little too good for an average of 
Roman virtue. If she had chosen Mark An- 
tony, or Lepidus, the contrast would have 
been less brilliant. The self-control which 
their principles required of them — the law 
which they had imposed on themselves, to 
have no indulgence for suffering in them- 
selves or in others, excluded tragedy from 
the range of their literature. Pity was never 
to be recognized by a Roman, but when it 
came in the shape of a noble clemency to a 
vanquished foe j — and waitings and complaints 
were never to disgust the ears of men, who 
knew how to act and to suffer in tranquillity. 
The very frequency of suicide in Rome, be- 
longed to this characteristic. There was no 
other alternative, but to endure firmly, or to 
die; — nor were importunate lamentations to 
be endured from one who was free to quit 
life whenever he could not bear it without 
murmuring. 

What has been said relates to the literature 
of republican Rome. The usurpation of Au- 
gustus gave a new character to her genius ; 
and brought it back to those poetical studies 
with whieh most other nations have begun. 
Ihe cause of this, too, is obvious. While 
liberty survived, the study of philosophy and 
oratory and history was but as an instrument 
in the hands of a liberal and patriotic ambi- 
tion, and naturally attracted the attention of 
all whose talents entitled them to aspire to 
the first dignities of the state. After an ab- 
solute government was established, those 
high prizes were taken out of the lottery of 
life ; and the primitive uses of those noble 
instruments expired. There was no longer 
any safe or worthy end to be gained, by in- 
fluencing the conduct, or fixing the principles 
of men. But it was still permitted to seek 
their applause by ministering to their delight; 
and talent and ambition, when excluded from 
the nobler career of political activity, naturally 
sought for a humbler harvest of glory in the 
cultivation of poetry, and the arts of imagina- 
tion. The poetry of the Romans, however, 
derived this advantage from the lateness of 
tts origin, that it was enriched by all that 
knowledge of the human h°art, and those 
habits of reflection, which had been generated 
by the previous study of philosophy ^ There is 
uniformly more thought, therefore, and more 
development, both of reason and of moral 
feeling, in the poets of the Augustan age. than 
in any of their Greek predecessors; and though 



repressed in a good degree by the remains of 
their national austerity, there is also a great 
deal more tenderness of affection. In spite 
of the pathos of some scenes in Euripides. 
and the melancholy passion of some frag- 
ments of Simonides and Sappho, there is no- 
thing at all like the fourth book of Virgil, the 
Alcmene, and Baucis and Philemon of Ovid, 
and some of the elegies of Tubulins, in the 
whole range of Greek literature. The memory 
of their departed freedom, too, conspired to 
give an air of sadness to much of the Roman 
poetry, and their feeling of the lateness of the 
age in which they were born. The Greeks 
thought only of the present and the future ; 
but the Romans had begun already to live in 
the past, and to make pensive reflections on 
the faded glory of mankind. The historians 
of this classic age, though they have more of 
a moral character than those of Greece, are still 
but superficial teachers of wisdom. Their 
narration is more animated, and more pleas- 
ingly dramatised, by the orations with which 
it Is interspersed ; — but they have neither the 
profound reflection of Tacitus, nor the power 
of explaining great events by general causes, 
which distinguishes the writers of modem 
times. 

The atrocious tyranny that darkened the 
earlier ages of the empire, gave rise to the 
third school of Roman literature. The suffer- 
ings to which men were subjected, turned 
their thoughts inward on their own hearts; 
and that philosophy which had first been 
courted as the handmaid of a generous ambi- 
tion, was now sought as a shelter and con- 
solation in misery. The maxims of the Stoics 
were again revived, — not, indeed, to stimulate 
to noble exertion, but to harden against mis- 
fortune. .Their lofty lessons of virtue were 
again repeated — but with a bitter accent of 
despair and reproach; and that indulgence, or 
indifference towards vice, which had charac- 
terised the first philosophers, was now con- 
verted, by the terrible experience of its evils, 
into vehement and gloomy invective. Seneca, 
Tacitus, Epictetus, all fall under this descrip- 
tion; and the same spirit is discernible in 
Juvenal and Lucan. Much more profound 
views of human nature, and a far greater mo- 
ral sensibility characterise this age, — and show 
that even the unspeakable degradation to 
which the abuse of power had then sunk the 
mistress of the world, could not arrest alto- 
gether that intellectual progress which gathers 
its treasures from all the varieties of human 
fortune. Quintilian and the two Plinys afford 
further evidence of this progress; — for they 
are, in point of thought and accuracy, and 
profound sense, conspicuously superior to any 
writers upon similar subjects in the days o? 
Augustus. Poetry and the fine arts languish- 
ed, indeed, under the rigours of this blasting 
despotism : — and it is honourable, on the 
whole, to the memory of their former great- 
ness, that so few Roman poets should have 
sullied their pens by any traces of adulation 
towards the monsters who then sat in the 
place of power. 

We pass over Madame de Stael's view of 
£2 



54 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



the middle ages, and of the manner in which 
the mixture of the northern and southern races 
ameliorated the intellect and the morality of 
both. One great cause of their mutual im- 
provement, however, she truly states to have 
been the general prevalence of Christianity; 
which, by the abolition of domestic slavery, 
removed the chief cause, both of the corrup- 
tion and the ferocity of ancient manners. By 
investing the conjugal union, too, with a sacred 
character of equality, it at once redressed the 
long injustice to which the female sex had 
been subjected, and blessed and gladdened 
private life with a new progeny of joys, and a 
new fund of knowledge of the most interest- 
ing description. Upon a subject of this kind, 
we naturally expect a woman to express her- 
self with peculiar animation ; and Madame 
de Stael has done it ample justice in the fol- 
lowing, and hi other passages. 

" C'est done alors que lesfemmes commencerent 
a etre de moitie dans l'association humaine. C'est 
alors aussi que l'on connut veritablement le bonheur 
domestique. Trop de puissance deprave la bonte, 
altere toutes les jouissances de la delicatessen les 
vertus et les sentimens ne peuvent register d'une 
part a l'exerciee du pouvoir, de 1'autre a 1'habitude 
de la crainte. La fetiche de l'homme s'accrut de 
toute l'independance qu'obtint l'objet de sa ten- 
dresse ; il put se croire aime ; un etre libre le 
choisit ; un etre libre obeit a ses desirs. Les ap- 
percus de l'esprit, les nuances senties par le cceur 
se mult iplie rent avec les idees et les impressions de 
ces ames nouvelles, qui s'essayoient a l'existence 
morale, apres avoir long-temps langui dans la vie. 
Les femrnes n'ont point compose d'ouvrages verit- 
ablement superieurs ; maisellesn'en ont pas moins 
eminemment servi les progres de la litterature, 
par la foule de pensees qu'ont inspirces aux hommes 
les relations entretenues avec ces etres mobiles et 
delicats. Tous les rapports se sont doubles, pour 
ainsi dire, depuis que les objets ont etc considered 
sous un point de vue tout-a-fait nouveau. La con- 
fiance, d'un lienintime en a plus apprissur la nature 
morale, que tousles train's et tous les systemes qui 
peignoient l'homme tel qu'il se montre a l'homme, 
et non tel qu'il est reellement." — pp. 197, 198. 

" Les femmes ont decouvert dans les caracteres 
une foule de nuances, que le besoin de dominer ou 
la crainte d'etre asservies leur a fait appercevoir: 
elles ont fourni au talent dramatique de nouveaux 
secrets pour emouvoir. Tous les sentimens aux- 
quels il leur est permis de se livrer, la crainte de la 
mort, le regret de la vie, le devouement sans 
bornes, l'indignation sans mesure, enrichissent la 
litterature d'expressions nouvelles. De-la vient 
que les moralistes modernes ont en general beau- 
coup plus de finesse et de sagacite dans la connois- 
sance des hommes, que les moralistes de I'anliquite. 
Quiconque, chez les anciens, ne pouvoit atteindre a 
la renommee, n'avoit. aucun motif de developpe- 
ment. Depuis qu'on est deux dans la vie domes- 
tique, les communications de l'esprit et l'exercice 
de la morale existent toujours, au moins dans un 
petit cercle; les enfans sont devenus plus chers a 
leur parens, par la tendrcsse reciproque qui forme le 
lien conjugal , et toutes les affections ont pris I'em- 
preinte de ceite divine alliance de l'amour et de 
Famine, de l'estime et de l'attrait, de la confiance 
merit ee et de la seduction involontaire. 

" Un age aride, que la gloire et la vertu pouvoient 
nonorer, rnais qui ne devoit plus etre ranime par 
les emotions du cceur, la vieillesse s'est enrichie de 
tou'es les pensees de la melancolie; il lui a ete 
donne de se ressouvenir, de regret ter, d'aimer en- 
core cc qu'elle avoit aime. Les affections morales, 
unies, des la jeunesse, aux passions briil antes, 
peuvent se prolonger par de nobles traces jusqu'a 



la fin de l'existence, et laisser voir encore le merae 
tableau sous le crepe funebre du temps. 

"Une sensibilite reveuse et profonde est un des 
plus grands charmes de quelques ouvrages mo- 
dernes; et ce sont les femmes qui, nt connoissant 
de la vie que la faculte d'aimer, ont fait passer la 
douceur de leurs impressions dans le style de quel- 
ques ecrivains. En lisant les livres composes de- 
puis la renaissance des lettres, l'on pomroit mar- 
quer a. chaque page, qu'elles sont les idees qu'on 
n'avoit pas, avant qu'on eiit accorde aux femmes 
une sorte d'egalite civile. La generosite,' la valeur, 
l'humanite, ont pris a quelques egards une accep- 
tion differente. Toutes les vertus des anciens 
etoient fondees sur l'amour de la patrie ; les femmes 
exercent leurs qualites d'une maniereindependante. 
La pitie pour la foiblesse, la sympathie pour le mal- 
heur, une elevation d'ame, sans autre but que la 
jouissance meme decette elevation, sont beauccup 
plus dans leur nature que les vertus poliiiques. Les 
modernes, influences par les femmes, ont fac, le- 
nient cede aux liens de la philanthropic ; et l'esprit 
est devenue plus philosophiquement libre, en se 
livrant moins a l'empire des associations exclusives." 
—pp. 212—215. 

It is principally to this cause that she 
ascribes the improved morality of modern 
times. The improvement of their intellect 
she refers more generally to the accumula- 
tion of knowledge, and the experience of 
which they have had the benefit. Instead 
of the eager spirit of emulation, and the un- 
weighed and rash enthusiasm which kindled 
the genius of antiquity into a sort of youthful 
or instinctive animation, we have a spirit of 
deep reflection, and a feeling of mingled 
melancholy and philanthropy, inspired by a 
more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, 
the affections, and the frailties of human 
nature. There is a certain touching and pa- 
thetic tone, therefore, diffused over almost 
all modern writings of the higher order; and 
in the art of agitating the soul, and moving 
the gentler affections of the heart, there is 
nothing in all antiquity that can be considered 
as belonging to the same class with the wri- 
tings of Bossuet or Rousseau — many passages 
in the English poets — and some few in those 
of Germany. The sciences, of course, have 
made prodigious advances; for in these noth- 
ing once gained can be lost. — and the mere 
elapse of ages supposes a vast accumulation. 
In morals, the progress has been greatest in 
the private virtues — in the sacred regard for 
life — in compassion, sympathy, and benefi- 
cence. Nothing, indeed, can illustrate the 
difference of the two systems more strikingly, 
than the opposite views they take of the re- 
lation of parent and child. Filial obedience 
and submission was enjoined by the ancient 
code with a rigour from which reason and 
justice equally revolt. According to our pre- 
sent notions, parental love is a duty of at least 
mutual obligation; and as nature has placed 
the power of showing kindness almost exclu- 
sively in the hands of the father, it seems 
but reasonable that the exercise of it should 
at last be enjoined as a duty. 

Madame de Stael begins her review of 
modem literature with that of Italy. It was 
there that the manuscripts — the monuments 
— the works of art of the imperial nation, 
were lost; — and it was there, of course, that 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



they were ultimately recovered. The re- 
searches necessary for this, required authority 
and money; and" they were begun, accord- 
ingly, i.nder the patronage of princes and 
academies:— circumstances favourable to the 
accumulation of knowledge, and the forma- 
tion of mere scholars — but adverse to the 
development of original genius. The Italians, 
accordingly, have been scholars, and have 
furnished the rest of Europe with the im- 
plements of liberal study; but they have 
achieved little for themselves in the high 
philosophy of politics and morals — though 
they have to boast of Galileo, Cassini, and a 
long list of celebrated names in the physical 
sciences. In treating of subjects of a large 
and commanding interest, they are almost 
always bombastic and shallow. Nothing, in- 
deed, can be more just or acute than the 
following delineation of this part of their 
character. 

" Les Italians, r.ccoutumes souvent a ne lien 
croire et a tout professer, se sont bien plus exerces 
dans la plaisantcrie que dans le raisonnemeut. lis se 
moquent de leur propre maniere d'etre. Qiiand ils 
veuleut reneneer a leur talent naturel, a l'csprit 
comique, pour essnyer de L'eloquence orafoire, ils 
ont presque toujours de l'afiectation. Les souvenirs 
d'une grandeur passee, sans aucun sentiment de 

? tandem presente. produisent le gigantesque. Les 
taliens auroient de la dignitc, si la plus sombre 
tristesse formoit leur caractere ; mais quaud les 
successeurs des Remains, prives de tout eclat na- 
tional, de toute liberie poli:ique, sont encore un des 
penples les plus gais de la terre, ils ne peuvent 
avoir aucun elevation naturelle. 

41 Les Iialiens se moquent dans leur contes, et 
souvent meme sur le theatre, des pretres, auxqueis 
ils sent d'ailieurs entiereraent asservis. Mais ce 
iVest point sous un point de vue philos«>phique qu'ils 
attaquent les abus de la religion Ils n'ont pas, 
coiume quelques-uns de nos ecrivains, le but de re- 
former les detains dont ils plaisantent ; ce qu'ils 
veulent settlement, e'est s' am user d'autant plus 

Sue le sujet est plus serieux. Leurs opinions sont, 
ans le fond, assez opposees a. tous les genres 
d'autorhe auxquels ils sont soumis; mais cet esprit 
d'opposition n'a de force que ce qu'il faut pour 

{jouvoir mepriser ceux qui les commandent. C'est 
a ruse des enl'ans envers leurs pedagogues ; ils leur 
obeissent, a condition qu'il leur soit permis de s'en 
moquer." — p. 248. 

In poetry, however, the brilliant imagina- 
tion of the South was sure to re-assert its 
claims to admiration; and the first great 
poets of modern Italy had the advantage of 
opening up a new career for their talents. 
Poetical fiction, as it is now known in Europe. 
seems to have had two distinct sources. 
Among the fierce and illiterate nations of 
the North, nothing had any chance of being- 
listened to, that did not relate to the feats of 
war in which it was their sole ambition to 
•excel ; and poetical invention was forced to 
display itself in those legends of chivalry, 
which contain merely an exaggerated picture 
of scenes that were familiar to all their audi- 
tors. In Asia, again, the terrors of a san- 
guinary despotism had driven men to express 
their emotions, and to insinuate their moral 
admonitions, in the form of apologues and 
fables; and as these necessarily took a very 
wild and improbable course, their fictions 
assumed a much more extravagant and va- 



ried form than those of the northern roman- 
cers. The two styles however were brought 
together, partly by the effect of the crusades, 
and partly by the Moorish settlement in 
Spain; and Ariosto had the merit of first 
combining them into one, in that miraculous 
poem, which. contains more painting, more 
variety, and more imagination, than any other 
poem in existence. The fictions of Boyardo 
are more purely in the taste of the Orientals; 
and Tasso is imbued far more deeply with the 
spirit and manner of the Augustan classics. 

The false refinements, the concetti } the in- 
genious turns and misplaced subtlety, v. Inch 
have so rong been the reproach of the Italian 
literature, Madame de Stael ascribes to their 
early study of the Greek Theologians, and 
later Platonists, who were so much in favour 
at the first revival of learning. The nice 
distinctions and sparkling sophistries which 
these gentlemen applied, with considerable 
success, in argument, were unluckily trans- 
ferred, by Petrarch, to subjects of love ar.d 
gallantry ; and the fashion was set of a most 
unnatural alliance between wit and passion — 
ingenuity and profound emotion, — which has 
turned out, as might have been expected, to 
the discredit of both the contracting parties. 
We admit the fact, and its consequences : but 
we do not agree as to the causes which are 
here supposed to have produced it. We really 
do not think that the polemics of Constanti- 
nople are answerable for this extravagance ; 
and have little doubt that it originated in that 
desire to impress upon their productions the 
visible marks of labour and art, which is felt 
by almost all artists in the infancy of the 
study. As all men can speak, and set words 
together in a natural order, it was likely to 
occur to those who first made an ail of com- 
position, and challenged general admiration 
for an arrangement of words, that it was 
necessary to make a very strong and con- 
spicuous distinction between their composi- 
tions and ordinary and casual discourse : and 
to proclaim to the most careless reader or 
hearer, that a great difficulty had beeir sur- 
mounted, and something effected which every 
one was not in a condition to accomplish; 
This feeling, we have no doubt, first gave 
occasion to versification in all languages ; and 
will serve to account, in a good degree, for 
the priority of metrical to prose compositions: 
but where versification was remarkably easy, 
or already familiar, some visible badge of 
artifice would also be required in the thought; 
and, accordingly, there seems to have been a 
certain stage in the progress of almost all 
literature, in which this excess has been com- 
mitted. In Italy, it occurred so early as the 
time of Petrarch. In France, it became con- 
spicuous in the writings of Voiture, Balsac, 
and all that coterie: and in England, in Cow- 
ley, Donne, and the whole tribe of meta- 
physical poets. Simplicity, in short, is tho 
last attainment of progressive literature; and 
men are very long afraid of being natural, 
from the dread of being taken for ordinary; 
There is a simplicity, indeed, that is antece 
dent to the existence of so. y thing like literarj 



56 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



ambition or critical taste in a nation, — the sim- 
plicity of the primitive ballads and legends 
of all rude nations ; but after a certain degree 
of taste has been created, and composition 
has become an object of pretty general atten- 
tion, simplicity is sure to be despised for a 
considerable period ; and indeed, to be pretty 
uniformly violated in practice, even after it is 
restored to nominal honour and veneration. 

We do not, however, agree the less cordial- 
ly with Madame de Stael in her remarks upon 
the irreparable injury which affectation does 
to taste and to character. The following is 
marked with all her spirit and sagacity. 

" L'affectation est de tous les defauts des carac- 
teres et des ecrits, celui qui tarit de la maniere la 
plus irreparable la source de tout bien ; car elle 
blase sur la verite meme, dont elle imite Paccent. 
Dans quelque genre que ce soit, tous les mots qui 
ont servi a des idees fausses, a de froides exagera- 
lions, sont pendant long-temps frappes d'aridite; 
et telle langue meme peut perdre entierement la 
puissance d'emouvoir sur tel sujet, si e!ie a ete trop 
souvent prodiguee a. ce sujet meme. Ainsi peut-eire 
1'Italien est-il de toutes les langues de l'Europe la 
moins propre a Peloquence passionnee de l'amour, 
comme la notre est maintenant usee pour 1'elo- 
quence de la liberte." — pp. 241, 242. 

Their superstition and tyranny — their in- 
quisition and arbitrary governments have ar- 
rested "the progress of the Italians — as they 
have in a great degree prevented that of the 
Spaniards in the career of letters and philoso- 
phy. Bat for this, the Spanish genius would 
probably have gone far. Their early roman- 
ces show a grandeur of conception, and a gen- 
uine enthusiasm ; and their dramas, though 
irregular, are full of spirit and invention. 
Though bombastic and unnatural in most of 
their serious compositions, their extravagance 
is not so cold and artificial as that of the Ital- 
ians ; but seems rather to proceed from a 
natural exaggeration of the fancy, and an in- 
considerate straining- after a magnificence 
which they had not skill or patience to attain. 

We come now to the literature of the North, 
— by which name Madame de Stael desig- 
nates the literature of England and Germany, 
and on which she passes an encomium which 
we scarcely expected from a native of the 
South. She startles us a little, indeed, when 
she sets off with a dashing parallel between 
Homer and Ossian ; and proceeds to say, that 
the peculiar character of the northern litera- 
ture has all been derived from that Patriarch 
of the Celts, in the same way as that of the 
south of Europe ma) r be ultimately traced 
back to the genius of Homer. It is certainly 
rather against this hypothesis, that the said 
Ossian has only been known to the readers 
and writers of the North for about forty years 
from the present day, and has not been held 
in especial reverence by those who have most 
distinguished themselves in that short period. 
However, we shall suppose that Madame de 
Stael means only, that the style of Ossian re- 
unites the peculiarities that distinguish the 
northern school of letters, and may be sup- 
posed to exhibit them such as they were 
before the introduction of the classical and 
Bouthern models, We rather think she is 



right in saying, that there is a radical differ* 
ence in the taste and genius of the two re- 
gions; and that there is more melancholy, 
more tenderness, more deep feeling and fixed 
and lofty passion, engendered among the 
clouds and mountains of the North, than upon 
the summer seas or beneath the perfumed 
groves of the South. The causes of the dif- 
ference are not perhaps so satisfactorily sta- 
ted. Madame de Stael gives the first place 
to the climate. 

Another characteristic is the hereditary 
independence of the northern tribes — arising 
partly from their scattered population and in- 
accessible retreats, and partly from the physi- 
cal force and hardihood which their way of 
life, and the exertions requisite to procure 
subsistence in those regions, necessarily pro- 
duced. Their religious creed, too, even be- 
fore their conversion to Christianity, was less 
fantastic, and more capable of leading to 
heroic emotions than that of the southern 
nations. The respect and tenderness with 
which they always regarded their women, is 
another cause (or effect) of the peculiarity of 
their national character ; and, in later times, 
their general adoption of the Protestant faith 
has tended to confirm that character. For 
our own part, we are inclined to ascribe more 
weight to the last circumstance, than to all 
the others that have been mentioned ; and 
that not merely from the better education 
which it is the genius of Protestantism to 
bestow on the lower orders, but from the nec- 
essary effect of the universal study of the 
Scriptures which it enjoins. A very great 
proportion of the Protestant population of 
Europe is familiarly acquainted with the Bi- 
ble ; and there are many who are acquainted 
with scarcely any other book. Now, the 
Bible is not only full of lessons of patience 
and humility and compassion, but abounds 
with a gloomy and awful poetry, which can- 
not fail to make a powerful impression on 
minds that are not exposed to any other, and 
receive this under the persuasion of its divine 
origin. The peculiar character, therefore, 
which Madame de Stael has ascribed to the 
people of the North in general, will now be 
found, we believe, to belong only to such of 
them as profess the reformed religion ; and 
to be discernible in all the communities that 
maintain that profession, without much re- 
gard to the degree of latitude which they in- 
habit — though at the same time it is unde- 
niable, that its general adoption in the North 
must be explained by some of the more gene- 
ral causes which we have shortly indicated 
above. 

The great fault which the French impute 
to the writers of the North, is want of taste 
and politeness. They generally admit that 
they have genius ; but contend that they do 
not know how to use it ; while their partisans 
maintain, that what is called want of taste is 
merely excess of genius, and independence 
of pedantic rules and authorities. Madame 
de Stael, though admitting the transcendent 
merits of some of the English writers, takes 
part, upon the whole, against them in this 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



57 



controversy; and, after professing her unquali- 
fied preference of a piece compounded of great 
blemishes and great beauties, compared with 
one free of faults, but distinguished by little 
excellence, proceeds very wisely to remark, 
that it would be still better if the great faults 
were corrected — and that it is but a bad spe- 
cies of independence which manifests itself 
by being occasionally offensive : and then she 
attacks Shakespeare, as usual, for interspers- 
ing so many puerilities and absurdities and 
grossieretes with his sublime and pathetic 
passages. 

Now, there is no denying, that a poem 
would be better without faults ; and that ju- 
dicious painters use shades only to set off 
their pictures, and not blots. But there are 
two little remarks to be made. In the first 
place, if it be true that an extreme horror at 
faults is usually found to exclude a variety 
of beauties, and that a poet can scarcely ever 
attain the h'gher excellencies of his art, with- 
out some degree of that rash and headlong 
confidence wh'ch naturally gives rise to blem- 
ishes and excesses, it may not be quite so 
absurd to hold, that this temperament and 
disposition, with all its hazards, deserves en- 
couragement, and to speak with indulgence 
of faults that are symptomatic of great beau- 
ties. There is a primitive fertility of soil that 
naturally throws out weeds along with the 
matchless crops which it alone can bear; and 
we might reasonably grudge to reduce its 
/igour for the sake of purifying its produce. 
There are certain savage virtues that can 
scarcely exist in perfection in a state of com- 
plete civilization ; and, as specimens at least, 
we may wish to preserve, and be allowed to 
admire them, with all their exceptionable 
accompaniments. It is easy to say, that 
there is no necessary connection between the 
faults and the beauties of our great dramat- 
ist ; but the fact is, that since men have be- 
come afraid of falling into his faults, no one 
has approached to his beauties; and we have 
already endeavoured, on more than one oc- 
casion, to explain the grounds of this con- 
nection. 

But our second remark is, that it is not quite 
fair to represent the controversy as arising 
altogether from the excessive and undue in- 
dulgence of the English for the admitted 
faults of their favourite authors, and their per- 
sisting to idolize Shakespeare in spite of his 
buffooneries, extravagancies, and bombast. 
We admit that he has those faults; and, as 
they are faults, that he would be better with- 
out them : but there are many more things 
which the French call faults, "but which we 
deliberately consider as beauties. And here, 
we suspect, the dispute does not admit of any 
settlement : Because both parties, if they are 
really sincere in their opinion, and understand 
the subject of discussion, may very well be 
right, and for that very reason incapable of 
coming (o any agreement. We consider taste 
to mean merely the faculty of receiving plea- 
sure from beauty; and, so* far as relates to the 
person receiving that pleasure, we apprehend 
it to admit of little doubt, that the best taste 
8 



is that which enables him to receive the 
greatest quantity of pleasure from the greatest 
number of things. With regard to the author 
again, or artist of any other description, who 
pretends to bestow the pleasure, his object of 
course should be, to give as much, and to as 
many persons as possible; and especially to 
those who, from their rank and education, are 
likely to regulate the judgment of the re- 
mainder. It is his business therefore to as- 
certain what does please the greater part of 
such persons; and to fashion his productions 
according to the rules of taste which may be 
deduced from that discovery. Now, we hum- 
bly conceive it to be a complete and final jus- 
tification for the whole body of the English 
nation, who understand French as well as 
English and yet prefer Shakespeare to Racine, 
just to state, modestly and firmly, the fact ol 
that preference ; and to declare, that their 
habits and tempers, and studies and occupa- 
tions, have been such as to make them receive 
far greater pleasure from the more varied 
imagery — the more flexible tone — the closer 
imitation of nature — the more rapid succes- 
sion of incident, and vehement bursts of pas- 
sion of the English author, than from the 
unvarying majesty — the elaborate argument 
— and epigrammatic poetry of the French dra- 
matist. For the taste of the nation at large, 
we really cannot conceive that any other apol- 
ogy can be necessary: and though it might 
be very desirable that they should agree with 
their neighbours upon this point, as well as 
upon many others, we can scarcely imagine 
any upon which their disagreement could be 
attended with less inconvenience. For the 
authors, again, that have the misfortune not 
to be so much admired by the adjoining na- 
tions as by their own countrymen, we can 
only suggest, lhat this is a very common mis- 
fortune ; and that, as they wrote in the lan- 
guage of their country, and will probably be 
always most read within its limits, it was not 
perhaps altogether unwise or unpardonable in 
them to accommodate themselves to the taste 
which was there established. 

Madame de Stael has a separate chapter 
upon Shakespeare ; in which she gives him 
full credit for originality, and for having been 
the first, and perhaps the only considerable 
author, who did not copy from preceding 
models, but drew all his greater conceptions 
directly from his own feelings and observa- 
tions. His representations of human passions, 
therefore, are incomparably more true and 
touching, than those of any other writer ; and 
are presented, moreover, in a far more elemen- 
tary and simple state, and without any of 
those circumstances of dignity or contrast 
with which feebler artists seem to have held 
it indispensable that they should be set off. 
She considers him as the first writer who has 
ventured upon the picture of overwhelming 
sorrow and hopeless wretchedness; — that de 
solation of the heart, which arises from the 
long contemplation of ruined hopes and irre 
parable privation ; — that inward anguish and 
bitterness of soul which the public life of the 
ancients prevented them from feeling, and 



58 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



their stoical precepts interdicted them from 
disclosing. The German poets, and some 
succeeding English authors, have produced a 
prodigious effect by the use of this powerful 
instrument ; but nothing can exceed the orig- 
inal sketches of it exhibited in Lear, in Ham- 
let, in Timon of Athens, and in some parts of 
Kithard and of Othello. He has likewise 
drawn, with the hand of a master, the strug- 
gles of nature under the immediate contem- 
plation of approaching death; and that with- 
out those supports of conscious dignity or 
exertion with which all other writers have 
thought it necessary to blend or to contrast 
their pictures of this emotion. But it is in the 
excitement of the two proper tragic passions 
of pity and terror, that the force and origin- 
ality of h : s genius are most conspicuous ; pity 
not only for youth and innocence, and noble- 
ness and virtue, as in Imogen and Desdemona, 
Brutus and Cariolanus — but for insignificant 
persons like the Duke of Clarence, or profli- 
gate and worthless ones like Cardinal Wolsey ; 
— terror, in all its forms, from the madness 
of Lear, and the ghost of Hamlet, up to the 
dreams of Richard and Lady Macbeth. In 
comparing the effects of such delineations 
with the superstitious horror excited by the 
mythological persons of the Greek drama, the 
vast superiority of the English author cannot 
fail to be apparent. Instead of supernatural 
beings interfering with their cold and impas- 
sive natures, in the agitations and sufferings 
of men, Shakespeare employs only the magic 
of powerful passion, and of the illusions to 
which it gives birth. The phantoms and ap- 
paritions which he occasionally conjures up 
to add to the terror of the scene, are in truth 
but a bolder personification of those troubled 
dreams, and thick coming fancies, which har- 
row up the souls of guilt and agony: and 
even his sorcery and incantation are but traits 
of the credulity and superstition which so 
frequently accompany the exaltation of the 
greater passions. But perhaps the most mi- 
raculous of all his representations, are those 
in which he has pourtrayed the wanderings 
of a disordered intellect, and especially of 
that species of distraction which arises from 
excess of sorrow. Instead of being purely 
terrible, those scenes are, in his hands, in the 
highest degree touching and pathetic ; and 
the wildness of fancy, and richness of imagery 
which they display, are even less admirable 
than the constant, though incoherent expres- 
sion of that one sentiment of agonizing grief 
which had overborne all the faculties of the 
soul. 

Such are the chief beauties which Madame 
d.e Stael discovers in Shakespeare : and though 
they are not perhaps exactly what an English 
reader would think of bringing most into no- 
tice, it is interesting to know what strikes an 
intelligent foreigner, in pieces with which we 
ourselves have always been familiar. The 
chief fault she imputes to him, besides the 
mixture of low buffoonery with tragic passion, 
are occasional tcdiousness and repetition — too 
much visible horror and bloodshed — and the 
personal deformity of Caliban and Richard 



III.; for all which we shall leave it to our 
readers to make the best apology they can. 

Madame de Stael thinks very poorly of our 
talent for pleasantry; and is not very success- 
ful in her delineation of what we call humour. 
The greater part of the nation, she says, lives 
either in the serious occupations of business 
and politics, or in the tranquil circle of family 
affection. What is called society, therefore, 
has scarcely any existence among them ; and 
yet it is in that sphere of idleness and frivolity, 
that taste is matured, and gaiety made ele- 
gant. They are not at all trained, therefore, 
to observe the finer shades of character and 
of ridicule in real life ; and consequently nei- 
ther think of delineating them in their com- 
positions, nor are aware of their merit when 
delineated by others. We are unwilling to 
think this perfectly just; and are encouraged 
to suspect, that the judgment of the ingenious 
author may not be altogether without appeal 
on such a subject, by observing, that she rep- 
resents the paltry flippancy and disgusting 
affectation of Sterne, as the purest specimen 
of true English humour; and classes the char- 
acter of Falstaff along with that of Pistol, as 
parallel instances of that vulgar caricature 
from which the English still condescend to 
receive amusement. It is more just, how- 
ever, to observe, that the humour, and in 
general the pleasantry, of our nation, has very 
frequently a sarcastic and even misanthropic 
character, which distinguishes it from the 
mere playfulness and constitutional gaiety of 
our French neighbours ; and that we have not, 
for the most part, succeeded in our attempts 
to imitate the graceful pleasantry and agree- 
able trifling of that ingenious people. We 
develope every thing, she maintains, a great 
deal too laboriously; and give a harsh and 
painful colouring to those parts which the 
very nature of their style requires to be but 
lightly touched and delicately shaded. We 
never think we are heard, unless we cry out; 
— nor understood, if we leave any thing un- 
told : — an excess of diffuseness and labour 
which could never be endured out of our own 
island. It is curious enough, indeed, to ob- 
serve, that men who have nothing to do with 
their time but to get rid of it in amusement, 
are always much more impatient of any kind 
of tediousness in their entertainers, than those 
who have but little leisure for entertainment. 
The reason is, we suppose, that familiarity 
with business makes the latter habitually 
tolerant of tediousness; while the less en- 
grossing pursuits of the former, in order to 
retain any degree of interest, require a very 
rapid succession and constant variety. On 
the whole, we do not think Madame de Stael 
very correct in her notions of English gaiety; 
and cannot help suspecting, that she must 
have been in some respects unfortunate in her 
society, during her visit to this country. 

Her estimate of our poetry, and of our works 
of fiction, is more unexceptionable. She does 
not allow us much invention, in the strictest 
sense of that word; and still less grace and 
sprightliness in works of a light and playful 
character: But, for glowing descriptions of 



MADAME DE STAEL HOLSTEIN. 



nature — for the pure language of the affec- 
tions — for profound thought and lofty senti- 
ment, she admits, that the greater poets of 
England are superior to any thing else that 
the world has yet exhibited. Milton, Young. 
Thomson, Goldsmith, and Gray, seem to be 
her chief favourites. We do not find that 
Cowper, or any later author, had come to her 
knowledge. The best of them, however, she 
says, are chargeable with the national faults 
of exaggeration, and l des longueurs. 7 She 
overrates the merit, we think, of our novels, 
when she says, that with the exception of La 
Nouvelle Heloise, which belongs exclusively to 
the genius of the singular individual who pro- 
duced it, and has no relation to the character 
of h : s nation, all the novels that have suc- 
ceeded in France have been undisguised imi- 
tations of the English, to whom she ascribes, 
without qualification, the honour of that meri- 
torious invention. 

The last chapter upon English literature re- 
lates to their philosophy and eloquence ; and 
here, though the learned author seems aware 
of the transcendent merit of Bacon, we rather 
think she proves herself to be unacquainted 
with that of his illustrious contemporaries or 
immediate successors, Hooker, Taylor, and 
Barrow — for she places Bacon as the only lu- 
minary of our sphere in the period preceding 
the Usurpation, and considers the true era of 
British philosophy as commencing with the 
reign of King William. We cannot admit the 
accuracy of this intellectual chronology. The 
character of the English philosophy is to be 
patient, profound, and always guided by a 
view to utility. They have clone wonders in 
the meta physic of the understanding; but 
have not equalled De Retz, La Bruyere, or 
even Montaigne, in their analys's of the pas- 
sions and dispositions. The following short 
passage is full of sagacity and talent. 

" Les Anglais ont avance dans Irs sciences phi- 
losophiqnes comme dans I'industrie commerriale, 
a 1'aide de la pa'ience et du temps. Le penchant 
de tears philosophies pour les abstractions sembloii 
devoir les entrainerdans dessys'emes qui pouvoient 
etre contraires a la raison ; niais l'esprr de calcul. 
qui regularise, dans leur application, les combmai- 
sons absiraites, la mornliie. qui est la plus experi- 
mentale de toutes les idees humaines. l'interet du 
commerce, 1'amourde la liberie, ont toujour? ramene 
les philosophes Anglais a des resultats pratiques. 
Que d'ouvrages entiepris pour servir utilement les 
hommes. pour I' education des enfans. pour le sou- 
lagement des malheureux. pour I'eYonomie politi- 
que, la legislation criminolle. les sciences: la morale, 
la meiaphysiqne ! Quelle philosophic dans les con- 
ceptions ! quel respect pour l'experience dans le 
choix des mnyens! 

" C'est a la liberie qu'il faut attribner cette 
emulation et cette sagpsse. On pouvoit si raremem 
se flatter en France d'influer par Sfs errits sur les 
institutions de son pays, qu'on ne songeoit qu'a 
montrer de l'esprit dans les discussions meme les 
plus seiieuses. On poussoit jusqu'au paradoxe un 
systeme vrai dans nne certaine mesure ; la raison 
tic pouvant avoir une effef mile, on vouloit an moins 
que le paradoxe fut brillant. D'ailleurs sous une 
monarchic absolue, on pouvoit sans danger vanfer. 
comme dans le Contrat Social, la democratic pure ; 
mais on n'auroir point ose approcher ries idees 
possibles. Tout etoit jeu d'e«prit en France, hors 
les arrets du con^il du roi: tandis qu'en Angle- 



terre, chacun pouvant agir d'une maniere quclcon- 
que sur les resolutions de ses representans, l'on 
prend l'habitude de comparer la pensee avec l'ac- 
tion, et Ton s'acooutume a I'amour du bien public 
par l'espoir d'y contribuer." — Vol. ii. pp. 5 — 7. 

She returns again, however, to her former 
imputation of "longueurs^ and repetitions, 
and excessive development; and maintains, 
that the greater part of English books are 
obscure, in consequence of their prolixity, and 
of the author's extreme anxiety to be perfect.lv 
understood. We suspect a part of the confu- 
sion is owing to her want of familiarity with 
the language. In point of fact, we know of 
no French writer on similar subjects so con- 
cise as Hume or Smith; and believe we might 
retort the charge of longueurs, in the name 
of the whole English nation, upon one half of 
the French classic authors — upon their Roilin 
and their Masillon— their D'Alembert — their 
Buffon — their Helvetius — and the whole tribe 
of their dramatic writers: — while as to repe- 
titions, we are quite certain that there is no 
one English author who has repeated the same 
ideas half so often as Voltaire himself — cer- 
tainly not the most tedious of the fraternity. 
She complains also of a want of warmth and 
animation in our prose writers. Arid it is 
true that Addison and Shaftesbury are cold; 
but the imputation only convinces us the 
more, that she is unacquainted with I he writ- 
ings of Jeremy Taylor, and that illustrious 
train of successors which has terminated, we 
fear, in the person of Burke. Our debates in 
parliament, she says, are more remarkable for 
their logic than their rhetoric ; and have more 
in them of saicasm. than of poetical figure 
and ornament. And no doubt it is so — and 
must be so — in all the discussions of perma- 
nent assemblies, occupied from day to day, 
and from month to month, with great ques- 
tions of internal legislation or foreign policy. 
If she had heard Fox or Pitt, however, or 
Burke or Windham, or Grattan, we cannot 
conceive that she should complain of our want 
of animation ; and, warm as she is in her en- 
comiums on the eloquence of Mirabeau, and 
some of the orators of the first revolution, she 
is forced to confess, that our system of elo- 
quence is better calculated for the detection 
of sophistry, and the effectual enforcement 
of al! salutary truth. We really are not aware 
of any other purposes which eloquence can 
serve in a great national assembly. 

Here end her remarks on our English litera- 
ture — and here we must contrive also to close 
this desultory account of her lucubrations — 
1 hough we have accompanied her through 
little more than one half of the work before 
us. It is impossible, however, that we can 
now find room to say any thing of her expo- 
sition of German or of French literature — and 
still less of her anticipations of the change 
which the establishment of a Republican gov- 
ernment in the last of those countries is likely 
to produce, — or of the hints and cautions with 
which, in contemplation of that event, she. 
thinks it necessary to provide her countrymen. 
These are perhaps the most curious parts of 
the work : — but we cannot enter upon ihein 



60 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



at present:— and indeed, in what we have 
already said, we have so far exceeded the 
limits to which we always wish to confine 
ourselves, that we do not very well know what 
apology to make to our readers — except 
merely, that we are not without hope.- that 
the miscellaneous nature of the subject, by 
which we have been insensibly drawn into 
this great prolixity, may have carried them 
also along, with as moderate a share of fatigue 
as we have ourselves experienced. If it be 
otherwise — we must have the candour and 
the gallantry to say, that we are persuaded 
the fault is to be imputed to us, and not to 



the ingenious author upon whose work w« 
have been employed; and that, if we had 
confined ourselves to a mere abstract of her 
lucubrations, or interspersed fewer of our own 
remarks with the account we have attempted 
to give of their substance, we might have 
extended this article to a still greater length, 
without provoking the impatience even of the 
more fastidious of our readers. As it is, we 
feel that we have done but scanty justice, 
either to our author or her subject — though 
we can now make no other amends, than by 
earnestly entreating our readers to study both 
of them for themselves. 



(Juln, 1806.) 



The Complete Works, in Philosophy, Politics, and Morals, of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin. 
Now first collected and arranged. With Memoirs of his Early Life } written by himself. — 
3 vols. 8vo. pp. 1450. Johnson, London: 1806. 



Nothing, we think, can show more clearly 
the singular want of literary enterprise or 
activity, in the United States of America, 
than that no one has yet been found in that 
flourishing republic, to collect and publish 
the works of their only philosopher. It is not 
even very creditable to the liberal curiosity 
of the English public, that there should have 
been no complete edition of the writings of 
Dr. Franklin, till the year 1806 : and we 
should have been altogether unable to ac- 
count for the imperfect and unsatisfactory 
manner in which the task has now been per- 
formed, if it had not been for a statement in 
the prefatory advertisement, which removes 
all blame from the editor, to attach it to a 
higher quarter. It is there stated, that re- 
cently after the death of the author, his 
grandson, to whom the whole of his papers 
had been bequeathed, made a voyage to 
London, for the purpose of preparing and dis- 
posing of a complete collection of all his 
published and unpublished writings, with 
memoirs of his life, brought down by himself 
to the year 1757, and continued to his death 
by his descendant. It w r as settled, that the 
work should be published in three quarto 
volumes, in England, Germany, and France : 
and a negotiation was commenced with the 
booksellers, as to the terms of the purchase 
and publication. At this stage of the busi- 
ness, however, the proposals were suddenly 
withdrawn ; and nothing more has been heard 
of the work, in this its fair and natural mar- 
ket. "The proprietor, it seems, had found a 
bidder of a different description, in some emis- 
sary of Government, whose object was to 
withhold the manuscripts from the world, — 
not to benefit it by their publication ; and 
they thus either passed into other hands, or 
the person to whom they were bequeathed, re- 
ceived a remuneration for suppressing them." 

If this statement be correct, we have no 
hesitation in saying, that no emissary of Gov- 
ernment was ever employed on a more miser- 



able and unworthy service. It is ludicrous 
to talk of the danger of disclosing in 1795, 
any secrets of state, with regard to the war 
of American independence; and as to any 
anecdotes or observations that might give 
offence to individuals, we think it should 
always be remembered, that public func- 
tionaries are the property of the public ; that 
their character belongs to history and to pos- 
j terity ; and that it is equally absurd and dis- 
creditable to think of suppressing any part of 
the evidence by which their merits must be 
I ultimately determined. But the whole of the 
I works that have been suppressed, certainly 
' did not relate to republican politics. The 
history of the author's life, down to 1757, 
; could not well contain any matter of offence ; 
and a variety of general remarks and specu- 
lations which he is understood to have left 
j behind him, might have been permitted to 
1 see the light, though his diplomatic revelations 
had been forbidden. The emissary of Gov- 
ernment, however, probably took no care of 
those things. He was resolved, we suppose, 
"to leave no rubs nor botches in his work ;" 
and, to stifle the dreaded revelation, he thought 
the best way was to strangle all the innocents 
in the vicinage. 

Imperfect as the work now before us nec- 
essarily is, we think the public is very much 
indebted to its editor. It is presented in a 
cheap and unostentatious form; and though 
it contains little that has not been already 
printed as the composition of the author, and 
does not often settle any point of disputed 
authenticity in a satisfactory manner, it seems, 
on the whole, to have been compiled with 
sufficient diligence, and arranged with con- 
siderable judgment. Few writings, indeed, 
require the aid of a commentator less than 
those of Dr. Franklin ; and though this editor 
is rather too sparing of his presence, we are 
infinitely better satisfied to be left now and 
then to our conjectures, than to be incumber- 
ed with the explanations, and overpowered 



DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



61 



with the loquacity, of a more officious at- 
tendant. 

We do not propose to give any thing like a 
regular account of the papers contained in 
these volumes. The best of them have long- 
been familiar to the public; and there are 
many which it was proper to preserve, that 
cannot now be made interesting to the general 
reader. Dr. Franklin, however, is too great 
a man to be allowed to walk past, without 
some observation ; and our readers, we are 
persuaded, will easily forgive us, if we yield 
to the temptation of making a few remarks on 
his character. 

This self-taught American is the most ra- 
tional, perhaps, of all philosophers. He never 
loses sight of common sense in any of his 
speculations ; and when his philosophy does 
not consist entirely in its fair and vigorous 
application, it is always regulated and con- 
trolled by it in its application and result. No 
individual, perhaps, ever possessed a juster 
understanding j or was so seldom obstructed 
in the use of it, by indolence, enthusiasm, or 
authority. 

Dr. Franklin received no regular education ; 
and he spent the greater part of his life in a 
society where there was no relish and no en- 
couragement for literature. On an ordinary 
mind, these circumstances would have pro- 
duced their usual effects, of repressing all 
sorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and 
perpetuating a generation of incurious me- 
chanics : but to an understanding like Frank- 
lin's, we cannot help considering them as 
peculiarly propitious; and imagine that we 
can trace back to them, distinctly, almost all 
the peculiarities of his intellectual charac- 
ter. 

Regular education, we think, is unfavour- 
able to vigour or originality of understanding. 
Like civilization, it makes society more in- 
telligent and agreeable ; but it levels the dis- 
tinctions of nature. It strengthens and assists 
the feeble ; but it deprives the strong of his 
triumph, and casts down the hopes of the 
aspiring. It accomplishes this, not only by 
training up the mind in an habitual veneration 
for authorities, but, by leading us to bestow a 
disproportionate degree of attention upon 
studies that are only valuable as keys or in- 
struments for the understanding, they come 
at last to be regarded as ultimate objects of 
pursuit ; and the means of education are ab- 
surdly mistaken for its end. How many 
powerful understandings have been lost in 
the Dialectics of Aristotle ! And of how- 
much good philosophy are we daily defraud- 
ed, by the preposterous error of taking a 
knowledge of prosody for useful learning! 
The mind of a man, who has escaped this 
training, will at least have fair play. What- 
ever other errors he may fall into, he will be 
safe at least from these infatuations : And if 
he thinks proper, after he grows up, to study 
Greek, it will probably be for some better 
purpose than to become critically acquainted 
with its dialects. His prejudices will be 
those of a man, and not of a schoolboy ; and 
ais speculations and conclusions will be inde- 



pendent of the maxims of tutors, and the 
oracles of literary patrons. 

The consequences of living in a refined and 
literary community, are nearly of the same 
kind with those of a regular education. There 
are so many critics to be satisfied — so many 
qualifications to be established — so many ri- 
vals to encounter, and so much derision to be 
hazarded, that a young man is apt to be de- 
terred from so perilous an enterprise, and led 
to seek for distinction in some safer line of 
exertion. He is discouraged by the fame and 
the perfection of certain models and favourites, 
who are always in the mouths of his judges, 
and, "under them, his genius is rebuked," 
and his originality repressed, till he sinks into 
a paltry copyist, or aims at distinction, by ex- 
travagance and affectation. In such a state 
of society, he feels that mediocrity has no 
chance of distinction : and what beginner can 
expect to rise at once into excellence? He 
imagines that mere good sense will attract no 
attention; and that the manner is of much 
more importance than the matter, in a candi- 
date for public admiration. In his attention 
to the manner, the matter is apt to be ne- 
glected; and, in his solicitude to. please those 
who require elegance of diction, brilliancy of 
wit, or harmony of periods, he is in some dan- 
ger of forgetting that strength of reason, and 
accuracy of observation, by which he first pro- 
posed to recommend himself. His attention, 
when extended to so many collateral objects, 
is no longer vigorous or collected ; — the stream, 
divided into so many channels, ceases to flow 
either deep or strong; — he becomes an unsuc- 
cessful pretender to fine writing, or is satis- 
fied with the frivolous praise of elegance or 
vivacity. 

We are disposed to ascribe so much power 
to these obstructions to intellectual originality, 
that we cannot help fancying, that if Franklin 
had been bred in a college, he would have 
contented himself with expounding the me- 
tres of Pindar, and mixing argument with his 
port in the common room ; and that if Boston 
had abounded w^ith men of letters, he would 
never have ventured to come forth from his 
printing-house ; or been driven back to it, at 
any rate, by the sneers of the critics, after the 
first publication of his Essays in the Busy 
Body. 

This will probably be thought exaggerated ; 
but it cannot be denied, we think, that the 
contrary circumstances in his history had a 
powerful effect in determining the character 
of his understanding, and in producing those 
peculiar habits of reasoning and investigation 
by which his writings are distinguished. He 
was encouraged to publish, because there was 
scarcely any one around him whom he could 
not easily excel. He wrote with great brevi- 
ty, because he had not leisure for more volu- 
minious compositions, and because he knew 
that the readers to whom he addressed him- 
self were, for the most part, as busy as him- 
self. For the same reason, he studied great 
perspicuity and simplicity of statement. His 
countrymen had then no relish for fine writ- 
ing, and could not easily be made *o under- 
F 



62 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



Stand a, deduction depending on a long or 
elaboiate process of reasoning. He was 
forced, therefore, to concentrate what he had 
to say; and since he had no chance of being 
admired for the beauty of his composition, it 
was natural for him to aim at making an im- 
pression by the force and the clearness of his 
statements. 

His conclusions were often rash and inaccu- 
rate, from the same circumstances which ren- 
dered his productions concise. Philosophy 
and speculation did not form the business of 
his life ; nor did he dedicate himself to any 
particular study, with a view to exhaust and 
complete the investigation of it in all its parts, 
and under all its relations. He engaged in 
every interesting inquiry that suggested itself 
to him, rather as the necessary exercise of a 
powerful and active mind, than as a task 
which he had bound himself to perform. He 
cast a quick and penetrating glance over the 
facts and the data that were presented to him; 
and drew his conclusions with a rapidity and 
precision that have not often been equalled. 
But he did not generally stop to examine the 
completeness of the data upon which he pro- 
ceeded, nor to consider the ultimate effect or 
application of the principles to which he had 
been conducted. In all questions, therefore, 
where the facts upon which he was to deter- 
mine, and the materials from which his judg- 
ment was to be formed, were either few in 
number, or of such a nature as not to be over- 
looked, his reasonings are, for the most part, 
perfectly just and conclusive, and his decisions 
unexceptionably sound; but where the ele- 
ments of the calculation were more numerous 
and widely scattered, it appears to us that he 
has often been precipitate, and that he has 
either been misled by a partial apprehension of 
the conditions of the problem, or has discovered 
only a portion of the truth which lay before 
him. In all physical inquiries; in almost all 
questions of particular and immediate policy; 
and in much of what relates to the practical 
wisdom and happiness of private life, his 
views will be found to be admirable, and the 
reasoning by which they are supported most 
masterly and convincing. But upon subjects of 
general politics, of abstract morality, and politi- 
cal economy, his notions appear to be more un- 
satisfactory and incomplete. He seems to have 
wanted leisure, and perhaps inclination also. 
to spread out before him the whole vast pre- 
mises of those extensive sciences, and scarcely 
to have had patience to hunt for his con- 
clusions through so wide and intricate a region 
as that upon which they invited him to enter. 
He has been satisfied, therefore, on many occa- 
sions, with reasoning from a very limited view 
of the facts, and often from a particular in- 
stance ; and he has done all tlj.at sagacity and 
sound sense could do with such materials: 
but it cannot excite wonder, if he has some- 
times overlooked an essential part of the argu- 
ment, and often advanced a particular truth 
into the place of a general principle. He sel- 
dom reasoned upon those subjects at all, we 
believe, without having some practical appli- 
cation of them immediately in view ; and as 



he began the investigation rather to determine 
a particular case, than to establish a general 
maxim, so he probably desisted as soon as he 
had relieved himself of the present difficulty. 

There are not many among the thorough- 
bred scholars and philosophers of Europe, who 
can lay claim to distinction in more than one 
or two departments t>f science or literature. 
The uneducated tradesman of America has 
left writings that call for our respectful atten- 
tion, in natural philosophy. — in politics. — in 
political economy, — and in general literature 
and morality. 

Of his labours in the department of Physics. 
we do not propose to say much. They were 
almost all suggested by views of utility in the 
beginning, and were, without exception, ap- 
plied, we believe, to promote such views in 
the end. His letters upon Electricity have 
been more extensively circulated than any of 
his other writings of this kind; and are en- 
titled to more praise and popularity than they 
seem ever to have met with in this country. 
Nothing can be more admirable than the lu- 
minous and graphical precision with which 
the experiments are narrated; the ingenuity 
with which they are projected ; and the saga- 
city with which the conclusion is inferred, 
limited, and confirmed. 

The most remarkable thing, however, in 
these, and indeed in the whole of his physical 
speculations, is the unparalleled simplicity 
and facility with which the reader is con- 
ducted from one stage of the inquiry to an- 
other. The author never appears for a mo- 
ment to labour or to be at a loss. The most 
ingenious and profound explanations are sug- 
gested, as if they were the most natural 
and obvious way of accounting for the phe- 
nomena; and the author seems to value him- 
self so little on his most important discoveries, 
that it is necessary to compare him with 
others, before we can form a just notion of his 
merits. As he seems to be conscious of no 
exertion, he feels no partiality for any part of 
his speculations, and never seeks to raise the 
reader's idea of their importance, by any arts 
of declamation or eloquence. Indeed, the ha- 
bitual precision of his conceptions, and his 
invariable practice of referring to specific facts 
and observations, secured him, in a great mea- 
sure, both from those extravagant conjectures 
in which so many naturalists have indulged, 
and from the zeal and enthusiasm which 
seems so naturally to be engendered in their 
defence. He was by no means averse to give 
scope to his imagination, in suggesting a va- 
riety of explanations of obscure and unman- 
ageable phenomena; but he never allowed 
himself to confound these vague and conjec- 
tural theories with the solid results of experi- 
ence and observation. In his Meteorological 
papers, and in his Observations upon Heat and 
Light, there is a great deal of such bold and 
original suggestions: but he evidently sets but 
little value upon them; and has no sooner 
disburdened his mind of the impressions from 
which they proceeded, than he seems to dis 
miss them entirely from his consideration, 
and turns to the legitimate philosophy of ex» 



DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



periment with unabated diligence and hu- 
mility. As an instance of this disposition, we 
may quote part of a letter to the Abbe Sou- 
laive, upon a new Theory of the Earth, which 
he proposes and dismisses, without concern or 
anxiety, in the course of a few sentences; 
though, if the idea had fallen upon the brain 
of an European philosopher, it might have ger- 
minated into a volume of eloquence, like 
Boffon's, or an infinite array of paragraphs and 
observations, like those of Parkinson and Dr. 
Huttoti. 

After remarking, that there are manifold 
indications of some of the highest parts of the 
land having been formerly covered by sea, 
Dr. Franklin observes — 

"Such changes in the superficial parts of the 
globe, seemed to me unlikely to happen, if the 
earth were solid in the centre. I therefore imagined, 
that the internal parts might be a fluid more dense, 
and of greater specific gravity than any of the solids 
we are acquainted with, which therefore might 
swim in or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of 
the globe would be a shell, capable of being broken 
and disordered by the violent movements of the 
fluid on which it rested. And as air has been com- 
pressed by art so as to be twice as dense as water, 
and as we know not yet the degree of density to 
which air may be compressed, and M. Amontons 
calculated that its density increasing as it approached 
the centre in the same proportion as above the sur- 
face, it would, at the depth of leagues, be heavier 
than gold, and possibly the dense fluid occupying 
the internal parts of the globe might therefore be 
air compressed. And as the force of expansion in 
dense air, when heated, is in proportion to its 
density, this central air might afford another agent 
to move the surface, as well as be of use in keeping 
alive the subterraneous fires; though, as you observe, 
the sudden rarefaction of water coming into contact 
with those fires, may also be an agent sufficiently 
strong for that purpose, when acting between the 
incumbent earth and the fluid on which it rests. 

" If one might indulge imagination in supposing 
how such a globe was formed, I should conceive, 
that all the elements in separate particles being 
originally mixed in confusion, and occupying a great 
space, they would (as soon as the Almighty fiat or- 
dained gravity, or the mutual attraction of certain 
parts, and the mutual repulsion of others to exist) 
all move to their common centre : that the air being 
a fluid whose parts repel each other, though drawn 
to the common centre by their gravity, would be 
densest towards the centre, and rarer as more re- 
mote ; consequently, all matters lighter than the 
central parts of that air, and immersed in it, would 
recede from the centre, and rise till they arrived at 
that region of the air which was of the same specific 
gravity with themselves, where they would rest ; 
while other matter, mixed with the lighter air, 
would descend, and the two, meeting, would form 
the shell of the first earth, leaving the upper atmos- 
phere nearly clear. The original movement of the 
parts towards their common centre, would natu- 
rally form a whirl there ; which would continue, 
upon the turning of the new-formed globe upon its 
axis : and the greatest diameter of the shell would 
be in its equator. If, by any accident afterwards, 
the axis should be changed, the dense internal fluid, 
by altering its form, must burst the shell, and throw 
all its substance into the confusion in which we find 
it. I will not trouble you at present with my fan- 
cies concerning the manner of forming the rest of 
our system. Superior beings smile at our theories, 
and at our presumption in making them." — vol. ii. 
pp. 117—119. 

He afterwards makes his theory much finer 
aud more extravagant, by combining with it a 



very wild speculation upon magnetism J and. 
notwithstanding the additional temptation of 
this new piece of ingenuity, he abandons it ill 
the end with as much unconcern, as if he 
had had no share in the making of it. We 
shall add the whole passage. 

"It has long been a supposition of mine, that the 
iron contained in the surface of the globe has mado 
it capable of becoming, as it it, a great magnet ; 
that the fluid of magnetism perhaps exists in all 
space; so that there is a magnetical north and 
south of the Universe, as well as of this globe, so 
that if it were possible for a man to fly from star to 
star, he might govern his course by the compass ; 
that it was by the power of this general magnetism 
this globe became a particular magnet. In soft or 
hot iron the fluid of magnetism is naturally diffused 
equally: But when within the influence of the 
magnet, it is drawn to one end of the iron ; made 
denser there, and rarer at the other. While the' 
iron continues soft and hot, it is only a temporary 
magnet : if it cools or grows hard in that situation, 
it becomes a permanent one, the magnetic fluid not 
easily resuming its equilibrium. Perhaps it may 
be owing to the permanent magnetism of this globe, 
which it had not at first, that its axis is at present 
kept parallel to itself and not liable to the changes 
it formerly suffered, which occasioned the rupture 
-of its shell, the submersions and emersions of its 
lands, and the confusion of its seasons. The present 
polar and equatorial diameters differing from each 
other near ten leagues, it is easy to conceive, in case 
some power should shift the axis gradually, and 
place it in the present equator, and make the new 
equator pass through the present poles, what a 
sinking of the waters would happen in the present 
equatorial regions, and what a rising in the present 
polar regions ; so that vast tracts would be dis- 
covered, that now are under water, and others 
covered, that are now dry, the water rising and 
sinking in the different extremes near five leagues. 
Such an operation as this possibly occasioned much 
of Europe, and among the rest this Mountain of 
Passy on which I live, and which is composed of 
limestone rock and sea-shells, to be abandoned by 
the sea, and to change its ancient climate, which 
seems to have been a hot one. The globe being 
now become a perfect magnet, we are, perhaps, 
safe from any change of its axis. But we are still 
subject to the accidents on the surface, which are 
occasioned by a wave in the internal ponderous 
fluid ; and such a wave is producible by the sudden 
violent explosion you mention, happening from the 
junction of water and fire under the earth, which 
not only lifts the incumbent earth that is over the 
explosion, but impressing with the same force the 
fluid under it, creates ja. Avave, that may run a 
thousand leagues, lifting, and thereby shaking, suc- 
cessively, all the countries under which it passes. I 
know not whether I have expressed myself so 
clearly, as not to get out of your sight in these 
reveries. If they occasion any new inquiries, and 
produce a better hypothesis, they will not be quite 
useless. You see I have given a loose to imagination; 
but I approve much more your method of philoso* 
phizing, which proceeds upon actual observation, 
makes a collection of facts, and concludes no further 
than those facts will warrant. In my present cir- 
cumstances, that mode of studying the nature of 
the globe is out of my power, and therefore I have 
permitted myself to wander a little in the wilds of 
fancy."— vol. ii. p. 119—121. 

Our limits will not permit us to make any 
analysis of the other physical papers contained 
in this collection. They are all admirable for 
the clearness of the description, the felicity 
and familiarity of the illustrations, and the 
singular sagacity of the remarks with which 
they are interspersed. The theory of whirl 



61 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



winds and waterspouts, as well as the obser- 
vations on the course of the winds and on cold, 
seem to be excellent. The paper called Mari- 
lime Observations is full of ingenuity and 
practical good sense j and the remarks on 
Evaporation, and on the Tides, most of which 
are contained in a series of letters to a young 
lady, are admirable, not merely for their per- 
spicuity, but for the interest and amusement 
they are calculated to communicate to every 
description of readers. The remarks on Fire- 
places and Smoky chinmies are infinitely more 
original, concise, and scientific, than those of 
Count Rumford; and the observations on the 
Gulph-stream afford, we believe, the first 
example of just theory, and accurate investi- 
gation, applied to that phenomenon. 

Dr. Franklin, we think, has never made use 
of the mathematics, in his investigation of the 
phenomena of nature ; and ihough this may 
render it surprising that he has fallen into so 
few errors of importance, we conceive that it 
helps in some measure to explain the un- 
equalled perspicuity and vivacity of his expo- 
sitions. An algebraist, who can work wonders 
with letters, seldom condescends to be much 
indebted to words ; and thinks himself enti- 
tled to make Jiis sentences obscure, provided 
his calculations be distinct. A writer who 
has nothing but words to make use of, must 
make all the use he can of them : he cannot 
afford to neglect the only chance he has of 
being understood. 

We should now say something of the politi- 
cal writings of Dr. Franklin, — the productions 
which first raised him into public office and 
eminence, and which will be least read or 
attended to by posterity. They may be di- 
vided into two parts; those which relate to 
the internal affairs and provincial differences 
of the American colonies, before their quarrel 
with the mother country; and those which 
relate to that quarrel and its consequences. 
The former are no longer in any degree in- 
teresting : and the editor has done wisely, we 
think, in presenting his readers with an ab- 
stract only of the longest of them. This was 
published in 1759, under the title of an His- 
torical Review of the Constitution of Pennsyl- 
vania, and consisted of upwards of 500 pages, 
composed for the purpose of showing that the 
political privileges reserved to the founder of 
the colony had been illegally and oppressively 
used. The Canada pamphlet, written in 1760, 
for the purpose of pointing out the importance 
of retaining that colony at the peace, is given 
entire ; and appears to be composed with great 
force of reason, and in a style of extraordinary 
perspicuity. The same may be said of what 
are called the Albany Papers, or the plan for 
a general political union of the colonies in 
1754 ; and a variety of other tracts on the 
provincial politics of that day. All these are 
worth preserving, both as monuments of Dr. 
Franklin's talents and activity, and as afford- 
ing, in many places, very excellent models of 
strong reasoning and popular eloquence : but 
the interest of the subjects is now completely 
gone by; and the few specimens of general 
reasoning which we meet with, serve only to 



increase our regret, that the talents of thfl 
author should have been wasted on such 
perishable materials. 

There is not much written on the subject ol 
the dispute with the colonies : and most of Dr. 
Franklin's papers on that subject are already 
well known to the public. His examination be- 
fore the House of Commons in 1766 affords a 
striking proof of the extent of his information, 
the clearness and force of his extempore com- 
position, and the steadiness and self-possession 
which enabled him to display these qualities 
with so much effect upon such an occasion. 
His letters before the commencement of hos- 
tilities are full of grief and anxiety; but, no 
sooner did matters come to extremities, than 
he appears to have assumed a certain keen 
and confident cheerfulness, not unmixed with 
a seasoning of asperity, and more vindictive- 
ness of spirit than perhaps became a philoso- 
pher. In a letter written in October 1775, he 
expresses himself in this manner: — 

" Tell our dear good friend * * *, who sometimes 
has his doubts and despondencies about our firm- 
ness, that America is determined and unanimous; 
a very few Tories and placemen excepted, who 
will probably soon export themselves. Britain, at 
the expense of three millions, has killed one hun- 
dred and fifty Yankies this campaign, which is 
20,OOOZ. a head; and, at Bunker's Hill, she gained 
a mile of ground, half of which she lost again by 
our taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the 
same time, sixty thousand children have been born 
in America. From these data, his mathematical 
head will easily calculate the time and expense nec- 
essary to kill us all, and conquer our whole terri- 
tory." — vol. hi, p. 357, 358. 

The following letters, which passed between 
Dr. Franklin and Lord Howe, when his Lord- 
ship arrived off the American coast with what 
were called the pacificatory proposals in 1776, 
show not only the consideration in which the 
former was held by the Noble Commissioner, 
but contain a very striking and prophetic state- 
ment of the consequences to be apprehended 
from the perseverance of Great Britain in her 
schemes of compulsion. His Lordship writes, 
in June 1776, — 

11 1 cannot, my worthy friend, permit the letters 
and parcels, which I have sent (in the state I re- 
ceived them,) to be landed, without adding a word 
upon the subject of the injurious extremities in 
which our unhappy disputes have engaged us. 

" You will learn the nature of my mission, from 
the official despatches which I have recommended 
to be forwarded by the same conveyance. Retain- 
ing all the earnestness I ever expressed, to see our 
differences accommodated; I shall conceive, if I 
meet with the disposition in the colonies which I 
was once taught to expect, the most flattering hopes 
of proving serviceable in the objects of the King's 
paternal solicitude, by promoting the establishment 
of lasting peace and union with the Colonies. But, 
if the deep-rooted prejudices of America, and the 
necessity of preventing her trade from passing into 
foreign channels, must keep us still a divided people, 
I shall, from every private as well as public motive, 
most heartily lament, that this is not the moment, 
wherein those great objects of my ambition are to 
be attained, and thai I am to be longer deprived of 
an opportunity to assure you, personally, of the re- 
gard with which I am, &c." — vol. iii. p. 365 — 367. 

Dr. Franklin answered, — 

"I received safe '.he letters your Lordship so 



DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



65 



kindly forwarded to me, and beg you to accept my 
. thanks. 

" The official despatches to which you refer me, 
contain nothing more than what we had seen in the 
. act of Parliament, viz. ' Offers of pardon upon sub- 
mission ;' which I was sorry to find*, as it must 
give your Lordship pain to be sent so far on so 
nopeless a business. 

" Directing pardons to be offered to the colonies, 
who arc the very parties injured, expresses indeed 
that opinion of our ignorance, baseness, and insen- 
sibility, which your uninformed and proud nation 
has long been pleased to entertain of us j but it c.m 
have no other effect than that of increasing our re- 
sentments. It is impossible we should think of 
submission to a government that has, with the most 
wanton barbarity and cruelty, burned our defence- 
less towns in the midst of winter; excited the 
savages to massacre our (peaceful) farmers, and our 
slaves to murder their masters ; and is even now* 
bringing foreign mercenaries to deluge our settle- 
ments with blood. These atrocious injuries have 
extinguished every spark of affection for that parent 
country we once held so dear: but, were it possible 
for us to forget and forgive them, it is not possible 
for yuu (I mean the British nation) to forgive the 
people you have so heavily injured. You can 
never confide again in those as fellow-subjects, and 
permit them to enjoy equal freedom, to whom you 
know you .have given such just causes of lasting 
enmity: and this must impel you, were we again 
under your government, to endeavour the breaking 
our spirit by the severest tyranny, and obstructing, 
by every means in your power, our growing strength 
and prosperity. 

"But your Lordship mentions 'the King's pa- 
ternal solicitude for promoting the establishment of 
lasting peace and union with the Colonies.' If by 
peace is here meant, a peace to be entered into by 
distinct states, now at war; and his Majesty has 
given your Lordship powers to treat with us of such 
a peace ; I may venture to say, though without au- 
thority, that I think a treaty for that purpose not 
quite impracticable, before we enter into foreign 
alliances. But T am persuaded you have no such 
powers. Your nation, though, by punishing those 
American governors who have fomented the discord, 
rebuilding our burnt towns, and repairing as far as 
possible the mischiefs done us, she might recover a 
great share of our regard, and the greatest share 
of our growing commerce, with all the advantages 
of that additional strength, to be derived from a 
friendship with us ; yet I know too^vell her abound- 
ing pride and deficient wisdom, to believe she will 
ever take such salutary measures. Her fondness for 
conquest as a warlike nation ; her lust of dominion 
as an ambitious one; and her thirst for a gainful 
monopoly as a commercial one, (none of them legit- 
imate causes of war,) will join to hide from her 
eyes every view of her true interest, and con- 
tinually goad her on in those ruinous distant expe- 
ditions, so destructive both of lives and of treasure, 
that they must prove as pernicious to her in the end, 
as the Croisades formerly were to most of the na- 
tions of Europe. 

"I have not the vanity, my Lord, to think of in- 
timidating, by thus predicting the effects of this 
war ; for I know it will in England have the fate 
of all my former predictions — not to be believed 
till the event shall verify it. 

" Long did I endeavour, with unfeigned and un- 
wearied zeal, to preserve from breaking that fine 
and noble porcelain vase — the British empire ; for I 
knew that, being once broken, the separate parts 
could not retain even their share of the strength and 
value that existed in the whole; and that a perfect 
reunion of those parts could scarce ever be hoped 
for. Your Lordship may possibly remember the 
tears of joy that wetted my cheek, when, at your 
good sister's in London, you once gave me expec- 



* About this time the Hessians, &.c. hud just arrived 
from Europe at Staten Island and New York. B. V. 



tations that a reconciliation might soon take place. 
I had the misfortune to find these expectations dis- 
appointed, and to be treated as the cause of the 
mischief I was labouring to prevent. My consola- 
tion under that groundless and malevolent treatment 
was, that I retained the friendship of many wise 
and good men in that country; and, among the 
rest, some share in the regard of Lord Howe. 

"The well-founded esteem, and, permit me to 
say, affection, which I shall always have for your 
Lordship, make it painfui to me to see you engaged 
in conducting a war, the great ground of which (as 
described in your letter) is ' the necessity of pre- 
venting the American trade from passing into 
foreign channels.' To me it seems, that neither 
the obtaining or retaining any trade, how valuable 
soever, is an object for which men may justly spill 
each other's blood ; that the true and sure means 
of extending and securing commerce, are the good- 
ness and cheapness of commodities ; and that the 
profits of no trade can ever be equal to the ex- 
pense of compelling it, and holding it by fleets and 
armies. I consider this war against us, therefore, 
as both unjust and unwise ; and I am persuaded that 
cool and dispassionate posterity will condemn to 
infamy those who advised it; and that even success 
will not save from some degree of dishonour, those 
who have voluntarily engaged to conduct it. 

" I know your great motive in coming hither was 
the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation ; 
and I believe, when you find that to be impossible, 
on any terms given you to propose, you will then 
relinquish so odious a command, and return to a 
more honourable private station. 

" With the greatest 'and most sincere respect, I 
have the honour to be, &c." — vol. iii. p. 367 — 371. 

None of Dr. Franklin's political writings, 
during the nine years when he resided as 
Ambassador at the Court of France, have yet 
been made public. Some of them, we should 
imagine, must be highly interesting. 

Of the merit of this author as a political 
economist, we have already had occasion to 
say something, in the general remarks -which 
we made on the character of his genius ; and 
we cannot now spare time to go much into 
particulars. He is perfectly sound upon many 
important and practical points: — upon the 
corn-trade, and the theory of money, for in- 
stance ; and also upon the more general doc- 
trines, as to the freedom of commerce, and 
the principle of population. In the more ele- 
mentary and abstract parts of the science, 
however, his views seem to have been less 
just and luminous. He is not very consistent 
or profound in what he says of the effects of 
luxury; and seems to have gone headlong 
into the radical error of the Economises, when 
he maintains, that all that is done by manu- 
facture, is to embody the value of the manu- 
facturer's subsistence in his work, and that 
agriculture is the only source from which a 
real increase of wealth can be derived. An 
other favourite position is, that all commerce 
is cheating, where a commodity, produced by 
a certain quantity of labour, is exchanged for 
another, on which more labour has been ex- 
pended ; and that the only fair price of any 
thing, is some other thing requiring the same 
exertion to bring it to market. This is evi- 
dently a very narrow and erroneous view of 
the nature of commerce. The fair price to 
the purchaser is, whatever he deliberately 
chooses to give, rather than go without the 
commodity ; — it is no matter to him, whether 
f2 



«6 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



the seller bestowed much or little labour upon 
it, or whether it came into his possession 
without any labour at all ; — whether it be a 
diamond, which he picked up, or a picture, at 
which he had been working for years. The 
commodity is not valued by the purchaser, 
on account of the labour which is supposed to 
be embodied in it, but solely on account of 
certain qualities, which he finds convenient 
or agreeable : he compares the convenience 
and delight which he expects to derive from 
this object, with the convenience and delight 
which is afforded by the things asked in ex- 
change for it ; and if he find the former pre- 
ponderate, he consents to the exchange and 
makes a beneficial bargain. 

We have stated the case in the name of a 
purchaser, because, in barter, both parties 
are truly purchasers, and act upon the same 
principles ; and it is easy to show, that all 
commerce resolves itself, ultimately, into bar- 
ter. There can be no unfairness in trade, 
except where there is concealment on the 
part of the seller, either of the defects of the 
commodity, or of the fact that the purchaser 
may be supplied with it at a cheaper rate by 
another. It is a matter of fact, but not of 
morality, that the price of most commodities 
will be influenced by the labour employed in 
producing them. If they are capable of being 
produced in unlimited quantities, the compe- 
tition of the producers will sink the price very 
nearly to what is necessary to maintain this 
labour; and the impossibility of continuing 
the production, without repaying that labour, 
will prevent it from sinking lower. The doc- 
trine does not apply at all, to cases where the 
materials, or the skill necessary to work them 
up, are scarce in proportion to the demand. 
The author's speculations on the effects of 
paper-money, seem also to be superficial and 
inaccurate. Statistics had not been carefully 
studied in the days of his activity; and. ac- 
cordingly, we meet with a good deal of loose 
assumption, and sweeping calculation in his 
writings. Yet he had a genius for exact ob- 
servation, and complicated detail ; and proba- 
bly wanted nothing but leisure, to have made 
very great advances in this branch of economy. 

As a writer on morality and general litera- 
ture, the merits of Dr. Franklin cannot be 
estimated properly, without taking into con- 
sideration the peculiarities that have been 
already alluded to in his early history and 
situation. He never had the benefit of any 
academical instruction, nor of the society of 
men of letters; — his style was formed entirely 
by his own judgment and occasional reading; 
and most of his moral pieces w T ere written 
while he was a tradesman, addressing him- 
self to the tradesmen of his native city. We 
cannot expect, therefore, either that he should 
write with extraordinary elegance or grace; 
or that he should treat of the accomplish- 
ments, follies, and occupations of polite life. 
He had no great occasion, as a moralist, to 
expose the guilt and the folly of gaming or 
seduction ; or to point a poignant and playful 
ridicule against the lighter immoralities of 
fashionable life. To the mechanics and tra- 



ders of Boston and Philadelphia, such warr>» 
ings were altogether unnecessary; and he. 
endeavoured, therefore, with more appropri- 
ate eloquence, to impress upon them the im- 
portance of industry, sobriety, and economy, 
and to direct their wise and humble ambition 
to the attainment of useful knowledge and 
honourable independence. That morality, 
after all. is certainly the most valuable, which 
is adapted to the circumstances of the greatei 
part of mankind ; and that eloquence the most 
meritorious, that is calculated to convince and 
persuade the multitude to virtue. Nothing 
can be more perfectly and beautifully adapted 
to its object, than most of Dr. Franklin's 
compositions of this sort. The tone of famili- 
arity, of good-will, and homely jocularity — 
the plain and pointed illustrations — the short 
sentences, made up of short words — and the 
strong sense, clear information, and obvious 
conviction of the author himself, make most 
of his moral exhortations perfect models of 
popular eloquence ; and afford the finest spec- 
imens of a style which has been but too little 
cultivated in a country which numbers per- 
haps more than half a million 'of readers 
among its tradesmen and artificers. 

In writings which possess such solid and 
unusual merit, it is of no great consequence 
that the fastidious eye of a critic can discover 
many blemishes. There is a good deal of 
vulgarity in the practical writings of Dr. 
Franklin; and more vulgarity than was any 
way necessary for the object he had in view. 
There is something childish, too, in some of 
his attempts at pleasantry; his story of the 
Whistle, and his Parisian letter, announcing 
the discovery that the sun gives light as soon 
as he rises, are instances of this. The solilo- 
quy of an Ephemeris, however, is much bet- 
ter ; and both it, and the Dialogue with the 
Gout, are executed with the lightness and 
spirit of genuine French compositions. The 
Speech in the Divan of Algiers, composed as 
a parody on those of the defenders of the 
slave trade, and the scriptural parable against 
persecution are inimitable; — they have all 
the point and facility of the fine pleasantries 
of Swift and Arbuttinot, with something more 
of directness and apparent sincerity. 

The style of his letters, in general, is ex- 
cellent. They are chiefly remarkable, for 
great simplicity of language, admirable good 
sense and ingenuity, and an amiable and 
inoffensive cheerfulness, that is never over- 
clouded or eclipsed. Among the most valua- 
ble of the writings that are published for the 
first time, in the present edition, are four let- 
ters from Dr. Franklin to Mr. Whatley, writ- 
ten within a few years of his death, and 
expressive of all that unbroken gaiety, phi- 
lanthropy, and activity, which distinguish the 
compositions of his earlier years. We give 
with pleasure the following extracts. 

" lam not acquainted with the saying of Alphon- 
sus. which you allude to as a sanctification of your 
rigidity, in refusing to allow me the plea of old age 
as an excuse for my want of exactitude in corre- 
spondence. What was that saying ? — You do not, it 
seems, feel any occasion for such an excuse, though 



DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



67 



j-ou are, as you say, rising seventy-five, but I am 
rising (perhaps more properly (ailing) eighty — and 
I leave the excuse wi'.h you till you arrive at that 
nge ; perhaps you may then be more sensible of its 
validity, and see fit to use it for yourself. 

'■ I must agree with you that the gout is bad, and 
that the stone is worse. lam happy in not having 
ihem both together ; and I join in your prayer, that 
you may live till you die wiihout either. But I doubt 
the author of the epitaph you sent me is a little mis- 
taken, when, speaking of the world, he says, that 

' he ne'er car'd a pin 

What they said or may 6ay of the mortal within.' 
"It is so natural to wish to be well spoken of, 
whether alive or dead, that I imagine he could not 
be quite exempt from that desire; and that at least 
he wished to be thought a wit, or he would not 
have given himself the trouble of writing so good 
an epitaph to leave behind him." — "You see I 
have some reason to wish that in a future state I 
may not only be as well as I was, but a little better. 
And I hope it: for I, too, with your poet, trust in 
God. And when I observe, that there is great fru- 
gality as well as wisdom in his works, since he has 
been evidently sparing both of labour and materials ; 
for, by the various wonderful inventions of propa- 
gation, he has provided for the continual peopling 
his world with plants and animals, without being 
at the trouble of repeated new creations: and by 
the natural reduction of compound substances to 
their original elements, capable of being employed 
in new compositions, he has prevented the neces- 
sity of creating new matter; for that the earth, 
water, air, and perhaps fire, which being compound- 
ed, form wood, do, when the wood is dissolved, re- 
turn, and again become air, earth, fire and water} — 
I say, that when I see nothing annihilated, and not 
even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the 
annihilation of souls; or believe that he will suffer 
the daily waste of millions of minds ready made 
that now exist, and put himself to the continual 
trouble of making new ones. Thus finding my- 
self to exist in the world, I believe I shall in some 
shape or other always exist. And with all the in- 
conveniences human life is liable to, I shall not 
object to a new edition of mine; hoping, however, 
that the errata of the last may be corrected." — Vol. 
iii. pp. 546—548. 

" Our constitution seems not to be well under- 
stood with you. If the congress were a permanent 
body, there would be more reason in being jealous 
of giving it powers. But its members are chosen 
annually, and cannot be chosen more than three 
years successively, nor more than three years in 
seven, and any of them may be recalled at any time, 
whenever their constituents shall be dissatisfied 
with their conduct. They are of the people, and 
return again to mix with the people, having no 
more durable preeminence than the different grains 
of sand in an hour-glass. Such an assembly can- 
not easily become dangerous to liberty. They are 
the servants of the people, sent together to do the 
people's business, and promote the public welfare ; 
their powers must be sufficient, or their duties can- 
not be performed. They have no profitable ap- 
pointments, but a mere payment of daily wages, 
such as are scarcely equivalent to their expenses ; 
so that, having no chance of great places and enor- 
mous salaries or pensions, as in some countries, 
there is no intriguing or bribing for elections. I 
wish Old England were as happy in its govern- 
ment, but I do not see it. Your people, however, 
think their constitution the best in the world, and 
affect to despise ours. It is comfortable to have a 
good opinion of one's self, and of every thing that 
belongs to us ; to think one's own religion, king, 
and wife, the best of all possible wives, kings, and 
religions. I remember three Greenlanders, who 
had travelled two years in Europe, under the care 
of some Moravian missionaries, and had visited 
Germany. Denmark, Holland, and England: when 
I asked them at Philadelphia (when they were in 



their way home) whether, now they had seen how 
much more commodiously the white people lived 
by the help of the arts, they would not choose to 
remain among us — their answer was, that they were 
pleased with having had an opportunity of seeing 
many fine things, but they chose to live in their own 
country: which country, by the way, consisted of 
rock only : for the Moravians were obliged to car- 
ry earth in their ship from New York, tor the pur- 
pose of making there a cabbage garden !" — Vol. iii. 
pp. 550, 551. 

" You are now seventy-eight, and I am eighty- 
two. You tread fast upon my heels ; but, though 
you have more strength and spirit, you cannot 
come up with me till I stop, which must now be 
soon ; for I am grown so old as to have buried most 
of the friends of my youth ; and I now often hear 
persons, whom I knew when children, called old 
Mr. such a one, to distinguish them from their sons, 
now men grown, and in business; so that, by liv- 
ing twelve years beyond David's period, I seem to 
have intruded myself into the company of posterity, 
when I ought to have been abed and asleep. Yet 
had I gone at seventy, it would have cut off twelve 
of the most active years of my life, employed, too, 
in matters of ihe greatest importance: but whether 
I have been doing good or mischief, is for time to 
discover. I only know that I intended well, and 
I hope all will end well. 

"Be so good as to present my affectionate re- 
spects to Dr. Rowley. I am under great obliga- 
tions to him, and shall write to him shortly. " It 
will be a pleasure to him to hear that my malady 
does not grow sensibly worse, and that is a great 
point; for it has always been so tolerable, as not 
to prevent my enjoying the pleasures of society, 
and, being cheerful in conversation. I owe this in 
a great measure to his good counsels." — Vol. iii. 
pp. 555, 556. 

" Your eyes must continue very good, since you 
are able to write so small a hand without specta- 
cles. I cannot distinguish a letter even of large 
print ; but am happy in the invention of double 
spectacles, which, serving for distant objects as well 
as near ones, make my eyes as useful to me as 
ever they were. If all the other defects and in- 
firmities of old age could be as easily and cheaply 
remedied, it would be worth while, my friend, to live 
a good deal longer. But I look upon death to be as 
necessary to our constiiutions as sleep. We shall 
rise refreshed in the morning. Adieu, and believe 
me ever, &c." — Vol. iii. pp. 544, 545. 

There is something extremely amiable in 
old age, when thus exhibited without quera- 
lousness, discontent, or impatience, and free, 
at the same time, from any affected or unbe- 
coming levity. We think there must be 
many more of Dr. Franklin's letters in exist- 
ence, than have yet been given to the public; 
and from the tone and tenor of those which 
we have seen, we are satisfied that they 
would be read with general avidity and im- 
provement. 

His account of his own life, down to the 
year 1730, has been in the hands of the pub- 
lic since 1790. It is written w r ith great sim- 
plicity and liveliness, though it contains too 
many trifling details and anecdotes of obscure 
individuals. It affords however a striking 
example of the irresistible force with which 
talents and industry bear upwards in society ; 
as well as an impressive illustration of the 
substantial wisdom and good policy of invaria- 
ble integrity and candour. We should think 
it a very useful reading for all young persons 
of unconfirmed principles, who have their 
fortunes to make or to mend in the world. 



*3 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



Upon the whole, we look upon the life and 
writings of Dr. Franklin as affording a striking- 
illustration of the incalculable value of a 
sound and well directed understanding ; and 
of the comparative uselessness of learning 
and laborious accomplishments. Without the 
slightest pretensions to the character of a 
scholar or a man of science, he has extended 
the bounds of human knowledge on a variety 
of subjects, which scholars and men of sci- 
ence had previously investigated without suc- 



cess; and has only been found deficient in 
those studies which the learned have gene- 
rally turned from in disdain. We would not be 
understood to say any thing in disparagement 
of scholarship and science; but the value 
of these instruments is apt to be over-rated 
by their possessors; and it is a wholesome 
mortification, to show them that the work 
may be done without them. We have long 
known that their employment does not insure 
its success, 



(Siftzmbzv, 181G.) 

The Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Containing Addi- 
tional Letters, Tracts, and Poems not hitherto published. With Notes, and a life of the Au- 
thor, by Walter Scott, Esq. J 9 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: 1815. 



By far the most considerable change which 
has taken place in the world of letters, in our 
days, is that by which the wits of Queen 
Anne's time have been gradually brought 
down from the supremacy which they had 
enjoyed, without competition, for the best part 
of a century. When we were at our studies, 
some twenty-five years ago, we can perfectly 
remember that every young man was set to 
read Pope, Swift, and Addison, as regularly 
as Virgil, Cicero, and Horace. All who had 
any tincture of letters were familiar with their 
writings and their history; allusions to them 
abounded in all popular discourses and all 
ambitious conversation; and they and their 
contemporaries were universally acknow- 
ledged as our great models of excellence, and 
placed without challenge at the head of our 
national literature. New books, even when 
allowed to have merit, were never thought 
of as fit to be placed in the same class, but 
were generally read and forgotten, and passed 
away like the transitory meteors of a lower 
sky; while they remained in their brightness, 
and were supposed to shine w T ith a fixed and 
unalterable glory. 

All this, however, we take it, is now pretty 
well altered ; and in so far as persons of our 
antiquity can judge of the training and habits 
of the rising generation, those celebrated 
writers no longer form the manual of our stu- 
dious youth, or enter necessarily into the in- 
stitution of a liberal education. Their names, 
indeed, are still familiar to our ears ; but their 
writings no longer solicit our habitual notice, 
and their subjects begin already to fade from 
our recollection. Their high privilieges and 
proud distinctions, at any rate, have evidently 
passed into other hands. It is no longer to 
them that the ambitious look up with envy, 
or the humble with admiration ; nor is it in 
their pages that the pretenders to wit and 
eloquence now search for allusions that are 
sure to captivate, and illustrations that cannot 
be mistaken. In this decay of their reputa- 
tion they have few advocates, and no imita- 
tors : and from a comparison of many obser- 
vations, it seems to be clearly ascertained. 



that they are declined considerably from l the 
high meridian of their glory, 7 and may fairly 
be apprehended to be l hastening to their set- 
ting. 7 Neither is it time alone that has 
wrought this obscuration ; for the fame of 
Shakespeare still shines in undecaying bright- 
ness; and that of Bacon has been steadily 
advancing and gathering new honours during 
the whole period which has witnessed the rise 
and decline of his less vigorous successors. 

There are but two possible solutions for 
phenomena of this sort. Our taste has either 
degenerated— or its old models have been 
fairly surpassed; and w r e have ceased to ad- 
mire the writers of the last century, only be- 
cause they are too good for us — or because 
they are not good enough. Now, we confess 
we are no believers in the absolute and per- 
manent corruption of national taste; on the 
contrary, we think that it is, of all faculties, 
that which is most sure to advance and im- 
prove with time and experience; and that, 
with the exception of those great physical or 
political disasters which have given a check 
to civilization itself, there has always been a 
sensible progress in this particular; and that 
the general taste of every successive genera- 
tion is better than that of its predecessors. 
There are little capricious fluctuations, no 
doubt, and fits of foolish admiration or fasti- 
diousness, which cannot be so easily account- 
ed for: but the great movements are all pro- 
gressive : and though the progress consists at 
one time in withholding toleration from moss 
faults, and at another in giving their high 
prerogative to great beauties, this alternation 
has no tendency to obstruct the general ad- 
vance; but, on the contrary, is the best and 
the safest course in which it can be con- 
ducted. 

We are of opinion, then, that the writers 
who adorned the beginning of the last cen- 
tury have been eclipsed by those of our own 
time; and that they have no chance of ever 
regaining the supremacy in which they have 
thus been supplanted. There is not, however, 
in our judgment, any thing very stupendous 
in this triumph of our contemporaries; and 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



69 



the greater wonder with us, is, that it was so 
long delayed, and left for them to achieve. 
For the truth is, that the writers of the former 
age had not a great dual more than their judg- 
ment' and industry to stand on: and were 
always much more remarkable for the few- 
ness of their faults than the greatness of their 
beauties. Their laurels were won much more 
by good conduct and discipline, than by en- 
terprising boldness or native force; — nor can 
it be regarded as any very great merit in- those 
who had so little of the inspiration of genius, 
to have steered clear of the dangers to which 
that inspiration is liable. Speaking generally 
of that generation of authors, it may be said 
that, as poets, they had no force or greatness 
of fancy — no pathos, and no enthusiasm ; — 
and, as philosophers, no comprehensiveness, 
depth, or originality. They are sagacious, no 
doubt, neat, clear, and reasonable; but for 
the most part cold, timid, and superficial. 
They never meddle w T ith the great scenes of 
nature, or the great passions of man ; but 
content themselves with just and sarcastic 
representations of city life, and of the paltry 
passions and meaner vices that are bred in 
that lower element. Their chief care is to 
avoid being ridiculous in the eyes of the 
witty, and above all to eschew the ridicule 
of excessive sensibility or enthusiasm — to be 
at once witty and rational themselves, with 
as good a grace as possible; but to give their 
countenance to no wisdom, no fancy, and no 
morality, which passes the standards current 
in good company. Their inspiration, accord- 
ingly, is little more than a sprightly sort of 
good sense: and they have scarcely any in- 
vention but what is subservient to the pur- 
poses of derision and satire. Little gleams 
of pleasantry, and sparkles of wit, glitter 
through their compositions; but no glow of 
feeling — no blaze of imagination — no flashes 
of genius, ever irradiate their substance. They 
never pass beyond "the visible diurnal 
sphere," or deal in any thing that can either 
lift us above our vulgar nature, or ennoble its 
reality. With these accomplishments, they 
may pass well enough for sensible and polite 
writers, — but scarcely for men of genius; and 
it is certainly far more surprising, that per- 
sons of this description should have maintain- 
ed themselves, for near a century, at the head 
of the literature of a country that had pre- 
viously produced a Shakespeare, a Spenser, a 
Bacon, and a Taylor, than that, towards the 
end of that low* period, doubts should have 
arisen as to the legitimacy of the title by 
which they laid claim to that high station. 
Both parts of the phenomenon, however, we 
dare say, had causes which better expounders 
might explain to the satisfaction of all the 
world. We see them but imperfectly, and 
have room only for an imperfect sketch of 
what we see. 

Our first literature consisted of saintly le- 
gends, and romances of chivalry, — though 
Chaucer gave it a more national and popular 
character, by his original descriptions of ex- 
ternal nature, and the familiarity and gaiety 
of his social humour. In the time of Eliza- 



beth, it received a copious infusion of classical 
images and ideas: but it was still intrinsically 
romantic — serious — and even somewhat lofty 
and enthusiastic. Authors were then so few 
in number, that they were looked upon with 
a sort of veneration, and considered as a kind 
of inspired persons; at least they were not 
yet so numerous, as to be obliged to abuse 
each other, in order to obtain a share of dis- 
tinction for themselves; — and they neither 
affected a tone of derision in their writings, 
nor wrote in fear of derision from others. 
They were filled with their subjects, and dealt 
with them fearlessly in their own way; and 
the stamp of originality, force, and freedom, 
is consequently upon almost all their produc- 
tions. In the reign of James I., our literature, 
with some few exceptions, touching rather 
the form than the substance of its merits, ap- 
pears to us to have reached the greatest per- 
fection to which it has yet attained; 1 hough 
it would probably have advanced still farther 
in the succeeding reign, had not the great na- 
tional dissensions which then arose, turned 
the talent and energy of the people into other 
channels — first, to the assertion of their civil 
rights, and afterwards to the discussion of 
their religious interests. The graces of litera- 
ture suffered of course in those fierce conten- 
tions; and a deeper shade of austerity was 
thrown upon the intellectual character of the 
nation. Her genius, however, though less cap- 
tivating and adorned than in the happier days 
which preceded, was still active, fruitful, and 
commanding; and the period of the civil wars^ 
besides the mighty minds that guided the 
public councils, and were absorbed in public 
cares, produced the giant powers of Taylor, 
and Hobbes, and Barrow — the muse of 'Mil- 
ton — the learning of Coke — and the ingenuity 
of Cowley. 

The Restoration introduced a French court 
— under circumstances more favourable for 
the effectual exercise of court influence than 
ever before existed in England : but this of 
itself would not have been sufficient to ac- 
count for the sudden change in our literature 
which ensued. It was seconded by causes 
of far more general operation. The Restora- 
tion was undoubtedly a popular act; — and, 
indefensible as the conduct of the army and 
the civil leaders was on that occasion, there 
can be no question that the severities of Crom- 
well, and the extravagancies of the sectaries, 
had made republican professions hateful, and 
religious ardour ridiculous, in the eyes of a 
great proportion of the people. All the emi- 
nent writers of the preceding period, however, 
had inclined to the party that was now over- 
thrown; and their writings had not merely 
been accommodated to the character of the 
government under which they were produced, 
but were deeply imbued with its obnoxious 
principles, which were those of their respect- 
ive authors. When the restraints of authority 
were taken off, therefore, and it became pro- 
fitable, as well as popular, to discredit the 
fallen party, it was natural that the leading 
authors should affect a style of levity and 
derision, as most opposite to that of their op- 



70 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



ponents, and best calculated for the purposes 
they had in view. The nation, too, was now 
for the first time essentially divided in point 
of character'and principle, and a much greater 
proportion were capable both of writing in 
support of their own notions, and of being in- 
fluenced by what was written. Add to all 
this, that there were real and serious defects 
in the style and manner of the former gener- 
ation: and that the grace, and brevity, and 
vivacity of that gayer manner which was now 
introduced from France, were not only good 
and captivating in themselves, but had then 
all the charms of novelty and of contrast ; 
and it will not be difficult to understand how 
it came to supplant that which had been es- 
tablished of old in the country, — and that so 
suddenly, that the same generation, among 
whom Milton had been formed to the severe 
sanctity of wisdom and the noble independ- 
ence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses 
on the obscenity and servility of such writers 
as Rochester and Wycherly. 

This change, however, like all sudden 
changes, was too fierce and violent to be long 
maintained at the same pitch ; and when the 
wits and profligates of King Charles had suf- 
ficiently insulted the seriousness and virtue 
of their predecessors, there would probably 
have been a revulsion towards the accustomed 
taste of the nation, had not the party of the 
innovators been reinforced by champions of 
more temperance and judgment. The result 
seemed at one time suspended on the will 
of Dryden — in whose individual person the 
genius of the English and of the French school 
of literature may be said to have maintained 
a protracted struggle. But the evil principle 
prevailed I Carried by the original bent of 
his genius, and h ; s familiarity with our older 
models, to the cultivation of our native style, 
to which he might have imparted more steadi- 
ness and correctness — for in force and in 
sweetness it was already majtchless — he was 
unluckily seduced by the attractions of fash- 
ion, and the dazzling of the dear wit and gay 
rhetoric in which it delighted, to lend his 
powerful aid to the new corruptions and re- 
finements; and in fact, to prostitute his great 
gifts to the purposes of party rage or licentious 
ribaldry. 

The sobriety of the succeeding re : gns al- 
layed this fever of profanity ; but no genius 
arose sufficiently powerful to break the spell 
that still withheld us from the use of our own 
peculiar gifts and faculties. On the contrary, 
it was the unfortunate ambition of the next 
generation of authors, to improve and perfect 
the new style, rather than to return to the old 
one; — and it cannot be denied that they did 
improve it. They corrected its gross indecen- 
cy—increased its precision and correctness 
---made its pleasantry and sarcasm more pol- 
ished and elegant — and spread through the 
whole of its irony, its narration, and its re- 
flection, a tone of clear and condensed good 
sense, which recommended itself to all who 
had, and all who had not any relish for higher 
beauties. 

This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits — 



and to this praise they are justly entitled. 
This was left for them to do, and they did it 
well. They were invited to it by the circum- 
stances of their situation, and do not seem to 
have been possessed of any such bold or vigor- 
ous spirit, as either to neglect or to outgo the 
invitation. Coming into life immediately after 
the consummation of a bloodless revolution, 
effected much more by the cool sense, than 
the angry passions of the nation, they seem 
to have felt that they were born in an age of 
reason, rather than of feeling or fancy ; and 
that men's minds, though considerably di- 
vided and unsettled upon many points, were 
in a much better temper to relish judicious, 
argument and cutting satire, than the glow 
of enthusiastic passion, or the richness of a 
luxuriant imagination. To those accordingly 
they made no pretensions ; but, writing with 
infinite good sense, and great grace and vi- 
vacity, and, above all, writing for the first 
time in a tone that was peculiar to the upper 
ranks of society, and upon subjects that were 
almost exclusively interesting to them, they 
naturally figured, at least while the manner 
was new, as the most accomplished, fashiona- 
ble, and perfect writers which the world had 
ever seen ; and made the wild, luxuriant, and 
humble sweetness of our earlier authois ap- 
pear rude and untutored in the comparison. 
Men grew ashamed of admiring, and afraid of 
imitating writers of so little skill and smart- 
ness; and the opinion became general, not 
only that their faults were intolerable, but 
that even their beauties were puerile and bar- 
barous, and unworthy the serious regard of a 
polite and distinguishing age. 

These, and similar considerations, will go 
far to account for the celebrity which those 
authors acquired in their day; but it is not 
quite so easy to explain how they should 
have so long- retained their ascendant. One 
cause undoubtedly was, the real excellence 
of their productions, in the style which they 
had adopted. It was hopeless to think of 
surpassing them in that style; and, recom- 
mended as it was, by the felicity of their exe- 
cution, it required some courage to depart 
from it, and to recur to another, \a hich seemed 
to have been so lately abandoned for its sake. 
The age which succeeded, too, was not the 
age of courage or adventure. There never 
was, on the whole, a quieter time than the 
reigns of the two first Georges, and the great- 
er part of that which ensued. There were 
two little provincial rebellions indeed, and a 
fair proportion of foreign war; but there was 
nothing to stir the minds of the people at 
large, to rouse their passions, or excite their 
imaginations — nothing like the agitations of 
the Reformation in the sixteenlh century, or 
of the civil wars in the seventeenth. They 
went on. accordingly, minding their old busi- 
ness, and reading their old books, with great 
patience and stupidity: And certainly there 
never was so remarkable a dearth of original 
talent — so long an interregnvm of native ge-* 
nius — as during about sixty years in the 
middle of the last century. The dramatic 
art w T as dead fifty years before — and poetry 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



71 



seemed verging to a similar extinction. The 
few sparks that appeared, too, showed that 
the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar 
must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another 
quality. Gray, with the talents, rather of a 
critic than a poet — with learning, fastidious- 
ness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead 
of fire, tenderness, or invention — began and 
ended a small school, which we could scarce- 
ly have wished to become permanent, admir- 
able in many respects as some of its produc- 
tions are — being far too elaborate and artifi- 
cial, either for grace or for fluency, and fitter 
to excite the admiration of scholars, than the 
delight of ordinary men. However, he had 
the merit of not being in any degree French, 
and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of 
seriousness, and the tone at least of force and 
energy. The Whartons, both as critics and 
as poets, were of considerable service in dis- 
crediting the h gh pretensions of the former 
race, and in bringing back to public notice 
the great stores and treasures of poetry which 
lay hid in the records of our older literature. 
Akenside attempted a sort of classical and 
philosophical rapture, which no elegance of 
language could easily have rendered popular, 
but which had merits of no vulgar order for 
those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote 
with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style 
of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplici- 
ty. He had the harmony of Pope without his 
quaintness, and his selectness of diction with- 
out his coldness and eternal vivacity. And, 
last of all, came Cowper, with a style of com- 
plete originality, — and. for the first time, made 
it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that 
Pope and Addison were no longer to be the 
models of English poetry. 

In philosophy and prose writing in general, 
the case was nearly parallel. The name of 
Hume is by far the most considerable which 
occurs in the period to which we have al- 
luded. But. though his thinking was English, 
his style is entirely French; and being natu- 
rally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that 
eloquence or richness about him, which char- 
acterizes the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, 
and Bacon — and continues, with less weight 
of matter, to please in those of Cowley and 
Clarendon. Warburton had great powers ; 
and wrote with more force and freedom than 
the wits to whom he succeeded — but ' his 
faculties were perverted by a paltry love of 
paradox, and rendered useless to mankind by 
an unlucky choice of subjects, and the arro- 
gance and dogmatism of his temper. Adam 
Smith was nearly the first who made deeper 
reasonings and more exact knowledge popu- 
lar among us; and Junius and Johnson the 
first who again famjliarized us with more 
glowing and sonorous diction — and made us 
feel the tameness and poorness of the serious 
style of Addison and Swift. 

This brings us down almost to the present 
times — in which the revolution in our litera- 
ture has been accelerated and confirmed by 
the concurrence of many causes. The agita- 
tions of the French revolution, and the discus- 
sions as well as the hopes and terrors to 



which it gave occasion — the genius of Ed- 
mund Burke, and some others of his land of 
genius — the impression of the new literature 
of Germany, evidently the original of our 
lake-school of poetry, and many innovations 
in our drama — the rise or revival of a more 
evangelical spirit, in the body of the people 
— and the vast extension of our political and 
commercial relations, which have not only 
familiarized all ranks of people with distant 
countries, and great undertakings, but have 
brought knowledge and enterprise home, not 
merely to the imagination, but to the actual 
experience of almost every individual. — All 
these, and several other circumstances, have 
so far improved or excited the character of 
our nation, as to have created an effectual 
demand for more profound speculation, and 
more serious emotion than was dealt in by 
the writers of the former century, and which, 
if it has not yet produced a corresponding 
supply in all branches, has at least had the 
effect of decrying the commodities that were 
previously in vogue, as unsuited to the altered 
condition of the times. 

Of those ingenious writers, whose charac- 
teristic certainly was not vigour, any more 
than tenderness or fancy, Sw t ift was indis- 
putably the most vigorous — and perhaps the 
least lender or fanciful. The greater part of 
his works being occupied with politics and 
personalities that have long since lost all in- 
terest, can now attract but little attention, 
except as memorials of the manner in whicn 
politics and personalities were then conduct- 
ed. In other parts, however, there is a vein 
of peculiar humour and strong satire, which 
will always be agreeable — and a sort of 
heartiness of abuse and contempt of mankind, 
which produces a greater sympathy and ani- 
mation in the reader than the more elaborate 
sarcasms that have since come into fashion. 
Altogether his merits appear to be more unique 
and inimitable than those of any of his con- 
temporaries ; and as his works are connected 
in many parts with historical events which it 
must always be of importance to understand, 
w r e conceive that there are none, of which a 
new and careful edition is so likely to be ac- 
ceptable to the public, or so worthy to engage 
the attention of a person qualified for the 
undertaking. . In this respect, the projectors 
of the present publication must be considered 
as eminently fortunate — the celebrated per- 
son who has here condescended to the func- 
tions of an editor, being almost as much 
distinguished for the skill and learning re- 
quired for that humbler office, as for the 
creative genius which has given such unex- 
ampled popularity to his original compositions 
— and uniting to the minute knowledge and 
patient research of the Mai ones and Chal- 
merses, a vigour of judgment and a vivacity 
of style to which they had no pretensions. 
In the exercise of these comparatively humble 
functions, he has acquitted himself, we think, 
on the present occasion, with great judgment 
and ability. The edition, upon the whole, is 
much better than that of Dryden. It is less 
loaded with long notes and illustrative quota- 



72 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



tions; while it furnishes all the information 
that can reasonably be desired, in a simple 
and compendious form. It contains upwards 
of a hundred letters, and other original pieces 
of Swift's never before published — and, among 
the rest, all that has been preserved of his 
correspondence with the celebrated Vanessa. 
Explanatory notes and remarks are supplied 
with great diligence to all the passages over 
which time may have thrown any obscurity ; 
and the critical observations that are prefixed 
to the more considerable productions, are, 
with a reasonable allowance for an editor's 
partiality to his author, very candid and in- 
genious. 

The Life is not every where extremely well 
written, in a literary point of view; but is 
drawn up, in substance, with great intelli- 
gence, liberality, and good feeling. It is quite 
fair and moderate in politics; and perhaps 
rather too indulgent and tender towards indi- 
viduals of all descriptions — more full, at least, 
of kindness and veneration for genius and 
social virtue, than of indignation at baseness 
and profligacy. Altogether, it is not much 
like the production of a mere man of letters, 
or a fastidious speculator in sentiment and 
morality; but exhibits throughout, and in a 
very pleasing form, the good sense and large 
toleration of a man of the world — with much 
of that generous allowance for the 

" Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise," 

which genius too often requires, and should 
therefore always be most forward to show. 
It is impossible, however, to avoid noticing. 
that Mr. Scott is by far too favourable to the 
personal character of his author; whom we 
think, it would really be injurious to the cause 
of morality to allow to pass, either as a very 
dignified or a very amiable person. The truth 
is, we think, that he was extremely ambi- 
tious, arrogant, and selfish ; of a morose, vin- 
dictive, and haughty temper; and, though 
capable of a sort of patronizing generosity 
towards his dependants, and of some attach- 
ment towards those who had long known and 
flattered him, his general demeanour, both in 
public and private life, appears to have been 
far from exemplary. Destitute of temper and 
magnanimity — and, we will add, of principle, 
in the former; and, in the latter, of tender- 
ness, fidelity, or compassion. 

The transformation of a young Whig into 
an old Tory — the gradual falling off of pru- 
dent men from unprofitable virtues, is. per- 
haps, too common an occurrence, to deserve 
much notice, or justify much reprobation. 
But Swift's desertion of hi« first principles 
was neither gradual nor early — and was ac- 
complished under such circumstances as really 
require to be exposed a little, and cannot well 
be passed over in a fair account of his life 
and character. He was bred a Whig under 
Sir William Temple — he took the title pub- 
licly in various productions ; and, during all 
the reign of King William, was a strenuous, 
and indeed an intolerant advocate of Revolu- 
tion principles and Whig pretensions. His 
first patrons were Somers, Hortland, and Hali- 



fax; and, under that ministry, the member* 
of which he courted in private and defended 
in public, he received church preferment to 
the value of near 400/. a year (equal at least 
to 1200/. ^t present), with the promise of still 
farther favours. He was dissatisfied, how- 
ever, because his livings were not in England ; 
and having been sent over on the affairs of 
the Irish clergy in 1710, when he found the 
Whig ministry in a tottering condition, he 
temporized for a few months, till he saw that 
their downfal was inevitable ; and then, with- 
out even the pretext of any public motive, 
but on the avowed ground of not having been 
sufficiently rewarded for his former services, 
he went over in the most violent and decided 
manner to the prevailing party; for whose 
gratification he abused his former friends and 
benefactors, with a degree of virulence and 
rancour, to which it would not be too much 
to apply the term of brutality; and, in the 
end, when the approaching death of the 
Queen, and their internal dissensions mjta»l 
his services of more importance to his new 
friends, openly threatened to desert them also, 
and retire altogether from the scene, unlesa 
they made a suitable provision for him ; and 
having, in this way, extorted the deanery of 
St. Patrick's, which he always complained 
of as quite inadequate to his merits, he coun- 
selled measures that must have involved the 
country in a civil war, for the mere chance 
of keeping his party in power; and, finally. 
on the Queen's death, retired in a "state of 
despicable despondency and bitterness to his 
living, where he continued, to the end of his 
life, to libel liberty and mankind with unre- 
lenting and pitiable rancour — to correspond 
with convicted traitors to the constitution they 
had sworn to maintain — and to lament as the 
worst of calamities, the dissolution of a minis- 
try which had no merit but that of having 
promised him advancement, and of -which 
several of the leading members immediately 
indemnified themselves by taking office in 
the court of the Pretender. 

As this part of his conduct is passed over a 
great deal too slightly by his biographer ; and 
as nothing can be more pernicious than the 
notion, that the political sins of eminent per- 
sons should be forgotten in the estimate of 
their merits, we must beg leave to verify the 
comprehensive sketch we have now given, by 
a few references to the documents that are to 
be found in the volumes before us. Of his 
original Whig professions, no proof will pro- 
bably be required ; the fact being notorious, 
and admitted by all his biographers. Abundant 
evidence, however, is furnished by his first 
successful pamphlet in defence of Lord So- 
mers, and the other Whi« lords impeached in 
1701; — by his own express declaration in 
another work (vol. hi. p. 240). that "having 
been long conversant with the Greek and 
Latin authors, and therefore a lover of liberty, 
he was naturally inclined to be what they call 
a Whig in politics;'' — by the copy of verses 
in which he deliberately designates himself 
"a Whig, and one who wears a gown ;" — by 
his exulting statement to Tisdal, whom he 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



leproaches with being a Tory, and says — " To 
cool your insolence a little, know that the 
Queen, and Court, and House of Lords, and 
half the Commons almost, are Whigs, and the 
number daily increases:" — And, among in- 
numerable other proofs, by the memorable 
verses on Whitehall, in which, alluding to the 
execution of King Charles in front of that 
building, he is pleased to say, with more zeal 
than good prosody, • 

" That theatre produced an action truly great, 
On which eternal acclamations wait," &c. 

Such being the principles, by the zealous 
profession of which he had first obtained dis- 
tinction and preferment, and been admitted 
to the friendship of such men as Somers, Ad- 
dison, and Steele, it only remains to be seen 
on what Occasion, and on what considerations, 
he afterwards renounced them. It is, of itself, 
a tolerably decisive fact, that this change 
took place just when the Whig ministry went 
out of power, and their adversaries came into 
full possession of all the patronage and inter- 
est of the government. The whole matter, 
however, is fairly spoken out in various parts 
of his own writings : — and we do not believe 
there is anywhere on record a more barefaced 
avowal of political apostasy, undisguised and 
un palliated by the slightest colour or pretence 
of public or conscientious motives. It is quite 
a singular fact, we believe, in the history of 
this sort of conversion, that he nowhere pre- 
tends to say that he had become aware of any 
danger to the country from the continuance 
of the Whig ministry — nor ever presumes to 
call in question the patriotism or penetration 
of Addison and the rest of his former asso- 
ciates, who remained faithful to their first 
professions. His only apology, in short, for 
this sudden dereliction of the principles 
which he had maintained for near forty years 
—for it was at this ripe age that he got the 
first glimpse of his youthful folly — is a pre- 
tence of ill usage from the party with whom 
he had held them ; a pretence — to say nothing 
of its inherent baseness — which appears to be 
utterly without foundation, and of which it is 
enough to say, that no mention is made, till 
that same party is overthrown. While they 
remain in office, they have full credit for the 
sincerity of their good wishes (see vol. xv. p. 
250. &c. ) : — and it is not till it becomes both 
safe and profitable to abuse them, that we 
hear of their ingratitude. Nay, so critically 
and judiciously timed is this discovery of 
their unworthiness, that, even after the worthy 
author's arrival in London in 1710, when the 
movements had begun which terminated in 
their ruin, he continues, for some months, to 
keep on fair terms with them, and does not 
give way to his well' considered resentment, 
till it is quite apparent that his interest must 
gain by the indulgence. He says, in the 
Journal to Stella, a few days after his arrival, 
* The Wh : gs would gladly lay hold on me, as 
a twig, while they are drowning — and their 
great men are making me their clumsy apolo- 
gies. But my Lord Treasurer (Godolphin) 
leceived me with a great deal of coldness, 
which has enraged me so, that I am almost 
10 



vowing revenge." In a few weeks after- - 
the change being by that time complete — he 
takes his pait definitively, and makes his ap- 
proaches to Harley, in a manner which we 
should really imagine no rot of the present 
day would have confidence enough to imitate. 
In mentioning his first interview with that 
eminent person, he says, " I had prepared 
him before by another hand, where he was 
very intimate, and got myself represented 
(which I might justly do) as one extremely ill 
used by the last .ministry, after some obligation, 
because I refused to go certain lengths they 
would have me." (Vol. xv. p. 350.) About 
the same period, he gives us farther lights 
into the conduct of this memorable conver- 
sion, in the following passages of the Journal. 

" Oct. 7. He (Harley) told me he must bring 
Mr. St. John and me acquainted; and spoke so 
many things of personal kindness and esteem, that 
I am inclined to believe what some friends had told 
me, that he would do every thing to brine vie over. 
He desired me to dine with him on Tuesday; and, 
after four hours being with him, set me down at 
St. James's coffee-house in a Hackney-coach. 

" I must tell you a great piece of refinement in 
Harley. He charged me to come and see him 
often ; I told him I was loath to trouble him, in so 
much business as he had, and desired I might have 
leave to come at his levee ; which he immediately 
refused, and said, ' That was no place ior friends.' 

" I believe never was any thing compassed so 
soon : and purely done by my personal credit with 
Mr. Harley ; who is so excessively obliging, that 1 
know not what to make of it, unless to shew (he ras~ 
cats of the other- party, that they used a man unwor- 
thily v;ho had deserved better. He speaks all the 
kind things of me in the world. — Oct. 14. I stand 
with the new people ten times better than ever I 
did with the old, and forty times more caressed." 
Life, vol.i. p. 126. 

" Nov. 8. Why should the Whigs think I came 
to England to leave them ? But who the devil cares 
what they think I Am 1 under obligations in the 
least to any of them all ? Rot them, ungrateful 
dogs. I will make them repent their usage of me, 
before I leave this place. They say ihe same thing 
here of my leaving the Whigs ; but they own they 
cannot blame me, considering ihe treatment I have 
had," &c. &c. 

If he really ever scrupled about going 
lengths with his Whig friends (which we do 
believe), he seems to have resolved, that his 
fortune should not be hurt by any delicacy of 
this sort in his new connection ; — for he look 
up the cudgels this time with the ferocity of 
a hireling, and the rancour of a renegade. In 
taking upon himself the conduct of the paper 
called '-The Examiner," he gave a new char- 
acter of acrimony and bitterness to the con- 
tention in which he mingled — and not only 
made the most furious and unmeasured at- 
tacks upon the body of the party to which it had 
formerly been his boast that he belonged, but 
singled out, with a sort of savage discourtesy, 
a variety of his former friends and benefac- 
tors, and made them, by name and descrip- 
tion, the objects of the most malignant abuse. 
Lord Somers, Godolphin, Steele, and many 
others with whom he had formerly lived in 
intimacy, and from whom he had received 
obligations, were successively attacked in pub- 
l.c with the most rancorous personalities, and 
often with the falsest insinuations : In short, 



74 



LITERATURE AND BTOGRAPHF. 



as he has himself emphatically expressed it 
in the Journal, he " libelled them all round." 
While he was thus abusing men he could not 
have ceased to esteem, it is quite natural, and 
in course, to find him professing the greatest 
affection for those he hated and despised. A 
thorough partisan is a thorough despiser of 
sincerity ; and no man seems to have got over 
that weakness more completely than the rev- 
erend person before us. In every page of 
the Journal to Stella, we find a triumphant 
statement of things he was writing or saying 
to the people about him, in direct contradic- 
tion to his real sentiments. We may quote a 
line or two from the first passage that pre- 
sents itself. "I desired my Lord Radnor's 
brother to let my lord know I would call on 
him at six, which I did ; and was arguing 
with him three hours to bring h : m over to us ; 
and I spoke so closely, that I believe he will 
be tractable. But he is a scoundrel ; and 
though I said I only talked from my love to him, 
I told a lie ; for I did not care if he ivere hang- 
ed : bat every one gained over is of conse- 
quence.^ — Vol. iii. p. 2. We th/nk there are 
not many even of those who have served a 
regular apprenticeship to corruption and job- 
bing, who could go through their base task 
wi h more coolness and hardihood than this 
pious neophyte. 

These few references are, of themselves, suf- 
ficient to show the spirit and the true motives 
of this derel ot'on of his first principles; and 
seem entirely to exclude the only apology 
which the partiality of his biographer has 
been able to suggest, viz. that though, from 
first to last, a Wh : g in politics, he was all 
along still more zealously a H'gh-Church- 
man as to rel gion ; and left the Whigs merely 
because the Tories seemed more favourable to 
eccles'astical pretensions. It is obvious, how- 
ever, that th's is quite inadmissible. The 
Whigs were as notoriously connected with the 
Low-Church party w r hen he joined and de- 
fended them, as when he deserted and re- 
viled them ; — nor is th's anywhere made the 
specific ground ^ c his revilings. It would not 
have been very easy, indeed, to have asserted 
such a principle as the motive of Irs 1 bels on 
the Earl of Nottingham, who, though a Whig, 
was a zealous H'gh-Churchman, or h : s eulo- 
gies on Bolinsbroke, who was pretty well 
known to be no churchman at all. It is plain, 
indeed, that Swift's H : gh-Church principles 
were all along but a part of his selfishness and 
ambition ; and meant nothing else than a de- 
sire to ra'se the consequence of the order to 
which he happened to belong. If he had 
been a layman, we have no doubt he would 
have treated the pretensions of the priesthood, 
a3 he treated the persons of all priests who 
were opposed to h'm, with the most bitter 
and irreverent disdain. Accordingly, he is so 
far from ever recommpndinjr W r h\u principles 
of government to h ; s H'gh-Chuich friends, or 
from confining h's abuse of the Whigs to their 
tenets in matters ecclesiastical, that he goes 
the whole length of proscribing the party, and 
proposing, with the desperation of a true 
apostate, that the Monarch should be made 



substantially absolute by the assistance of a 
military force, in oider to make it impossible 
that their principles should ever again acquire 
a preponderance in the country. It is impos- 
sible, w r e conceive, to give any other mean- 
ing to the advice contained in his '-Free 
Thoughts on the State of Affairs," which he 
wrote just before the Queen's death, and 
which Bolingbroke himself thought too strong 
for publication, even at that critical period. 
His leading injunction there, is to adopt a sys- 
tem of the most rigorous exclusion of all 
Whigs from every kind of employment ; and 
that, as they cannot be too much or too soon 
disabled, they ought to be proceeded against 
with as strong measures as can possibly con- 
sist with the lenity of our government ; so 
that in no time to come it should be in the 
power of the Crown, even if it washed it, to 
choose an ill majority in the House of Com- 
mons. This great work, he adds very explic- 
itly, could only be w r ell carried on by an^ 
entire new-modelling of the army : and espe- 
cially of the Royal Guards, — which, as they 
then stood, he chooses to allege were fitter to 
guard a prince to the bar of a high court of 
justice, than to secure him on the throne* 
(Vol.v. p. 404.) This, even Mr. Scott is so 
little able to reconcile with the alleged Whig 
principles of his author, that he is forced to 
observe upon it, that it is "daring, uncom- 
promising counsel ; better suited to the genius 
of the man who gave it, than to that of the 
British nation, and most likely, if followed, to 
have led to a civil war." After this admis- 
sion, it really is not very easy to understand 
by what singular stretch of charity the learn- 
ed editor conceives he may consistently hold, 
that Swift was always a good Revolution 
Whig as to politics, and only sided with the 
Tories — reluctantly, we must suppose, and 
with great tenderness to his political oppo- 
nents — out of his overpowering zeal for the 
Church. 

While he thus stooped to the dirtiest and 
most dishonourable part of a partisan's drudge- 
ry, it was not to be expected that he should 
decline any of the mean arts by which a Court 
party may be maintained. Accordingly, we 
find him regular in his attendance upon Mrs. 
Ma sham, the Queen's favourite ; and, after 
reading the contemptuous notices that occur 
of her in some of his Whig letters, as " one 
of the Queen's dressers, who, by^ great in- 
trigue and flattery, had gained an ascendant 
over her," it is very edifying to find him 
writing periodical accounts of the progress of 
her pregnancV; and "praying God to preserve 
her life, which is of great importance to this 
nation," &c. &c. 

A connection thus begun upon an avowed 
dissatisfaction with the reward of former 
services, cannot, with consistency, be sup- 
posed to have had any thing but self-interest 
as its foundation : and though Swift's love of 
power, and especially of the power of wound- 
ing, was probably gratified by his exertions 
in behalf of the triumphant party, no room is 
left for doubting that these exertions were 
substantially prompted by a desire to better 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



75 



his own fortune, and that his opinion of the 
merits of the party depended entirely upon 
their power and apparent inclination to per- 
form this first of all duties. The thing is 
spoken out continually in the confidential 
Journal to Stella: and though he was very 
angry with Harley for offering him a bank 
note for fifty pounds, and refused to be his 
chaplain, this was very plainly because he 
considered these as no sufficient pay for his 
services — by no means because he wished to 
serve without pay. Very soon after his pro- 
fession of Toryism, he writes to Stella — " This 
is the last sally I shall ever make ; but I hope 
it will turn to some account. I have done more 
for these, and I think they are more honest 
than the last." And a little after — " My new 
friends are very kind; and I have promises 
enough. To return without some mark of 
distinction, would look extremely little ; and 
I would likewise gladly be somewhat richer than 
Jen." At last, he seems to have fairly asked 
for the see of Hereford (Vol. xvi. p. 45.); and 
when this is refused, he says. "I dined with 
Lord Treasurer, who chid me for being absent 
three days. Mighty kind with a p — ! Less 
of civility, and more of interest!" At last, 
when the state of the Queen's health made 
the duration of the ministry extremely pre- 
carious, and the support of their friends more 
essential, he speaks out like a true Swiss, and 
tells them that he will run awa)^ and leave 
them, if they do not instantly make a provi- 
sion for him. In the Journal to Stella, he 
writes, that having seen the warrants for three 
deaneries, and none of them for him, he had 
gone to the Lord Treasurer, and " told him I 
had nothing to do but to go back to Ireland 
immediately ; for I could not, with any reputa- 
tion, stay longer here, unless I had something 
honourable immediately given to me. He after- 
wards told me he had stopped the warrants, 
and hoped something might be compassed for 
me," &c. And in the page following we find, 
that all his love for his dear friend the Lord 
Treasurer, would not induce him ever to see 
him again, if he was disappointed in this ob- 
ject cf ambition. "The warrants for the 
deaneries are still stopped, for fear I should 
be gone. Do you think any thing will be 
done ? In the mean time, I prepare fo^my 
journey, and see no great people ; — nor will I 
see Lord Treasurer any more, if I go." (Vol. iii. 
p. 207.) It is under this threat that he extorts 
the Deanery of St. Patrick's, — which he ac- 
cepts with much grumbling and discontent, 
and does not enter into possession till all hope 
of better preferment seems for the time at an 
end. In this extremity he seems resolved, 
however, to make the most of it ; and finding 
that the expenses of his induction and the 
usual payments to government on the occa- 
sion come to a considerable sum, he boldly 
resolves to ask a thousand pounds from the 
ministers, on the score of his past services, in 
order to make himself easy. This he an- 
nounces to Stella soon after the appointment. 
11 1 hope in time they will be persuaded to 
give me some money to clear off these debts. 
They expect I shall pass the next winter 



here ; and then I will drive them to give me a 
sum of money. " And a little altei — •• I shall 
be sadly cramped, unless the Queen will give 
me a thousand pounds. I am sure she owes 
me a great deal more. Lord Treasurer rallies 
me upon it, and, I am sure, intends it — but 
quandoV And again — "Lord Treasurer uses 
me barbarously. He laughs w hen 1 mention a 
thousand pounds — though a thousand pounds 
is a very serious thing." It appears, however, 
that this modest request never was complied 
with; for, though Bolingbroke got the Queen's 
warrant for it, to secure Swift's attachment 
after he had turned out Harley, yet her ma- 
jesty's immediate death rendered the gift 
unavailing. 

If any thing were wanting to show that his 
change" of party and his attachment to that 
which was now uppermost, was wholly foun- 
ded on personal, and in no degree on public 
considerations, it would be supplied by the 
innumerable traits of personal vanity, and the 
unrestrained expressions of eulogy or abuse, 
accoiding as that vanity was gratified or 
thwarted, that are scattered over the whole 
journal and correspondence, — and which are 
utterly irreconcileable w ith the conduct of a 
man who was acting on any principle of dig- 
nity or fairness. With all his talent and all 
his pride, indeed, it appears that Swift ex- 
hibited, during this period of favour, as much 
of the ridiculous airs of a parvenu — of a low- 
bred underling brought suddenly into contact 
with wealth and splendour, as any of the base 
understrappers that ever made party disgust- 
ing. The studied rudeness and ostentatious 
arrogance with which he withheld the usual 
tribute of respect that all well-bred persons 
pay to rank and office, may be reckoned 
among the signs of this. But for a fuller pic- 
ture, w r e would refer to the Diary of Bishop 
Kennet, who thus describes the demeanour 
of this politic partisan in the year 1713. 

" Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a 
how from every hody hut me. W hen I came to 
the aniichamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift 
was the principal man of talk and business, and 
acted as a master of requests. He was soliciting 
the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother i lie Duke 
of Ormond, to eret a chaplain's place established in 
the garrison of Hull for Mr. Fiddes. a clergyman in 
that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and 
published sermons to pay fees. He was promising 
Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord '1 reasurer, 
that, according to his petition, he should obtain a 
salary of 2007. per annum as minister of the English 
church at Rotterdam. He stopped t'. Gwynne, 
Esq., going in with the red bag to. the Queen, and 
told him aloud he had something to say to him from 
my Lord Treasurer. He talked with the son of 
Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out his 
pocket-book, and wrote down several things, as 
memoranda, to do for him. He turned to the fire, 
and took out his gold watch, and telling the time of 
the day, complained it was very late. A gentleman 
said 'he was too fast.' — ' How can I help i',' says 
the doctor, 'if the courtiers give me a watch that 
won't go right?' Then he instructed a young no- 
bleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. 
Pope (a papist), who had begun a translation of 
Homer into English verse, for which ' he must have 
them all subscribe;' — 'for,' says he, 'the author 
shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas 
for him.' Lord Treasurer, alter leaving the Queen, 



76 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



cam« through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to 
follow him: both went off just before prayers." — 
Life, vol. i. p. 139, 140. 

We are very unwilling, in any case, to as- 
cribe to unworthy motives, what may be suf- 
ficiently accounted for upon better considera- 
tions; but we really have not charity enough 
to impute Swift's zealous efforts to prevent the 
rupture between Harley and Bolingbroke, or 
his continued friendship with both after that 
rupture took place, to his personal and disin- 
terested affection for those two individuals. 
In the first place, he had a most manifest in- 
terest to prevent their disunion, as that which 
plainly tended to the entire dissolution of the 
ministry, and the ruin of the party on which 
he depended; and, as to his remaining the 
friend of both after they had become the most 
rancorous enemies of each other, it must be 
remembered that they were still respectively 
the two most eminent individuals with whom 
he had been connected; and that, if ever that 
party should be restored to power, from which 
alone he could now look for preferment, he 
who stood well with both these statesmen 
would have a double chance of success. Con- 
sidering, indeed, the facility with which he 
Beems to have cast off friendships far more 
intimate than the inequality of their condition 
renders it possible that those of Oxford or Bo- 
lingbroke could be with him, whenever party 
interest interfered with them; — considering 
the disrespect with which he spoke of Sir 
William Temple's memory, after he had ab- 
jured his principles; — the coarseness with 
which he calls Lord Somers "a false deceit- 
ful rascal," after having designated him as the 
modern Aristides, for his blameless integrity; 
— and tne unfeeling rancour with which he 
exposes the personal failings and pecuniary 
embarrassments of Steele, with whom he had 
been long so closely united ; — it would seem 
to require something more than the mere per- 
sonal attachment of a needy pamphleteer to 
two rival peers, to account for his expressions 
of affection for both, after one had supplanted 
the other. The natural solution, indeed, 
seems to lie sufficiently open. After the per- 
fidy he had shown to the Whig party, and the 
virulence with which he had revenged his 
own apostasy, there was no possibility of his 
being again received by them. His only 
chance, therefore, was in the restoration of the 
Tories, and his only policy to keep well with 
both their great leaders. 

Mr. Scott, indeed, chooses to represent him 
as actuate 1 by a romantic attachment to Lord 
Oxford, and pronounces an eloquent encomium 
on his devoted generosity in applying for 
leave of absence, upon that nobleman's dis- 
grace, in order to be able to visit him in his 
retirement. Though he talks of such a visit, 
however, it is certain that he never did pay 
it; and that he was all the time engaged in 
the most friendly correspondence with Bo- 
lingbroke, from whom the very day after he 
had kickeu out his dear friend with the most 
undisguised anger and contempt, he conde- 
scended to receive an order for the thousand 
pounds he had so long solicited from his pre- 



decessor in vain. The following, too, are the 
terms in which Bolingbroke, at that very time, 
thought there was no impropriety, and could 
be no offence, in writing of Oxford, in a pri- 
vate confidential letter to this his dear de- 
voted friend. "Your state of late passages is 
right enough. I reflect upon them with in- 
dignation; and shall never forgive myself for 
having trusted so long to so much real pride 
and awkward humility; — to an air of such fa- 
miliar friendship, and a heart so void of all 
tenderness; — to such a temper of engrossing 
business and power, and so perfect an inca- 
pacity to manage one, with such a tyrannical 
disposition to abuse the other," &c. &c. (Vol. 
xvi. p. 219.) If Swift's feelings for Oxford had 
borne any resemblance to those which Mr. 
Scott has imputed to him, it is not conceiv- 
able that he should have continued upon a 
footing of the greatest cordiality with the man 
who. after supplanting him, could speak in 
those terms of his fallen rival. Yet Swift's 
friendship, as they called it, with Bolingbroke, 
continued as long as that with Oxford, and 
we find him not only giving him his advice 
how to act in the government which had now 
fallen entirely into his hands, but kindly of- 
fering, "if his own services may be of any 
use, to attend him by the beginning of win- 
ter." (Id. p. 215.) Those who know of what 
stuff political friendships are generally made, 
indeed, will not require even this evidence to 
prove the hollowness of those in which Swift 
was now connected. The following passage, 
in a letter from Lewis, the most intimate and 
confidential of all his coadjutors, dated only a 
week or two before Oxford's disgrace, gives a 
delicious picture, we think, of the whole of 
those persons for whom the learned Dean was 
thus professing the most disinterested attach- 
ment, and receiving, no doubt, in return, pro- 
fessions not less animated and sincere. It is 
addressed to Swift in July, 1714. 

"I meet with no man or woman, who pretend 
upon any probable grounds to judge who will carry 
the great point. Our female friend (Mrs Masham) 
told ihe dragon (Lord Oxford) in her own house, 
last Thursday morning, these words: 'You never 
did the Queen any service, nor are you capable of 
doing her any.' He made no reply, but supped 
with her and Mercurialis (Bolingbroke) that night 
at, hWovm house. — His revengeis not the less medi' 
fated for that. He tetts the words clearly and dis- 
tinct ly to all mankind. Those who range under his 
banner, call her ten thousand bitches and hitchen- 
wcnches. Those who hate him do the same. And 
from my heart, I grieve that she should give such 
a loose to her passion ; for she is susceptible of true 
friendship, and has many social and domestic vir- 
tues. The great attorney (Lord Chancellor Har- 
cour;) who made you the sham offer of the York- 
shire living, had a long conference with the dragon 
on Thursday, hissed him at parting, and cursed him 
at night!" — vol. xvi. p. 173, 174. 

The death of Queen Anne, however, which 
happened on the 1st of August thereafter, 
speedily composed all those dissensions, and 
confounded the victors and the vanquished in 
one common proscription. Among the most 
miserable and downcast of all the mourners 
on that occasion, we confess we were some- 
what surprised to find our reverend author. 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



77 



He who, but a few months before, was willing 
to have hazarded all the horrors of a civil war, 
for the chance of keeping his party in office, 
sunk instantly into pitiable and unmanly des- 
pondency upon the final disgrace of that party. 
We are unwilling to believe, and we do not 
m fact believe, that Swift was privy to the de- 
signs of Bolingbroke, Ormond, and Mar, to 
bring in the Pretender on the Queen's demise, 
and are even disposed to hold it doubtful 
whether Oxford concurred in those measures; 
but we are sure that no man of common firm- 
ness could have felt more sorrow and despair, 
if the country had been conquered by a law- 
less invader, than this friend of the Act of 
Settlement did upon the quiet and regular 
transmission of the sceptre to the appointed 
heir ; and the discomfiture of those ministers 
who are proved to have traitorously conspired 
to accomplish a counter revolution, and re- 
store a dynasty which he always affected to 
consider as justly rejected. How all this sor- 
row is to be reconciled to the character of a 
good Revolution Whig, we leave it to the 
learned editor, who has invested him with 
that character, to discover. To us it merely 
affords new evidence of the selfishness and 
ambition of the individual, and of that utter 
and almost avowed disregard of the public, 
which constituted his political character. Of 
the sorrow and despondency itself, we need 
produce no proofs, — for they are to be found 
in every page of his subsequent writings. 
His whole life, indeed, after this event, was 
one long fit of spleen and lamentation : and, 
to the very end of his days, he never ceases 
bewailing the irreparable and grievous calam- 
ity v/hich the world had suffered in the death 
of that most imbecile princess. He speaks 
of it. in short, throughout, as a pious divine 
might be supposed to speak of the fall of 
primeval man from the state of innocence. 
The sun seems darkened for ever in his eyes, 
and mankind degenerated beyond the tolera- 
tion of one who w r as cursed with the remem- 
brance of their former dignity ! And all this 
for what 1 — because the government was, with 
the full assent of the nation, restored to the 
hands of those whose talents and integrity he 
had once been proud to celebrate — or rather, 
because it was taken from those who would 
have attempted, at the evident risk of a civil 
war, to defeat that solemn settlement of which 
he had always approved, and in virtue of 
which alone the late Sovereign had succeed- 
ed ; — because the liberties of the nation were 
again to be secured in peace, under the same 
•councils which had carried its glories so high 
in war — and the true friends of the Revolution 
of 1688 to succeed to that patronage which 
had previously been exercised by its virtual 
enemies ! Such were the public calamities 
which he had to lament as a patriot ; — and 
the violence done to his political attachments 
seems to have been of the same character. 
His two friends were Bolingbroke and Ox- 
ford : and both these had been abusing each 
other, and endeavouring to supplant each 
other, with all their might, for a long period 
of "time ; — and, at last, one of them did this 



good office for the other, in the most insult- 
ing and malignant manner he could devise: 
and yet the worthy Dean had charity enough 
to love them both just as dearly as ever. He 
was always a zealous advocate, too, for the 
Act of Settlement; and has in twenty places 
expressed his abomination of all who could 
allow themselves to think of the guilt of call- 
ing in the Pretender. If, therefore, he could 
love and honour and flatter Bolingbicke, who 
not only turned out his beloved Oxford, but 
actually went over to the Pretender, it is not 
easy to see why he should have been so im- 
placable towards those older friends of his, 
who only turned out Bolingbroke in order to 
prevent the Pretender from being brought in. 
On public grounds, in short, there is nothing 
to be said for him ; — nor can his conduct or 
feelings ever receive any explanation upon 
such principles. But every thing becomes 
plain and consistent when we look to another 
quarter — when we consider, that by the ex- 
tinction of the Tory party, his hopes of pre- 
ferment were also extinguished ; and that he 
was no* longer to enjoy the dearer delight of 
bustling in the front of a triumphant party — 
of inhaling the incense of adulation from its 
servile dependants — and of insulting with im- 
punity the principles and the benefactors he 
had himself deserted. 

That this was the true key to his feelings, 
on this and on every other occasion, may be 
concluded indeed with safety, not only from 
his former, but from his after life. His Irish 
politics may all be referred to one principle — 
a desire to insult and embarrass the govern- 
ment by which he was neglected, and with 
which he despaired of being reconciled : — A 
single fact is decisive upon this point. While 
his friends were in power, we hear nothing 
of the grievances of Ireland; and to the last 
we hear nothing of its radical grievance, the 
oppression of its Catholic population. His 
object was, not to do good to Ireland, but to 
vex and annoy the English ministry. To do 
this however with effect, it was necessary 
that he should speak to the interests and the 
feelings of some party who possessed a cer- 
tain degree of power and influence. This 
unfortunately was not the case in that day 
with the Catholics ; and though this gave them 
only a stronger title to the services of a truly 
brave or generous advocate, it was sufficient 
to silence Swift. They are not so much as 
named above two or three times in his writ- 
ings — and then only with scorn and reproba- 
tion. In the topics which he does take up, it 
is no doubt true, that he frequently inveighs 
against real oppression and acts of indisput- 
able impolicy; yet it is no want of charity to 
say, that it is quite manifest that these were 
not his reasons for bringing them forward, and 
that he had just as little scruple to make an 
outcry, where no public interest was concern- 
ed, as where it w T as apparent. It was suffi- 
cient for him, that the subject was likely to 
excite popular prejudice and clamour, — or 
that he had some personal pique or animosity 
to gratify. The Drapier's letters are a suffi 
cient proof of the influence of the former 

Ql 



78 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



principle ; and the Legion Club, and the num- 
berless brutalities against Tighe and Bettes- 
worth, of the latter. Every body is now 
satisfied of the perfect harmlessness, and in- 
deed of the great utility of Wood's scheme 
for a new copper coinage ; and the only pre- 
texts for the other scurrilities to which we 
have alluded were, that the Parliament had 
shown a disposition, to interfere for the alle- 
viation, in some inconsiderable particulars, of 
the intolerable oppression of the tithe system, 
— to the detriment, as Swift imagined, of the 
order to which he himself belonged ; and that 
Mr. Tighe had obtained for a friend of his 
own, a living which Swift had wished to se- 
cure for one of his dependants. 

His main object in all this, we make no 
doubt, was personal pique and vengeance; — 
yet it is probable, that there was occasionally, 
or throughout, an expectation of being again 
brought into the paths of power and prefer- 
ment, by the notoriety which these publica- 
tions enabled him to maintain, and by the 
motives which they held out to each succes- 
sive ministry, to secure so efficient a pen in 
their favour. That he was willing to have 
made his peace with Walpole, even during 
the reign of George I., is admitted by Mr. 
Scott, — though he discredits the details which 
Lord Chesterfield and others have given, ap- 

Earently from very direct authority, of the 
umiliating terms upon which he was willing 
to accede to the alliance ; — and it is certain, 
that he paid his court most assiduously to the 
successor of that Prince, both while he was 
Prince of Wales, and after his accession to 
the throne. The manner in which he paid 
his court, too, was truly debasing, and espe- 
cially unworthy of a High-Churchman and a 
public satirist. It was chiefly by flatteries 
and assiduity to his mistress, Mrs. Howard ! 
with whom he maintained a close correspond- 
ence, and upon whom he always professed 
mainly to rely for advancement. When 
George I. died, Swift was among the first to 
kiss the hands of the new sovereign, and in- 
dulged anew in the golden dreams of prefer- 
ment. Walpole's recal to power, however, 
60on overcast those visions; and he then wrote 
to the mistress, humbly and earnestly entreat- 
ing her, to tell him sincerely what were his 
chances of success. She flattered him for 
a while with hopes; but at last he discovered 
that the prejudice against him was too strong 
to be overcome; and ran back in terrible hu- 
mour to Ireland, where he railed ever after 
with his usual vehemence against the King, 
the Queen, and the concubine. The truth, it 
seems, was, that the latter was disposed to fa- 
vour him ; but that her influence with the King 
was subordinate to that of the Queen, who 
made it a principle to thwart all applications 
which were made through that channel. 

Such, we think, is a faithful sketch of the 
political career of this celebrated person; — 
and if it be correct in the main, or even in 
any material particulars, we humbly conceive 
that a more unprincipled and base course of 
proceeding never was held up to the scorn 
and ridicule of mankind. To the errors and 



even the inconsistencies of honest minds, w« 
hope we shall always be sufficiently indulgent ; 
and especially to such errors in practical life 
as are incident to literary and ingenious men. 
For Swift, however, there is no such apology. 
His profession, through life, was much moie 
that of a politician than of a clergyman or an 
author. He was not led away in any degree 
by heated fancy, or partial affection— by de- 
luding visions of impossible improvements, or 
excessive indignation at incurable vices. He 
followed, from first to last, the eager, but 
steady impulse of personal ambition and per- 
sonal animosity; and in the dirty and devious 
career into which they impelled him, he never 
spared the character or the feelings of a single 
individual who appeared to stand in his way. 
In no respect, therefore, can he have any 
claim to lenity; — and now, when his faults 
are of importance only as they may serve the 
purpose of warning or misleading to others, 
we consider it as our indispensable duty to 
point them out in their true colours; and to 
show that, even when united to talents as 
distinguished as his, political profligacy and 
political rancour must lead to universal dis- 
trust and avoidance during the life of the in- 
dividual, and to contempt and infamy there- 
after. 

Of Swift's personal character, his ingenious 
biographer has given almost as partial a rep- 
resentation, as of his political conduct; — a 
great part of it indeed has been anticipated, 
in tracing the principles of that conduct; — 
the same arrogance and disdain of mankind, 
leading to profligate ambition and scurrility in 
public life, and to domineering and selfish 
habits in private. His character seems to have 
been radically overbearing and tyrannical ; — 
for though, like other tyrants, he could stoop 
low enough where his interests required it, it 
was his delight to exact an implicit compli- 
ance with his humours and fancies, and to 
impose upon all around him the task of ob- 
serving and accommodating themselves to his 
habits, without the slightest regard to their 
convenience or comfort. Wherever he came, 
the ordinary forms of society were to give way 
to his pleasure; and every thing, even to the 
domestic arrangements of a family, to be sus- 
pended for his caprice. — If he was to be intro- 
duced to a person of rank, he insisted that the 
first advances and the first visit should be made 
to him. If he went to see a friend in the coun- 
try, he would order an old tree to be cut down, 
if it obstructed the view from his window — and 
was never at his ease unless he was allowed 
to give nicknames to the lady of the house, 
and make lampoons upon her acquaintance. 
On going for the first time into any family, he 
frequently prescribed beforehand the hours 
for their meals, sleep, and exercise : and in- 
sisted rigorously upon the literal fulfilment of 
the capitulation. From his intimates he uni- 
formly exacted the most implicit submission 
to all his whims and absurdities; and carried 
his prerogative so far, that he sometimes used 
to chase the Grattans and other accommodating 
friends, through the apartments of the Dean- 
ery, and up and down stairs, driving them like 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



79 



horses, with a large whip, till he thought he 
had enough of exercise. All his jests have 
the same character of insolence and coarse- 
ness. When he first came to his curate's 
house, he announced himself as " his mas- 
ters'—took possession of the fireside, and or- 
dered his wife to take charge of his shirts and 
stockings. When a young clergyman was in- 
troduced to him, he offered him the dregs of 
a bottle of wine, and said, he always kept a 
poor parson about him to drink up his dregs. 
Even in hiring servants, he always chose to 
insult, them, by inquiring into their qualifica- 
tions for some filthy and degrading office. 
And though it may be true, that his after 
conduct was not exactly of a piece with those 
preliminaries; it is obvious, that as no man of 
proper feelings could submit to such imperti- 
nence, so no man could have a right to indulge 
in it. Even considered merely as a manner 
assumed to try the character of those with 
whom he lived, it was a test which no one 
but a tyrant could imagine himself entitled to 
apply ; — and Swift's practical conclusion from 
it was just the reverse of what might be ex- 
pected. He attached himself to those only 
who were mean enough to bear this usage, 
and broke with all who resented it. While 
he had something to gain or to hope from the 
world, he seems to have been occasionally 
less imperious : but, after he retired to Ireland. 
he gave way without restraint to the native 
arrogance of his character ; and, accordingly, 
confined himself almost entirely to the society 
of a few easy-tempered persons, who had no 
talents or pretensions to come in competition 
with his : and who, for the honour of his ac- 
quaintance, were willing to submit to the do- 
minion he usurped. 

A singular contrast to the rudeness and ar- 
rogance of this behaviour to his friends and 
dependants, is afforded by the instances of 
extravagant adulation and base humility, 
which occur in his addresses to those upon 
whom his fortune depended. After he gets 
into the society of Bolingbroke and Oxford, 
and up to the age of forty, these are composed 
in something of a better taste ; but the true 
models are to be found in his addresses to Sir 
William Temple, the first and most honoured 
of his patrons, upon whose sickness and re- 
covery he has indited a heroic epistle and a 
Pindaric ode, more fulsome and extravagant 
than any thing that had then proceeded from 
the pen even of a poet-laureate ; and to whom, 
after he had left his family in bad humour, 
he sends a miserable epistle, entreating a cer- 
tificate of character, in terms which are scarce- 
ly consistent with the consciousness of de- 
serving it ; and are, at all events, infinitely 
inconsistent with the proud and peremptory 
tone which he assumed to those who would 
bear with it. A few lines may be worth 
quoting. He was then full twenty-seven years 
of age, and a candidate for ordination. After 
explaining this, he adds — 

"I entreat that your honour will consider this, 
and will please to send me some certificate of my 
behaviour during almost three years in your family; 
wherein I shall stand in na 3d of all your goodness to 



excuse my many weaknesses and oversights, much 
more to say any thing to my advantage. The par- 
ticulars expected of me are what relate to morals 
and learning, and the reasons of quitting your 
honour's family, that is, whether the last was oc- 
casioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely 
to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think 
I cannot reproach myself any farther than for in- 
firmities. 

" This is all I dare beg at present from your honour, 
under circumstances of life not worth your regard. 
What is led me to wish (next to the health and pros- 
perity of your honour and family), is, that Heaven 
would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving 
my acknowledgments at your feet lor so many fa- 
vours I have received ; which, whatever effect they 
have had upon my fortune, shall never fail to have 
the greatest upon my mind, in approving myself, 
upon all occasions, your honour's most obedient 
and most dutiful servant." — Vol. xv. pp. 230, 231. 

By far the most characteristic, and at the 
same time most discreditable and most inter- 
esting part of Swift's history, however, is that 
which relates to his connection with the three 
unfortunate women, whose happiness he ru- 
ined, and whose reputation he did what was 
in him to destroy. We say, the three women 
— for though Varina was cast off* before he 
had fame or practice enough in composition 
to celebrate her in song, like Stella or Vanessa, 
her injuries seem to have been nearly as great, 
and altogether as unpardonable as those of the 
other two. Soon after leaving college, he 
appears to have formed, or at best professed, 
an attachment to a Miss Jane Waryng, the 
sister of a fellow-student, to whom his assidu- 
ities seemed to have rendered him acceptable, 
and with whom he corresponded for a series 
of years, under the preposterous name of Va- 
rina. There appear to be but two letters of this 
correspondence preserved, both written by 
Swift, one in the height of his passion, and 
the other in its decline — and both extremely 
characteristic and curious. The first is dated 
in 1696, and is chiefly remarkable for its ex- 
treme badness and stupidity; though it is full 
enough of love and lamentation. The lady, 
it seems, had long before confessed a mutual 
flame; but prudential considerations made 
her averse to an immediate union, — upon 
which the lover raves and complains in the 
following deplorable sentences, — written, it 
will be observed, when he was on the borders 
of thirty, and proving, along with his earty 
poems, how very late he came to the use of 
his faculties. 

" Madam — Impatience is the most inseparable 
quality of a lover, and indeed of every person who 
is in pursuit of a design whereon he conceives his 
greatest happiness or misery to depend. It is the 
same thing in war, in courts, and in common busi- 
ness. Every one who hunts after pleasure, or fame, 
or fortune, is still restless and uneasy till he has 
hunted down his game; and all this is not only 
very natural, but something reasonable too: for a 
violent desire is little better than a distemper, and 
therefore men are not to blame in looking after 
a cure. / find myself hugely infected with this 
malady, and am easily vain enough to believe it 
has some very good reasons to excuse it. For in- 
deed, in my case, there are some circumstances 
which will admit pardon for more than ordinary 
disquiets. That dearest object upon which all 
my prospect of happiness entirely depends, is in 
perpetual danger to be removed fur ever from my 



ao 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



eight. Varina's life is daily wasting ; and though 
one just and honourable action would furnish heahh 
to her, and unspeakable happiness to us both, yet 
some power that repines at human felicity lias that 
influence to hold her continually doating upon her 
cruelly, and me on the cause of it. 

" Would 10 Heaven you were but a while sensi- 
ble of the thoughts into which my present distrac- 
tions plunge me ; they hale me a thousand ivays, 
and I not aide to bear them. It is so, by Heaven: 
The love of Varina is of more tragical consequence 
than her cruelty. Would to God you had treated 
and scorned me from the beginning. It was your 
pity opened the first way to my misfortune ; "and 
now your love is finishing my ruin: and is it so 
then ? In one fortnight I must take eternal farewell 
of Varina: and (I wonder) will she weep at part- 
ing, a little to justify her poor pretences of some 
affection to me ? 

"Surely, Varina, you have but a very mean 
opinion of (he joys that accompany a true, honour- 
able, unlimited love ; yet either nature and our an- 
cestors have highly deceived us, or else all other 
sublunary things are dross in comparison. Is it 
possible you can be yet insensible to the prospect 
of a rapture and delight so innocent and so exalted ? 
By Heaven. Varina, you are more experienced and 
have less virgin innocence than I. Would not your 
conduct make one think you were hugely skilled 
in all the little politic methods of intrigue? Love, 
with the gall of too much discretion, is a thousand 
times worse than with none at all. It is a peculiar 
part of nature which art debauches, but cannot 
improve. 

" Farewell, madam ; and may love make you a 
while forget your temper to do me justice. Only 
remember, that if you still refuse to be mine, you 
will quickly lose, for ever lose, him that has resolved 
to die as he has livid, all yours, Jox. Swift." — 
Vol. xv. pp. 232—237. 

Notwithstanding these tragic denunciations, 
he neither died — nor married — nor broke off 
the connection, for four years thereafter; in 
the latter part of which, having been at last 
presented to two livings in Ireland, worth 
near 400?. a year, the lady seems to have 
been reduced to remind him of his former 
impatience, and fairly to ask him, whether 
his affections had suffered any alteration. His 
answer to this appeal is contained in the 
second letter; — and is, we think, one of the 
most complete patterns of meanness, selfish- 
ness, and brutality, we have ever met with. 
The truth undoubtedly was, that his affections 
were estranged, and had probably settled by 
this time on the unfortunate Stella: but in- 
stead of either fairly avowing this inconstancy, 
or honourably fulfilling engagements, from 
which inconstancy perhaps could not release 
him, he thinks fit to write, in the most frigid, 
insolent, and hypocritical terms, undervaluing 
her fortune and person, and finding fault with 
her humour ; — and yet pretending, that if she 
would only comply with certain conditions 
which he specifies, he might still be persuaded 
to venture himself with her into the perils of 
matrimony. It will be recollected, that when 
he urged immediate marriage so passionately 
in 1696, he had no provision in the world, and 
must have intended to live on her fortune, 
which yielded about 100Z. a year, and that he 
thought her health as well as happiness would 
be saved by the match. In 1700, when he 
had got two livings, he addresses her as fol- 
lows — 

"I desire, therefore, you will let me know if 



your health be otherwise than it was when you 
told me the doctors advised you against marriage, 
as what would certainly hazard your life. Are 
they or you grown of another opinion in this partic- 
ular? are you iti a condition to manage domestic 
affairs, with an income of less (perhaps) than 300/. 
a-year ? (it must have been near 500Z.) have you 
such an inclination to my person and humour, as 
to comply with my desires and way of living, and 
endeavour to make us both as happy as you can ? 
can you bend your love and esteem aiid indifference 
to others the same way as I do mine ? shall I have 
so much power in your heart, or you so much gov- 
ernment of your passions, as to grow in good 
humour upon my approach, though provoked by a 

? have you so much good nature as to 

endeavour by soft words to smooth any rugged 
humour occasioned by the cross accidents of life ? 
shall the place wherever your husband is thrown 
be more welcome than courts or cities without 
him ? In short, these are some of the necessary me- 
thods to please men, who, like me, are deep read in 
the vjorld ; and to a perso?i thus made, 1 should be 
proud i?i giving all due returns towards mak'mg 
her happy." — Vol. xv. pp. 247, 248. 

He then tells her, that if every thing else 
were suitable, he should not care whether 
her person were beautiful, or her fortune large. 

" Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the 
other, is all I look for. I desire, indeed, a plentiful 
revenue, but would rather it should be of my own ; 
though I should bear from a wife to be reproached 
for the greatest," — Vol. xv. pp. 218. 

To complete the picture of his indifference, 
or rather his ill-disguised disinclination, he 
adds — 

" The dismal account you say I have given you 
of my livings I can assure you to be a true one; 
and, since it is a dismal one even in your own 
opinion, you can best draw consequences from it. 
The place where Dr. Bolton lived is upon a living 
which he keeps with the deanery; but the place 
of residence for that they have given me is within 
a mile of a town called Trim, twenty miles from 
hence; and there is no other way but to hire a 
house at Trim, or build one on the spot : the first 
is hardly to be done, and the other I am too poor to 
perform at present." — Vol. xv. p. 246. 

The lady, as was to be expected, broke off 
all correspondence after this letter — and so 
ended Swift's first matrimonial engagement, 
and first eternal passion ! — What became of 
the unhappy person, whom he thus heartlessly 
abandoned, with impaired health, and morti- 
fied affections, after a seven-years' courtship, 
is nowhere explained. The fate of his next 
victim is at least more notorious. 

Esther Johnson, better known to the reader 
of Swift's works by the name of Stella, was 
the child of a London merchant, who died ir. 
her infancy ; when she went with her mother, 
who was a friend of Sir W. Temple's sister, 
to reside at Moorpark, where Swift was then 
domesticated. Some part of the charge of her 
education devolved upon him; — and though 
he was twenty years her senior, the interest 
with which he regarded her. appears to have 
ripened into something as much like affection 
as could find a place in his selfish bosom. 
Soon after Sir William's death, he got his 
Irish livings, besides a considerable legacy ; — 
and as she had a small independence of her 
own, it is obvious that there was nothing to 
prevent their honourable and immediate union. 
Some cold-blooded vanity or ambition, how- 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



ever, or some politic anticipation of his own 
possible inconstancy, deterred him from this 
onward and open course ; and led him to an 
arrangement which was dishonourable and 
absurd in the beginning, and in the end pro- 
ductive of the most accumulated misery. He 
prevailed upon her to remove her residence 
from the bosom of her own family in Eng- 
land, to his immediate neighbourhood in Ire- 
land, where she took lodgings with an elderly 
companion, of the name of Mrs. Dingley — 
avowedly for the sake of his society and pro- 
tection, and on a footing of intimacy so very 
strange and unprecedented, that whenever he 
left his parsonage house for England or Dub- 
lin, these ladies immediately took possession, 
and occupied it till he came back. — A situa- 
tion so extraordinary and undefined, was liable 
of course to a thousand misconstructions ; and 
must have been felt as degrading by any 
woman of spirit and delicacy : and accord- 
ingly, though the master of this Platonic se- 
raglio seems to have used all manner of paltrj' 
and insulting practices, to protect a reputation 
which he had no right to bring into question, 
— by never seeing her except in the presence 
of Mrs. Dingley, and never sleeping under 
the same roof with her, — it is certain both 
that the connection was regarded as indeco- 
rous by persons of her own sex, and that she 
herself felt it to be humiliating and improper. 
Accordingly, within two years after her set- 
tlement iii Ireland, it appears that she encou- 
raged the addresses of a clergyman of the 
name of Tisdall, between whom and Swift 
there was a considerable intimacy; and that 
she would have married him, and thus sacri- 
ficed her earliest attachment to her freedom 
and her honour, had she not been prevented 
by the private dissuasions of that false friend, 
who did not choose to give up his own claims 
to her, although he had not the heart or the 
Honour to make her lawfully his own. She 
was then a blooming beauty, of little more 
than twenty, with fine black hair, delicate 
features, and a playful and affectionate char- 
acter. It seems doubtful to us, whether she 
originally felt for Swift any thing that could 
properly be called love — and her willingness 
to marry another in the first days of their 
connection, seems almost decisive on the 
subject : but the ascendancy he had acquired 
over her mind, and' her long habit of submit- 
ting her own judgment and inclinations to 
his, gave him at least an equal power over 
her, and moulded her pliant affections into 
too deep and exclusive a devotion. Even 
before his appointment to the Deanery of St. 
Patrick's, it is utterly impossible to devise 
any apology for his not marrying her, or allow- 
ing her to marry another ; the only one that 
lie ever appears to have stated himself, viz. 
the want of a sufficient fortune to sustain the 
expenses of matrimony, being palpably absurd 
in the mouth of a man born to nothing, and 
already more wealthy than nine-tenths of his 
order: but, after he obtained that additional 
preferment, and was thus ranked among the 
well beneficed dignitaries of the establish- 1 
inentj it was plainly an insult upon common [ 
11 



sense to pretend that it was the want of mo- 
ney that prevented him from fulfilling hia 
engagements. Stella was then twenty-six, 
and he near forty-five ; -and both had hitherto 
lived very far within an income that was now 
more than doubled. That she now expected 
to be made his wife, appears from the pains 
he takes in the Journal indirectly to destroy 
that expectation; and though the awe in 
which he habitually kept her, probably pre- 
vented her either from complaining, or in- 
quiring into the cause, it is bow certain that 
a new attachment, as heartless, as unprinci- 
pled, and as fatal in its consequences as either 
of the others, was at the bottom of this cruel 
and unpardonable proceeding. 

During his residence in London, from 1710 
to 1712, he had leisure, in the intervals of his 
political labours, to form the acquaintance of 
Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whose unfortunate 
love he has recorded, with no great delicacy, 
under the name of Vanessa. This young- 
lady, then only in her twentieth year, joined 
to all the attractions of youth, fashion, and 
elegance, the still more dangerous gifts of a 
lively imagination, a confiding temper, and a 
capacity of strong and permanent affection — 
Swift, regardless of the ties which bound him 
to Stella, allowed himself to be engaged by 
those qualities; and, without explaining the 
nature of those ties to his new idol, strove by 
his assiduities to obtain a return of affection — 
while he studiously concealed from the un- 
happy Stella the wrong he was conscious of 
doing her. We willingly borrow the words 
of his partial biographer, to tell the rest of a 
story, which, we are afraid, we should tell 
with little temper ourselves. 

"While Vanessa was occupying much of his 
time, and much doubtless of his thoughts, she is 
never once mentioned in the Journal directly by 
name, and is only twice casually indicated by the 
title of Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter. There was, 
therefore, a consciousness on Swift's part, that his 
atiachment to his younger pupil was of a nature 
which could not be grat Hying to her predecessor, 
although he probably shut his own eyes to me con- 
sequences of an intimacy which he wished to con- 
ceal from those of Stella. Miss Vanhomrigh, in 
the mean while, conscious of the pleasure which 
Swift received from her society, and of the advan- 
tages of youth and fortune which she possessed, 
and ignorant of the peculiar circumstances in which 
he stood with respect to another, naturally, and 
surely without offence either to reason or virtue, 
gave way to the hope of forming an union with a 
man whose talents had first attracted her admira- 
tion, and whose attentions, in the course of their 
mutual studies, had, by degrees, gained her affec- 
tions, and seemed to warrant his own. The friends 
continued to use the language of friendship, bin 
with the assiduity and earnestness of a warmer 
passion, until Vanessa rent asunder the veil, by in 
timaiing to Swift the state of her affections ; and in 
this, as she conceived, she was justified by his own 
favourite, though dangerous maxim, of doing that 
which seems in itself right, without respect to the 
common opinion of the world. We cannot doubt 
that he actually felt the ' shame, disappointment, 
guilt, surprise,' expressed in his celebrated poem, 
though he had not courage to take the open and 
manly course of avowing those engagements with 
Stella, or other impediments which prevented him 
from accepting the hand and fortune of her rival.— 
Without, therefore, making this painful but just 



92 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



confession, he answered the avowal of Vanessa's 
passion, at first in raillery, and afterwards by an 
ofTer of devoted and everlasiing friendship, founded 
on the basis of virtuous esteem. Vanessa seems 
neither to have been contented nor silenced by the 
result of her declaration; but to the very close of 
her life persisted in endeavouring, by entreaties and 
arguments, to extort a more lively return to her 
passion, than this cold proffer was calculated to 
dFord. 

"The effect of his increasing intimacy with the 
fascinating Vanessa, may be plainly traced in the 
Journal to Stella, which, in the course of its pro- 
gress, becomes more and more cold and indiffer- 
ent, — breathes fewer of those aspirations after the 
quiet felicity of a life devoted to M. D. and the 
willows at Laracor, — uses less frequently the affec- 
tionate jargon, called the ' little language,' in which 
his fondness at first displays itself, — and, in short, 
exhibits all the symptoms of waning affection. 
Stella was neither blind to the altered style of his 
correspondence, nor deaf to the rumours which 
were wafted to Ireland. Her letters are not pre- 
served^ but, from several passages of the Journal, 
it appears that they intimated displeasure and jea- 
lousy, which Swift endeavours to appease. 

" Upon Swift's return to Ireland, we may guess 
at the disturbed state of his feelings, wounded at 
once by ungratified ambition, and harassed by his 
affection being divided between two objects, each 
worthy of his attachment, and each having great 
claims upon him, while neither was likely to remain 
contented with the limited return of friendship in 
exchange for love, and that friendship too divided 
with a rival. The claims of Stella were preferable 
in point of date ; and, to a man of honour and good 
faith, in every respect irresistible. She had resigned 
her country, her friends, and even hazarded her 
character, in hopes of one day being united to 
Swift. But if Stella had made the greatest sacri- 
fice, Vanessa was the more important victim. She 
had youth, fortune, fashion; all the acquired ac- 
complishments and information in which Stella was 
deficient; possessed at least as much wit, and cer- 
tainly higher powers of imagination. That he had 
no intention to marry Vanessa, is evident from pas- 
sages in his letters, which are inconsistent with 
such an arrangement; as, on the other hand, their 
whole tenor excludes that of guilty intimacy. On 
the other hand, his conduct, with respect to Stella. 
was equally dubious. So soon as he was settled in 
the Deanery-house, his first care was to secure 
lodgings for Mrs. Dingley and Stella, upon Or- 
mond's Quay, on the other side of the Liffy ; and 
to resume, with the same guarded caution, the in- 
tercourse which had formerly existed between them. 
But circumstances soon compelled him to give that 
connection a more definite character. 

"Mrs. Vanhomrigh was now dead. Her two 
sons survived her but a short time ; and the cir- 
cumstances of the young ladies were so far em- 
barrassed by inconsiderate expences, as gave them 
a handsome excuse for retiring to Ireland, where 
their father had left a small property near Celbridge. 
The arrival of Vanessa in Dublin excited the ap- 
prehensions of Swift, and the jealousy of Stella. 
However imprudently the Dean might have in- 
dulged himself and the unfortunate young lady, by 
frequenting her society during his residence in Eng 
land, there is no doubt that he was alive to all the 
hazards that might accrue to the reputation and 
peace of both, by continuing the same intimacy in 
Dublin. But the means of avoiding it were no 
longer in his power, although his reiterated re- 
monstrances assumed even the character of unkind- 
ness. She importuned him with complaints of ne- 

flect and cruelty ; and it was obvious, that any 
ecisive measure to break their correspondence, 
would be attended with some such tragic conse- 
quence, as, though late, at length concluded their 
story. Thus engaged in a labyrinth, where perse- 
verance was wrong, and retreat seemed almost im- 



possible, Swift resolved to temporise, in hopes 
probably, that time, accident, the mutability inci- 
dent to violent affections, might, extricate himself 
and Vanessa from the snare in which his own 
culpable imprudence had involved ihem. Mean 
while, he continued to bestow on her those marks 
of regard which it was impossible to refuse to her 
feelings towards him, even if they had not been 
reciprocal. But the conduct which he adopted 
as kindest to Miss Vanhomrigh, was likely to prove 
fatal to Stella. His fears and affections were next 
awakened for that early favourite, whose suppress- 
ed grief and jealousy, acting upon a frame naturally 
delicate, menaced her health in an alarming man- 
ner. The feelings with which Swift beheld the 
wreck which his conduct had occasioned, will not 
bear description. Mrs. Johnson had forsaken her 
country, and clouded even her reputation, to be- 
come the sharer of his fortunes, when at their 
lowest ; and the implied lies by which he was bound 
to make her compensation, were as strong as the 
most solemn promise, if indeed even promises of 
future marriage had not been actually exchanged 
between them. He employed Dr. St. George 
Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, his tutor and early friend, 
to request the cause of her melancholy ; and he 
received the answer which his conscience must 
have anticipated — it was her sensibility to his recent 
indifference, and to the discredit which her own 
character sustained from the long subsistence of 
the dubious and mysterious connection between 
them. To convince her of the constancy of his 
affection, and to remove her beyond the reach of 
calumny, there was but one remedy. To this com- 
munication Swift replied, that he had formed two 
resolutions concerning matrimony : — one, that he 
would not marry till possessed cf a competent for- 
tune : the other, that the event should take place 
at a time of life which gave him a reasonable pros- 
pect to see his children settled in the world. The 
independence proposed, he said, he had not yet 
achieved, being still embarrassed by debt; and, on 
the other hand, he was past that term of life after 
which he had determined never to marry. Yet he 
was ready to go through the ceremony for the ease 
of Mrs. Johnson's mind, providing it should re- 
main a strict secret from the public, and that they 
should continue to live separately, and in the same 
guarded manner as formerly. To these hard terms 
Stella subscribed ; they relieved her own mind at 
least from all scruples on the impropriety of their 
connection ; and they soothed her jealousy, by 
rendering it impossible that Swift should ever give 
his hand to her rival. They were married in the 
garden of the Deanery, by the Bishop of Clogher, 
in the year 1716."— Vol. i. pp. 229—238. 

Even admitting all the palliations that are 
here suggested, it is plain that Swift's conduct 
is utterly indefensible — and that his ingenious 
biographer thinks nearly as ill of it as we do. 
Supposing it possible that a man of his pene- 
tration should have inspired an innocent young 
girl with a violent passion, without being at 
all aware of it, what possible apology can 
there be for his not disclosing his engage- 
ments with Mrs. Johnson, and peremptorily 
breaking off all intercourse with her rejected 
rival'? — He was bound to her by ties even 
more sacred than those of actual marriage — • 
and was no more at liberty, under such cir- 
cumstances, to disguise that connection than 
the other : — or if he had himself unconsciously 
imbibed an irresistible passion for his younger 
admirer, it would have been far less guilty or 
dishonourable to have avowed this to Stella, 
and followed the impulse of such a fatal at- 
tachment. In either of these ways, he would 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



have spared at least one of his victims. But 
he had not the apology of any such passion ; 
and, desirous apparently of saving, himself 
the shock of any unpleasant disclosure, or 
wishing to secure to himself the gratification 
of both their attachments, he endeavoured 
basely to conceal from each the share which 
the other had in his affections, and sacrificed 
the peace of both to the indulgence of this 
mean and cold-blooded duplicity. The same 
disgusting selfishness is, if possible, still more 
apparent, in the mortifying and degrading 
conditions he annexed to his nominal marriage 
with Stella, for the concealment of which no 
reason can be assigned, to which it is possible 
to listen with patience, — at least after the 
death of Vanessa had removed all fear of its 
afflicting or irritating that unhappy rival. This 
tragical event, of which Swift was as directly 
and as guiltily the cause, as if he had plunged 
a dagger into her heart, is described with 
much feeling by Mr. Scott, who has added a 
fuller account of her previous retirement than 
any former editor. 

" About the year 1717, she retired from Dublin, 
to her house and property near Celbridge, to nurse 
her hopeless passion in seclusion from the world. 
Swift seems to have foreseen and warned her 
against the consequences of this step. His letters 
uniformly exhort her to seek general society, to 
take exercise, and to divert, as much as possible, 
the current of her thoughts from the unfortunate 
subject which was preying upon her spirits. He 
even exhorts her to leave Ireland. Until the year 
1720, he never appears to have visited her at Cel- 
bridge ; they only met when she was occasionally 
in Dublin. But in that year, and down to the time 
of her death, Swift came repeatedly to Celbridge ; 
and, from the information of a most obliging cor- 
respondent, I am enabled to give account of some 
minute particulars attending them. 

" iMarley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss 
Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a 
real cloister, especially in its external appearance. 
An aged man (upwards of ninety by his own ac- 
count) showed the grounds to my correspondent. 
He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, 
and used to work with his father in the garden when 
a boy. He remembered the unfortunale Vanessa 
well, and his account of her corresponded with the 
U9ual description of her person, especially as to her 
embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and 
saw little company : her constant amusement was 
reading, or walking in the garden. Yet, according 
to this authority, her society was courted by several 
families in the neighbourhood, who visited her, 
notwithstanding her seldom returning that atten- 
tion, — and he added, that her manners interested 
every one who knew her. But she avoided com- 
pany, and was always melancholy save when Dean 
Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. — 
The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded 
with laurels. The old man said, that when Miss 
Vanhomrigh expected the Dean, she always plant- 
ed, with her own hand, a laurel or two against his 
arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called 
Vanessa's Bower. Three or four trees, and some 
laurels, indicate the spot. They had formerly 
according to the old man's information, been train 
ed into a close arbour. There were two seats and 
and a rude table whhin the bower, the opening of 
which commanded a view of the Liffy, which had 
a romantic effect ; and there was a small cascade 
that murmured at some distance. In this seques- 
tered spot, according to the old gardener's account, 
the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit. with books 
and writing-materials on the table before them. 



"Vanessa, besides musing over her unhappy 
attachment, had, during her residence in this soli- 
tude, the care of nursing the declining health of 
her younger sister, who at length died about 1720. 
This event, as it left her alone in the world, seems 
to have increased the energy of her fatal passion for 
Swift, while he, on the. contrary, saw room lor stiU 
greater reserve, when her situation became that of 
a solitary female, without the society or counte- 
nance of a female relation. But Miss Vanhomrigh, 
irritated at the situation in which she found herself, 
determined on bringing to a crisis those expecta- 
lions of an union with the object of her affections, 
to the hope of which she had clung amid every 
vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most, 
probable bar was his undefined connection with 
Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been per- 
fectly known to her, had, doubtless, long excited 
her secret jealousy : although only a single hint to 
that purpose is to be found in theircorresponder.ee, 
and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him, 
then in Ireland, " If you are very happy, it is ill- 
natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what 
is inconsistent with mine.' Her silence and pa- 
tience under this state of uncertainty, for no less 
than eight years, must have been partly owing to 
her awe for Swift, and partly perhaps to the weak 
state of her rival's health, which from year to year, 
seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, 
however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed ; and she 
ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. 
Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of 
that connection. Stella, in reply, informed her of 
her marriage with the Dean ; and, full of the high- 
est resentment against Swift for having given an- 
other female such a right in him as Miss Vanhom- 
righ's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's 
letter of interrogation, and, without seeing him, or 
awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. 
Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the con- 
sequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of 
fury to which he was liable, both from temper and 
disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he 
entered the apartment, the sternness of his counte- 
nance, which was peculiarly formed to express the 
fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa 
with such terror, that she could scarce ask whether 
he would not sit*down. He answered by flinging 
a letter on the table: and, instantly leaving the 
house, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. 
When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found 
her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. 
She sunk at once under the disappointment of the 
delayed, yet cherished hope3, wh ; ch had so long 
sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained 
wrath of him for whose 6ake she had indulged 
them. How long she survived this last interview, 
is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have 
exceeded a few weeks." — Life, vol.i. pp. 248 — 253. 

Among the novelties of the present edition, 
is what is called a complete copy of the cor- 
respondence betwixt Swift and this unfortu- 
nate lady* To us it is manifest, that it is by 
no means a complete copy; — and. on the 
whole, the parts that are now published for 
the first time, are of less moment than those 
that had been formerly printed. But it is 
altogether a very interesting and painful col- 
lection; and there is something to us inex- 
pressibly touching in the innocent fondness, 
and almost childish gaiety, of Vanessa at its 
commencement, contrasted with the deep 
gloom into which she sinks in its later stages; 
while the ardour of affection which breathes 
through the whole, and the tone of devoted 
innocence and simplicity of character which 
are every where preserved, make us both 
hate and' wonder at the man who could de- 



84 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



liberately break a heart so made to be cher- 
ished. We cannot resist the temptation of 
extracting a little of the only part of this 
whole publication in which any thing like 
heart or tenderness is to be discovered. His 
first letter is written immediately after their 
first separation, and while she yet believed 
that his slowness in returning her passion 
arose, as he had given her ample warrant to 
suppose, (see the whole of the poem of Cad- 
enus and Vanessa, vol. xiv.) from nothing but 
a sense of the unsuitableness of their years 
and habits, which would give way to the con- 
tinued proofs of its constancy and ardour. 
He had written her a cold note on his journey, 
to which she thus rapturously answers: — 

" Now you are good beyond expression, in send- 
ing mc that dear voluntary from St. Alban's. It 
f'ves me more happiness than you can imagine, or 
describe, to find that your head is so much better 
already. I do assure you all my wishes are em- 
ployed for the continuance of it. I hope the next 
will tell me they have been of force. Pray, why 
did not you remember me at Dunstable, as well as 
Moll ? Lord ! what a monster is Moll grown since. 
But nothing of poor Hess; except that the mark 
will be in the same place of Davilla where you left 
it. Indeed, it is not much advanced yet, for I have 
been studying of Rochefoucault to see if he de- 
scribed as much of love as I found in myself a Sun- 
day, and I find he falls very short of it. I am very 
impatient to hear from you at Chester. It is im- 
possible to tell you how often I have wished you a 
cup of coffee and an orange at your inn." — Vol. 
xix, pp. 403, 404. 

Upon hearing of his arrival in Ireland, she 
writes again in the same spirit. 

"Here is now three long weeks passed since 
you wrote to me. Oh! happy Dublin, that can 
employ all your thoughts, and happy Mrs. Emer- 
son, that could hear from you the moment you 
landed. Had it not been for her,*I should be yet 
more uneasy than I am. I really believe, before 
you leave Ireland, I shall give you just reason to 
wish I did not know my letters, or at least that I 
could not write : and I had rather you should wish 
so, than entirely forget me. Mr. Lewis has given 
me • Lea Dialogues Des Mortes,' and I am so 
charmed with them, that 1 am resolved to quit my 
body, let the consequence be what it will, except 
you will talk to me, for I find no conversation on 
earth comparable to yours ; so, if you care I should 
stay, do but talk, and you will keep me with plea- 
sure."— Vol. xix, pp. 407—409. 

There is a great deal more of this trifling 
of a heart at ease, and supported by enchant- 
ing hopes. It is miserable to think how sadly 
the style is changed, when she comes to know 
better the object on whom she had thus irre- 
trievably lavished her affections. The follow- 
ing is the first letter that appears after she fol- 
lowed him to Ireland in 1714 ; and it appears 
to us infinitely more touching and pathetic," 
in the truth and simplicity of the wretched- 
ness it expresses, than all the eloquent despair 
of all the heroines of romance. No man, 
with a heart, we think, could receive such 
letters and live. 

" You bid me be easy, and you'd see me as often 
as you could . you had better have said as often as 
you could get the better of your inclinations so 
much ; or as often as you remembered there was 
such a person in the world. If you continue to 



treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy 
by me long. 'Tis impossible to describe what I 
have suffered since 1 saw you last ; I am sure I 
could have borne the rack much belter than those 
killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes 1 have 
resolved to die without seeing you more, but those 
resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long: for 
there is someihit'gin human nature thai prompts 
one so to find reliet in this world : I must give way 
to it, and beg you'd see me, and speak kindly to 
me ! for I am sure you would not condemn any 
one to suffer what I have done, could you but know 
it. The reason I wriie to you is, because I cannot 
tell it you, should I see you; for when 1 begin to 
complain, then you are angry, and there is some- 
thing in your look so awful, that it strikes me dumb. 
Oh ! that you may but have so much regard tor me 
left, that this complaint may touch your soul with 
pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but 
know what I thought, I am sure it would move 
you. Forgive me, and believe I cannot help tell- 
ing you this, and live." — Vol, xix. p. 421. 
And a little after, 

"I am, and cannot avoid being in the spleen to 
the last degree. Every thing combines to make 
me so. Yet ibis and all other disappointments in 
life I can bear with ease, but that of being neglected 
by ... . Spleen I cannot help, so you must ex- 
cuse it. I do all I can to get the better of it ; but 
it is too strong for me. I have read more since I 
saw Cad, than I did in a great wfcile passed, and 
chose those books that required most attention, on 
purpose to engage my thoughts, but I find the more 
I think the more unhappy 1 am. 

" I had once a mind <not to have wrote to you, 
for fear of making you uneasy to find me so dull ; 
but I could not keep to that" resolution, for the 
pleasure of writing to you. The satisfaction I have 
in your remembering me, when you read my letters, 
and the delight I have in expecting one from Cad, 
makes me rather choose to give you some uneasi- 
ness, than add to my own." — Vol. xix. pp. 431, 432. 

As the correspondence draws to a close, her 
despair becomes more eloquent and agonizing. 
The following two letters are dated in 1720. 

" Believe me, it is with the utmost regret that I 
now complain to you ; — yet what can I do ? I must 
either unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, 
or sink under the inexpressible distress I now suffer 
by your prodigious neglect of me. 'Tis now ten 
long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I 
have never received but one letter from you, and 
a little note with an excuse. Oh, how have you 
forgot me! You endeavour by severities to force 
me from you: Nor can I blame you; for with the 
utmost distress and confusion, I behold myself the 
cause of uneasy reflections to you, yet I cannot 
comfort you, but here declare, that 'tis not in the 
power of time or accident to lessen the inexpressible 
passion which I have for 

" Put my passion under the utmost restraint, — 
send me as distant from you as the earth will allow, 
— yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which 
will ever stick by me whilst I have the use of 
memory. Nor is the love 1 bear you only seated 
in my soul, for there is not a single atom of my 
frame that is not blended with it. Therefore, don't 
flatter yourself that separation will ever change my 
sentiments ; for I find myself unquiet in the midst 
of silence, and my heart is at once pierced with 
sorrow and love. For Heaven's sake, tell me what 
has caused this prodigious change on you, which I 
have found of late. If you have the least remains of 
pity for me left, tell me tenderly. No : don't : tell 
it so that it may cause my present deatr, and don't 
suffer me to live a life like a languishing death, 
which is the only life I can lead, if you have losit 
any of your tenderness for me." — Vol. xix. pp.441, 
442. 

11 Tell me sincerely, if you have once wished 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



with earnestness to see me, since I wrote last to 
you. No, so far from that, you have not once 
pitied me, though I told you how I was distressed, 
bolitude is insupportable to a mind which is not at 
ease. I have worn on my days in sighing, and my 
nights with watching and thinking of . . . . who 
thinks not of me. How many letters must I send 
you before I shall receive an answer? Can you 
deny me in my misery the only comfort which I 
can expect at present? Ob ! that I could hope to 
see you here, or that 1 could go to you ! I was 
born with violent passions, which terminate all in 
one, that inexpressible passion I have' for you 
Consider the killing emotions which I feel from 
your neglect, and show some tenderness for me, or 
I shall lose my senses. Sure you cannot possibly 
be so much taken up, but you might command a 
moment to write to me, and force your inclinations 
to do so great a charity. I firmly believe, could I 
know your thoughts which no human creature is 
capable of guessing at, (because never any one 
living thought like you.) I should fi id you have 
often in a rage wished me religious, hoping then I 
should have paid my devotions to Heaven: but 
that would not spare you. — for was I an enthusiast, 
still you'd be the deity 1 should worship. What 
marks are there of a deity, but what you are ro be 
known by ? — you are present everywhere : your 
dear ima^e is always before mine eyes. Some- 
times you strike me with that prodigious awe, I 
tremble wi h tear, at other times a charming com- 
passion shines through your countenance, which 
revives my soul. Is it not more reasonable to adore 
a radiant form one has seen, thin one only de- 
scribed P' — Vol. xix. pp. 442, 443. 

From this heart-breaking scene we turn to 
another, if possible, still more deplorable. 
Vanessa was now dead. The grave had 
heaped its tranquillising mould on her agi- 
tated heart, and given her tormentor assur- 
ance, that he should no more sutler from her 
reproaches on earth ; and yet, though with her 
the last pretext was extinguished for refusing 
to acknowledge the wife he had so infamously 
abused, we find him, with this dreadful ex- 
ample before his eyes, persisting to withhold 
from his remaining victim, that late and im- 
perfect justice to which her claim was so 
apparent, and from the denial of which she 
was sinking before his eyes in sickness and 
sorrow to the grave. It is utterly impossible 
to suggest any excuse or palliation for such 
cold-blooded barbarity. Even though we 
were to believe with Mr. Scott, that he had 
ceased to be a man, this would afford no 
apology for his acting like a beast ! He 
might still have acknowledged his wife in 
public; and restored to her the comfort and 
the honour, of which he had robbed her with- 
out the excuse of violent passion, or thought- 
less precipitation. He was rich, far beyond 
what either of them could have expected 
when their union was first contemplated ; and 
had attained a name and a station in society 
which made him independent of riches. Yet, 
for the sake of avoiding some small awkward- 
ness or inconvenience to himself — to be se- 
cured from the idle talking of those who might 
wonder why, since they were to marry, they 
did not marry before — or perhaps merely to 
retain the object, of his regard in more com- 
plete subjection and dependence, he could 
bear to see her pining, year after year, in 
solitude and degradation, and sinking at last 
into an untimely giave, prepared by his hard 



and unrelenting refusal to clear her honour to 
the world, even at her dying hour. There 
are two editions of this dying scene — one on 
the authority of Mr. Sheridan, the other on 
that of Mr. Theophilus Swift, who is said to 
have received it from Mrs. VVhiteway. Mr. 
Scott, who is unable to discredit the former, 
and is inclined at the same time to prefer the 
least disreputable for his author, is reduced 
to the necessity of supposing, that both may 
be true, and that Mr. Shendairs story may 
have related to an earlier period than that 
reported by Mrs. VVhiteway. We shall lay 
both before our readers. Mr. Sheridan sayt^ 

" ' A short time before her death, a scene passed 
between the Dean and her, an account of winch I 
had from my father, and which I shall relate with 
reluctance, as it seems to bear more hard on Swift's 
humanity than any other part of his conduct in life. 
As she found her final dissolution approach, a few 
days before it happened, in the presence of Dr. 
Sheridan, she addressed Swift in the most earnest 
and pathetic terms to grant her dying request; 
" That, as the ceremony of marriage had passed 
between them, though lor sundry consideraiions 
they had not cohabited in that state, in order to put 
it out of the power of slander to be busy with her 
fame after death, she adjured him by their friend- 
ship to let her have the satisfaction of dying at 
least, i hough she had not lived, his acknowledged 
wife." 

" ; Swift made no reply, but, turning on his heel, 
walked silently out of the room, nor ever saw her 
afterward, during the few days she lived. This 
behaviour threw Mrs. Johnson into unspeakable* 
agonies, and for a time she sunk under the weight 
of so cruel a disappointment. But soon after, 
roused by indignation, she inveighed against his 
cruelty in the bitterest terms; and, sending for a 
lawyer, made her will, bequeathing her fortune by 
her own name to charitable uses. This was done 
in the presence of Dr. Sheridan, whom she ap- 
pointed one of her executors.' " — Vol. i. p. 357. 

If this be true, Swift must have had the 
heart of a monster ; and it is of little conse- 
quence, whether, when her death was nearer, 
he pretended to consent to what his unhappy 
victim herself then pathetically declared to 
be 'too late;' and to what, at ail events, cer- 
tainly never was done. Mrs. Whiteway's 
statement is as follows : — 

*' ' When Stella was in her last weak state, and 
one day had come in a chair to the Deanery, she 
was wnh difficulty brought into the parlour, 'i he 
Dean had prepared some mulled wine, and kept it 
by the fire for her refreshment. After fusing it, 
she became very faint, but having recovered a little 
by degrees, when her breath (for she was asthmatic), 
was allowed her, she desired to lie down. She 
was carried up stairs, and laid on a bed ; the Dean 
suing by her. held her hand, and addressed her in 
the most affectionate manner. She drooped, how- 
ever, very much. Mrs. White way was the only 
third person present. After a short time, her po- 
liteness induced her to withdraw to the adjoining 
room, but it was necessary, on account of air, that 
the door should not be closed, — it was half shut: 
the rooms were close adjoining. Mrs. Whiiewaj 
had too much honour to listen, but could not avoid 
observing, that the Dean and Mrs. Johnson con- 
versed together in a low tone; the latter, indeed, 
was too weak to raise her voice. Mrs. Whuewaf 
paid no attention, having no idle curiosity, but at 
length she heard the Dean say, in an audinle voice, 
" Well, my dear, if you wish it, it shall be owned,'* 
to which Sella answered with a sigh, " It is too 
later— Vol. i. pp. 355, 356. 



*« 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



With the consciousness of having thus bar- 
barously destroyed all the women for whom 
he had ever professed affection, it is not won- 
derful that his latter days should have been 
overshadowed with gloom and dejection: but 
it was not the depression of late regret, or un- 
availing self-condemnation, that darkened his 
closing scene. It was but the rancour of dis- 
appointed ambition, and the bitterness of proud 
misanthropy : and we verily believe, that if 
his party had got again into power, and given 
him the preferment he expected, the pride 
and joy of his vindictive triumph would have 
been but little alloyed by the remembrance 
of the innocent and accomplished women of 
whom we have no hesitation to pronounce him 
the murderer. In the whole of his later 
writings, indeed, we shall look in vain for any 
traces of that penitential regret, which was 
due to the misery he had occasioned, even if 
it had arisen without his guilt, or even of that 
humble and solemn self-reproach, which is 
apt to beset thoughtful men in the decline of 
life and animation, even when their conduct 
has been generally blameless, and the judg- 
ment of the candid finds nothing in them to 
condemn : on the contrary, there is nowhere 
to be met with, a tone of more insolent re- 
proach, and intolerant contempt to the rest of 
the world, or so direct a claim to the posses- 
sion of sense and virtue, which that world 
was no longer worthy to employ. Of women, 
too, it is very remarkable, that he speaks with 
unvaried rudeness and contempt, and rails 
indeed at the whole human race, as wretches 
with whom he thinks it an indignity to share 
a common nature. All this, we confess, ap- 
pears to us intolerable ; for, whether we look 
to the fortune, or the conduct of this extraor- 
dinary person, we really recollect no individual 
who was less entitled to be either discontented 
or misanthropical — to complain of men or of 
accidents. Born almost a beggar, and neither 
very industrious nor very engaging in his early 
habits, he attained, almost with his first efforts, 
the very height of distinction, and was re- 
warded by appointments, which placed him 
in a state of independence and respectability 
for life. He was honoured with the acquaint- 
ance of all that was distinguished for rank, 
literature, or reputation; — and, if not very 
generally beloved, was, what he probably 
valued far more, admired and feared by most 
of those with whom he was acquainted. 
When his party was overthrown, neither his 
person nor his fortune suffered ; — but he was 
indulged, through the whole of his life, in a 
licence of scurrility and abuse, which has 
never been permitted to any other writer, — 
and possessed the exclusive and devoted af- 
fection of the only two women to whom he 
wished to appear interesting. In this history r , 
we confess, we see but little apology for dis- 
content and lamentation ; — and. in his conduct, 
there is assuredly still less for misanthropy. 
In public life, we do not know where we 
ovriiid have found any body half so profligate 
and unprincipled as himself, and the friends 
to whom he finally attached himself; — nor 
can we conceive that complaints of venality, 



and want of patriotism, could ever come With 
so ill a grace from any quarter, as from him 
who had openly deserted and libelled his 
original party, without the pretext of any 
other cause than the insufficiency of the re- 
wards they bestowed upon him, — and joined 
himself with men, who were treacherous not 
only to their first professions, but to their 
country and to each other, to all of whom he 
adhered, after their mutual hatred and vil- 
lanies were detected. In private life, again, 
with what face could he erect himself into a 
rigid censor of morals, or pretend to complain 
of men in general, as unworthy of his notice, 
after breaking the hearts of two, if not three, 
amiable women, whose affections he had en- 
gaged by the most constant assiduities. — after 
savagely libelling almost all his early friends 
and benefactors, and exhibiting, in h:s daily 
life and conversation, a picture of domineering 
insolence and dogmatism, to which no parallel 
could be found, we believe, in the history of 
any other individual, and which rendered his 
society intolerable to all who were not subdued 
by their awe of him, or inured to it by long 
use 1 He had some right, perhaps, to look with 
disdain upon men of ordinary understandings; 
but for all that is the proper object of reproach, 
he should have looked only within: and what- 
ever may be his merits as a writer, we do 
not hesitate to say. that he was despicable as 
a politician, and hateful as a man. 

With these impressions of his personal char- 
acter, perhaps it is not easy for us to judge 
quite fairly of his works. Yet we are far 
from being insensible to their great and very 
peculiar merits. Their chief peculiarity is, 
that they were almost all w hat may be called 
occasional productions — not written for fame 
or for posterity — from the fulness of the mind, 
or the desire of instructing mankind — but on 
the spur of the occasion — for promoting some 
temporary and immediate object, and pro- 
ducing a practical effect, in the attainment 
of which their whole importance centered. 
With the exception of The Tale of a Tub, Gul- 
liver, the Polite Conversation, and about half 
a volume of poetry, this description will ap- 
ply to almost all that is now before us ; — and 
it is no small proof of the vigour and vivacity 
of his genius, that posterity should have been 
so anxious to preserve these careless and 
hasty productions, upon which their author 
appears to have set no other value lhan as 
means for the attainment of an end. The 
truth is, accordingly, that they are very extra- 
ordinary performances : And, considered with 
a view to the purposes for which, they were 
intended, have probably never been equalled 
in any period of the world. They are writ- 
ten with great plainness, force, and intrepidity 
— advance at once to the matter in dispute — 
give battle to the strength of the enemy, and 
never seek any kind of advantage from dark 
ness or obscurity. Their distinguishing fea- 
ture, however, is the force and the vehe- 
mence of the invective in which they abound , 
— the copiousness, the steadiness, Ihe perse- 
verance, and the dexterity with which abuse 
and ridicule are showered upo i the adver- 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



67 



sary. This, we think, was. beyond all doubt, 
Swift's great talent, and the weapon by which 
he made himself formidable. He was, with- 
out exception, the greatest and most efficient 
libeller that ever exercised the trade ; and 
possessed, in an eminent degree, all the quali- 
fications which it requires: — a clear head — a 
cold heart — a vindictive temper — no admira- 
tion of noble qualities — no sympathy with suf- 
fering — not much conscience — not much con- 
sistency — a ready wit — a sarcastic humour — 
a thorough knowledge of the baser parts of 
human nature — and a complete familiarity 
with every thing that is low, homely, and fa- 
miliar in language. These were his gifts ; — 
and he soon felt for what ends they were 
given. Almost all his works are libels; gene- 
rally upon individuals, sometimes upon sects 
and parties, sometimes upon human nature. 
Whatever be his end, however, personal 
abuse, direct, vehement, unsparing invective, 
is his means. It is his sword and his shield, 
his panoply and his chariot of war. In all his 
writings, accordingly, there is nothing to raise 
or exalt our notions of human nature, — but 
every thing to vilify and degrade. We may 
learn from them, perhaps, to dread the con- 
sequences of base actions, but never to love 
the feelings that lead to generous ones. There 
is no spirit, indeed, of love or of honour in any 
part of them; but an unvaried and harassing 
display of insolence and animosity in the 
writer, and villany and folly in those of whom 
he is writing. Though a great polemic, he 
makes no use of general principles, nor ever 
enlarges his views to a wide or comprehen- 
sive conclusion. Every thing is particular 
with him, and, for the most part, strictly per- 
sonal. To make amends, however, we do 
think him quite without a competitor in 
personalities. With a quick and sagacious 
spirit, and a bold and popular manner, he 
joins an exact knowledge of all the strong and 
the weak parts of every cause he has to man- 
age ; and, without the least restraint from 
delicacy, either of taste or of feeling, he 
seems always to think the most effectual 
blows the most advisable, and no advantage 
unlawful that is likely to be successful for 
the moment. Disregarding all the laws of 
polished hostility, he uses, at one and the 
same moment, his sword and his poisoned 
dagger — his hands and his teeth, and his en- 
venomed breath, — and does not even scruple, 
upon occasion, to imitate his own yahoos, by 
discharging on his unhappy victims a shower 
of filth, from which neither courage nor dex- 
terity can afford any protection. — Against 
such an antagonist, it was, of course, at no 
time very easy to make head ; and accord- 
ingly his invective seems, for the most part, 
to have been as much dreaded, and as tre- 
mendous as the personal ridicule of Voltaire. 
Both were inexhaust'ble, well-directed, and 
unsparing; but even when Voltaire drew blood, 
he did net mangle the victim, and was only 
mischievous when Swift was brutal. Any one 
who will compare the ep'grams on M. Franc 
de Pompignan with those on Tighe or Bettes- 
w-orth, will easily understand the distinction. 



Of the few works which he wrote in the 
capacity of an author, and not of a party zealot 
or personal enemy, The Tale of a Tub was 
by far the earliest in point of time, and has, 
by many, been considered as the first in point 
of merit. We confess we are not of that opin- 
ion. It is by far too long and elaborate for a 
piece of pleasantry ; — the humour sinks, in 
many places, into mere buffoonery and non- 
sense; — and there is a real and extreme te- 
diousness arising from the too successful mim- 
icry of tediousness and pedantry. All these 
defects are apparent enough even in the main 
story, in which the incidents are without the 
shadow of verisimilitude or interest, and by 
far too thinly scattered ; but they become in- 
sufferable in the interludes or digressions, 
the greater part of which are to us utterly 
illegible, and seem to consist almost entirely 
of cold and forced conceits, and exaggerated 
representations of long exploded whims and 
absurdities. The style of this work, which 
appears to us greatly inferior to the History of 
John Bull or even of Martinus Scriblerus, is 
evidently more elaborate than that of Swift's 
other writings, — but has all its substantial 
characteristics. Its great merit seems to con- 
sist in the author's perfect familiarity with 
all sorts of common and idiomatical expres- 
sions, his unlimited command of established 
phrases, both solemn and familiar, and the 
unrivalled profusion and propriety with which 
he heaps them up and applies them to the 
exposition of the most fantastic conceptions. 
To deliver absurd notions or incredible tales 
in the most authentic, honest, and direct 
terms, that have been used for the commu- 
nication of truth and reason, and to luxuriate 
in all the variations of that grave, plain, and 
perspicuous phraseology, which dull men use 
to express their homely opinions, seems to be 
the great art of this extraordinary humorist, 
and that which gives their character and 
their edge to his sly strokes of satire, his 
keen sarcasms and bitter personalities. 

The voyages of Captain Lemuel Gulliver 
is indisputably his greatest work. The idea 
of making fictitious travels the vehicle oi 
satire as well as of amusement, is at least as 
old as Lucian ; but has never been carried 
into execution with such success, spirit, and 
originality, as in this celebrated performance. 
Tiie brevity, the minuteness, the homeliness, 
the unbroken seriousness of the narrative, all 
give a character of truth and simplicity to the 
work, which at once palliates the extrava- 
gance of the fiction, and enhances the effect 
of those weighty reflections and cutting se- 
verities in which it abounds. Yet though it 
is probable enough, that without those touch- 
es of satire and observation the work would 
have appeared childish and preposterous, we 
are persuaded that it pleases chiefly by the 
novelty and vivacity of the extraordinary pic- 
tures it presents, and the entertainment we 
receive from following the fortunes of the 
traveller in his several extraordinary adven- 
tures. The greater part of the wisdom and 
satire at least appears to us to be extremely 
vulg-ar and common-place ; and we have no 



88 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



idea that they could possibly appear either 
impressive or entertaining, if presented with- 
out these accompaniments. A considerable 
part of the pleasure we derive from the voy- 
ages of Gulliver, in short, is of the same de- 
scription with that which we receive from 
those of Sinbad the sailor; and is chiefly 
heightened, we believe, by the greater brevi- 
ty and minuteness of the story, and the su- 
perior art that is employed to give it an ap- 
pearance of truth and probability, in the very 
midst of its wonders. Among those arts, as 
Mr. Scott has judiciously observed, one of 
the most important is the exact adaptation of 
the narrative to the condition of its supposed 
author. 

" The character of the imaginary traveller is ex- 
actly that of Dampier, or any other sturdy nautical 
wanderer of the period, endowed with courage and 
common sense, who sailed through distant seas, 
without losing a single English prejudice which he 
had brought from Portsmouth or Plymouth, and 
on his return gave a grave and simple narrative of 
what he had seen or heard in foreign countries. 
The character is perhaps strictly English, and can 
be hardly relished by a foreigner. The reflection? 
and observations of Gulliver are never more refined 
or deeper than might be expected from a plain mas- 
ter of a merchantman, or surgeon in the Old Jew- 
ry; and there was such a reality given to his whole 
person, that one seaman is said to have sworn he 
knew Captain Gulliver very well, but he lived at 
Wapping, not at Rotherhithe. It is the contrast 
between the natural ease and simplicity of such a 
style, and the marvels which the volume contains, 
that forms one great charm of this memorable satire 
on the imperfections, follies, and vices of mankind. 
The exact calculations preserved in the first and 
second part, have also the effect of qualifying the 
extravagance of the fable. It is said that in natural 
objects where proportion is exactly preserved, the 
marvellous, whether the object be gigantic or di- 
minutive, is lessened in the eyes of the spectator; 
and it is certain, in general, that proportion forms 
an essential attribute of truth, and consequently of 
verisimilitude, or that which renders a narration 
probable. If the reader is disposed to grant the 
traveller his postulates as to the existence of the 
strange people whom he visits, it would be difficult 
to detect any inconsistency in his narrative. On 
the comrary, it would seem that he and they con 
duct themselves towards each other, precisely as 
must necessarily have happened in the respective 
circumstances which the author has supposed. In 
this point of view, perhaps the highest praise that 
could have been bestowed on Gulliver's Travels 
was the censure of a learned Irish prelate, who 
said the book contained some things which he could 
not prevail upon himself to believe." — Vol. i. pp. 
340, 341. 

That the interest does not arise from the 
satire but from the plausible description of 
physical wonders, seems to be farther proved 
by the fact, that the parts which please the 
least are those in which there is most satire 
and least of those wonders. In the voyage 
to Laputa, after the first description of the 
flying island, the attention is almost exclu- 
sively directed to intellectual absurdities; 
and every one is aware of the dulness that is 
the result. Even as a satire, indeed, this 
part is extremely poor and defective; nor can 
any thing show more clearly the author's in- 
capacity for large and comprehensive views 
than his signal failure in all those parte wrrch 
write him to such contemplations. In the 



multitude of his vulgar and farcical represen- 
tations of particular errors in philosophy, he 
nowhere appears to have any sense of its 
true value or principles; but satisfies him- 
self with collecting or imagining a number 
of fantastical quackeries, which tend to illus- 
trate nothing but his contempt for human un- 
derstanding. Even where his subject seeing 
to invite him to something of a higher flight, 
he uniformly shrinks back from it, and takes 
shelter in common-place derision. "What, for 
instance, can be poorer than the use he makes 
of the evocation of the illustrious dead — in 
which Hannibal is conjured up, just to say 
that he had not a drop of vinegar in his camp; 
and Aristotle, to ask two of his commentators, 
"whether the rest of the tribe were as great 
dunces as themselves'?" The voyage to the 
Houyhnhmns is commonly supposed to dis- 
please by its vile and degrading representa- 
tions of human nature ; but. if we do not 
strangely mistake our own feelings on the 
subject, the impression it produces is not so 
much that of disgust as of dulness. The pic- 
ture is not only extravagant, but bald and 
tame in the highest degree ; while the story 
is not enlivened by any of those numerous 
and uncommon incidents which are detailed 
in the two first parts, with such an inimitable 
air of probability as almost to persuade us of 
their reality. For the rest, we have observed 
already, that the scope of the whole work, 
and indeed of all his writings, is to degrade 
and vilify human nature ; and though some 
of the images which occur in this part may 
be rather coarser than the others, we do not 
think the difference so considerable as to ac- 
count for its admitted inferiority in the power 
of pleasing. 

His only other considerable works in prose, 
are the "Polite Conversation," which we 
think admirable in its sort, and excessively 
entertaining; and the "Directions to Ser- 
vants," which, though of a lower pitch, con- 
tains as much perhaps of his peculiar, vigor- 
ous and racy humour, as any one of his pro- 
ductions. The Journal to Stella, which Avas 
certainly never intended for publication, is 
not to be judged of as a literary work at all 
— but to us it is the most interesting of all 
his productions — exhibiting not only a minute 
and masterly view of a very extraordinary 
political crisis, but a truer, and, upon the 
whole, a more favourable picture of his own 
mind, than can be gathered from all the rest 
of h's writings — together with innumerable 
anecdotes characteristic not only of various 
eminent individuals, but of the private man- 
ners and public taste and morality of the 
times, more nakedly and surely authentic 
than any thing that can be derived from con- 
temporary publications. 

Of his Poetry, we do not think there is 
much to be said ; — for we cannot persuade 
ourselves that Swift was in any respect a 
poet. It would be proof enough, we think, 
just to observe, that, though a popular and 
most miscellaneous writer, he does not men- k 
tion the name of Shakespeare above two or 
three times in any part of his works, and h&g 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



nowhere «aid a word in his praise. His par- 
tial editor admits that -he has produced noth- 
ing which can be called either sublime or 
pathetic : and we are of the same opinion as 
to the beautiful. The merit of correct rhymes 
and easy diction, we shall not deny him ; but 
the diction is almost invariably that of the 
most ordinary prose, and the matter of his 
pieces no otherwise poetical, than that the 
Muses and some other persons of the Hea- 
then mythology are occasionally mentioned. 
He has written lampoons and epigrams, and 
satirical ballads and abusive songs in great 
abundance, and with infinite success. But 
these things are not poetry ; — and are better 
in verse than in prose, for no other reason 
than that the sting is more easily remem- 
bered, and the ridicule occasionally enhanced, 
by the hint of a ludicrous parody, or the drol- 
lery of an extraordinary rhyme. His witty 
verses, when they are not made up of mere 
filth and venom, seem mostly framed on the 
model of Hudibras; and are chiefly remarka- 
ble, like those of h : s original, for trie easy and 
apt application of homely and familiar phrases, 
to illustrate ingenious sophistry or unexpected 
allusions. One or two of his imitations of 
Horace, are executed with spirit and elegance, 
and are the best, we think, of his familiar 
pieces; unless we except the verses on his 
own death, in which, however, the great 
charm arises, as we have just stated, from 
the singular ease and exactness with which 
he has imitated the style of ordinary society, 
and the neatness with wrrch he has brought 
together and reduced to metre such a number 
of natural, characteristic, and common-place 
expressions. The Cadenus and Vanessa is, 
of itself, complete proof that he had in h ; m 
none of the elements of poetry. It was writ- 
ten when h : s faculties were in their perfec- 
tion, and h : s heart animated with all the ten- 
derness of which it was ever capable — and 
yet it is as cold and as flat as the ice of Thule. 
Though describing a real passion, and a real 
perplexity, there is not a spark of fire nor a 
throb of emotion in it from one end to the 
other. All the return he makes to the warm- 
hearted creature who had put her destiny into 
his hands, cons : sts in a frigid mythological 
fiction, in which he sets forth, that Venus and 
the Graces lavished their gifts on her in her 
infancy, and moreover got Minerva, bv a trick, 
to inspire her with wit and wisdom. The style 
is mere prose — or rather a string of familiar 
and vulgar phrases tacked together in rhyme, 
like the general tissue of his poetry. How- 
ever, it has been called not only easy but 
elegant, by some indulgent critics — and there- 
fore, as we take it for granted nobody reads it 
now-a-days, we shall extract a few lines at 
random, to abide the censure of the judicious. 
To us they seem to be about as much poetry 
as so many lines out of Coke upon Littleton. 

"But in the poets we mav find 
A wholesome law, time out of mind, 
„ Had been confirni'd by Fate's decree, 
That gods, of wha'soe'er degree, 
Resume not what themselves have given, 
Or any brother god in Heaven : 
12 



Which keeps the peace among the gods, 
Or they must always be at odds : 
And Pallas, it she broke the laws, 
Must yield her foe the stronger cause; 
A shame to one so much ador'd 
For wisdom at Jove's council board ; 
Besides, she fear'd the Queen of Love 
Would meet wilh better friends above. 
And though she must with grief reflect, 
To see a mortal virgin deck'd 
With graces hidierto unknown 
To female breasts except her own : 
Yet she would act as best became 
A goddess of unspotted fame. 
She knew by augury divine, 
Venus would ("ail in her design : 
She studied well the point, and found 
Her foe's conclusions were not sound, 
From premises erroneous brought ; 
And therefore the deduction's naught, 
And must have contrary effects, 
To what her treacherous foe expects." 

Vol. xiv. pp, 448, 449. 

The Rhapsody of Poetry, and the Legion 
Club, are the only two pieces in which there 
is the least glow of poetical animation ; though, 
in the latter, it takes the shape of ferocious 
and almost frantic invective, and, in the for- 
mer, shines out but by fits in the midst of the 
usual small wares of cant phrases and snap- 
pish misarjthropy. In the Rhapsody, the fol- 
lowing lines, for instance, near the beginning, 
are vigorous and energetic. 

M Not empire to the rising sun 
By valour, conduct, fortune won; 
Not highest wisdom in debates 
For fran ing laws to govern states; 
Not skill in sciences profound 
So large to grasp the circle round : 
Such heavenly influence require, 
As how to strike the Muse's lyre. 

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot; 
Not bastard of a pedlar Scot ; 
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes, 
The spawn of bridewell or the ste^s; 
Nor infants dropped, the spurious pledges 
Of gypsies littering under hedges; 
Are so disqualified by fa>e 
To rise in church, or law, or state, 
As he whom Fhcebus in his ire 
Has blasted with poetic fire." 

Vol. xiv. pp. 310, 311. 

Yet, immediately after this nervous and po- 
etical line, he drops at once into the knvness 
of vulgar flippancy. 

"What hope of custom in the fair, 

While not a soul demands your ware?" &c. 

There are undoubtedly many strong lines, 
and much cutting satire in this poem; but 
the staple is a mimicry of Hudibras, without 
the richness or compression of Butler ) as, for 
example, 

" And here a simile comes pat in : 

Though chickrns take a monih :o fatten, 
The yuests in less ihan half an hour, 
Will more than half a score devour. 
So. after toiling twenty days 
Tn earn a sto< k of pence and praise, 
Thy labours, crown the critic's piey, 
Are swallow'd o'er a dish of tea: 
Gone to be never heard of more, 
Gone where the chickens went before. 
How shall a new attempier learn 
Of different spirits to discern. 
Ai-d how distinguish which is which. 
The poet's vein, or scribbling itch ?" 

Vol. xiv. pp. 311,312. 
H 2 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



The Legion Club is a satire, or rather a 
tremendous invective on the Irish House of 
Commons, who had incurred the reverend 
author's displeasure for entertaining some 
propositions about alleviating the burden of 
the tithes in Ireland • and is chiefly remarka- 
ble, on the whole, as a proof of the extraor- 
dinary liberty of the press which was in- 
dulged to the disaffected in those days — no 
prosecution having been instituted, either by 
that Honourable House itself, or by any of the 
individual members, who are there attacked 
in a way in which no public men were ever 
attacked, before or since. It is also deserving 
of attention, as the most thoroughly animated, 
fierce, and energetic, of all Swift's metrical 
compositions; and though the animation be 
altogether of a ferocious character, and seems 
occasionally to verge upon absolute insanity, 
there is still a force and a terror about it which 
redeems it from ridicule, and makes us shud- 
der at the sort of demoniacal inspiration with 
which the malison is vented. The invective 
of Swift appears in this, and some other pieces, 
like the infernal fire of Milton's rebel angels, 
which 

" Scorched and blasted and o'erthrew — " 

and was launched even against the righteous 
with such impetuous fury, 

" That whom it hit none on their feet might stand, 
Though standing else as rocks — but down they 

fell 
By thousands, angel on archangel rolled." 

It is scarcely necessary to remark, however, 
that there is never the least approach to dig- 
nity or nobleness in the style of these terrible 
invectives; and that they do not even pretend 
to the tone of a high-minded disdain or gene- 
rous impatience of unworth : ness. They are 
honest, coarse, and violent effusions of furious 
anger and rancorous hatred ; and their effect 
depends upon the force, heartiness, and ap- 
parent sincerity with which those feelings are 
expressed. The author's object is simply to 
vilify h : s opponent, — by no means to do honour 
to himself. If he can make his victim writhe, 
he cares not what may be thought of his tor- 
mentor ; — or rather, he is contented, provided 
he can make him sufficiently disgusting, that 
a good share of the filth which he throws 
6hould stick to his own fingers ; and that he 
should himself excite some of the loathing 
of which his enemy is the principal object. 
In the piece now before us, many of the 
personalities are too coarse and filthy to be 
quoted ; but the very opening shows the spirit 
in w T hich it is written. 

" As I stroll the city oft I 
See a building large and loftv, 
Not a bow-shot from the college, 
Half the globe from sense and knowledge ! 
Bv the prudenf^architect, 
Plar-'d against the church direct, 
Making good my grandam's jest, 
4 Near the church' — you know the rest. 

" Tell u« what the pile contains ? 
Many a hend that holds no brains. 
These demoniacs let me dub 
Wiih the name of Legion Club. 
Such assemblies, you might swear, 
Meet when butchers bait a bear : 



Such a noise an il such haranguing, 

When a brother thief is hanging: 

Such a rout and such a rabble 

Run to hear Jackpudding gabble : 

Such a crowd their ordure throws 

On a far less villain's nose. 
" Could I from the building's top 

Hear the rattling thunder drop, 

While the devil upon the roof 

(If the devil be thunder proof ) 

Should with poker fiery red 

Crack the stones, and melt the lead ; 

Drive them down on every scull, 

When the den of thieves is full; 

Quite destroy the harpies' nest; 

How then might our isle be blest ! 
" Let then), when they once get in, 

Sell the nation for a pin ; 

While i hey sit a picking straws, 

Let them rave at making laws; 

While they never hold their tongue, 

Let ihem dabble in their dung; 

Let them form a grand committee, 

How to plngue and starve the city ; 

Let them stare, and storm, and frown 

When they see a clergy gown ; 

Let them, ere they crack a louse ; 

Call for th orders of the House ; 

Let them, with their gosling quills, 

Scribble senseless heads of bills; 

We may, while they strain their Croats, 

Wipe our noses with their voles. 
" Let Sir Tom, that rampant ass. 

Stuff his guts with flax and grass ; 

But before the priest he fleeces, 

Tear the Bible all to pieces : 

At the parsons, Tom, halloo, boy! 

Worthy offsprirg of a shoeboy, 

Footman! traitor! vile seducer ! 

Perjnr'd rebel ! brib'd accuser ! 

Lay thy paliry privilege aside, 

Sprung from Papists, and a regicide ! 

Fall a working like a mole, 

Raise the dirt about your hole !" 

Vol. x. pp. 548—550. 
This is strong enough, we suspect, for most 
readers; but we shall venture on a few lines 
more, to show the tone in which the leading 
characters in the country might be libelled 
by name and surname in those days. 

"In the porch Briareus stands, 
Shows a bribe in all his hands; 
Briareus the secretary, 
But we mortals call him "~*arey. 
When the rogues their country fleece, 
They may hope for pence a-piece. 

" Clio, who had been so wise 
To put on a fool's disguise, 
To bespeak some approbation, 
And be thought a near relation, 
When she saw three hundred brutes 
All involv'd in wild disputes. 
Roaring till their lungs were spent, 
Privilege of Parliament, 
Now a new misfortune feels, 
Dreading to be laid by th' heels," &c. 

11 Keeper, show me where to fix 
On the puppy pair of Dicks : 
By their lantern jaws and leathern, 
You might swear they both are brethren', 
Dick Fitz'iaker, Dick the player! 
Old acquaintance, are you there? 
Dear companions, hug and kiss, 

Toast Old Glorious in your ; 

Tie them, keeper, in a tether, 
Let them starve and stink together; 
Both are apt to be unruly, 
Lash them daily, lash them duly; 
Though 'tis hopeless to reclaim tbem, 
Scorpion rods, perhaps, may tame them." 
Vol. x. pp. 553, 554. 



WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 



91 



Such were the libels which a Tory writer 
found it sate to publish under a Whig admin- 
istration in 1736 j and we do not find that any- 
national disturbance arose from their impu- 
nity, — though the libeller was the most cele- 
brated and by far the most popular writer of 
the age. Nor was it merely the exasperation 
01 bad fortune that put that polite party upon 
the use of this discourteous style of discus- 
sion. In all situations, the Tories have been 
the great libellers — and, as is fitting, the 
great prosecutors of libels ; and even in this 
early age of their glory, had themselves, when 
in power, encouraged the same licence of 
defamation, and in the same hands. It will 
scarcely be believed, that the following char- 
acter of the Earl of Wharton, then actually 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was publicly 
printed and sold, with his Lordship's name 
and addition at full length, in 1710, and was 
one of the first productions by which the rev- 
erend penman bucklered the cause of the 
Tory ministry, and revenged himself on a 
parsimonious patron. We cannot afford to 
give it at full length — but this specimen will 
answer our purpose. 

" Thomas, Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, 
has some years passed his grand climateric, without 
any visible effects of old age, either on his body or 
his mind ; and in spite of a continual prostitution to 
those vices which usually wear out both. His be- 
haviour is in all the forms of a voung man at five- 
and-fwenty. Whether he walks, or whistles, or 
talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in 
each, beyond a templar of three years' standing. — 
He skeins to be but an ill dissembler, and an ill liar, 
although they are the two talents he most practises. 
and most values himself upon. The ends he has 
gained by lying, appear to be more owing: to the fre- 
quency, than the art of them : his lies being; some- 
times detected in an hour, often in a day. and al- 
ways in a week. He tells them freely in mixed 
companies, although he knows half of those thai 
hear him to be bis enemies, and is sure they will 
discover them the moment thev lea\e him.' He 
Bwears solemnly he loves and will serve you ; and 
your back is no sooner turned, but he tells thos^ 
about him. you are a dog and a rascal. He g»es 
constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and 
will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel-door. 
He is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in 
religion ; but he chooses at present to whore wi'h a 
papist. — He has sunk his fortune by endeavouring 
to ruin one kingdom, and has raised it by going far 
in the ruin of another. 

" He bears the gallantries of his lady with the 
indifference of a stoic; and thinks them well re- 
compensed, by a return of children to support his 
familv. without the fatigues of being a father. 

" He has three predominant passions which vou 
will seldom find united in the same man. as arising 
from different dispositions of mind, and naturally 
thwarting each other : these, are, love of power, 
love of money, and love of pleasure ; thev ride him 
8ometimes by turns, sometimes all together. Since 
he went into Ireland, he seems most disposed to 
the second and has met with great success ; hav- 
ing gained by his goverment. of under two vears, 
five-and-fbrty thousand pounds by the most favour- 
able computation, half in the regular way, and half 
in the prudential. 

" He was never yet known to refuse, or keep a 
promise, as I remember he told a lady, but wi'h an 
exception to the promise he then made (which was 
to get her a pension) ; yet he broke even that, and, 
I confess, deceived us both. But here I desire to 



distinguish between a promise and a bargain ; for 
he will he sure to keep the latter, when he has the 
fairest offer."— Vol. iv. pp. 149—152. 

We have not left ourselves room now to 
6ay much of Swift's style, or of the general 
character of his literary genius : — But our 
opinion may be collected from the remarks 
we have made on particular passages, and 
from our introductory observations on the 
school or class of authors, with whom he 
must undoubtedly be rated. On the subjects 
to which he confines himself, he is unques- 
tionably a strong, masculine, and perspicuous 
writer. He is never finical, fantastic, or 
absurd — takes advantage of no equivocations 
in argument — and puts on no tawdriness for 
ornament. Dealing always with particulars, 
he is safe from all great and systematic mis- 
takes ; and, in fact, reasons mostly in a series 
of small and minute propositions, in the hand- 
ling of which, dexterity is more requisite than 
genius; and practical good sense, with an 
exact knowledge of transactions, of far more 
importance than profound and high-reaching 
judgment. He did not write history or phi- 
losophy, but party pamphlets and journals ; — 
not satire, but particular lampoons; — not 
pleasantries for all mankind, but jokes for a 
particular circle. Even in his pamphlets, the 
broader questions of party are always waved, 
to make way for discussions of personal or im- 
mediate interest. His object is not to show 
that the Tories have better principles of gov- 
ernment than the Whigs, — but to prove Lord 
Oxford an angel, and Lord Somers a fiend, to 
convict the Duke of Marlborough of avarice 
or Sir Richard Steele of insolvency ; — not to 
point out the wrongs of Ireland, in the depres- 
sion of her Catholic population, her want of 
education, or the discouragement of her in- 
dustry; but to raise an outcry against an 
amendment of the carper or the gold coin, or 
against a parliamentary proposition for remit- 
ting the tithe of agistment. For those ends, 
it cannot be denied, that he chose his means 
judiciously, and used them with incomparable 
skill and spirit. But to choose such ends, 
we humbly conceive, was not the part either 
of a high intellect or a high character ; and 
his genius must share in the disparage- 
ment which ought perhaps to be confined to 
the impetuosity and vindictiveness of his 
temper. 

Of his style, it has been usual to speak with 
great, and, we think, exaggerated praise. It 
is less mellow than Dryden's — less elegant 
than Pope's or Addison's — less free and noble 
than Lord Bolingbroke's — and utterly without 
the glow and loftiness which belonged to our 
earlier masters. It is radically a low and 
homely style — without grace and without af- 
fectation ; and chiefly remarkable for a great 
choice and profusion of common words and 
expressions. Other writers, who have used a 
plain and direct style, have been for the most 
part jejune and limited in their diction, and 
generally give us an impression of the poverty 
as well as the tameness of their language : 
but Swift, without ever trespassing into figured 
or poetical expressions, or ever employing a 



02 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



word that can be called line, or pedantic, has 
a pr</digiou3 variety of good set phrases al- 
ways at his command, and displays a sort of 
homely richness, like the plenty of an old 
English dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy 
burgess. This taste for the plain and sub- 
stantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists 
not on such elements ; but was in the highest 
degree favourable to the effect of his hamour, 
very much of which depends on the imposing 
gravity with which it is delivered, and on the 
various turns and heightenings it may receive 
from a rapidly shifting and always appropriate 
expression. Almost all. his works, after The 
Tale of a Tub, seem to have been written 
very fast, and w T ith very little minute care of 
the diction. For his own ease, therefore, it 
is probable they were all pitched on a low- 
key, and set about on the ordinary tone of a 
familiar letter or conversation ; as that from 
which there was a little hazard of falling, 
even in moments of negligence, and from 
which any rise that could be effected, must 
always be easy and conspicuous. A man 
fully possessed of his subject, indeed, and 
confident of his cause, may almost always 
write with vigour and effect, if he can get 
over the temptation of writing finely, and 
really confine himself to the strong and clear 
exposition of the matter he has to bring for- 
ward. Half of the affectation and offensive 
pretension we meet with in authors, arises 
from a want of matter, — and the other half, 
from a paltry ambition of being eloquent and 
ingenious out of place. Swift had complete 
confidence in himself; and had too much real 
business on his hands, to be at leisure to in- 
trigue for the fame of a fine writer-; — in con- 
sequence of which, his writings are more ad- 
mired by the judicious than if he had bestowed 
all his attention on their style. He was so 
much a man of business, indeed, and so much 
accustomed to consider his writings merely as 
means for the attainment of a practical end — 
whether that end was the strengthening of a 
party, or the wounding a foe — that he not only 
disdained the reputation of a composer of 
pretty sentences, but seems to have been 
thoroughly indifferent to all sorts of literary- 
fame. He enjoyed the notoriety and influence 
which he had procured by his writings; but 
it was the glory of having carried his point, 
and not of having written well, that he valued. 
As soon as his publications had served their 
turn, they seem to have been entirely forgot- 
ten by their author ; — and, desirous as he was 
of being ricier, he appears to have thought 
as little of making money as immortality by 
means of them. He mentions somewhere, 



that except 300Z. which he got for Gulliver, ho 
never made a farthing by any of his writings. 
Pope understood his trade better, — and not 
only made knowing bargains for his own 
works, but occasionally borrowed his friends' 
pieces, and pocketed the price of the whole. 
This was notoriously the case with three 
volumes of Miscellanies, of which the greater 
part were from the pen of Swift. 

In humour and in irony, and in the talent of 
debasing and defiling what he hated, we join 
with all the w-orld in thinking the Dean of St. 
Patrick's without a rival. His humour, though 
sufficiently marked and peculiar, is not to be 
easily defined. The nearest description we 
can give of it, would make it consist in ex- 
pressing sentiments the most absurd and 
ridiculous — the most shocking and atrocious 
— or sometimes the most energetic and origi- 
nal — in a sort of composed, calm, and uncon- 
scious way, as if they were plain, undeniable, 
commonplace truths, which no person could 
dispute, or expect to gain credit by announcing 
— and in maintaining them, always in the 
gravest and most familiar language, with a 
consistency which somewhat palliates their 
extravagance, and a kind of perverted inge- 
nuity, which seems to give pledge for their 
sincerity. The secret, in short, seems to con- 
sist in employing the language of humble 
good sense, and simple undoubting conviction, 
to express, in their honest nakedness, senti- 
ments which it is usually thought necessary 
to disguise under a thousand pretences — or 
truths which are usually introduced with a 
thousand apologies. The basis of the art is 
the personating a character of great simplicity 
and openness, for whom the conventional or 
artificial distinctions of society are supposed 
to have no existence; and making use of this 
character as an instrument to strip vice and 
folly of their disguises, and expose guilt in all 
its deformity, and truth in all its terrors. In- 
dependent of the moral or satire, of which 
they may thus be the vehicle, a great part of 
the entertainment to be derived from works 
of humour, arises from the contrast between 
the grave, unsuspecting indifference of the 
character personated, and the ordinary feel- 
ings of the world on the subjects v. hich he 
discusses. This contrast it is easy to heighten, 
by all sorts of imputed absurdities: in v. hich 
case, the humour degenerates into mere farce 
and buffoonery. Swift has yielded a little to 
this temptation in The Tale of a Tftb-; but 
scarcely at all in Gulliver, or any of his later 
writings in the same style. Of his talent for 
reviling, we have already said at least enough^ 
in some of the preceding pages. 



i(LnD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. DE LESPINAS&E. 



93 



(JFanuctrt), 1810.) 

Correspondance inedite de Madame du Deffand ; avec D'Alcmbert, Montesquieu, le President 



Renault, La Duchcsse du Maine, Mesdamcs de.Choiseul, De Siaal, fyc. fyc. 
Paris: 1809. 



3 tomes, 12mo. 



Lettres de Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, ecrites depuis VAnnee 1773 jusqit' a VAnnee 1776, &a> 
3 tomes. 12mo. Paris: 1809. 



The popular works of La Harpe and Mar- 
montel have made the names at least of these 
ladies pretty well known in this country; and 
we have been induced to place their corres- 

fjondeiice under one article, both because their 
listory is in some measure connected, and 
because, though extremely unlike each other, 
they both form a decided contrast to our own 
national character, and, taken together, go far 
to exhaust what was peculiar in that of France. 
Most of our readers probably remember 
what La Harpe and Marmontel have said of 
these two distinguished women; and, at all 
events, it is not necessary for our purpose to 
give more than a very superficial account of 
them. Madame du Deffand was left a widow 
with a moderate fortune, and a great reputa- 
tion for wit, about 1750; and soon after gave 
up her hotel, and retired to apartments in the 
convent de St. Joseph, where she continued to 
receive, almost every evening, whatever was 
most distinguished in Paris for rank, talent, 
or accomplishment. Having become almost 
blind in a few years thereafter, she found she 
required the attendance of some intelligent 
young woman, who might read and write for 
her, and assist in doing the honours of her 
conversazioni. For this purpose she cast her 
eyes on Mademoiselle Lespinasse. the illegiti- 
mate daughter of a man of rank, who had 
been boarded in the same convent, and was 
for some time delighted with her election. 
By and bye, however, she found that her 
young companion began to engross more of 
the notice of her visitors than she thought 
suitable ; and parted from her with violent, 
ungenerous, and implacable displeasure. 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, carried 
with her the admiration of the greater part of 
her patroness' circle j and having obtained a 
small pension from government, opened her 
own doors to a society not less brilliant than 
that into which she had been initiated under 
Madame du Deffand. The fatigue, however, 
which she had undergone in reading the old 
marchioness asleep, had irreparably injured 
her health, which was still more impaired by 
the agitations of her own inflammable and 
ambitious spirit; and she died, before she had 
obtained middle age, about 1776, — leaving on 
the minds of almost all the eminent men in 
France, an impression of talent, and of ardour 
of imagination, which seems to have been 
considered as without example. Madame du 
Deffand continued to preside in her circle till 
a period of extreme old age; and died in 
1780, in full possession of her faculties. 



Where the letters that are now given to the 
world have been secreted for the last thirty 
years, or by whom they are at last publish- 
ed, we are not informed in either of the works 
before us. That they are authentic, we con- 
ceive, is demonstrated by internal evidence ; 
though, if more of them are extant, the selec- 
tion that has been made appears to us to be a 
little capricious. The correspondence of 
Madame du Deffand reaches from the year 
1738 to 1764;— that of Mademoiselle de Les- 
pinasse extends only from 1773 to 1776. The 
two works, therefore, relate to different pe- 
riods ; and, being entirely of different charac- 
ters, seem naturally to call for a separate 
consideration. We begin with the correspon- 
dence of Madame du Deffand, both out of 
respect to her seniority, and because the va 
riety which it exhibits seems to afford room 
for more observation. 

As this lady's house was for fifty years the 
resort of every thing brilliant in Paris, it is 
natural to suppose, that she herself must have 
possessed no ordinary attraction — and to feel 
an eager curiosity to be introduced even to 
that shadow of her conversation which we 
may expect to meet w r ith in her correspond- 
ence. Though the greater part of the letters 
are addressed to her by various correspond- 
ents, yet the few which she does write are 
strongly marked with the traces of her pecu- 
liar character and talent; and the whole taken 
together give a very lively idea of the struc- 
ture and occupations of the best French so- 
ciety, in the days of its greatest splendour. 
Laying out of view the greater constitutional 
gaiety of our neighbours, it appears to us, that 
this society was distinguished from any that 
has ever existed in England, by three circum- 
stances chiefly: — in the first place, by the 
exclusion of all low-bred persons; secondly, 
by the superior intelligence and cultivation of 
the women ; and, finally, by the want of politi- 
cal avocations, and the absence of political 
antipathies. 

By the first of these circumstances, the old 
Parisian society was rendered considerably 
more refined, and infinitely more easy and 
natural. The general and peremptory pro- 
scription of the bourgeois, excluded, no doubt, 
a good deal of vulgarity and coarseness ; but 
it had a still better effect in excluding those 
feelings of mutual jealousy and contempt, and 
that conflict of family pride and consequential 
opulence, which can only be prevented from 
disturbing a more promiscuous assembly, by 
means of universal and systematic reserve. 



94 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



Where all r.re noble, all are equal ; — there is 
no room for ostentation or pretension of any 
sort; — every one is in his place everywhere; 
and the same manners being familiar to the 
whole society from their childhood, manners 
cease in a great measure to be an object of 
attention. Nobody apprehends any imputa- 
tion of vulgarity; and nobody values himself 
on being free from it. The little peculiarities 
by which individuals are distinguished, are 
ascribed, not to ignorance or awkwardness, 
but to caprice merely, or to peculiarity of dis- 
position ; and not being checked by contempt 
or derision, are indulged, for the most part, as 
caprice or disposition may dictate; and thus 
the very highest society is brought back, and 
by the same causes, to much of the freedom 
and simplicity of the lowest. 

In England, we have never had this ar- 
rangement. The great -wealth of the mercan- 
tile classes, and the privilege which every 
man here possesses of aspiring to every situa- 
tion, has always prevented any such complete 
separation of the high and the low r -born, even 
in ordinary society, and made all large assem- 
blages of people to a certain degree promis- 
cuous. Great wealth, or great talents, being 
sufficient to raise a man to power and emi- 
nence, are necessarily received as a sufficient 
passport into private company ; and fill it, on 
the large scale, with such motley and dis- 
cordant characters, as visibly to endanger 
either its ease or its tranquillity. The pride 
of purse, and of rank, and of manners, mutu- 
ally provoke each other ; and vanities which 
were undiscovered while they were univer- 
sal, soon become visible in the light of oppo- 
site vanities. With us. therefore, society, 
when it passes beyond select clubs and asso- 
ciations, is apt either to be distracted with 
little jealousies and divisions, or finally to 
settle into constraint, insipidity, and reserve. 
People meeting from all the extremes of life, 
are afraid of being misconstrued, and despair 
of being understood. Conversation is left to 
a few professed talkers; and all the rest are 
satisfied to hold their tongues, and despise 
each other in their hearts. 

The superior cultivation of French Women, 
however, was productive of still more sub- 
stantial advantages. Ever since Europe be- 
came civilised, the females of that country 
have stood more on an intellectual level witn 
the men than in any other, — and have taken 
their share in the politics and literature, and 
public controversies of the day, far more 
largely than in any other nation with which 
we are acquainted. For more than two cen- 
turies, they have been the umpires of polite 
letters, and the depositaries and the agents of 
those intrigues by which the functions of gov- 
ernment are usually forwarded or impeded. 
They could talk, therefore, of every thing that 
men cculd wish to talk about ; and general 
conversation, consequently, assumed a tone, 
both less frivolous and less uniform, than it 
has ever attained in our country. 

The grand source, however, of the differ- 
ence between the good society of France and 
of England, is, that, in the former counry, men 



had nothing but society to attend to ; whe-eas, 
in the latter, almost all who are cons.de able 
for ranks or for talents, are continually en- 
grossed with politics. They have no leisure, 
therefore, for society, in the first place: in the 
second place, if they do enter it at all, they are 
apt to regard it as a scene rather of relaxation 
than exertion; and, finally, they naturally 
acquire those habits of thinking and of talk- 
ing, which are better adapted to carry on 
business and debate, than to enliven people 
assembled for amusement. In England, men 
of condition have still to perform the high 
duties of citizens and statesmen, and can only 
rise to eminence by dedicating their days and 
nights to the study of business and affairs — 
to the arts of influencing those, with whom, 
and by whom, they are to act — and to the 
actual management of those strenuous con- 
tentions by which the government of a free 
state is perpetually embarrassed and pre- 
served. In France, on the contrary, under 
the old monarchy, men of the first rank had 
no political functions to discharge — no control 
to exercise over the government — and no rights 
to assert, either for themselves or their fellow 
subjects. They were either left, therefore, 
to solace their idleness with the frivolous en- 
chantments of polished society, or, if they had 
any object of public ambition, were driven to 
pursue it by the mediation of those favourites 
or mistresses who were most likely to be wou 
by the charms of an elegant address, or the 
assiduities of a skilful flatterer. 

It is to this lamentable inferiority in the 
government and constitution of their country, 
that the French are indebted for the superi- 
ority of their polite assemblies. Their saloons 
are better filled than ours, because they have no 
senate to fill out of their population ; and their 
conversation is more sprightly, and their so- 
ciety more animated than ours, because there 
is no other outlet for the talent and ingenuity 
of the nation but society and conversation. 
Our parties of pleasure, on the other hand, are 
mostly left to beardless youths and superan- 
nuated idlers — not because our men want 
talents or taste to adorn them, but because 
their ambition, and their sense of public duty, 
have dedicated them to a higher service. 
When we lose our constitution — when the 
houses of parliament are shut up, our assem- 
blies, we have no doubt, will be far more ani- 
mated and rational. It would be easy to have 
splendid gardens and parterres, if we would 
only give up our corn fields and our pastures: 
nor should we want for magnificent fountains 
and ornamental canals, if w t c were contented 
to drain the whole surrounding country of the 
rills that maintain its fertility and beauty. 

But, while it is impossible to deny that the 
French enjoyed, in the agreeable constitution 
of their higher society, no slight compensation 
for the want of a free government, it is curious, 
and not unsatisfactory, to be able to trace the 
operation of this same compensating principle 
through all the departments we have alluded 
to. It is obviously to our free government, 
and to nothing else, that we owe that mixture 
of ranks and of characters, which certainly 



MAD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. DE LESPINASSE. 



95 



renders our large society less amiable, and 
less unconstrained, than that of the old French 
nobility. Men, possessed of wealth and po- 
litical power, must be associated with by all 
with whom they choose to associate, and to 
whom their friendship or support is material. 
A trader who has bought his borough but yes- 
terday, will not give his influence to any set 
of noblemen or ministers, who will not receive 
him and his family into their society, and 
agree to treat them as their equals. The same 
principle extends downwards by impercepti- 
ble gradations ; — and the whole community is 
mingled in private life, it must be owned with 
some little discomfort, by the ultimate action 
of the same principles which combine them, 
to their incalculable benefit, in public. 

Even the backwardness or the ignorance of 
our women may be referred to the same no- 
ble origin. Women have no legal or direct 
political functions in any country in the uni- 
verse. In the arbitrary governments of Eu- 
rope, however, they exert a personal influence 
over those in power and authority, which 
raises them into consequence, familiarizes 
them in some degree with business and affairs, 
and leads them to study the character and the 
dispositions of the most eminent persons of 
their day. In free states, again, where the 
personal inclination of any individual can go 
but a little way, and where every thing must 
be canvassed and sanctioned by its legitimate 
censors, this influence is very inconsiderable; 
and women are excluded almost entirely from 
any concern in those affairs, with which the 
leading spirits of the country are necessarily 
occupied. They come, therefore, almost un- 
avoidably, to be considered as of a lower order 
of intellect, and to act, and to be treated, upon 
that apprehension. The chief cause of their 
inferiority, however, arises from the circum- 
stances that have been already stated. Most 
of the men of talent in upper life are engaged 
in pursuits from which women are necessarily 
excluded, and have no leisure to join in those 
pursuits which might occupy them in com- 
mon. Being thus abandoned in a good degree 
to the society of the frivolous of our sex, it is 
impossible that they should not be frivolous 
in their turn. In old France, on the contrary, 
the men of talents in upper life had little to 
do but to please and be pleased with the wo- 
men ; and they naturally came to acquire that 
knowledge and those accomplishments which 
fitted them for such society. 

The last distinction between good French 
and good English society, arises from the dif- 
ferent position which was occupied in each 
by the men of letters. In France, certainly, 
they mingled much more extensively with the 
polite world, — incalculably to the benefit both 
of that world, and of themselves. In England, 
our great scholars and authors have commonly 
lived in their studies, or in the society of a 
few learned friends or dependants ; and their 
life has been so generally gloomy, laborious 
and inelegant, that literature and intellectual 
eminence have lost some of their honours, and 
much of their attraction. With us, when a 
naan takes to authorship, he is commonly 



looked upon as having renounced both the gay 
and busy world : and the consequence is, that 
the gay are extremely frivolous, and the ac- 
tive rash and superficial ; while the man of 
genius is admired by posterity, and finishes 
his days rather dismally, without knowing or 
caring for any other denomination of men, 
than authors, booksellers and critics. 

This distinction too, we think, arises cut of 
the difference of government, or out of some 
of its more immediate consequences. Our 
politicians are too busy to mix with men of 
study ; and our idlers are too weak and too 
frivolous. The studious, therefore, are driven 
in a great measure to herd with each other, 
and to form a little world of their own, in 
which all their peculiarities are aggravated, 
their vanity encouraged, and their awkward- 
ness confirmed. In Paris, where talent and 
idleness met together, a society grew up, both 
more inviting and more accessible to men of 
thought and erudition. What they commu- 
nicated to this society rendered it more intel- 
ligent and respectable ; and what they learned 
from it, made them much more reasonable, 
amiable, and happy. They learned, in short, 
the true value of knowledge and of wisdom, 
by seeing exactly how much they could con- 
tribute to the government or the embellish- 
ment of life ; and discovered, that there were 
sources both of pride and of happiness, far 
more important and abundant than thinking, 
writing, or reading. 

It is curious, accordingly, to trace in the 
volumes before us, the more intimate and 
private life of some of those distinguished 
men, w T hom vje find it difficult to represent to 
ourselves under any other aspect, than that 
of the authors of their learned publications, 
D'Alembert, Montesquieu, Henault, and sev- 
eral others, all appear in those letters in their 
true and habitual character, of cheerful and 
careless men of the world — whose thoughts 
ran mostly on the little exertions and amuse- 
ments of their daily society ; who valued even 
their greatest works chiefly as the means of 
amusing their leisure, or of entitling them to 
the admiration of their acquaintances; and 
occupied themselves about posterity far less 
than posterity w r ill be occupied about them. 
It will probably scandalize a good part of our 
men of learning and science (though we think 
it w r ill be consolatory to some) to be told, that 
there is great reason for suspecting that the 
most profound of those authors looked upon 
learning chiefly as a sort of tranquil and in- 
nocent amusement ; to which it was very well 
to have recourse when more lively occupa- 
tions w T ere not at hand, but which it was wise 
and meritorious, at all times, to postpone to 
pleasant parties, and the natural play, either 
of the imagination or of the affections. It ap- 
pears, accordingly, not only that they talked 
easily and familiarly of all their works to theii 
female friends, but that they gave themselves 
very little anxiety either about their sale, or 
their notoriety out of the sphere of their own 
acquaintances, and made and invited all sorta 
of jokes upon them with unfeigned gaiety and 
indifference. The lives of our learned men 



96 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



would be much happier, and their learning 
much more useful and amiable, if they could 
be persuaded to see things in the same light. 
It is more than time, however, to introduce 
the reader to the characters in the volumes 
before us. 

Madame du Deffand's correspondence con- 
sists of letters from Montesquieu, D'Alem- 
bert, Henault, D'Argens, Formont, Bernstorff, 
Scheffer, &c. among the men, — and Mesdames 
de Staal, de Choiseul, &c. among the women. 
Her own letters, as we have already intimat- 
ed, form but a very inconsiderable part of 
the collection; — and, as these distinguished 
names naturally excite, in persons out of Paris, 
more interest than that of any witty mar- 
chioness whatsoever, we shall begin with 
some specimens of the intimate and private 
style of those eminent individuals, who are 
already so well known for the value and the 
beauty of their public instructions. 

Of these, the oldest and the most popularly 
known, was Montesquieu, — an author who 
frequently appears profound when he is only 
paradoxical, and seems to have studied with 
great success the art of hiding a desultory and 
fantastical style of reasoning in imposing- 
aphorisms, and epigrams of considerable ef- 
fect. It is impossible to read the Esprit des 
Loix, without feeling that it is the work of an 
indolent and very ingenious person, who had 
fits of thoughtfulness and ambition ; and had 
meditated the different points which it com- 
prehends at long intervals, and then connect- 
ed them as he best could, by insinuations, 
metaphors, and vague verbal distinctions. 
There is but little of him in this collection ; 
but what there is, is extremely characteristic. 
D'Alembert had proposed that he should write 
the articles Democracy and Despotism, for the 
Encyclopedie ; to which proposal he answers 
with much naivete, as follows : 

" Quant a mon introduction dans l'Encyclope- 
die, c'est un beau palais ou je serais bien glorieux 
de mettre les pieds ; mais pour los deux ariicles 
Democratic et Despotisme, je ne voudrais pas pren- 
dre ceux-la; j'ai tire, sur ces articles, de mon cer- 
veau tout ce qui y etait. Uesprit que fai est un 
moule; on n'en tire jamais que les memes portraits: 
ainsi je ne vous dirais que ce que j'ai dit, et peut- 
etre plus mal que je jie Fai dit. Ainsi, si vous 
voulez de moi, laissez a mon esprit le choix de quel- 
ques articles ; et si vous voulez ce choix, ce fera 
chez madame du Dcffand avec du marasquin. Le 
pere Castel dit qu'il ne peut pas se corriger, parce 
qu'encorrigeant son ouvrage, il en fait un autre; et 
moi je ne puis pas me corriger, parce que je chante 
toujours la meme chose. II me vient dans l'esprit 
que je pourrais prendre peut-etre 1'artiele Gout, et 
je prouverai bicn que difficile est proprie communia 
dicere"—Vo\. i. pp. 30," 31. 

There is likewise another very pleasing let- 
ter to M. de Henault, and a gay copy of verses 
to Madame de Mirepoix ; — but we hasten on 
to a personage still more engaging. Of all 
the men of genius that ever existed, D'Alem- 
bert perhaps is the most amiable and truly 
respectable. The great extent and variety of 
his learning, his vast attainments and dis- 
coveries in the mathematical sciences, and the 
beauty and eloquence of his literary composi- 
tions, are known to all the world: But the 



simplicity and openness of his character — his 
perpetual gentleness and gaiety in society- 
the unostentatious independence of his senti- 
ments and conduct — his natural and cheerful 
superiority to all feelings of worldly ambition, 
jealousy, or envy — and that air of perpetual 
youth and unassuming kindness, which made 
him so delightful and so happy in the society 
of women, — are traits which we scarcely ex- 
pect to find in combination with those splendid 
qualifications; and compose altogether a char- 
acter of which we should have been tempted 
to question the reality, were we not fortunate 
enough to be familiar with its counterpart in 
one living individual.* 

It is not possible, perhaps, to give a better 
idea of the character of D'Alembert, than 
merely to state the fact, and the reason of his 
having refused to go to Berlin, to preside over 
the academy founded there by Frederic. In 
answer to a most flattering and urgent appli- 
cation from that sovereign, he writes thus to 
M. D'Argens.t 

"La situation ou je suis seroit peut-etre, mon- 
sieur, un motif suffisant pour bien d'autres, de re- 
noncer a leur pays. Ma fortune est au-dessous du 
mediocre ; 1700 liv. de rente font tout mon revenu : 
entierement independant et maitre de mes volontes, 
je n'ai point de famille qui s'y oppose; oublie du 
gouvernement comnie tant de gens le sont de la 
Providence, persecute meme autant qu'on peut 
Petre quand on evite de donner trop d'avantages 
sur soi a la mechancete des hommes ; je n'ai aucune 
part aux recompenses qui pleuvent ici sur les gens 
de lettres, avec plus de profusion que de lumieres. 
Malgre tout cela, monsieur, la tranquillite dont je 
jouis est si parfaite et si douce, que je ne puis me 
resoudre a. lui faire courir le moindre risque." — 
" Superieur a la mauvaise fortune, les epreuves de 
toute espece que j'ai essuyees dans ce genre, m'orit 
endurci a l'indijjence et au malheur, et. ne m'ont 
laisse de sensibilite que pour ceux qui me ressern- 
blent. A force de privations, je me suis accoutume" 
sans effort a me contenter du plus etroit necessaii e, 
et jeserois meme enetat de partager mon peu de for- 
tune avec d.'honnetes gens plus pauvres que moi. .T';>i 
commence, comme les autres hommes, par desirer 
les places et les richesses, j'ai fini par y renoncer ab- 
solument ; et de jour en jour je m'en trouve niicux. 
La vie retiree et assez obscure que je mene est 
parfaitement conforme a. mon caractere, a. mon 
amour extreme pour l'independance, et peut-etre 
meme a un peu d'eloignement que les evenemens 
de ma vie m'ont inspire pour les hommes. La re* 
traite ou le regime que me prescrivent mon e:at et 
mon gout rn'ont procure la sante la plus parfaite et 
la plus egale — e'est-a-dire, le premier bien d'un 
philosophe ; enfin j'ai le bonheur de jouir d'un petit 
nombre d'amis, dont le commerce et la confiance 
font la consolation et le charme de ma vie. Jugez 
maintenant vous-meme, monsieur, s'il m'est possi- 
ble de renoncer a ces avantages, et de changer un 
bonheur sur pour une situation toujours incertaine, 
quelque brillante qu'elle puisse etre. Je ne doute 
nullement des bontes du roi, et de tout ce qu'il peut 

* It cannot now offend the modesty of any living 
reader, if I explain that the person here alluded to 
was my excellent and amiable friend, the late Pro- 
fessor Play fair. 

t This learned person writes in a very affected 
and precieuse style. He ends one of his letters to 
D'Alembert with the following eloquent expres- 
sion : — " Ma sante s'effoiblit tous les jours de plue 
en plus ; et je me dispose a aller faire bientot me* 
reverences au pere eternel: mais tandis que je res- 
terai dans ce monde je serai le plus zele de vos ad- 
mirateurs." 



MAD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. DE LESPINASSE. 



97 



faire pour me rendre agreable moti nouvel ctat ; 
mais, tnalliciiretisement pour moi, toutes les circon- 
stances essentielles a mon bonhcur ne sont pas en 
son pouvoir. Si ma same venoit a s'alterer, ce qui 
ne seroit que ttop a craindrc, que deviendrois-je 
alors ? Incapable de me rendre utile au roi, je me 
verrois force a allcr finir mes jours loin do lui. et a 
reprendre dans ma patric, ou ailleurs, mon ancien 
ctat, qui auroit perdu ses premiers charmes. Petit- 
etrc meme n'aurois-je plus la consolation de re- 
trouver en France les amis que j'y aurois laisses, et 
a qui je pereerois le occur par mon depart. Jc vous 
avoue, monsieur, que cette derniere raison seule 
peut tout sur moi. 

" Enfin (et je vous prie d'etre persuade que je ne 
cherche point a me parer ici d'une fausse modestie) 
ie doute que je fusse aussi propre a cette place que 
S. M. veut bien lecroire. Livre des mon enl'ance 
a des etudes continuelles, je n'ai que dans la theorie 
la cormoissance des bommes, qui est si neccssaire 
dans la p atiquc quand on a affaire a eux. La tran- 
quillite, et, si je l'ose dire, Voisivete du cabinet, 
m'ont rendu absolument incapable des details aux- 
quels le chef d'un corps doit se livrer. D'ailleurs, 
dans les differens objets dont l'Academie s'occupe, 
il en est qui me sont entierement inconnus, comme 
la chimie, l'histoire naturelle, et plusicurs autres, 
sur lesquels par consequent je ne pourrois etre aussi 
utile que je le desirerois. Enfin une place aussi 
brillante que celle dont le roi veut m'honorer. oblige 
a une sorte de representation tout-a-fait eloignee 
du train de vie que j'ai pris jusqu'ici ; elle engage 
a un grand nombre cle devoirs: et les devoirs sont 
les entraves d'un homme libre." — Vol. ii. pp.73— 78. 

This whole transaction was kept quite se- 
Gret for many months ; and. when it began to 
take air, lie speaks of it to Madame du Def- 
fand, in the following natural manner. 

" Apres tout, que cela se repande ou ne se re- 
pande pas, je n'en suis ni fache ni bien-aise. Je 
garderai au roi de Prusse son secret, meme lorsqu'il 
ne l'exige plus, et vous verrez aisement que mes 
lettres n'ont pas etc faites pour etre vues du minis- 
tere de France ; je suis bien resolu de ne lui pas 
demander plus de graces qu'aux ministresdu roi de 
Congo; et je me contenterai que la postcrite lise 
sur mon tombeau ; ilfut estime des honnetes geJis, 
et est morl pauvre. parce qu'il Va bien voiilu. Voila, 
madame, de quelle manicre jc pense. Je ne veux 
braver ni aussi flatter les gens qui m'ont fait du mal, 
ou qui sont dans la disposition de m'en faire ; mais je 
me eonduirai de manicre que je les reduirai seule- 
ment a ne me pas faire du bien." — Vol. ii. pp. 33, 34. 

Upon publishing his Melanges, he was 
furiously attacked by a variety of acrimonious 
writers ; and all his revenge was to retire to 
his geometry, and to write such letters as the 
following to Madame du Deffand. 

" Me voila claquemure pour long-temps, et vrai- 
semblablement pour toujours, dans ma triste, mais 
tres-chere et trcs-paisible Geometrie ! Je suis fort 
content de trouver un pretexte pour ne plus rien 
faire, dans le dechatnement que mon livre a excite 
contre moi. Je n'ai pourtant ni attaque personne, 
ni meme designe qui que ce soit, plus que n'a fait 
l'auteur du Mediant, et vingt autres, contre lesquels 
personne ne s'est dechaine. Mais il n'y a qu'beur 
et malbeur. Je n'ai besoin ni de 1'amitie de tous 
ces gens-la. puisque assurement je ne veux rien 
leur demander, ni de leur estime, puisque i'ai bien 
resolu de ne jamais vivre avec eux : aussi je les mets 
a pis faire. 

" Adieu, Madame; hatez votre retour. Que ne 
savez-yous de la geometric ! qu'avec elle on se 
passe de bien deschoses!" — Vol. i. pp. 104, 105. 

" Mon ouvrage est publie ; il s'est un pen vendu ; 

les frais de l'impression sont retires ; les eloges, 

les critiques et l'argent viendront qunnd ils vou- 

dront." — "Je n'ai encore rien touchc. Jc vous man- 

13 



dcrai ce que je gagnerai : il n'y a pas d'ap; r.rence 
que cela se morvte iort baut ; il n'y a pas d'appa- 
rence non plus que je continue a travailler clans co 
genre. Jefcraide la geometric, et je lirai Tacite! 
II me semblc qu'on a grande envie que je me laise. 
et en veri-e jc ne demande pas micux. Quand ma 
petite fortune ne suffira plus a ma subsistence, je 
me rctirerai dans quelquc endroit ou je puisse vivre 
et mourir a bon marche*. Adieu, Madame. Es- 
thnez, comme moi, les homines ce qu'ils valent, et 
il ne vous manquera rien pour etre heureuse. On 
dit Voltaire raccommode avec le roi cle Prusse, et 
Maupertuis retombe. Ma foi, les bommes sont 
bien foux, a commencer par les sages." — Vol. ii. 
pp. 50, 51. 

" Eb bien ! vous ne voulez done pas, ni Formont 
non plus, que je me claquemure dans ma geome- 
trie? J'en suis pourtant bien tente. Sivoussaviez 
combien cette geometrie est une retraite douce a la 
paresse ! el puis les sots ne vous lisent point, et par 
consequent ne vous blament ni ne vous louent : et 
comptez-vous cet avantage-la pour rien ? En tout 
cas, j'ai de la geometrie pour un an, tout au moins. 
Ah ! que je fais a present de belles choses que per- 
sonne ne lira ! 

,; J'ai bien quelques morceaux de litterature a 
traiter, qui seroient peut-ctre assez agrcables j mais 
je chasse tout celade ma tete, comme mauvais train. 
La geometrie est ma femme, et je me suis remis en 
menage. 

"Avec cela, j'ai plus d'argent devant moi que 
je n'en puis depenser. Ma foi, on est bien fou de 
se tant tourmenter pour des choses qui ne rendent 
pas plus heureux : on a bien plutot fait de dire : Ne 
pourrois-je pas me passer de cela ? Et e'est larecette 
dont j'use depuis long-temps." — Vol. ii. pp.52, 53. 

With all this softness and carelessness of 
character, nothing could be more firm and 
inflexible when truth and justice were in 
question. The President Henault was the 
oldest and first favourite of Madame du Def- 
fand ; and, at the time of publishing the En- 
cyclopaedia, Madame du Deffand had more 
power over D'Alembert than any other person. 
She wished very much that something flatter- 
ing should be said of her favourite in the In- 
troductory Discourse, which took a review of 
the progress of the arts and sciences; but 
D'Alembert resisted, with heroic courage, all 
the entreaties that were addressed to him on 
this subject. The following may serve as 
specimens of the tone which he maintained 
on the occasion. 

" Je suis devenu cent fois plus amoureux de la 
retraite et de la solitude, que je ne l'etois quand 
vous avez quitte Paris. Je dine et soupe chez moi 
tous les jours, ou presque tous les jours, et je me 
trouve tres-bien de cette manicre de vivre. Je vous 
verrai done quand vous n'aurez personne, et aux 
heures ou je pourrai esperer de vous trouver seule : 
dans d'autres temps, j'y rencontrerois votre presi- 
dent, qui m'embarrasseroit, parce qu'il croiroit avoir 
des reproches a me faire, que je ne crois point en 
meriter, et que je ne veux pas etre dans le casde le 
desobliger, en me justifiant aupres de lui. Cc que 
vous me demandez pour lui est impossible, et je 
puis vous assurer qu'il est bien impossible, puisque 
je ne fais pas cela pour vous. En premier lieu, le 
Discours preliminaire est imprime, il y a plus dc six 
semaines: ainsi je ne pourrois pas l'y fourrer au- 
jourd'hui, meme quand je le voudrois. En second 
lieu, pensez-vous de bonne foi, madame, que dans 
un ouvrage destine a celcbrer les grands genies de 
la nation et les ouvrages qui ont veritablement con- 
tribue aux progres des lettres et des sciences, j« 
doive parler de l'Abrege chronologique ? C'est 
un ouvrage utile, j'en conviens, et assez commode \ 
mais voila tout en verite: c'est la ce qup les gena 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



de lettres en pensent, c'est la ce qu'on en dira quand 
le president ne sera plus : et quand je ne serai plus 
moi, je suis jaloux qu'on ne me reproche pas 
d'avoir donne d'eloges excessifs a personne." — 
Vol. ii. pp. 35, 36. 

"J'ai une confession a. vous faire : j'ai parle de 
lui dans l'Encyclopedie, nou pas a Chronologie, car 
cela est pour Newton, Petau et Scaliger, mais a. 
Chronologique. J'y dis que nous avons, en notre 
langue, plusieurs bons abreges chronologiques : le 
sien, un autre qui vaut pour le moins autant, et un 
troisieme qui vaut mieux. Cela n'est pas dit si 
crument, ainsi ne vous fachez pas. II trouvera la 
louange bien mince, surtout la partageant avec 
d'autres; mais Dieu et vous, et meme vous toute 
seule, ne me feroient pas changer de langage." — 
"II fera sur l'Academie tout ce qui lui plaira^ ma 
conduite prouve que je ne desire point d'en etre, et 
en yeriie je le serois sans lui, si j'en avois bien 
envie ; mais le plaisir de dire la verite librement 
quand on n'outrage ni n'attaque personne, vaut 
mieux que touies les Academies du monde, depuis 
la Francoise, jusqu'a c«lle de Dugast." — " Puisque 
je suis deja d'une Academie, c'est un petit agre- 
ment de plus que d'etre des autres ; mais si j'avois 
mon experience, et quinze ans de moins, je vous 
reponds que je ne serois d'aucune." — Vol. ii. pp. 
56—64. 

We may now take a peep at the female 
correspondents, — in the first rank of whom 
we must place Madame de Staal, so well 
known to most of our readers by her charm- 
ing Memoirs. This lady was attached to the 
court of the Duchess of Maine; and her let- 
ters, independent of the wit and penetration 
they display, are exceedingly interesting, from 
the near and humiliating view they afford of 
the miserable ennui, the selfishness and paltry 
jealousies which brood in the atmosphere of 
a court, — and abundantly avenge the lowly 
for the outward superiority that is assumed 
by its inhabitants. There are few things more 
instructive, or more compassionable, than the 
picture which Madame de Staal has drawn, in 
the following passages, of her poor princess 
dragging herself about in the rain and the 
burning sun, in the vain hope of escaping from 
the load of her own inanity, — seeking relief, 
in the multitude of her visitors, from the sad 
vacuity of friendship and animation around 
her, — and poorly trying to revenge herself for 
her own unhappiness, by making every body 
near her uncomfortable. 

" Je lus avant-hier votre lettre, ma reine, a S. A. 
Elle etait dans un acces de frayeur du tonnerre, qui 
ne fit pas valoir vos galanteries. J'aurai soin une 
autre fois de ne vous pas exposer a l'orage. Nous 
nageons ces jours passes dans la joie ; nous nageons 
a present dans la pluie. Nos idees, devenues douces 
et agreables, vont reprendre toute leur noirceur. 
Pardessus cela est arrive, depuis deux jours, a notre 
princesse un rhume, avec de la fievre : ce nonob- 
stant et malgre le temps diabolique, la promenade 
va toujours son train. II semble que la Providence 
prenne soin de construire pour les princes des corps 
a l'usage de leurs fantaisies, sans quoi iis ne pour- 
raient attraperage d'homme." — Vol. i.pp. 161, 162. 

" En depit d'un troisieme orage plus violent que 
les deux precedens, nous arrivons d'une chasse : 
nous avons essuye la bordee au beau milieu de la 
foret. J'esperais eviter comme a. l'o'rdinaire cette 
belle partie ; mais on aadroitement tire parti des rai- 
sons que j'avais alleguees pourm'en dispenser; ce 
qui m'a mishors d'etat de reculer. C'est dommage 
qu'un art si ingenieux soit employe a desoler les 
gens." — Vol. i. p. 164. 

" Je suis tres fachee que vous manquiez d'amuse- 



mens: c'est un medicament necessaire a la sant6, 
notre princesse le pense bien ; car etant veritable* 
ment malade, elle va sans fin, sans cesse, quelque 
temps qu'il fasse." — Vol. i. p. 168. 

" Nous faisons, nous disons toujours les memes 
choses : les promenades, les observations sur le 
vent, le cavagnole, les remarques sur ia perte et le 
gain, les mesures pour tenir les portes ferniees quel- 
que chaud qu'il fasse, la desolation de ce qu'on ap- 
pelle les etouffes, au nombre desquels je suis, e, 
dont vous n'etes pas, qualite qui redouble le desr 
de votre societe." — Vol. i. p. 197. 

" Rien n'est egal a la surprise et au chagrin ou 
Ton est, ma reine, d'avoir appris que vous avez ete 
chez Madame la Duchesse de Modene. Un amant 
bien passionne et bien jaloux supporte plus tran- 
quillement les demarches les plus suspectes, qu'on 
n'endure celle-ci de votre part. ' Vous allez^ vous 
devouer la, abandonner tout le reste ; voila. a quoi 
on etoit reserve: c'est une destinee bien cruelle !' 
&c. J'ai dit ce qu'il y avait a dire pour ramener 
le calme ; on n'a voulu rien entendre. Quoique je 
ne doive plus m'etonner, cette scene a encore trouve 
moyen de me surprendre. Venez, je vous conjure, 
ma reine, nous rassurer contre cette alar me : ne 
louez point la personne dont il s'agit, et surtout ne 
parlez pas de son affliction ; car cela serait pris pour 
un reproche." — Vol. ii. pp. 22, 23. 

All this is miserable: but such are the 
necessary consequences of being bred up 
among flatterers and dependants. A prince 
has more chance to escape this heartlessness 
and insignificance ; because he has high and 
active duties to discharge, which necessarily 
occupy his time, and exercise his understand- 
ing ; but the education of a princess is a work 
of as great difficulty as it may come to be of 
importance. We must make another extract 
or two from Madame de Staal, before taking 
leave of her. 

" Madame du Chatelet et Voltaire, qui s'etaient 
annonces pour aujourd'hui et qu'on avait perdus de 
vue, parurent hier, sur le minuit, comme deux 
spectres, avec une odeur de corps embaumes qu'ils 
semblaient avoir apportee de leurs tombeaux. On 
sortait de table. C'etaient pourtant des spectres 
affames: il leur fallut un souper, et qui plus est, des 
lits, qui n'etaient pas prepares. La concierge, deja 
couchee, se leva a grande hate. Gaya, qui avait 
oflfert son logement pour les cas pressans, hit force 
de le ceder dans celui-ci, demenagea avec autant 
de precipitation et de deplaisir qu'une armee sur- 
prise dans son camp, laissant une partie de son 
bagage au pouvoir de 1'ennemi. Voltaire s'est 
bien trouve du gite : cela n'a point du tout console 
Gaya. Pour la dame, son lit ne s'est pas trouve 
bien fait : il a fallu la deloger aujourd'hui. Notez 
que ce lit elle Favait fait elle-meme, faute de gens, 
et avait trouve un defaut de . . . . dans les matelas, 
ce qui, je crois, a plus blesse son esprit exact que 
son corps peu delicat." — "Nos revenans ne se 
montrent point de jour, ils apparurent hier a dix 
heures du soir : je ne pense pas qu'on les voie guere 
plus tot aujourd'hui; l'un est a decrire de nauts 
faits, I'autre a commenter Newton ; ils ne veulent 
ni jouer ni se promener : ce sont bien des non-va- 
leursdans une societe, ou leurs doctes ecrits ne sont 
d'aucun rapport." — "Madame du Chatelet est 
d'hier a son troisieme logement : elle ne pouvait 
plus supporter celui qu'elle avait choisi ; il y avait 
du bruit, de la fumee sans feu (il me semble que 
c'est son embleme). Le bruit, ce n'est pas la butt 
qu'il Pincommode, a ce qu'elle m'a dit, mais^ le 
jour, au fort de son travail : cela derange ses idees. 
Elle fait actuellement la revue de ses principes ! 
c'est un exercice qu'elle reitere chaque annee, sans 
quoi ils pourraient s'echapper, etpeut-etre s'en aller 
si loin qu'elle n'en retrouverait pas un seul. Je 
crois bien que sa tete est pour eux une maison de 



MAD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. DE LESPINASSE. 



99 



force, et non pas le lieu de leur naissance : c'est !e 
cas dt veiller soigneusement a leur garde. El!e 
preiere le bon air de cette occupation a tout nme- 
r/tent, et persiste a no se montrer qu'a la Quit close. 
Voltaire a fait des vers galan*, qui reparent un peu 
le mauvais effet de leur conduite inusitee." — Vol. i. 
pp. 178, 179. 1S2. 185, 186. 

After all this experience of the follies of the 
great and the learned, this lively little woman 
concludes in the true tone of French practical 
philosophy. 

" O ma reine ! que les hommes et leurs femelles 
sont de plaisans animaux ! Je ris de leurs manoeu- 
vres, le jour que j'ai bien dormi; quand le som- 
meil me manque, je suis prete a les assommer. 
Cette variete de mes dispositions me fait voir que 
je ne degenere pas de mon espece. Moquor.s-nous 
des autres, et qu'ils se moquent de nous; c'est 
bien fait de toute part P* — Vol. i. p. 181. 

Among the lady writers in these volumes, 
we do not know if there be any entitled to 
take precedence of la Duchesse de Choiseul, 
who writes thus learnedly on the subject of 
ennui to Madame du Deffand. 

" Savez-vous pourquoi vous vous ennuyez tant, 
ma chere enfant? C'est justement par la peine 
que vous prenez d'eviter, de prevoir, de combat t re 
I'enoui. Vivez au jour la journee : prenez le temps 
com me il vient ; profitez de tous les inomens, et 
avec cela vous verrez que vous ne vous ennui^rez 
pas : si les circonstances vous sont contraires, cedez 
au torrent et ne prctendez pas y resister." — 

" Je m'apereois, ma chere enfant, que je vous 
dis des choses bien communes; mats accouiumez- 
vous a les supporter, 1°, parce que je ne suis pas 
en etat de vous en dire d'autres ; 2°, parce qu'en 
morale elles sont toujours les plus vraies, parce 
qu'elles tiennent a la nature. Apres avoir bien 
exerce son esprit, le philosophe le plus eclaire sera 
oblige d'en revenir, a cet egard, a. I'axiome du plus 
grand sot, de mcme qu'il partage avec lui l'air qu'il 
respire." — "Les prejuges se multiplient, les arts 
s'accroissent, les sciences s'approfondi^sent : mais 
la morale est toujours la nieme, parce que la nature 
ne change pas ; elle est toujours reduite a ces deux 
points: eire juste pour e're bon, erre sage pour 
etre heureux Sadi, poete Persan. dit que la sa- 
gesse est dejouir, la bonte de faire jouir: j'y ajoute 
la justice." — 

•' II y a trois choses dont vous dires que les fem- 
mes ne conviennent jamais: Tune d'entre elles est 
de s'ennuyer. Je n'en conviens pas non plus ici: 
malgre vos soupcons, je vois mes ouvriers, je crois 
conduire leurs ouvrages. A ma toilette, j'ai cette 
petite Corbie qui est laide, maisfraiche comme une 
peche, foile comme un jeune chien ; qui chante, 
qui rit, qui joue du clavecin, qui danse, qui saute 
au lieu de marcher, qui ne sait ce qu'elle fait, et 
fait tout avec grace, qui nesait ce qu'elle dit, et dit 
tout avec esprit, et surtout une naivete charmante. 
La nuit je dors, le jour je reve, el ces plaisirs si 
doux, si passifs, si beres, sont precisement ceux qui 
me conviennent le mieux." — Vol. ii. pp. 134, 135. 

It is time now that we should come to 
Madame du Deffand herself: — the wittiest, the 
most selfish, and the most ennuye of the whole 
party. Her wit, to be sure, is very enviable 
and very entertaining ; but it is really con- 
solatory to common mortals, to find how little 
it could amuse its possessor. This did not 
proceed in her, however, from the fastidious- 
ness which is sometimes supposed to arise 
from a long familiarity with excellence, so 
much as from a long habit of selfishness, or 
rather from a radical want of heart or affec- 
tion. La Harpe says of her, " Qu'il etoit dif- 



ficile d'avoir moins de sensibilite, et plus 
d'egoisme." With all ihis, she was greatly 
given to gallantry in her youth ; though her 
attachments, it would seem, were of a kind 
not very likely to interfere with her peace of 
mind. The very evening her first lover died, 
after an intimacy of twenty years, La Harpe 
assures us, '-Qu'elle vint souper en grande 
cornpagnie chez Madame de Marchais, ou 
j'etais; et on lui parla de la perte qu'elle ve- 
nait de faire. Helas ! il est mort ce soir a six 
heures ; sans cela, vous ne me verriez pas ici 
Ce furent ses propres paroles; et elle soupa 
comme a son ordinaire, e'est-a-dire fort bien : 
car elle etait tres-gourmande." (Pref. p. xvi.j 
She is also recorded to have frequently de- 
clared, that she could never bring herself to 
love any thing, — though, in order to take 
every possible chance, she had several times 
attempted to become devote — with no great 
success. This, we have no doubt, is the 
secret of her ennui ; and a fine example it is 
of the utter worthlessness of all talent, ac- 
complishment, and glory, when disconnected 
from those feelings of kindness and generosity, 
which are of themselves sufficient for happi- 
ness. Madame du Deffand, however, must 
have been delightful to those who sought only 
for amusement. Her tone is admirable ; her 
wit flowing and natural : and though a little 
given to detraction, and not a little importu- 
nate and ezigcante towards those on whose 
complaisance she had claims, there is always 
an air of politeness in her raillery, and of 
knowledge of the world in her murmurs, that 
prevents them from being either wearisome 
or offensive. 

Almost all the letters of her writing which 
are published in these volumes, seem to have 
been written in the month of July 1742, 
when she spent a few weeks at the waters of 
Forges, and wrote almost daily to the Presi- 
dent Henault at Paris. This close corres- 
pondence of theirs fills one of these volumes; 
and, considering the rapidity and carelessness 
with which both parties must have written, 
must give, we should think, a very correct, 
and certainly a very favourable idea of the 
style of their ordinary conversation. We 
shall give a few extracts very much at ran- 
dom. She had made the journey along with 
a Madame de Pequigni, of whom she gives 
the following account. 

" Mais venons a un article bien plus interessant, 
c'est ma compagne. O mon Dicu ! qu'elle me 
deplait ! Elle est radicalement folle ; elle ne con- 
noit point d'heure pour ses repas ; elle a dejeune a 
Gisors a huit heures du matin, avec du veau froid ; 
a Gournay, elle a mange du pain trempe dans le 
pot, pour nourrir un Limousin, ensuite un morceau 
de brioche, et puis trois assez grands biscuits. Nous 
arrivons, il n'est que deux heures et demie, et ella 
veut du riz et une capilotade ; elle mange comme 
un singe; sesmainsressemblenta leurs pattes; elle 
ne cesse de bavarder. Sa pretention est d'avoir de 
l'imagination, et de voir toutes choses sous des faces 
singulieres, et comme la nouveaute des idecs hri 
manque, elle y supplee par la bizarrerie de l'ex- 
pression, sous pretexte qu'elle est naturelle. Elle 
me declare toutes ses fantaisies, en m'agsurant 
qu'elle ne veut que ce qui me convient ; mais ja 
crains d'etre force a etre sa complaisante; cepen- 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



dant je compte bien que cela ne s'etendra pas sur 
ce qui interessera mon regime. Elle comptoittout 
a l'heure s'etablir dans ma chambre pour y (aire 
ses repas, mais je lui ai dit que j'allois ecrire : je 
i'ai price de faire dire a Madame Laroehe les heures 
ou elle vouloit manger et ce qu'elle voudroit man- 
ger, et ou elle vouloit manger; et que, pour moi, 
je comptois avoir la merae liberte : en consequence 
je manoerai du riz et un poulet a huit heures du 
soir."— Vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. 

After a few days she returns again to this 
unfortunate companion. 

" La Pequigni n'est d'aucune ressource, et son 
esprit est comme l'espace : il y a etendue, profon- 
deur, et peut-etre toutes les autres dimensions que 
je ne saurais dire, parce que je ne les sais pas ; 
mais cela n'est que du vide pour l'usage. Elle 
a tour senti, tout juge, tout eprouve, tout choisi, 
tent rejete ; elle est, dit-elle, d'une difficulte sin- 
guliere en compagnie, et cependant elle est toute 
la journee avec toutes nos petites madames a 
jaboler comme une pie. Mais ce n'est pas cela 
qui me deplait en elle : cela m'est commode des 
aujourd'hui, et cela me sera tres agreable shot 
que Formont sera arrive. Ce qui m'est insup- 
portable, e'est le diner ; elle a l'air d'une folle 
en mangeant ; elle depece une poularde dans le 
plat ou on la sert, ensuite elle la met dans un autre, 
se fait rapporter du bouillon pour mettre dessus, 
tout semblable a celui qu'elle rend, et puis elle 
prend un haut d'aile, ensuite le corps dont elle ne 
mange que la moitie ; et puis elle ne veut pas que 
Ton retourne le veau pour couper un os, de peur 
qu'on n'amollisse la peau; elle coupe un os avec 
toute la peine possible, elle le ronge a demi, puis 
retourne a sa poularde ; apres elle pele tout le 
dessus du veau, ensuite elle revient a. ronger sa 
poularde : cela dure deux heures. Elle a sur son 
assiette des morceaux d'os rongees, du peaux su- 
cees, et pendant ce temps, ou je m'ennuie, a la 
mort, ou je mange plus qu'il ne faudrait. C'est 
une curiosite de lui voir manger un biscuit; cela 
dure une demi-heure, et le total, c'est qu'elle 
mange comme un loup: il est vrai qu'elle fait un 
exercice enrage. Je suis fachee que vous ayez de 
commun avec elle l'impossibilite de rester une 
minute en repos." — Vol. hi. pp. 39 — 41. 

The re3t of her company do not come any 
better off. The lady she praises most, seems 
to come near to the English character. 

" Madame de Bancour a trente ans; elle n'est 
pas vilaine ; elle est tres douce et tres polie, et ce 
n'est pas sa faute de n'etre pas plus amusante ; 
c'est faute d'avoir rien vu : car elle a du bon sens, 
n'a nulle pretention, et est fort naturelle ; son ton 
de voix est doux, naif et meme un pen niais, dans 
le gout de Jeliot; si elle avaitvecu dans le monde, 
elle serait aimable : je lui fais conter sa vie ; elle 
BSt occupee de ses devoirs, sans austerite ni osten- 
tation ; si elle ne m'ennuyait pas, elle me plairait 
•assez." — Vol. iii. p. 26. 

The following are some of her wailings 
over her banishment. 

" II me prend des etonnemens funestes d'etre ici : 
c'est comme la pensee de la mort ; si je ne m'en 
distrayais, j'en mourraisreellement. Vousnesau- 
riez vous flgurer la tristesse de ce sejour ; mais si 
fait, puisque vous ete3 a Plombieres : mais non ; 
c'est que ce n'est point le lieu, c'est la compagnie 
dont il est impossible de faire aucun usage. Heu- 
reusement depuis que je suis ici, j'ai un certain 
hebetement qui ferait que je n'entendrais pas le plus 
Detit raisonnement : je vegete." — " Je ne crois 
pas qu'aucun remede puisse etre bon lorsqu'on 
fc'ennuie autant que je fais: ce n'est pas que je 
aupporte mon mal patiemment ; mais jamais je ne 
suis bien-aise, et ce n'est que parce que je vegete 
>iue je suis tranquille : quand dix heures arrivent je 



suis ravie, je vois la fin ce la journee avec oelicos. 
Si je n'avais pas mon lit et mon fauteuil, je serais 
cent fois plus malheureuse." — Vol. iii. pp. 9G — 98. 

The following, though short, is a good spec- 
imen of the tone in which she treats her 
lover. 

" Je crois que vous me regrettez, e'est-a-dire, 
que vous pensez beaucoup a. moi. Mais (comme 
de raison) vous vous divertissez fort bien : vous etes 
comme les quietistes, vous faites tout en moi, pour 
moi et par moi ; mais le fait est que vous faites tout 
sans moi et que vos journees se passent gaiement, 
que vous jouissez d'une certaine liberte qui vous 
plait, et vous etes fort aise que pendant ce temps-la 
je travaille a me bien porter. Mes nuits ne sont 
pastrop bonnes, et je crois que c'est que je mange 
un peu trop: hier je me suis retranche le bceut, au- 
jourd'hui je compte reformer la quantite de pain." 
— " N'allez point vous corriger sur rien, j'aime que 
vous me parliez ormeaux, ruisseaux, moineaux, etc., 
et ce m'est une occasion tres-agreable de vous don- 
ner des dementis, de vous conlondre, de vous tour- 
menter, c'est je crois ce qui contribue le plus a me 
faire passer mes eaux." — Vol. iii. pp. 126, 127. 129. 

We have scarcely left ourselves room to 
give any of the gentleman's part of this cor- 
respondence. It is very pleasingly avid gaily 
sustained by him, — though he deals mostly in 
the tittle-tattle of Paris, and appears a little 
vain of his own currency and distinction. We 
extract the following paragraphs, just as they 
turn up to us. 

" Je ne crois pas que Ton puisse etre heureux en 
province quand on a passe sa vie a Paris ; mais 
heureux qui n'a jamais connu Paris, et qui n'ajoute 
pas necessairement a cette vie les maux chime- 
riques, quisont les plus grands ! caron peut guerir un 
seigneur qui gemit de ce qu'il a ete grele, en lui 
faisant voir qu'il se trompe, et que sa vigne est cou- 
verte de raisin ; mais la grele metaphysique ne peut 
etre combattue. La nature, ou la providence n'est 
pas si injuste qu'on le veut direj n'y meltons. rien 
du notre, et nous serons moins a plaindre ; et puis 
regardons le terme qui approche, le marteau qui va 
frapper l'heure, et pensons que tout cela va dis- 
paraitre. 

" Ah ! l'inconcevable Pont de Veyle ! il vient do 
donner une parade chez M. le due d' Orleans : cetto 
scene que vous connaissez du vendeur d'orvietan. 
Au lieu du Forcalquier, c'eiait le petit Gauffin qui 
faisait le Giles ; et Pont de Veyle a distribue an 
moins deux cents boites avec un couplet pour tout 
le monde: il est plus jeune que quand vous l'avez 
vu la premiere fois ; il s' amuse de tout; tfaime rien; 
et n'a conserve de la memoire de la dei'unte que la 
haine pour la musique francaise." — Vol. i. pp. 
110, ill. 

At the end of the letters, there are placed 
a variety of portraits, or characterst)f the most 
distinguished persons in Madame du Def- 
fand's society, written by each other — some- 
times with great freedom, and sometimes 
with much flattery — but almost always with 
wit and penetration. We give the following 
by Madame du DefFand as a specimen, 
chiefly because it is shorter than most of the 
others. 

"Madame la Duchesse d'Aiguillon a la bouche 
enfonce, le nez de travers, le regard fol et hardi, — 
et malgre cela elle est belle. L'eclat de son teint 
l'emporte sur l'irregularite de ces traits. 

" Sa taille est grossiere, sa gorge, ses bras sonl 
enormes ; cependant elle n'a point l'air pesant ni 
epais : la force supplee en elle a la legerete. 

" Son esprit a beaucoup de rapport a 8a figure : il 
est pour ainsi dire aussi mal dessine que son visage, 



. MAD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. LESPINASSE. 



I OS 



fit aussi eclatant : 1'abondance, l'activi.e, l'impetu- 
osite en sont les qualites dominantes. Sans gout, 
Bans grace, ef sans justesse, eile etonne, elle sur- 
prend, mais eile ne plait ni n'interesse. 

" On puunait comparer Madame la Duchesse 
d'AiguiUon a ccs statues faites pour le cintre, etqui 
paraissent monstrueuses etant dans le parvis. Sa 
figure ni son esprit ne veulent point etre vus ni ex- 
amines de trop pies ; une certaine distance est neces- 
saire a sa beaute: des juges peu eclaires et peu 
delicats sont les seuls qui puissent etre favorables a 
son esprit. 

" Semblabie a la trompette du jugement, elle est 
faite pour resusciter les morts; ce sont les impuis- 
sans qui doivent 1' aimer, ce sont les sourds qui doi- 
Tent lentendre." — Vol. iii. pp. 154 — 156. 

There are three characters of Madame du 
Deffand herself, all very flattering. That by 
the President Renault is the least so. It ends 
as follows. 

" Cependant, pour ne pas marquer trop de pre- 
vention et obtenir plus de croyance, j'ajout^rai que 
Page, sans lui oter ses talens, l'avait vendue ja- 
louse et mefiante, cedant a ses premiers mouve- 
mens. maladroite pour conduire les hommes dont 
elle disposait naturellement ; enfin de l'humeur 
inegale, injuste, ne cessant d'etre aimable qu'aux 
yeux des personnes auxquelles il lui importait de 
plaire, et, pour mnr, la personne par laquelle j'ai 
e'e le plus heureux et le plus malheureux, parce 
qu'elleest ee que j'ai le plus aime." — Vol. iii. p. 188. 

He is infinitely more partial to a Madame 
de Flamarens, whose character he begins 
with great elegance as follows. 

" Madame de Flamarens a le visage le plus 
touchant et le plus modeste qui fut jamais ; e'est un 
genre de beaute que la nature n'a attrape qu'une 
fois : il y a dans ses traits quelque chose de rare et 
de mysterieux. qui aurait fait dire, dans les temps 
fabuleux. qifune immortelle, sous cette forme, ne 
s'eiait pas assez deguisee!" — Vol. iii. p 196. 

We take our leave now of these volumes: 
and of the brilliant circle and brilliant days 
of Madame du DefTand. Such a society pro- 
bably never will exist again in the world : — 
nor can we say we are very sorry for it. 
It was not very moral, we are afraid; and we 
have seen, that the most distinguished mem- 
bers of it were not very happy. When we 
6ay that it must have been in the highest de- 
gree delightful to those who sought only for 
amusement, we wish it to be understood, not 
only that amusement does not constitute hap- 
piness, but that it can afford very little plea- 
sure to those who have not other sources of 
happiness. The great extent of the accom- 
plished society of Paris, and the familiarity 
of its intercourse, seems to have gradually 
brought almost all its members to spend their 
whole lives in public. They had no notion, 
therefore, of domestic enjoyments; and their 
affections being dissipated among so many 
competitors, and distracted by such an inces- 
sant variety of small occupations, came natur- 
ally to be weakened and exhausted ; and a 
certain ^heartless gaiety to be extended indis- 
criminately to the follies and the misfortunes 
of their associates. Bating some little fits of 
gallantry, therefore, there could be no devo- 
tedness of attachment; and no profound sym- 
pathy for the sufferings of the most intimate 
friends. Every thing, we find accordingly, 
was made a subject for epigrams; and those 



who did not make jests at their friends' ca- 
lamities, were glad, at any rate, to forget them 
in the society of those who did. When we 
recollect, too, that the desertion of all the high 
duties of patriots and statesmen, and the in- 
sulting and systematic degradation of the great 
body of the people were necessary conditions 
of the excellence of this society, we cannot 
hesitate in saying, that its brilliancy was 
maintained at far too great a cost , and that 
the fuel which was wasted in its support, 
would have been infinitely better applied in 
diffusing a gentler light, and a more genial 
heat, through the private dwellings of the 
land. 

We have occupied ourselves so long with 
Madame du Deffand and her associates, that 
we can afford but a small portion of our atten- 
tion for Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. A very 
extraordinary person we will allow her to have 
been ; and a most extraordinary publication 
she has left us to consider. On a former oc- 
casion, we took some notice of the account 
which Marmontel had given of her character 
and conduct, and expressed our surprise that 
any one, who had acted the unprincipled and 
selfish part which he imputes to her, should 
be thought worthy, either of the admiration 
he expresses, or of the friendship and patron- 
age of so many distinguished characters, or 
of the devoted attachment of such a man as 
D'Alembert. After reading these letters, we 
see much reason to doubt of the accuracy of 
Marmontel's representation ; but, at the same 
time, find great difficulty in settling our own 
opinion of the author. Marmontel describes 
her as having first made a vain attempt upon, 
the heart of M. de Guibert, the celebrated 
author of the Tactics, — and then endeavoured 
to indemnify herself by making a conquest of 
M. de Mora, the son of the Spanish ambassa- 
dor, upon whose death she is stated to have 
died of mortification ; and, in both cases, she 
is represented as having been actuated more 
by a selfish and paltry ambition, than by any 
feeling of affection. The dates, and the tenor 
of the letters before us, enable us to detect 
many inaccuracies in this statement; while 
they throw us into new perplexity as to the 
true character of the writer. They begin in 
1773, after M. de Mora had been recalled to 
Spain by his relations, and when her whole 
soul seems to be occupied with anguish for 
this separation; and they are all addressed to 
M. de Guibert, who had then recently recom- 
mended himself to her, by the tender interest 
he took in her affliction. From the very be- 
ginning, however, there is more of love in 
them, than we can well reconcile with the 
subsistence of her first engrossing passion; 
and, long before the death of M. Mora, she 
expresses the most vehement, unequivocal, 
and passionate attachment to M. Guibert. 
Sometimes she has fits of remorse for this; 
but, for the most part, she seems quite uncon- 
scious, either of inconsistency or impropriety ; 
and M. Guibert is. in the same letter, ad- 
dressed in terms of the most passionate ado- 
ration, and made the confident of her un- 
speakable, devoted, and unalterable love for 
12 



102 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



M. Mora. So she goes on, — most furiously and 
outrageously in love with them both at the 
same time, — till the death of M. Mora, in 
1774. This event, however, makes no differ- 
ence in her feelings or expressions; she con- 
tinues to love his memory, just as ardently as 
his living successor in her affection ; and her 
letters are divided, as before, between ex- 
pressions of* heart-rending grief and unbounded 
attachment — between her besoin de mourir for 
M. Mora, and her delight in living for M. 
Guibert. There are still more inexplicable 
things in those letters. None of Guibert's 
letters are given, — so that we cannot see how 
he responded to all these raptures ; but, from 
the very first, or almost from the first, she 
complains bitterly of his coldness and dissipa- 
tion ; laments that he has a heart incapable 
of tenderness; and that he feels nothing but 
gratitude or compassion for a being whom he 
had fascinated, exalted, and possessed with 
the most ardent and unbounded passion. We 
cannot say that we see any clear traces of her 
ever having hoped, or even wished that he 
should marry her. On the contrary, she re- 
commends several wives to him ; and at last 
he takes one, with her approbation and con- 
sent, while the correspondence goes on in the 
same tone as before. The vehemence and 
excess of her passion continue to the last of 
the letters here published, which come down 
to within a few weeks of her death, in 1776. 
The account which we have here given ap- 
pears ridiculous : and there are people, and 
wise people, who, even after looking into the 
book, will think Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
deserving of nothing but ridicule, and consign 
her and her ravings to immeasurable con- 
tempt. Gentle spirits,, however, will judge 
more gently; and there are few, we believe, 
who feel interest enough in the work to read 
it through, who will not lay it down with 
emotions of admiration and profound com- 
passion. Even if we did not know that she 
was the chosen companion of D'Alembert, 
and the respected friend of Turgot, Condillac, 
Condorcet, and the first characters in France, 
there are, in the strange book before us, such 
traces of a powerful, generous, and ardent 
mind, as necessarily to command the respect 
even of those who may be provoked with her 
inconsistencies, and wearied out with the ve- 
hemence of her sorrow. There is something 
so natural too, so eloquent, and so pathetic in 
her expression — a tone of ardour and enthusi- 
asm so infectious, and so much of the true 
and agonizing voice of heart-struck wretched- 
ness, that it burdens us with something of the 
weight of a real sorrow ; and we are glad to 
make ourselves angry at her unaccountable- 
ness, in order to get rid of the oppression. It 
ought to be recollected also, that during the 
whole course of the correspondence, this poor 
young woman was dying of a painful and ir- 
ritating disease. Tortured with sickness, or 
agitated with opium, her blood never seems 
in all that time to have flowed peaceably in 
\er veins, and her nerves and her passions 
seem to have reacted upon each other in a 
series of crueHagitations. Why she is so very 



wretched, and so very angry, we do not in 
deed always understand ; but there is no mis- 
taking the language and real emotion , and 
while there is something wearisome, perhaps, 
in the uniformity of a* vehemence of winch we 
do not clearly see the cause, there is some- 
thing truly dechirant in the natural and pite- 
ous iteration of her eloquent complainings, 
and something captivating and noble in the 
fire and rapidity with which she pours out her 
emotions. The style is as original and extra- 
ordinary as the character of its author. It is 
quite natural, and even negligent — altogether 
without gaiety or assumed dignity — and yet 
full of elegance and spirit, and burning with 
the flames of a heart abandoned to passion y 
and an imagination exalted by enthusiasm. 
It is not easy to fall into the measure of such 
a composer, in running over a miscellany of 
amusement ; but we cannot avoid adding a 
few extracts, if it were only to make what 
we have been saying intelligible, to some at 
least of our readers. 

" Je me sentois une repugnance mortelle a. ouvrir 
votre lettre : si je n'avois craint de vous offenser, 
j'allois vous la renvoyer. Quelque chose me disoit 
qu'elle irri:eroit mes maux, et je voulois me me- 
nager. La soufFrance continuelle de mon corps 
aflaisse mon ame : j'ai encore eu la fievre ; je n'ai 
pas ferme l'ceil ; je n'en puis plus. De grace, par 
pitie, ne tourmentezplusunevie qui s'eteint, et dont 
tous les instans sont devoues a la douleur et aux 
regrets. Je ne vous accuse point, je n'exige rien, 
vous ne me devez rien : car, en effet, je n'ai pas eu 
un mouvement, pas un sentiment auquel j'ai con- 
senti ; et quand j'ai eu le malheur d'y ceder, j'ai 
tonjours deteste la force, ou la foiblesse, qui m'en- 
trainoit. Vous voyez que vous ne me devez aucune 
reconnaissance, et que je n'ai le droit de vous faire 
aucun reproche. Soyez done fibre, retournez a ce 
que vous aimez, et a. ce qui vous convient plus que 
vous ne croyez peut-etre. Laissez-moi a ma dou- 
leur ; laissez-moi m'occuper sans distr etion du seul 
ot jet que j'ai adore, et dont le souvenir m'est plus 
cher que tout ce qui reste dans la nature. Mon 
Dieu ! je ne devrois pas le pleurer ; j'aurois du le 
suivre : e'est vous qui me faites vivre, qui faiies le 
tourment d'une creature que la douleur consume, 
et qui emploie ce qui lui reste de forces a invoquer 
la mort. Ah ! vous en faites trop, et pas assez pour 
moi. Je vous le disois bien il y a huit jours, vous 
me rendez difficile, exigeante : en donnant tour, on 
veut obtenir quelque chose. Mais, encore une fois, 
je vous pardonne. et je ne vous hais point : ce n'est 
pas par generosite que je vous pardonne, ce n'est 
pas par home que je ne vous hais pas; e'est que 
mon ame est lasse, qu'elle meurt de fatigue. Ah I 
mon ami, laissez-moi. ne me difes plus que vous 
m' aimez : ce baume devient du poison ; vous calmez 
et dechirez ma plaie tour a tour. Oh ! que vous 
me faites mal ! que la vie me pose ! que je vou3 
aime pourtant, et que je serois desolee de mettre de 
la trisiesse dans votre ame ! Mon ami, elle est trop 
partagee, trop dissipee, pour que le vrai plaisir y 
puisse penetrer. Vous voulez que je vous voie ce 
soir ; et bien, venez done !" — Vol. ii. pp. 206 — 208. 

" Combien de fois aurois-je pu me plaindre ; com- 
bien de fo:s vous ai-je cache mes larmes ! Ah ! je 
le vois trop bien: on ne saui'oit ni retenir, ni ra- 
mener un cceur qui est eniraine par un autre pen- 
chant ; je me le dis sans cesse, quelquefois je me 
crois guerie ; vous paroissez, et tout est detruit. 
La reflexion, mes resolutions, le malheur, tout perd 
sa force au premier mot que vous prononcez. Je 
ne vois plus d'asile que la mort, et jamais aucun 
malheureux ne l'a invoquee avec plus d'ardeui 
Je retiens la moitie de mon ame: sa chaleur, sou 
mouvement vous importuneroit, et vous eteindroi. 



MAD. DU DEFFAND AND MLLE. DE LESPINASSE. 



103 



tout-a-fait; le feu qui n'echauffe pas, incommode. 
Ah ! si vous saviez, si vous lisiez comme j'ai lait 
jouir une ame tone et passionnee, du plaisir d'etre 
aimee ! 11 comparoit ce qui l'avoit aime, ce qui 
1'aimoit encore, et il me disoit sans cesse: ' Oh! 
elles ne sont p:is digues d'etre vos ecolieres ; votre 
ame a ete chaurl'ee par le soleil de Lima, et mes 
compatriotes semblent etre nees sous les glaces de 
la Laponie.' Et c'etoit de Madrid qu'il me mandoit 
cela! Mon ami, il ne me louoit pas; il jouissoit ; 
et je ne crois point me louer, quand je vous dis 
qu'en vous aimant a la folie, je ne vous donne que 
ce que je ne puis pas garder ou retenir." — Vol. ii. 
pp. 215—217. 

" Oh, mon Dieu ! que Ton vit fort lorsqu'on est 
mort a tout, excepte a. un objet qui est I'univers 
pour nous, et qui s'empare tellement de touies 
nos facultes, qu'il n'est plus possible de vivre dans 
d'autres temps que dans le moment ou Ton est4 
Eh! comment voulez-vous que je vous dise si je 
vous aimerai dans trots rnois ? Comment pourrois- 
je, avec ma pensee, me distraire de mon senti- 
ment ? Vous voudriez que, lorsque je vous vois, 
lorsque votre presence charme mes sens et mon 
ame, je pusse vous rendre compte de I'efTet que je 
recevrai de votre mariage ; mon ami. je n'en sais 
l"ien, — mais rien du tout. S'il me guerissoit, je 
vous le dirois, et vous etes assez juste pour ne m'en 
pas blamer. Si, au contraire, il porioit le desespoir 
dans mon ame, je ne me plaindrois pas, et je soufFri- 
rois bien peu de temps. Alois vous seriez assez 
sensible et assez delicat pour approuver un parti qui 
ne vouscouteroit que des regrets passage rs, et dont 
votre nouvelle situation vous distrairoit bien vite ; et 
je vous assure que cette pensee est consolante pour 
moi : je m'en sens plus libre. Ne me demandez 
done plus ce que je ferai lorsque vous aurez engage 
votre vie a une autre. Si je n'avois que de la vaniie 
et de l'ainour-propre. je serois bien plus eclairee sur 
ce que j'eprouverai alors. II n'y a guere de meprise 
aux calculs de t'amour-propre ; il prevoit assez 
juste: la passion n'a point d'avenir ; ainsi en vous 
disant : je vous aime, je vous dis tout ce, que je sais 
et tout ce que je sens. — Oh ! mon ami, je me sens 
capable de tour, excepte de plier: j'aurois la force 
d'un martyr, pour satisfaire ma passion on celle de 
la personne qui m'aimeroit: mais je ne trouve rien 
en moi qui me reponde de pouvoir jamais faire le 
sacrifice de mon sentiment. La vie n'est rien en 
comparaison, et vous verrez si ce ne sont la. que les 
discours d'une tete exaltee. Oui, peui-etre ce sont 
la les pensees d'une ame exaltee, mais a. laquelle 
appartiennent les actions fortes. Seroit-ce a la rai- 
son qui est siprevoyante, si foible dans ses vues, et 
meme si impuissante dans ses moyens, que ces 
pensees pourroient appartenir ? Mon ami, je ne suis 
point raisonnable, et e'est peut-etre a force d'etre 
passionnee que j'ai mis touie ma vie tant de raison a 
tout ce qui est sournis an jugement et a. I'opinion des 
indifferens. Combien j'ai usurpe d'eloges sur ma 
moderation, sur ma noblesse d'ame, sur mon desin- 
teressement, sur les sacrifices pretendus que je 
faisois a. une memoire respectable el chere, et a la 
maison d' Alb. . . . ! Voila comme le monde juge, 
comme ilvoit! Eh,bonDieu! sots que vous eies, 
je ne merite pas vos Iouanges: mon ame n'etoit 
pas faite pour les petits imerets qui vous occupent ; 
toute entiere au bonheur d' aimer et d'etre, aime il 
ne m'a fallu ni force, ni honnetete pour supporter 
la pauvrete, et pour dedaigner les avantages de la 
vanite. J'ai tant joui, j'ai si bien senti le prix de la 
vie, que s'il falloit recommencer, je voudrois que ce 
fut aux memes conditions. Aimer et soufTrir — le 
ciel, I'enfer, — voila. a quoi je me devouerois. voila 
ce que je voudrois sentir, voila. le clirnat que je vou- 
drois habiter; et non cet etat tempere dans lequel 
vivent tous les sots et tous les automates dont nous 
sommes environnes." — Vol. ii. pp. 228 — 233. 

All this is raving no doubt; but it is the 
laving of real passion, and of a lofty and 
powerful spirit. It is the eloquent raving of 



the heart; and, when we think that this ex- 
traordinary woman wrote all this, not in the 
days of impatient youth, when the heart is 
strong for suffering, and takes a strange de- 
light in the vehemence even of its painful 
emotions, but after years of misery, and with 
death before her eyes — advancing by gradual 
but visible steps, it is impossible not to feel 
an indescribable emotion of pity, resentment, 
and admiration. One little word more. 

"Oh! que vous pesez sur mon cceur, lorsque 
vous voulez me prouver qu'il doit etre content du 
voire ! Je ne me plaindrois jamais, mais vous me 
forcez souvent a crier, tant le mal que vous me 
faites est aigu et profond ! Mon ami, j'ai ete aimee, 
je le suis encore, et je meurs de regret en pensant 
que ce n'est pas de vous. J'ai beau me dire que je 
ne meritai jamais le bonheur que je regiette; mon 
cceur cette fois fait taire mon amour-propre : il me 
dir que, si je dus jamais etre aimee, c'etoit de celui 
qui auroit assez de charme a mes yeux, pour me dis- 
traire de M. de M et pour me retenir a la vie, 

apres I'avoir perdu. Je n'ai fait que languir depuis 
votre depart ; je n'ai pas ete une heme sans souf- 
f ranee : le mal de mon ame passe a. mon corps ; j'ai 
tous les jours la fievre, et mon medecin, qui n'est 
pas le plus habile de tous les hommes, me repcte 
sans cesse que je suis consumee de chagrin, que 
mon pouls, que ma respiration annoncent une dou- 
leur active ; et. il s'en va toujours en me disant : 
nous ?t'avo?is point de rerntde pour V ame. II n'y en 
a plus pour moi: ce n'est pas guorir que je voudrois, 
mais me calmer, mais retrouver quelques momens 
de repos pour me conduire a. celui que la nature 
m'accordcra biemot." — Vol. iii. pp. 146, 147. 

" Je n'ai plus assez de force pour mon ame— elle 
me tue. Vous ne pouvez plus rien sur moi, que 
me faire souffiir. Ne tachez done plus a me conso- 
ler, et cessez de vouloir me faire le victimede votre 
morale, apres m'avoir fait celle de votre legerete. — 
Vous ne m'avez pas vue, parce que la journee n'a 
que douze heures, et que vous aviez de quoi les 
remplir par des interets et des plaisirs qui vous sont, 
et qui doivent vous etre plus chers que mon mal- 
heur. Je ne reclame rien, je n'exige rien, et je me 
dis sans cesse que la source de mon bonheur et de 
mon plaisir est perdu pour jamais." — Vol. iii. p. 59. 

We cannot leave our readers with these 
painful impressions ; and shall add just one 
word or two of what is gayest in these deso- 
lating volumes. 

" M. Grimm est de retour ; je l'ai accable de 
questions. II point la Czcnine, non pas comme une 
souveraine, mais comme une femmeaimable. pleine 
d'esprit, de saillies, et de tout ce qui peut seduire 
et charmer. Mais cans tout ce qu'il me disoit, je 
reconnoissois plutot cet art chairman* d'une. courti- 
sane erecque, que la dignite et I'eclat de l'lmpera- 
trice d'un grand empire." — Vol. ii. p. 105. 

" Avant diner je vais voir rue de Clery des auto- 
mates ; qui sont prodigieux. a ce qu'on dit. Quand 
j'allois dans le monde, je n'aurois pas eu cette cu- 
riosite : deux ou trois soupers en donnent sat;ete; 
mais ceux de la rue de Clery valent mieux : ils 
agissent et ne parlent point. Venez-y, en allant 
au Marais, et je vou^ dirai la si j'ai la loge de M. 
leduc d' Aumont. Madame de Ch. . . nevouscroit 
point coupable de negligence : elle m'a demande 
aujonrd'hui si votre retraite duroit encore. Ce que 
les femmes veulent seulemenf, e'est d'etre piefe- 
rees. Presque personne n'a besoin d'etre aime, et 
cela est bien heureux : car e'est ce qui se fait le 
plus mal a Paris. Ils osent dire qu'ils ainent ; et 
ils sont calmes et dissipes ! e'est assurement bien 
connoiire le sentiment et la passion. Pan vies gens! 
il fant les louer comme les Liliputiens : ils si>nj 
bien jolis, bien gentils, bien aimables. Adieu, moa 
ami."— Vol. ii. pp. 197, 198. 



/04 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



We have left ourselves no room to make 
nny reflections; except, only, that the French 
fashion of living, and almost of dying, in 
public, is nowhere so strikingly exemplified, 
as in the letters of this victim of passion and 
of fancy. While her heart is torn with the 
most agonizing passions, and her thoughts 



visibly within a few weeks of her end, and is 
wasted with coughs and spasms, she still ha* 
her salon filled twice a day with company ; 
and drags herself out to supper with all tne 
countesses of her acquaintance. There is ;» 
great deal of French character, indeed, in 
both the works of which we now take our 



turned hourly on suicide, she dines out, and leave ; — a great deal to admire, and to wonder 
makes visits every day ; and, when she is I at — but very little, we think, to envy. 



(Ungual, 1825.) 

Wilhelrn Meister's Apprenticeship: a Novel. From the German of Goethe. 3 vols. 12mo. 

pp. 1030. Edinburgh: 1824. 



There are few things that at first sight ap- 
pear more capricious and unaccountable, than 
the diversities of national taste ; and yet there 
are not many, that, to a certain extent at least, 
admit of a. clearer explanation. They form 
evidently a section in the great chapter of 
National Character; and, proceeding on the 
assumption, that human nature is everywhere 
fundamentally the same, it is not perhaps 
very difficult to indicate, in a general way, 
the circumstances which have distinguished 
it into so many local varieties. 

These may be divided into two great class- 
es, — the one embracing all that relates to the 
newness or antiquity of the society to which 
they belong, or. in other words, to the stage 
which any particular nation has attained in 
that great progress from rudeness to refine- 
ment, in which all are engaged ; — the other 
comprehending what may be termed the ac- 
cidental causes by which the character and 
condition of communities may be affected ; 
such as their government, their relative posi- 
tion as to power and civilization to neighbour- 
ing countries, their prevailing occupations, 
determined in some degree by the capabilities 
of their soil and climate, and more than all 
perhaps, as to the question of taste, the still 
more accidental circumstance of the character 
of their first models of excellence, or the 
kind of merit by which their admiration and 
national vanity had first been excited. 

It is needless to illustrate these obvious 
sources of peculiarity at any considerable 
length. It is not more certain, that all primi- 
tive communities proceed to civilization by 
nearly the same stages, than that the progress 
of taste is marked by corresponding gradations, 
and may, in most cases, be distinguished into 
periods, the order and succession of which is 
nearly as uniform and determined. If tribes 
of savage men always proceed, under ordinary 
circumstances, from the occupation of fronting 
to that of pasturage, from that to agriculture, 
and from that to commerce andmanufactures, 
the sequence is scarcely less invariable in the 
history of letters and art. In the former, 
verse is uniformly antecedent to prose — mar- 
vellous legends to correct history — exagge- 
rated sentiments to just representations of 
nature. Invention, in short, regularly comes 



before judgment, warmth of feeling before 
correct reasoning — and splendid declamation 
and broad humour before delicate simplicity 
or refined wit. In the arts again, the progress 
is strictly analagous — from mere monstrosity 
to ostentatious displays of labour and design, 
first in massive formality, and next in fantas- 
tical minuteness, variety, and flutter of parts; 
— and then, through the gradations of start- 
ling contrasts and overwrought expression, to 
the repose and simplicity of graceful nature. 

These considerations alone explain much 
of that contrariety of taste by which different 
nations are distinguished. They not only 
start in the great career of improvement at 
different times, but they advance in it with 
different velocities — some lingering longer in 
one stage than another — some obstructed and 
some helped forward, by circumstances oper- 
ating on them from within or from without. 
It is the unavoidable consequence, however, 
of their being in any one particular position, 
that they will judge of their own productions 
and those of their neighbours, according to 
that standard of taste which belongs to the 
place they tjien hold in this great circle ; — 
and that a whole people will look on their 
neighbours with wonder and scorn, for ad- 
miring what their own grandfathers looked on 
with equal admiration, — while they them- 
selves are scorned and vilified in return, for 
tastes which will infallibly be adopted by the 
grandchildren of those who despise them. 

What we have termed the accidental causes 
of great differences in beings of the same 
nature, do not of course admit of quite so 
simple an exposition. But it is not in reality 
more difficult to prove their existence and 
explain their operation. Where great and 
degrading despotisms have been early estab- 
lished, either by the aid of superstition or of 
mere force, as in most of the states of Asia, 
or where small tribes of mixed descent have 
been engaged in perpetual contention for free- 
dom and superiority, as in ancient Greece — 
where the ambition and faculties of individ 
uals have been chained up by the institution 
of castes and indelible separations, as in India 
and Egypt, or where all men practise all oc- 
cupations and aspire to all honours, as in Ger- 
many or Britain — where the sole occupation 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



105 



of the people has been war, as in infant Rome, 
or where a vast pacific population has been 
for ages inured to mechanical drudgery, as in 
China — it is needless to say, that very oppo- 
site notions of what conduces to delight and 
amusement must necessarily prevail ; and that 
the Taste of the nation must be affected both 
by the sentiments which it has been taught to 
cultivate, and the capacities it has been led 
to unfold. 

The influence of early models, however, is 
perhaps the most considerable of any; and 
may be easily enough understood. When 
men have been accustomed to any particular 
kind of excellence, they naturally become 
good judges of it, and account certain consid-4 
erable degrees of it indispensable, — while 
they are comparatively blind to the merit of 
other good qualities to which they had been 
less habituated, and are neither offended by 
their absence, nor at all skilful in their estima- 
tion. Thus those nations who, like the English 
and the Dutch, have been long accustomed to 
great cleanliness and order in their persons 
and dwellings, naturally look with admiration 
on the higher displays of those qualities, and 
are proportionally disgusted by their neglect; 
while they are apt to undervalue mere pomp 
and stateliness, when destitute of these re- 
commendations : and thus also the Italians 
and Sicilians, bred in the midst of dirt and 
magnificence, are curiously alive to the beau- 
ties of architecture and sculpture, and make 
but litle account of the more homely comforts 
which are so highly prized by the others. In 
the same way, if a few of the first successful 
adventurers in art should have exceed in 
any particular qualities, the taste of their na- 
tion will naturally be moulded on that stand- 
ard — will regard those qualities almost ex- 
clusively as entitled to admiration, and will 
not only consider the want of them as fatal to 
all pretensions to excellence, but will unduly 
despise and undervalue other qualities, in 
themselves not less valuable, but with which 
their national models had not happened to 
make them timeously familiar. If, for ex- 
ample, the first great writers in any country 
should iiave distinguished themselves by a 
pompous and severe regularity, and a certain 
elaborate simplicity of design and execution, 
it will naturally follow, that the national taste 
will not only become critical and rigorous as 
to those particulars, but will be proportionally 
deadened to the merit of vivacity, nature, and 
invention, when combined with irregularity, 
homeliness, or confusion. While, if the great 
patriarchs of letters had excelled in variety 
and rapidity.of invention, and boldness and 
truth of sentiment, though poured out with 
considerable<lisorder and incongruity of man- 
ner, those qualities would quickly come to be 
the national criterion of merit, and the cor- 
rectness and decorum of the other school be 
despised, as mere recipes for monotony and 
tameness. 

These, we think, are the plain and certain 

effects of the peculiar character of the first 

great popular writers of all countries. But 

still we do not conceive that they depend al- 

14 



together on any thing so purely accidental as 
the temperament or early history of a few in- 
dividuals. No doubt the national taste of 
France and of England would at this moment 
have been different, had Shafospeare been a 
Frenchman, and Boileau and Racine written 
in English. But then, we do not think that 
Shakespeare could have been a Frenchman; 
and we conceive that his character, and that 
of other original writers, though no doubt to 
be considered on the whole as casual, must 
yet have been modified to a great extent by 
the circumstances of the countries in which 
they were bred. It is plain that no original 
force of genius could have enabled Shakespeare 
to write as he had done, if he had been born 
and bred among the Chinese or the Peruvians, 
Neither do we think that he could have done 
so, in any other country but England — free, 
sociable, discursive, reformed, familiar Eng- 
land — whose motley and mingling population 
not only presented " every change of many- 
coloured life" to his eye, but taught and per- 
mitted every class, from the highest to the 
lowest, to know and to estimate the feelings 
and the habits of all the others — and thus 
enabled the gifted observer not only to deduce 
the true character of human nature from this 
infinite variety of experiments and examples, 
but to speak to the sense and the hearts of 
each, with that truly universal tongue, which 
every one feels to be peculiar, and all enjoy 
as common. 

We have said enough, however, or rather 
too much, on these general view's of the sub- 
ject — which in truth is sufficiently clear in 
those extreme cases, where the contrariety is 
great and universal, and is only perplexing 
when there is a pretty general conformity 
both in the causes which influence taste and 
in the results. Thus, w T e are not at all sur- 
prised to find the taste of the Japanese or the 
Iroquois very different from our own — and 
have no difficulty in both admitting that our 
human nature and human capacities are sub- 
stantially the same, and in referring this dis- 
crepancy to the contrast that exists in the 
whole state of society, and the knowledge, 
and the opposite qualities of the objects to 
which we have been respectively accustomed 
to give our admiration. That nations living in 
times or places altogether remote, should dis- 
agree in taste, as in every thing else, seems 
to us quite natural. They are only the nearer 
cases that puzzle. And, that great European 
countries, peopled by the same mixed races, 
educated in the admiration of the same clas- 
sical models — venerating the same remains 
of antiquity — engaged substantially in the 
same occupations — communicating every day, 
on business, letters, and society — bound up in 
short in one great commonwealth, as against 
the inferior and barbarous parts of the world, 
should yet differ so widely — not only as to 
the comparative excellence of their respective 
productions, but as to the constituents of ex- 
cellence in all w r orks of genius or skill, does 
indeed sound like a paradox, the solution of 
which every one may not be able to deduce 
from the preceding observations. 



106 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



The great practical equation on which we 
in this country have been hitherto most fre- 
quently employed, has been between our own 
standard of taste and that which is recognized 
among our neighbours of Fiance: — And cer- 
tainly, though feelings of rivalry have some- 
what aggravated its ajjparent, beyond its real 
amount, there is a great and substantial differ- 
ence to be accounted for. — in the way we have 
suggested — or in some other way. Stating that 
difference as generally as possible, we would 
say, that the French, compared with ourselves, 
are more sensitive to faults, and less trans- 
ported with beauties — more enamoured of art, 
and less indulgent to nature — more charmed 
with overcoming difficulties, than with that 
power which makes us unconscious of their 
existence — more averse to strong emotions, or 
at least less covetous of them in their intensity 
— more students of taste, in short, than adorers 
of genius — and far more disposed than any 
other people, except perhaps the Chinese, to 
circumscribe the rules of taste to such as they 
themselves have been able to practise, and to 
limit the legitimate empire of genius to the 
provinces they have explored. There has 
been a good deal of discussion of late years, 
in the face of literary Europe, on these de- 
batable grounds; and we cannot but think 
that the result has been favourable, on the 
whole, to the English, and that the French 
have been compelled to recede considerably 
from many of their exclusive pretensions — a 
result which we are inclined to ascribe, less 
to the arguments of our native champions, 
than to those circumstances in the recent his- 
tory of Europe, wdiich have compelled our 
ingenious neighbours to mingle more than 
they had ever done before with the surround- 
ing nations — and thus to become better ac- 
quainted with the diversified forms which 
genius and talent may assume. 

But while we are thus fairly in the way of 
settling our differences with France, we are 
little more than beginning them, we fear, with 
Germany; and the perusal of the extraordinary 
volumes before us, which has suggested all 
the preceding reflections, has given us, at the 
same time, an impression of such radical, and 
apparently irreconcilable disagreement as to 
principles, as we can scarcely hope either to 
remove by our reasonings, or even very satis- 
factorily to account for by our suggestions. 

This is allowed, by the general consent of all 
Germany, to be the very greatest work of their 
very greatest w r riter. The most original, the 
most varied and inventive, — the most charac- 
teristic, in short, of the author, and of his coun- 
try. We receive it as such accordingly, with 
implicit faith and suitable respect; and have 
perused it in consequence with very great at- 
tention and no common curiosity. We have 
perused it, indeed, only in the translation of 
which we have prefixed the title : But it is a 
translation by a professed admirer; and by one 
who is proved by his Preface to be a person of 
talents, and by every part of the work to be no 
ordinary master, at least of one of the languages 
with which he has to deal. We need scarcely 
eay ( tkat we profess to judge of the work only 



according to our own principles of judgment and 
habits of feeling; and, meaning nothing less thau 
to dictate to the readers or the critics of Ger- 
many what they should think of their favour- 
ite authors, propose only to let them know, in 
all plainness and modesty, what we, and we 
really believe most of our countrymen, actually 
think of this chef-d } <zuvre of Teutonic genius. 

We must say, then, at once, that we cannot 
enter into the spirit of this German idolatry; 
nor at all comprehend upon what grounds the 
work before us could ever be considered aa 
an admirable, or even a commendable per- 
formance. To us it certainly appears, after 
the most deliberate consideration, to be emi- 
nently absurd, puerile, incongruous, vulgar, 
and affected ; — and, though redeemed by con- 
siderable powers of invention, and some traits 
of vivacity, to be so far from perfection, as to 
be, almost from beginning to end, one flagrant 
offence against every principle of taste, and 
every just rule of composition. Though indi- 
cating, in many places, a mind capable both 
of acute and profound reflection, it is full of 
mere silliness and childish affectation ; — and 
though evidently the work of one who had 
seen and observed much, it is throughout al- 
together unnatural, and not so properly im- 
probable, as affectedly fantastic and absurd — 
kept, as it were, studiously aloof from general 
or ordinary nature — never once bringing us 
into contact with real life or genuine character 
— and, where not occupied with the profes- 
sional squabbles, paltry jargon, and scenical 
profligacy of strolling players, tumblers, and 
mummers (which may be said to form its 
staple^, is conversant only wuth incomprehen- 
sible mystics and vulgar men of whim, with 
whom, if it w^ere at all possible to understand 
them, it would be a baseness to be acquainted. 
Every thing, and every body we meet with, 
is a riddle and an oddity ; and though the tis- 
sue of the story is sufficiently coarse, and the 
manners and sentiments infected with a strong 
tinge of vulgarity, it is all kept in the air, like 
a piece of machinery at the minor theatres, 
and never allowed to touch the solid ground, 
or to give an impression of reality, by the 
disclosure of known or living features. In 
the midst of all this, however, there are, every 
now and then, outbreaking^ of a fine specula- 
tion, and gleams of a warm and sprightly 
imagination — an occasional wild and exotic 
glow of fancy and poetry — a vigorous heaping 
up of incidents, and touches of bright and 
powerful description. 

It is not very easy certainly to account for 
these incongruities, or to suggest an intelligi- 
ble theory for so strange a practice. But in 
so far as we can guess, these peculiarities 
of German taste are to be referred, in part, to 
the comparative newness of original compo- 
sition among that ingenious people, and to 
the state of European literature when they 
first ventured on the experiment — and in part 
to the state of society in that great country 
itself. and the comparatively humble condition 
of the greater part of those who w r rite, or to 
whom writing is there addressed. 

The Germans, though undoubtedly an ima- 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



107 



ginative and even enthusiastic race, had ne- 
glected their native literature for two hundred 
years — and were chiefly known for their 
learning and industry. They wrote huge 
Latin treatises on Law and Theology — and 
put forth bulky editions and great tomes of 
annotations on the classics. At last, however, 
they grew tired of being respected as the 
learned drudges of Europe, and reproached 
with their consonants and commentators; and 
determined, about fifty years ago, to show 
what metal they were made of, and to give 
the world a taste of their quality, as men of 
genius and invention. In this attempt the 
first thing to be effected was at all events to 
avoid the imputation of being scholastic imi- 
tators of the classics. That would have smelt 
too much, they thought, of the old shop ; and 
in order to prove their claims to originality, it 
was necessary to go a little into the opposite 
extreme, — to venture on something decidedly 
modern, and to show at once their indepen- 
dence on their old masters, and their supe- 
riority to the pedantic rules of antiquity. 
With this view some of them betook them- 
selves to the French models — set seriously to 
study how to be gay — appendre a etre vif — and 
composed a variety of petites pieces and 
novels of polite gallantry, in a style — of which 
we shall at present say nothing. This manner, 
however, ran too much counter to the general 
character of the nation to be very much fol- 
lowed — and undoubtedly the greater and bet- 
ter part of their writers turned rather to us, 
for hints and lessons to guide them in their 
ambitious career. There was a greater original 
affinity in the temper and genius of the two 
nations — and, in addition to that consideration, 
our great authors were indisputably at once 
more original and less classical than those of 
France. England, however, we are sorry to 
say, could furnish abundance of bad as well 
as of good models — and even the best were 
perilous enough for rash imitators. As it 
happened, however, the worst were most 
generally selected — and the worst parts of the 
good. Shakespeare was admired — but more 
for his flights of fancy, his daring improprie- 
ties, his trespasses on the borders of absurdity, 
than for the infinite sagacity and rectifying 
good sense by which he redeemed those ex- 
travagancies, or even the profound tenderness 
and simple pathos which alternated with the 
lofty soaring or dazzling imagery of his style. 
Altogether, however, Shakespeare was beyond 
their rivalry ; and although Schiller has dared, 
and not ingloriously. to emulate his miracles, 
it was plainly to other merits and other rival- 
ries that the body of his ingenious country- 
men aspired. The ostentatious absurdity — 
the affected oddity — the pert familiarity — the 
broken style, and exaggerated sentiment of 
Tristram Shandy — the mawkish morality, 
dawdling details, and interminable agonies of 
JRicnardson — the vulgar adventures, and home- 
ly, though, at the same time, fantastical specu- 
lations of John Buncle and others of his for- 
gotten class, found far more favour in their 
eyes. They were original, startling, unclas- 
sical, and puzzling. They excited curosity 



by not being altogether intelligible — effectu- 
ally excluded monotony by the rapidity and 
violence of their transitions, and promised to 
rouse the most torpid sensibility, by the vio- 
lence and perseverance with which they thun- 
dered at the heart. They were the very 
things, in short, which the German originals 
were in search of; — and they were not slow, 
therefore, in adopting and improving on them. 
In order to make them thoroughly their own, 
they had only to exaggerate their peculiarities 
— to mix up with them a certain allowance 
of their old visionary philosophy, misty meta- 
physics, and superstitious visions — and to in- 
troduce a few crazy sententious theorists, to 
sprinkle over the whole a seasoning of rash 
speculation on morality and the fine arts. 

The style was also to be relieved by a va- 
riety of odd comparisons and unaccountable 
similes — borrowed, for the most part, from 
low and revolting objects, and all the better 
if they did not exactly fit the subject, or even 
introduced new perplexity into that which 
they professed to illustrate. 

This goes far, we think, to explain the ab- 
surdity, incongruity, and affectation of the 
works of which we are speaking. But there 
is yet another distinguishing quality for which 
we have not accounted — and that is a peculiar 
kind of vulgarity which pervades all their va- 
rieties, and constitutes, perhaps, their most 
repulsive characteristic. We do not know 
very well how to describe this unfortunate 
peculiarity, except by saying that it is the 
vulgarity of pacific, comfortable burghers, oc- 
cupied with stuffing, cooking, and providing 
for their coarse personal accommodations. 
There certainly never were any men of genius 
who condescended to attend so minutely to 
the non-naturals of their heroes and heroines 
as the novelists of modern Germany. Their 
works smell, as it were, of groceries — of 
brown papers filled with greasy cakes and 
slices of bacon, — and frying* in frowsy back 
parlours. All the interesting recollections of 
childhood turn on remembered tidbits and 
plunderings of savoury store-rooms. In the 
midst of their most passionate scenes there is 
always a serious and affectionate notice of the 
substantial pleasures of eating and drinking. 
The raptures of a tete-a-tete are not complete 
without a bottle of nice wine and a "trim 
collation." Their very sages deliver their 
oracles over a glass of punch ; and the en- 
chanted lover finds new apologies for his 
idolatry in taking a survey of his mistress 7 
"combs, soap, and towels, with the traces of 
their use." These baser necessities of our 
nature, in short, which all other writers who 
have aimed at raising the imagination or 
touching the heart have *ept studiously cut 
of view, are ostentatiously brought forward, 
and fondly dwell on by the pathetic authors 
of Germany. 

We really cannot well account for th:s ex- 
traordinary taste. But we suspect it is owing 
to the importance that is really attached to 
those solid comforts and supplies of neces- 
saries, by the greater part of the readers and 
writers of that country. Though here is & 



108 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



great deal of freedom in Germany, it operates 
less by raising the mass of the people to a 
potential equality with the nobles, than by 
securing to them their inferior and plebeian 
privileges : and consists rather in the immu- 
nities of their incorporated tradesmen, which 
may enable them to become rich as such, than 
in any general participation of national rights, 
by whxh they may aspire to dignity and ele- 
gance, as well as opulence and comfort. Now. 
the writers, as well as the readers in that 
country, belong almost entirely to the plebeian 
and vulgar class. Their learned men are 
almost all woJ'ully poor and dependent : and 
the comfortable burghers, who buy entertain- 
ing books by the thousand at the Frankfort 
fair, probably agree with their authors in noth- 
ing so much as the value they set on those 
homely comforts to which their ambition is 
mutually limited by their condition ; and enter 
into no part of them so heartily as those which 
set forth their paramount and continual im- 
portance. 

It is time, however, that we should proceed 
to give some more particular account of the 
work which has given occasion to all these 
observations. Nor indeed have we anything 
more of a general nature to premise, except 
that we really cannot join in the censure which 
we have found so generally bestowed on it 
for its alleged grossness and immorality. It 
is coarse, certainly, in its examples, and by 
no means very rigorous in its ethical precepts. 
Bat it is not worse in those respects than many 
works on which we pride ourselves at home — 
Tom Jones, for example, or Roderick Random. 
There are passages, no doubt, that would 
6hock a delicate young lady ; but to the bulk 
of male readers, for whom we suppose it was 
chiefly intended, we do not apprehend that it 
will either do any great harm, or give any 
great offence. 

Wilhelm Meister is the son of a plodding- 
merchant, in one of the middling towns of 
Germany, who, before he is out of his ap- 
prenticeship, takes a passion for play-going ; 
which he very naturally follows up by en- 
gaging in an intrigue with a little pert actress, 
who performed young officers and other male 
parts with great success. The book opens 
with a supper at her lodgings; where he tells 
her a long silly story of his passion for puppet- 
shows in his childhood — how he stole a set 
of puppets out of a pantry of his mother's, into 
which he had slipped to filch sugar-plums — 
how he fitted up a puppet-show of his own, in 
a garret of his father's house, and enacted 
David and Goliah, to the wonder and delight 
of the whole family, and various complaisant 
neighbours, w r ho condescended to enact audi- 
ence — how a half-pay lieutenant assisted him 
in painting the figures and nailing up the 
boards — and hxnv out of all this arose his early 
taste for playhouses and actresses. This 
goodly stuff extends through fifty mortal 
pages — all serious, solemn, and silly, far be- 
yond the pitch of the worst gilt thing ever 
published by Mr Newberry. As this is one 
of the most characteristic parts of the work, 
we must verify the account we have ventured 



to give of it by a few extracts. Wilhelm 1* 
describing the dress of the prophet Samuel m 
his Punch's Opera of Goliah, and telling "how 
the taffeta of the cassock had been taken from 
a gown of his grandmother's," when a noise 
is heard in the street, and the old maid Bar- 
bara informs them that 

" The disturbance arose from a set of jolly com. 
panions, who were just then sallying out of the 
Italian Tavern, hard by, where they had been busy 
discussing fresh oysters, a cargo of which had just 
arrived, and by no means sparing (heir champagne. 
' Pity,' Mariana said, ' that we did not think of it 
in time ; we might have had some entertainment to 
ourselves.' ' It is not yet too late,' said Wilhelm, 
giving Barbara a louis d'or : ' get us what we want ; 
then come and take a share with us.' The old 
dame made speedy work ; ere long a trimly- covered 
table, with a neat collation, stood before the lovers. 
They made Barbara sit with them ; they ate and 
drank, and enjoyed themselves. On such occa- 
sions, there is never want of enough to say. Mari- 
ana soon took up little Jonathan again, and the old 
dame turned the conversation upon VVilhelm's 
favourite topic. 'You were telling us,' she said, 
'about the first exhibition of a puppet-show on 
Christmas-eve : I remember you were interrupted, 
just as the ballet was going to begin.' ' I assure 
you,' said Wilhelm, 'it went off quite well. And 
certainly the strange caperings of these Moors and 
Mooresses, these shepherds and shepherdesses, 
these dwarfs and dwarfesses, will never altogether 
leave my recollection while I live,' " &c. &c. 

We spare our readers some dozen pages of 
doll-dressing and joinery, and come to the 
following choice passage. 

" 'In well adjusted and regulated houses/ con- 
tinued Wilhelm, 'children have a feeling not unlike 
what 1 conceive rats and mice to have ; they keep 
a sharp eye on all crevices and holes, where they 
may come at any forbidden dainty; ihey enjoy it 
also with a fearful, stolen satisfaction, which forms 
no small part of the happiness of childhood. More 
than any other of the young ones, I was in the habit 
of looking out attentively to see if I could notice 
any cupboard left open, or key standing in its lock. 
The more reverence I bore in my heart for those 
closed doors, on the outside of which I had to pass 
by for weeks and months, catching only a furtive 
glance when our mother now and then opened the 
consecrated place to take something from it, — the 
quicker was I to make use of any opportunities 
which the forgetfulness of our housekeepers at times 
afforded me. Among all the doors, that of the store- 
room was. of course, the one I watched most nar- 
rowlv. Few of* the joyful anticipations in life can 
equal the feeling which I used to have, when my 
mother happened to call me, that I might help her to 
carry out any thing, after which I might pick up a 
few dried plums, either with her kind permission, 
or by help of my own dexterity. The accumulated 
treasures of this chamber took hold of my imagina- 
tion by their magnitude ; the very fragrance exhaled 
by so multifarious a collection of sweet-smelling 
spices produced such a craving effect on me, that I 
never failed, when passing near, to linger ibr a little, 
and regale myself at least on the unbolted atmos- 
phere. At length, one Sunday morning, my mo- 
•her, being hurried by the ringing of the church 
bells, forgot to take this precious key with heron 
shutting the door, and went away leaving all the 
house in a deep sabhath stillness. No sooner had 
I marked this oversight, than gliding softly once or 
twice to and from the place, I at last approached 
very g ngerly, opened the door, and felt myself, 
after a single step, in immediate contact with these 
manifold and long-wished-for means of happiness. 
I glanced over glasses, chests, and bags, and drawers 
and boxes, with a quick and doubtful eye, consider. 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



109 



ing what I ought to take ; turned finally to my dear 
withered plums, provided myself also with a lew 
dried apples, and completed the forage with an 
orange-chip. I was quietly retreating with my 
plunder, when some little chests, lying piled over 
one another, caught my attention : the more so, as I 
noticed a wire with hooks at the end of it, sticking 
through the joint of the lid in one of them. Full 
of eager hopes, I opened this singular package ; 
and judae of my emotions, when I found my glad 
world of heroes all sleeping safe within ! I meant 
to pick out the topmost, and, having examined them, 
to pull up those below ; but in this attempt the 
wires got very soon entangled, and I fell into a 
fright and flutter, more particularly as the cook just 
then began making some stir in the kitchen, which 
lay close by; so that I had nothing for it but to 
squeeze the whole together, the best way I could, 
and to shut the chest, having stolen from it nothing 
but a little written book, which happened to be 
lying above, and contained the whole drama of 
Goliah and David. With this booty I made good 
my retreat into the garret.' " — pp. 20 — 22. 

This, we suppose, will be received as a 
sufficient specimen of the true German taste 
for comfits, cooking, and cockering. If any- 
one should wish for a sample of pure childish- 
ness, or mere folly, there are pages on pages 
like the following. 

"'It was natural that the operas, with their 
manifold adventures and vicissitudes, should attract 
me more than any thing beside. In these compo- 
sitions, I found stormy seas; gods descending in 
chariots of cloud; and, what most of all delighted 
me, abundance of thunder and lightning. I did my 
best with pasteboard, paint, and paper: I could 
make night very prettily ; my lightning was fearful 
to behold ; only my thunder did not always pros- 
per, which however was of less importance. In 
operas, moreover, I found frequent opportunities of 
introducing my David and Goliah, persons whom 
the regular drama would hardly admit. Daily I felt 
more attachment for the hampered spot where I 
enjoyed so many pleasures; and, I must confess, 
the fragrance which the puppets had acquired from 
the store-room added not a little to my satisfaction. 

" ' The decorations of my theatre were now in a 
tolerable state of completeness. I had always had 
the nack of drawing with compasses, and clipping 
pasteboard, and colouring figures ; and here it serv- 
ed me in good stead. But the more sorry was I, on 
the other hand, when, as frequently happened, my 
stock o{ actors would not suffice for representing 
great affairs. — My sisters dressing and undressing 
their dolls, awoke in me the project of furnishing 
my heroes by and by with garments, which might 
also be put off and on. Accordingly, I slit the 
scraps of cloth from off their bodies ; tacked the 
fragments together as well as possible ; saved a par- 
ticle of money to buy new ribbons and lace ; beg- 
ged many a rag of taffeta; and so formed, by de- 
grees, a full theatrical wardrobe, in which hoop- 
petticoats for the ladies were especially remember- 
ed. — My troop was now fairly provided with dresses 
for the most important piece, and you might have 
expected that henceforth one exhibition would fol- 
low close upon the heels of another. But it hap- 
pened with me, as it often happens with children ; 
(hey embrace wide plans, make mighty prepara- 
tions, then a few trials, and the whole undertaking 
ts abandoned. I was guilty of this fault,' " &c. &c. 

But we must get on with our story. While 
he is lulling his little actress to sleep by these 
edifying discourses, and projecting to go on 
the stage along with her, our mercantile hero 
is suddenly sent off by his father, to collect 
debts from their country customers. The in- 
genious author, however, cannot possibly let 
liim go, without presenting his readers with 



an elaborate character of the worthy old trader 
and his partner. Old Meister, it seems, had 

'" A peculiar inclination for magnificence, for 
whatever catches the eye and possesses at the same 
time real worth and durability. In his house, be 
would have all things solid and massive ; his stores 
must be copious and rich, all his plate must be 
heavy, the furniture of his table must be costly. 
On the other hand, his guests were seldom invited ; 
for every dinner was a festival, which, both for its 
expense and for its inconvenience, could not often 
be repeated. The economy of his house went on at 
a settled uniform rate, and every thine that moved 
or had a place in it was just what yielded no one 
any real enjoyment. 

41 The elder Werner, in his dark and hampered 
house, led quite another sort of life. The business 
of the day, in his narrow counting-room, at his an- 
cient desk, once done, Werner liked to eat well and 
if possib'e to drink belter. Nor could he fully en- 
joy good things in solitude ; with his family he must 
always see at table his friends and any stranger 
that had the slightest connection with his house. 
His chairs were of unknown age and antic fashion, 
but he daily invited some to sit on them. The dainty 
victuals arrested the attention of his guests, and 
none remarked that they were served up in com- 
mon ware. His cellar held no great stock of wine ; 
but the' emptied niches were usually filled by more 
of a superior sort." — pp. 56, 57. 

This must be admitted not to be the very 
best exemplification of the style noble. Nor 
is the outfit of the hero himself described in 
a vein more lofty. 

"He must prepare," said Meister, "and set 
forth as soon as possible. Where shall we get a 
horse for him to suit this business ? — We shall not 

seek far. The shopkeeper in H , who owes us 

somewhat, but is withal a good man, has offered me 
a horse instead of payment. My son knows it, and 
tells me it is a serviceable beast. He may fetch it 
himself; let him go with the diligence ; the day 
after to-morrow he is back again betimes ; we have 
his saddle-bags and letters made ready in the mean 
time; he can set out Monday morning." 

The following passage, however, is a fairer 
sample of the average merit of the work; 
and exhibits some traits of vivacity and elo- 
quence, though debased by that affectation 
of singularity, and that predominating and 
characteristic vulgarity, of which we have 
already said so much. He is describing his 
hero's hours of fascination, in the playhouse, 
and elsewhere. 

" For hours he would stand by the sooty light 
frame, inhaling the vapour of tallow lamps, look- 
ing out at his mistress ; and when she returned and 
cast a kindly glance upon him, he was himself 
lost in ecstacy, and, though close upon laths and 
bare spars, he seemed transported into paradise. 
The stuffed bunches of wool denominated lambs, 
the water-falls of tin, the paper roses, and the one- 
sided huts of straw, awoke in him fair poetic visions 
of an old pastoral world. Nay, the very dancing 
girls, ugly as they were when seen at hand, did 
not always inspire him with disgust. They trod 
the same floor with Mariana. So true is it, that 
love, which alone can give their full charm to rose- 
bowers, myrtle-groves, and moonshine, can also 
communicate, even to shavings of wood and paper 
clippings, the aspect of animated nature. It is so 
strong a spice, that tasteless, or even nauscou* 
soups, are by it rendered palatable ! 

" So potent a spice was certainly required to ren 
der tolerable, nay at last agreeable, the state in 
which he usually found her chamber, not to say 
herself. — Brought up in a substantial burgher's 
house, cleanliness and order were the element in 



110 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



which he breathed ; and inheriting as he did a por- 
lion of his father's taste for finery, it had always 
been his rare, in boyhood, to furnish up his cham- 
ber, which he regarded as his little kingdom, in the 
Stateliest fashion, He had got himself a carpet for 
the middle of his chamber, and a finer one for his 
table. He had also a white cap, which he wore 
Straight up like a turban! and the sleeves of his 
night-gown he had caused to be cut short, in the 
mode of the Orientals. As a reason for this, he 
pretended, that long wide sleeves encumbered him 
in writing. 

" In those times, how happy did he think the 
players, whom he saw possessed of so many splen- 
did garments, trappings, and arms; and in the con- 
stant practice of a lofty demeanour, the spirit of 
which seemed to hold up a mirror of whatever, in 
the opinions, relations, and passions of men, was 
stateliest and most magnificent. Of a piece with 
this, thought Wilhelm, is also the player's domes- 
tic life ; a series of dignified transactions and em- 
ployments, whereof their appearance on the stage 
is but the outmost portion ! Like as a mass of sil- 
ver, long simmering about in the purifying furnace, 
at lengili gleams with a bright and beautiful tinge 
in the eye of the refiner, and shows him, at the same 
time, that the metal now is cleansed of all foreign 
mixture. 

" Great, accordingly, was his surprise at first, 
when he found himself beside his mistress, and 
looked down, through the cloud that environed 
him, on tables, stools, and floor. The wrecks of a 
transient, light, and false decoration lay, like the 
glittering coat of a skinned fish, dispersed in wild 
disorder. The implements of personal cleanliness, 
combs, soap, towels, with the traces of their use! 
were not concealed. Music, portions of plays and 
pairs of shoes, washes and Italian flowers, pin- 
cushions, hair-skewers, rouge-pots and ribbons, 
books, and straw-hats; no article despised the 
neighbourhood of another; all were united by a 
common element, powder and dust. Yet as Wil- 
helm scarcely noticed in her presence aught except 
herself; nay, as all that had belonged to her, that 
she had touched, was dear to him..he came at last 
to feel, in this chaotic housekeeping, a charm which 
the proud pomp of his own habitaiion never had 
communicated. When, on this hand, he lifted 
aside her boddice, to get at the harpsicord ; on that, 
threw her gown upon the bed, that he might find a 
seat: when she herself, with careless freedom, did 
not seek to hide from him many a natural office ! 
which, out of respect for the presence of a second per- 
son, is usually concealed; he felt as if by all this 
he was coming nearer to her every moment, as if 
the communion betwixt them was fastening by in- 
visible ties!" 

In the midst of all these raptures, and just 
after he had been gallantly serenading her 
with the trumpets of a travelling showman, 
he detects his frail fair one in an intrigue with 
a rival ; and falls into the most horrible ago- 
nies, the nature and violence of which the in- 
genious author illustrates by the following 
very obvious and dignified simile. 

" As when by chance, in the preparation of some 
artificial fire-works, any part of the composition 
kindles before its time, and the skilfully bored and 
loaded barrels, — which, arranged, and burning 
after a settled plan, would have painted in the air a 
magnificently varying series of flaming images, — 
now hissing and roaring, promiscuously explode 
with a confused and dangerous crash ; so, in our 
hero's case, did happiness and hope, pleasure and 
joys, realities and dreams, clash together with de- 
structive tumult, all at once in his bosom." 

He sets off, however, on his journey, and 
speedily gets into those more extensive theat- 
rical connections, from which he can scarcely 



be said to escape till the end of the wcnk. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more ludicrously un- 
natural than the luck he has in meeting witu 
nothing but players, and persons connected 
with playhouses. On his very first sally, he 
falls in with a player who had run away with 
a young lady, whom he had captivated from 
the stage — and has scarcely had time to ad- 
mire the mountain scenery among which he 
has to pass his first evening, when he is sur- 
prised to learn that the work-people in the 
adjacent village are about to act a play ! — the 
whole process of which is described with as 
solemn a tediousness as his own original pup- 
pet-show. In the first town to which he 
descends, he meets first with a seducing com- 
pany of tumblers and rope-dancers, reinforced 
by the valuable addition of a Strong Man ; 
and in half an hour after makes acquaintance 
with a gay and bewitching damsel — who 
sends across the street to beg a nosegay she 
sees in his hands — and turns out, by the hap- 
piest accident in the world, to be a strolling 
actress, waiting there for the chance of em- 
ployment. To give our readers an idea of 
the sort of descriptions with which the great 
writers in Germany now electrify their read- 
ers, we copy the following simple and impres- 
sive account of the procession of the tumbling 
party. 

" Preceded by a drum, the manager advanced on 
horseback ; he was followed by a female dancer 
mounted on a corresponding hack, and holding a 
child before her, all bedizened with ribbons and 
spangles. Next came the remainder of the troop 
on foot ; some of them carrying children on their 
shoulders in dangerous postures, yet smoothly and 
lightly ; among these the young, dark, black-haired 
figure again attracted Wilhelm's notice. — Pickle- 
herring ran gaily up and down the crowded multi- 
tude, distributing his hand-bills with much practical 
fun ; here smacking the lips of a girl, there breech- 
ing a boy, and awakening generally among the 
people an invincible desire to know more of him. — 
On the painted flags, the manifold science of the 
company was visibly delineated." 

The new actress, to whom he is introduced 
by another of the fraternity whom he finds at 
his inn, is named Philina; and her character 
is sketched and sustained throughout the book 
with far more talent than could be expected 
from any thing we have hitherto cited. She 
is gay, forward, graceful, false, and good-na- 
tured ; with a daring and capricious pleasantry, 
which, if it often strikes as unnatural, is fre- 
quently original and effective. Her debut, 
however, we must say, is in the author's most 
characteristic manner. 

11 She came out from her room in a pair of tight 
little slippers with high heels, to give them welcome. 
She had thrown a black mantle over her, above a 
white negligee, not indeed superstiliously clean, 
but which, for that very reason, gave her a more 
frank and domestic air! Her short dress did not 
hide a pair of the prettiest feet and ancles in the 
world. — ' You are welcome,' she cried to Wilhelm, 
' and I thank you for your charming flowers.' She 
led him into her chamber with the one hand, press- 
ing the nosegay to her breast with the other. Be- 
ing all seated, and got into a pleasant train of general 
talk, to which she had the art of giving a delightful 
turn, Laertes threw a handful of gingerbread nuts 
into her lap, and she immediately began to eat 
them.—' Look what a child this young gallant is !' 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



Ill 



fho saia; 'He wants to persuade you that I am 
fond of such confectionary ; and it is himself that 
cannot live without licki?ig his lips over something 
of the kind.' — ' Let us confess,' replied Laertes, 
' that, in this point, as in others, you and I go hand 
In nand. For example,' he continued, 'the weather 
is delightful to-day : what if we should take a drive 
into the country, and eat our dinner at the Mill?' " 
—Vol. i. pp. 143, 144. 

Even at the mill they are fortunate enough 
to meet with a dramatic representation— some 
miners in the neighbourhood having, by great 
good luck, taken it into their heads to set forth 
the utility of their craft in a sort of recitative 
dispute with some unbelieving countrymen, 
and to sing through a part of Werner's Lec- 
tures on Mineralogy — upon which very natural 
and probable occurrence our apprentice com- 
ments, in this incredible manner. 

" ' In this little dialogue,' said Wilhelm, when 
seated at table, ' we have a lively proof how useful 
the theatre might be to all ranks ; what advantage 
even the State might procure from it, if the occupa- 
tions, trades, and undertakings of men were all 
brought upon the stage! and presented on their 
praiseworthy side, in that point of view in which 
the State itself should honour and protect them ! 
As matters stand, we exhibit only the ridiculous 
side of men. — Might it not be a worthy and pleasing 
task for a statesman to survey the natural and re- 
ciprocal influence of all classes on each other, and 
to guide some poet, gifted with sufficient humour, 
in such labours as these? In this way, I am per- 
suaded, many very entertaining, both agreeable 
and useful pieces, might be executed.' " 

Such, is the true sublime of German specu- 
lation ! and it is by writing such sheer non- 
sense as this that men in that country acquire 
the reputation of great genius — and of uniting 
with pleasant inventions the most profound 
suggestions of political wisdom ! Can we be 
wrong in maintaining, after this, that there 
are diversities of national taste that can never 
be reconciled, and scarcely ever accounted 
for'? 

On another day they go in a boat, and agree, 
by way of pastime, to " extemporise a Play," 
by each taking an ideal character, and at- 
tempting to sustain it — and this, "because it 
forces each to strain his fancy and his wit to 
the uttermost," is pronounced to be a most 
u comfortable occupation," — and is thus mo- 
ralized upon by a reverend clergyman who 
had joined their party, and enacted a country 
parson with great success. 

" ' I think this practice very useful among actors, 
and even in the company of friends and acquaint- 
ances. It is the best mode of drawing men out of 
themselves, and leading them, by a circuitous path, 
back into themselves again.' " 

Their evening occupation is not less intel- 
lectual and dramatic; though it ends, we 
must own, with rather too much animation. 
They all meet to read a new play; and 

— "between the third and fourth act, the ■punch 
arrived, in an ample bowl ; and there being much 
fighting and drinking in the piece itself, nothing 
was more natural than that, on every such occur- 
rence, the company should transport themselves 
into the situation of the heroes, should flourish and 
strike along with them, and drink long life to their 
favourites among the dramatis persona. 

" Each individual of the party was inflamed with 
the most noble fire of national spirit. How it grati- 



fied this German company to be poetically enter- 
tained, according to their own character, 071 stuff 
of 1 heir own manufacture! In particular, the vaults 
and caverns, the ruined castles, the moss and hoi. 
low trees; but above all the nocturnal Gipsey- 
scenes, and the Secret Tribunal, produced a quite 
incredible effect. 

" Towards the fifth act the approbation became 
more impetuous and louder ; and at lasj, when the 
hero actually trampled down his oppressor, and 
the tyrant met his doom, the ecstasy increased to 
such a height, that all averred they had never 
passed such happy moments. Melina, whom the 
liquor had inspired, was the noisiest ; and when the 
second bowl was empty, and midnight near, Laertes 
swore through thick and thin, that no living mortal 
was worthy ever more to put these glasses to his 
lips; and, so swearing, he pitched his own right 
over his head, through a window-pane, out info the 
street. The rest followed his example ; and not- 
withstanding the protestations of the landlord, who 
came running in at the noise, the punch-bowl itself, 
never after this festivity to be polluted by unholy 
drink, was dashed into a thousand shreds. Philina, 
whose exhilaration was the least noticed, the other 
two girls by that time having laid themselves upon 
the sofa in no very elegant positions, maliciously 
encouraged her companions in their tumult. 

" Meanwhile the town-guard had arrived, and 
were demanding admission to the house. Wilhelm, 
much heated by his reading, though he had drank 
but little, had enough to do with the landlord's help 
to content these people by money and good words, 
and afterwards to get the various members of his 
party sent home in that unseemly case." 

Most of our readers probably think they 
have had enough of this goodly matter. But 
we cannot spare them a taste of the manner of 
courtship and flirtation that prevailed among 
these merry people. Philina one day made a 
garland of flowers for her own hair — and then 
another, which she placed on the brows of 
our hero. 

"'And I, it appears, must go empty!' said 
Laertes. — ' Not by any means ; you shall not have 
reason to complain,' replied Philina, taking off the 
garland from her own head, and putting it on his. — 
' If we were rivals,' said Laertes, ' we might now 
dispute very warmly which of us stood higher in 
thy favour.' — * And the more fools you,' said she, 
whilst she bent herself towards him, and offered 
him her lips to kiss: and then immediately turned 
round, threw her arm about Wilhelm, and be- 
stowed a kind salute on him also. ' Which of 
them tastes best V said she archly. — ' Surprisingly !' 
exclaimed Laertes: 'it seems as if nothing else 
had ever such a tang of wormwood in it.' — ' As 
little wormwood,' she replied, 'as any gift that a 
man may enjoy without envy and without conceit. 
But now,' cried she, ' I should like to have an 
hour's dancing, and after that we must look to our 
vaulters.' " 

Another evening, as Wilhelm was sitting 
pensively on the bench at the inn door, 

" Philina came singing and skipping along 
through the front door. She sat down by him ; nay, 
we might almost say, on him, so close did she 
press herself towards him ; she leant upon his 
shoulders, began playing with his hair, patted him, 
and gave him the best words in the world. She 
begged of him to stay with them, and not leave her 
alone in that company, or she must die of ennui: 
she could not live any longer in the same house 
with Melina, and had come over to lodge in the 
other inn for that very reason. — He tried in vain to 
satisfy her with denials ; to make her understand 
that he neither could nor would remain any longer. 
She did not cease her entreaties ; nav, suddenly 
she threw her arm about his neck, and kissed him 



i!2 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



with the liveliest expression of fondness. — ' Are 
you mad, Philina?' cried Wilhelm, endeavouring 
to disengnge himself; ' to make the open street the 
scene ofsu.di caresses, which I 'nowise merit! Let 
me go ; 1 cannot and I will not stay.' — ' And I will 
hold thee last,' said she, ' and kiss thee here on 
the open street, and kiss thee till thou promise 
what I want. I shall die of laughing,' she con- 
tinued : ' By this familiarity the good people here 
must take me for thy wife of four weeks' standing ; 
and husbands that witness this touching scene will 
commend me to their wives as a pattern of child- 
like simple tenderness.' — Some persons were just 
then going by ; she caressed him in the most 
graceful way ; and he, to avoid giving scandal, was 
constrained to play the part of the patient husband. 
Then she made faces at the people, when their 
backs were turned; and, in the wildest humour, 
continued to commit all sons of improprieties, till 
at last he was obliged to promise that he would not 
go that day, or the morrow, or the next day. — 
' You are a true clod ! ' said she, quitting him ; 
' and I am but a fool to spend so much kindness 
on you.' "—Vol. i. pp. 203, 209. 

But we are tired of extracting so much 
trash, and must look out for something better. 
Would any one believe, that the same work 
which contains all these platitudes of vulgarity 



;anty 
with 



one of his most fantastical characters, and 
Lord Byron with one of the most beautiful 
passages in his poetry 1 ? Yet so it is. The 
character of Fenella, in Peveril of the Peak, 
is borrowed almost entire from the Mignon 
of the work before us — and the prelude to 
the Bride of Abydos, beginning, "0 know 
you the land where the cypress and myrtle V 
is taken, with no improvement, from a little 
wild air which she sings. It is introduced 
here, too, with more propriety, and effect 
than in the work of the noble author ; for she 
is represented as having been stolen from 
Italy ; and the song, in this its original form, 
shadows out her desire to be restored to that 
delightful land and the stately halls of her 
ancestors, — retracing her way by the wild 
passes of the Alps. It is but fair to the poet- 
ical powers of Goethe to give this beautiful 
song, as it is here, apparently, very ably trans- 
lated. 

" Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees 
bloom ? 

Where the gold orange glows in the deep thick- 
et's gloom ? 

Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven 
blows, 

And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose ? 

Know'st thou it ? 

Thither! O thither, 

My dearest and kindest, with thee would I go. 

Know'st thou the house, with its turreted walls, 
Where the chambers are glancing, and vast are 

the halls? 
Where the figures of marble look on me so mild, 
As if thinking : ' Why thus did they use thee, 

poor child ?' 
Know'st thou it ? 

Thither! O thither, 
My guide and my guardian, with thee would I go. 

Know'st <hou the mountain, its cloud-cover'd 
arch, 

Where the mules among mist o'er the wild tor- 
rent march? 

In the clefts of it, dragons lie coil'd with their 
brood ; 



The rent crag rushes down, and above it the flood. 
Know'st thou it? 

Thither! O thither, 
Our way leadeth: Father! O come let us go !" 
Vol. i. p. 229. 

The mystery that hangs over the original 
condition of Fenella in Rushin Castle, is dis- 
carded, indeed, as to Mignon, from ihe first; 
for she is first exhibited to us as actually tum- 
bling! — and is rescued by our hero from the 
scourge of the master tumbler, who was dis- 
satisfied with her performance. But the fonds 
of the character is the same. She is beautiful 
and dwarfish, unaccountable, and full of sen- 
sibility, and is secretly in love with her pro- 
tector, who feels for her nothing but common 
kindness and compassion. She comes at last, 
to be sure, to be rather more mad than Fenel- 
la, and dies the victim of her hopeless passion. 
The following is ihe description, something 
overworked perhaps, and not quite intelligible, 
but, on the whole, most powerful and impres- 
sive, of this fairy creature's first indication 
of her love to her youthful deliverer. 

" Nothing is more touching than the first disclo- 
sure of a love which has been nursed in silence, of 
a faith grown strong in secret, and which at last 
comes forth in the hour of need, and reveals itself 
to him who formerly has reckoned it of small ac- 
count. The bud, which had been closed so long 
and firmly, was now ripe, to burst its swathirgs, 
and VVilhelm's heart could never have been readier 
to welcome the impressions of affection. 

" She stood before him, and noticed his disquiet- 
ude. 'Master!' she cried, 'if thou art unhappy, 
what will become of Mignon?' 'Dear little crea- 
ture,' said he, taking her hands, ' thou too art part 
of my anxieties. I must go.' She looked at his 
eyes, glistening with restrained tears, and knelt 
down with vehemence before him. He kept her 
hands ; she laid her head upon his knees, and re- 
mained quite still. He played with her hair, palled 
her, and spoke kindly to her. She continued mo- 
tionless for a considerable time. At last he felt a sort 
of palpitating movement in her, which began very 
sofly, and then by degrees with increasing violence 
diffused itself over all her frame. ' What ails thee, 
Mignon ?' cried he ; ' what ails thee ?' She raised 
up her little head, looked at him, and all at once 
laid her hand upon her heart, with the countenance 
of one repressing the utterance of pain. He raised 
her up, and she fell upon his breast ; he pressed 
her towards him, and kissed her. She replied not 
by any pressure of the hand, by any motion what- 
ever. She held firmly against her heart ; and all at 
once gave a cry, which was accompanied by spag- 
modic movements of the body. She started up, 
and immediately fell down before him, as if broken 
in every joint. It was an excruciating moment! 
' My child !' cried he, raising her up, and clasping 
her fast ; ' My child, what ails thee ?' The palpita- 
tions continued, spreading from the heart over all 
the lax and powerless limbs ; she was merely 
hanging in his arms ! All at once she again became 
quite stiff, like one enduring the sharpest corporeal 
agony ; and soon with a new vehemence all her 
frame once more became alive ; and she threw her- 
self about his neck, like a bent spring that is closing; 
while in her soul, as it were a strong rent took 
place, and at the same moment a stream of tears 
flowed from her shut eyes into his bosom. He held 
her fast. She wept ! and no tongue can express, 
the force of these tears. Her long hair had loosened, 
and was hanging down before her ; it seemed as if 
her whole being was melting incessantly into a 
brook of tears ! Her rigid limbs were again become 
relaxed ; her inmost soul was pouring itself forth ! 
In the wild confusion of the moment, Wilhelm was 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



113 



afraid she would dissolve in his arms, and leave 
nothing thr/re for him to grasp. He held her faster 
and faster. 'My child!' cried he, 'my child!' 
Her tears continued flowing. At last she raised her- 
self; a faint gladness shone upon her face. 'My 
father !' cried she, ' thou wilt not forsake me? Wilt 
he my father ? I am thy child.' " 

We cannot better illustrate the strange in- 
consistency of our authors manner, than by 
subjoining to this highly passionate and really 
beautiful scene, his account of the egg dance^ 
which this little creature performs a few days 
after, for her friend's entertainment. 

" She came into his room one evening carrying a 
•ittle carpet below her arm, which she spread out 
upon the floor. She then brought four candles, and 
placed one upon each corner of the carpet. A little 
basket of eggs, which she next carried in, made her 
purpose clearer. Carefully measuring her steps, 
she then walked to and fro on the carpet, spreading 
out the eggs in certain figures and positions ; which 
done, she called in a man that was waiting in the 
house, and could play on the violin. He retired 
with his instrument into a corner; she tied a band 
about her eyes, gave a signal, and, like a piece of 
wheel- work set a-going, she began moving the 
same instant as the music, accompanying her beats 
and the notes of the tune with the strokes' of a pair 
of castanets. 

" Lightly, nimbly, quickly, and with hairsbreadth 
accuracy, she carried on the dance. She skipped 
so sharply and surely along between the eggs, and 
trode so closely down beside them, that you would 
have thought every instant she must trample one 
of them in pieces, or kick the rest away in her rapid 
turns. By no means ! She touched no one of them, 
though winding herself through their mazes with 
all kinds of steps, wide and narrow, nay even with 
leaps, and at last half kneeling. — Constant as the 
morement of a clock, she ran her course ; and the 
strange music, at each repetition of the tune gave a 
new impulse to the dance, recommencing and again 
rushing off as at first. 

"The dance being ended, she rolled the eggs 
together softly with her foot into a little heap, left 
none behind, harmed none ; then placed herself 
beside it, taking the bandage from her eyes, and 
concluding her performance with a little bow." 

Soon after this, the whole player party are 
taken to the castle of a wealthy Count, to as- 
sist him in entertaining a great Prince and his 
numerous attendants, from whom he was ex- 
pecting a visit. Our hero is prevailed on to 
go also, and takes Mignon along with him — 
and though treated with some indignity, and 
very ill lodged and attended, condescends to 
compose a complimentary piece in honour of 
the illustrious stranger, and to superintend, as 
well as to take a part in, all the private theat- 
ricals. By degrees, however, he steals into 
the favour of the more distinguished guests — 
is employed to read to the Countess, and at 
last is completely fascinated with her elegance 
and beauty — while, as it turns out, he has un- 
consciously made some impression on her in- 
nocent heart. He is not a little assisted in his 
designs, whatever they may have been, by a 
certain intriguing Baroness, who dresses him 
out, on one occasion, in the Count's clothes, 
when that worthy person was from home, in- 
tending to send the Countess in upon him, by 
telling her that her lord was suddenly return- 
ed. But this scheme is broken up by the 
unexpected verification of her fable ; for the 
Count actually returns at the moment ; and, 
15 



on stepping into his dressing-room, is so much 
terrified at seeing himself sitting quietly in an 
arm-chair by the fire, that he runs out in a 
great fright, and soon after becomes a vision- 
ary, and joins the insane flock of Swedenborg. 
A critical scene, however, is at last brought 
on accidentally — and though the transaction 
recorded is by no means quite correct, we 
cannot help inserting the account of it, as a 
very favourable specimen of the author's most 
animated and most natural style. Wilhelm 
had been engaged in reading, as usual, to the 
Countess and her female party, when they 
are interrupted by the approach of visitors. 
The Baroness goes out to receive them j 

" And the Countess, while about to shut her 
writing-desk, which was standing open, took up 
her casket, and put some other rings upon her fin- 
ger. ' We are soon to part,' said she, keeping her 
eyes upon the casket : ' accept a memorial of a true 
friend, who wishes nothing more earnestly, than 
that you may always prosper-' She then took out 
a ring, which, underneath a crystal, bore a little 
plate of woven hair, beautifully set with diamonds. 
She held it out to Wilhelm, who, on taking it, 
knew neither what to say nor do, but stood as if 
rooted to the ground. The Countess shut her desk, 
and sat down upon the sofa. ■ And Jr must go 
empty ?' said Philina, kneeling down at the Count- 
ess' right hand. ' Do but look at the man ! he 
carries such a store of words in his mouth, when 
no one wants to hear them ; and now he cannot 
stammer out the poorest syllable of thanks. Quick, 
sir ! Express your services, by way of pantomime 
at least ; and if to-day you can invent nothing ; then, 
for Heaven's sake, be my imitator !' Philina seized 
the right hand of the Countess, and kissed it warm- 
ly. Wilhelm sank upon his knee, laid hold of the 
left, and pressed it to his lips. The Countess seem- 
ed embarrassed, yet without displeasure. ' Ah !' 
cried Philina ; ' so much splendour of attire I may 
have seen before ; but never one so fit to wear it. 
What bracelets, but also what a hand! What a 
neck-dress, but also what a bosom !' ' Peace, little 
cozener !' said the Countess. ' Is this his Lordship 
then?' said Philina, pointing to a rich medallion, 
which the Countess wore on her left side, by a 
particular chain. ' He is painted in his bridal dress,' 
replied the Countess. ' Was he then so young?' 
inquired Philina; I know it is but a year or two 
since you were married.' ' His youth must be 
placed to the artist's account,' replied the lady. 
' He is a handsome man,' observed Philina. ' But 
was there never,' she continued, placing her hand 
upon the Countess' heart, ' never any other image 
that found its way in secret hither?' 'Thou art 
very bold, Philina !' cried she ; ' I have spoiled 
thee. Let me never hear such another speech. 
' If you are angry, then am I unhappy,' said Phi 
lina, springing up, and hastening from the room. 

" Wilhelm still held that lovely hand in both # 
his. His eyes were fixed upon the bracelet-clasp 
he noticed, with extreme surprise, that his initia. \ 
were traced on it, in lines of brilliants. ' Have i 
then,' he modestly inquired, ' you own hair in th.» 
precious ring ?' ' Yes,' replied she in a faint voice , 
then suddenly collecting herself, she said, and 
pressed his hand: 'Arise, and fare you well!* 
' Here is my name,' cried he, ' by the most curious 
chance!' He pointed to the bracelet-clasp. 'How?' 
cried the Countess; ' it is the cipher of a female 
friend !' ' They are the initials of my name. For- 
get me not. Your image is engraven on my heart, 
and will never be effaced. Farewell ! I must be 
gone.' He kissed her hand, and meant to rise; but 
as in dreams, some strange thing fades and change* 
into something stranger, and the succeeding wonder 
takes us by surprise ; so, without knowing how it 
happened, he found the Countess in his arms ! Her 
k 2 



114 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



lips were resting upon his, and their warm mutual 
kisses were yielding them that blessedness, which 
mortals sip from the topmost sparkling foam on the 
freshly poured cup of love ! 

" Her head lay upon his shoulder ; the disordered 
ringlets and ruffles were forgotten. She had 
thrown her arm around him ; he clasped her with 
vivacity ; and pressed her again and again to his 
breast. O that such a moment could but last for- 
ever ! And wo to envious fate that shortened even 
this brief moment to our friends ! How terrified 
was Wilhelm, how astounded did he start from this 
happy dream, when the Countess, with a*shriek, 
on a sudden tore herself away, and hastily pressed 
her hand against her heart. He stood confounded 
before her ; she held the other hand* upon her eyes, 
and, after a moment's pause, exclaimed : 'Away ! 
leave me! delay not!' He continued standing. 
' Leave me!' she cried; and taking off her hand 
from her eyes, she looked at him with an indescrib- 
able expression of countenance ; and added, in the 
most tender and affecting voice: 'Fly, if you love 
me.' Wilhelm was out of the chamber, and again 
in his room, before he knew what he was doing. 
Unhappy creatures ! What singular warning of 
chance or of destiny tore them asunder ?' " 

These questionable doings are followed up 
by long speculations on the art of playing, and 
the proper studies and exercises of actors. 
But in the end of these, which are mystical 
and prosing enough, we come suddenly upon 
what we do not hesitate to pronounce the 
most able, eloquent, and profound exposition 
of the character of Hamlet, as conceived by 
our great dramatist, that has ever been given 
to the world. In justice to the author, we 
shall give a part of this admirable critique. 
He first delineates him as he was before the 
calamities of his family. 

" ' Soft, and from a noble stem, this royal flower 
had sprung up under the immediate influences of 
majesty : the idea of moral rectitude with that of 
princely elevation, the feeling of the good and dig- 
nified with the consciousness of high birth, had in 
him been unfolded^ simultaneously. He was a 
prince, by birth a prince ; and he wished to reign, 
only that good men might be good without obstruc- 
tion. Pleasing in form, polished by nature, cour- 
teous from the heart, he was meant to be the pat- 
tern of youth and the joy of the world. 

" ' Without any prominent passion, his love for 
Ophelia was a still presentiment of sweet wants. 
His zeal in knightly accomplishments was not en- 
tirely his own ; it needed to be quickened and in- 
flamed by praise bestowed on others for excelling 
in them. He was calm in his temper, artless in his 
conduct, neither pleased with idleness, nor too vio- 
lently eager for employment. The routine of a 
university he seemed to continue when at court. 
lie possessed more mirth of humour than of heart ; 
ne was a good companion, pliant, courteous, dis- 
creet, and able to forget and forgive an injury ; yet 
never able to unite himself with those who over- 
stept the limits of the right, the good, and the 
becoming.' " 

He then considers the effects of the mis- 
fortunes of his house on such a disposition. 
The first is the death of his father, by which 
his fair hopes of succession are disappointed. 

"He is now poor in goods and favour, and a 
stranger in the scene which from youth he had 
looked upon as his inheritance. His temper here 
assumes its first mournful tinge. He feels that now 
he is not more, that he is less, than a private no- 
bleman ; he offers himself as the servant of every 
one ; he is not courteous and condescending, he is 
needy and degraded. 



"'The second stroke that came upon h.m 
wounded deeper, bowed still more. J', was :h» 
marriage of his mother. The faithful tender son 
had yet a mother, when his father passed away. 
He hoped, in the company of his surviving and 
noble-minded parent, to reverence the heroic form 
of the departed ; but his mother too he loses ! and 
it is something worse than death that robs him cf 
her. The trustful image, which a good child loves 
to form of his parents, is gone. With the dead 
there is no help — on the living no hold ! She also 
is a woman, and her name is Frailty, like that of all 
her sex. 

" 'Figure to yourselves this youth,' cried he, 
' this son of princes ; conceive him vividly, bring 
his state before your eyes, and then observe him 
when he learns that his father's spirit walks ! 
Stand by him in the terrors of the night, when the 
venerable ghost itself appears before him. A hor- 
rid shudder passes over him ; he speaks to the mys- 
terious form ; he sees it beckon him ; he follows if, 
and hears. The fearful accusation of his uncle 
rings in his ears ; the summons to revenge, and the 
piercing oft-repeated prayer, Remember me ! 

" 'And when the ghost has vanished, who is it 
that stands before us ? A young hero panting for 
vengeance? A prince by birth, rejoicing. to be 
called to punish the usurper of his crown ? No ! 
Trouble and astonishment take hold of the solitary 
young man : he grows bitter against smiling vil- 
lains, swears that he will not forget the spirit, and 
concludes with the expressive ejaculation : 

The time is out of joint : O ! cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set them right ! 

" 'In these words, I imagine, will be found the 
key to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it ia 
clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, 
to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a 
soul u?ifit for the performance of it. In this view 
the whole piece seems to me to be composed. An 
oak-tree is planted in a costly jar, which should 
have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom ; the 
roots expand, the jar is shivered ! A lovely, pure, 
noble, and most moral nature, without the strength 
of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a bur- 
den which it cannot bear, and must not cast away. 
All duties are holy for him ; the present is too hard. 
Impossibilities have been required of him ; not in 
themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He 
winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances 
and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puis himself 
in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from 
his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace 
of mind.' " 

There is nothing so good as this in any of 
our own commentators — nothing at once so 
poetical, so feeling, and so just. It is incon- 
ceivable that it should have been written by 
the chronicler of puppet-shows and gluttonous 
vulgarities. 

The players, with our hero at their head, 
now travel across the country, rehearsing, 
lecturing, squabbling, and kissing as usual. 
There is war however on their tra'ck; and 
when seated pleasantly at dinner in a wood 
on their journey, they are attacked by some 
armed marauders, robbed of their goods, and 
poor Wilhelm left wounded and senseless on 
the field. What follows, though not very 
original in conception, is described with effect 
and vivacity. 

" On again opening his eyes, he found himself in 
the strangest posture. The first thing that pierced 
the dimness which yet swam before his vision, was 
Philina's face bent down over his. He felt himself 
weak ; and making a movement to rise, he dis- 
covered that he was in Philina's lap ; into which, 
indeed, he again sank down. She was sitting on 



GOETHE ; S WILHELM MEISTER. 



115 



the sward. She had sofily pressed towards her the 
hend of the fallen young man; and made for him 
an easy couch, as far as this was in her power. 
Mignon was kneeling with dishevelled and bloody 
hair at his feet, which she embraced with many 
tears. Philina let him know that this true-hearted 
creature, seeing her friend wounded, and in the 
hurry of the instant, being able to think of nothing 
which would staunch the blood, had taken her own 
hair that was flowing round her head, and tried to 
6top the wounds with it ; but had soon been obliged 
to give up the vain attempt; that afterwards they 
had bound with moss and dry mushrooms, Philina 
herself giving up her neck-kerchief for that purpose. 
" After a few moments, a young lady issued from 
the thickets, riding on a gray courser, and accom- 
panied by an elderly gentleman and some cavaliers. 
Grooms, servants, and a troop of hussars, closed up 
the rear. Philina stared at this phenomenon, and 
was about to call, and entreat the Amazon for help ; 
when the latter, turning her astonished eyes on the 
group, instantly checked her horse, rode up to 
them, and halted. She inquired eagerly about the 
wounded man, whose posture in the lap of this light- 
minded Samaritan seemed to strike her as peculiar- 
ly strange. ' Is it your husband ?' she inquired of 
Philina. ' Only a friend,' replied the other, with a 
tone that Wilhelm liked extremely ill. He had 
fixed his eyes upon the soft, elevated, calm, sympa- 
thizing features of the stranger: he thought he had 
never seen aught nobler or more lovely. Her shape 
he could not see : it was hid by a man's great-coat, 
which she seemed to have borrowed from some of 
her attendants, to screen her from the chill evening 
air."— Vol. ii. pp. 38—43. 

A surgeon in this compassionate party ex- 
amines his wounds, and the lovely young 
woman, after some time 

— "turned to the old gentleman, and said, 'Dear 
uncle, may I be generous at your expense ?' She 
took off the great-coat, with the visible intention to 
give it to the stript and wounded youth. 

" Wilhelm, whom the healing look of her eyes 
had hitherto held fixed, was now, as the surtout fell 
away, astonished at her lovely figure. She came 
near, and softly laid the coat above him. At this 
moment, as he tried to open his mouth, and stam- 
mer out some words of gratitude, the lively impres- 
sion of her presence worked so strongly on his 
senses, already caught and bewildered, that all at 
once it appeared to him as if her head were encir- 
cled with rays ; and a glancing light seemed by de- 
grees to spread itself over all her form ! At this 
moment the surgeon, endeavouring to extract the 
ball from his wound, gave him a sharper twinge; 
the angel faded away from the eyes of the fainting 
patient : he lost all consciousness ; and, on returning 
to himself, the horsemen and coaches, the fair one 
with her attendants, had vanished like a dream. 

" He, meanwhile, wrapt up in his warm surtout, 
was lying peacefully upon the litter. An electric 
warmth seemed to flow from the fine wool into his 
body: in short, he felt himself in the most delight- 
ful frame of mind. The lovely being, whom this 
garment lately covered, had affected him to the 
very heart. He still saw the coat falling down 
from her shoulders: saw that noble form, begirt 
with radiance, stand beside him ; and his soul hied 
over rocks and forests on the footsteps of his de- 
parted benefactress. — Vol. ii. pp. 45 — 47. 

The party afterwards settles in a large 
town, under the charge of a regular manager. 
There are endless sqabbles and intrigues, and 
interminable dissertations on acting. Our hero 
performs Hamlet with great applause, and 
gets tipsy with the whole company at a riotous 
supper after it — the rehearsals, the acting, 
and the said supper being all described with 



great spirit and animation. We may extract 
the end of the latter. 

"Amid the pleasures of the entertainment, it 
had not been noticed that the children and the Harper 
were away. Ere long they made their entrance, 
and were blithely welcomed by the company. 
They came in together, very strangely decked: 
Felix was beating a triangle, Mignon a tambou- 
rine ; the old man had his large harp hung round 
his neck, and was playing on it whilst he carried it 
before him. They marched round and round the 
table, and sang a multitude of songs. Eatables 
were handed to them ; and the guests believed 
they could not do a greater kindness to the children, 
than by giving them as much sweet vnne as they 
chose to drink. For the company themselves had 
not by any means neglected a stock of savoury 
flasks, presented by the two amateurs, which had 
arrived this evening in baskets. The children 
tripped about and sang; Mignon in particular was 
frolicsome beyond what any one had ever seen her. 
She beat the tambourine with the greatest liveli- 
ness and grace : now, with her ringer pressed 
against the parchment, she hummed across it quick- 
ly to and fro ; now rattled on it with her knuckles, 
now with the back of her hand ; nay sometimes, 
with alternating rhythm, she struck it first against 
her knee and then against her head ; and anon 
twirling it in her hand, she made the shells jingle 
by themselves ; and thus, from the simplest instru- 
ment, elicited a great variety of tones. The com- 
pany, as much as they had laughed at her at first, 
were in fine obliged to curb her. But persuasion 
was of small avail ; for she now sprang up, and 
raved, and shook her tambourine, and capered 
round the table. With her hair flying out behind 
her, with her head thrown back, and her limbs as 
it were cast into the air, she seemed like one of 
those antique Masnades, whose wild and all but 
impossible positions still strike us with astonish- 
ment when seen on classic monuments, &c. 

M It was late ; and Aurelia, perhaps the only one 
retaining self-possession in the party, now stood up, 
and signified that it was time to go. By way of 
termination, Serlo gave a firework, or what resem- 
bled one : for he could imitate the sound of crack- 
ers, rockets, and fire-wheels with his mouth, in a 
style of nearly inconceivable correctness. You 
had only to shut your eyes, and the deception was 
complete. On reaching the open air, almost all 
of them observed that they had dra7iJc too liberally. 
They glided asunder without taking leave. 

"The instant Wilhelm gained his room, he 
stripped, and, extinguishing his candle, hastened 
into bed. Sleep was overpowering him without 
delay, when a noise, that seemed to issue from be- 
hind the stove, aroused him. In the eye of his 
heated fancy, the image of the harnessed kins: was 
hovering near him : he sat up that he might address 
the spectre ; but he felt himself encircled with soft 
arms, and his mouth was shut \<i;h kisses, which 
he had not force to push away !" — Vol. ii. pp. 205 — 
209. 

In this division of the story we hear a great 
deal of an Aurelia — a sister of the manager's — 
an actress of course — but a woman of talent 
and sentiment — who had been perfidiously 
left by her lover — and confided all the bitter 
ness of her heart to our hero. There is a 
good deal of eloquence in some of these dia- 
logues — and a nearer approach to nature, than 
in any other part of the work. This is a 
sample of them. 

" ' One more forsaken woman in the world !' 
you will say. You are a man. You are thinking: 
' What a noise she makes, the fool, about a neces- 
sary evil, which certainly as death awaits women 
when such is the fidelity of men !' Oh. my friend I 
if my fate were common, I would gladly v. 1 de go 



?16 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



a common evil. But it is so singular : why cannot 
I present it to you in a mirror, why not command 
BOtne one to tell it you ? Oh, had I, had I been 
seduced, surprised, and afterwards forsaken ! there 
would then be comfort in despair: but lam far 
more miserable ; I have been my own deceiver ; I 
have wittingly betrayed myself; and this, this is 
what shall never be forgiven me.' 

" ' I hate the French language,' she added, 
'from the bottom of my soul. During the period 
of our kindliest connection, he wrote in German, 
and what genuine, powerful, cordial German ! It 
was not till he wanted to get quit of me, that he 
began seriously to write in French. I marked, I 
felt what he meant. What he would have blushed 
to utter in his mother tongue, he could by this 
means write with a quiet conscience. It is the lan- 
guage of reservations, equivocations, and lies: it is 
a perfidious language ! Heaven be praised ! I can- 
not find another word to express this perfide of 
theirs in all its compass. Our poor treulos, the 
faithless of the English, are innocent as babes be- 
side it. Perfide means faithless with enjoyment, 
with insolence and malice. How enviable is the 
culture of a nation that can figure out so many 
shades of meaning by a single word ! French is 
exactly the language of the world; worthy to be- 
come the universal language, that all may have it 
in their power to cheat, and cozen, and betray each 
other! His French letters were always smooth 
and pleasant while you read them. If you chose 
to believe it, they sounded warmly, even passion- 
ately : but if you examined narrowly, they were 
but phrases, accursed phrases ! He has spoiled my 
feeling to the whole language, to French literature, 
even to the beautiful delicious expressions of noble 
souls which may be found in it. I shudder when 
a French word is spoken in my hearing.' " 

What follows is still more in the raving 
style — and we suppose is much more admired 
in Germany. 

" She sunk in thought ; then after a brief pause, 
she exclaimed with violence : ' You are accustomed 
to have all things fly into your arms. No, you 
cannot feel ; no man is in a case to feel the worth 
of a woman that can reverence herself. By all the 
holy angels, by all the images of blessedness which 
a pure and kindly heart creates, there is not any 
thing more heavenly than the soul of a woman that 
gives herself to the man she loves! We are cold, 
proud, high, clear-sighted, wise, while we deserve 
the name of women ; and all these qualities we 
lay down at your feet, the instant that we love, that 
we hope to excite a return of love. Oh ! how have 
I cast away my entire existence wittingly and wil- 
lingly ! But now will I despair, purposely despair. 
There is no drop of blood within me but shall 
suffer, no fibre that I will not punish. Smile, I 
pray you ; laugh at this theatrical display of pas- 
sion.' 

" Wilhelm was far enough from any tendency 
to laugh. This horrible, half-natural, half-fictitious 
condition of his friend afflicted him but too deeply. 
She looked him intently in the face, and asked : 
' Can you say that you never yet betrayed a woman, 
that you never tried with thoughtless gallantry, 
with false asseverations, with cajoling oaths, to 
wheedle favour from her ?' ' I can,' said Wilhelm, 
' and indeed without much vanity ; my life has been 
so simple and sequestered, I have had but few en- 
ticements to attempt such things. And what a 
warning, my beautiful, my noble friend, is this 
melancholy state in which I see you ! Accept of 
me a vow, which is suited to my heart, &c. ; no 
woman shall receive an acknowledgment of love 
from my lips, to whom I cannot consecrate my 
life.' She looked at him with a wild indifference ; 
and drew back some steps as he offered her his 
hand. ' 'Tis of no moment !' cried she : ' so many 
>vomen'» tears more or fewer ! the ocean will not 



swell by reason of them ! And yet,' continued 
she, ' among thousands one woman saved ! that still 
is something : among thousands one honest man 
discovered ; this is not to be refused. Do yon 
know then what you promise ?' • I know it,' an 
swered Wilhelm with a smile, and holding out his 
hand. 'I accept it then,' said she, and made a 
movement with her right hand, as if meaning to 
take hold of his : but instantly she darted it intn 
her pocket, pulled out her dagger as quick as light 
ning, and scored with the edge and point of it 
across his hand ! He hastily drew back his arm 
but the blood was already running down. 

" ' One must mark you men rather sharply, if 
one means you to take heed,' cried she with a wild 
mirth, which soon passed into a quick assiduity. 
She took her handkerchief, and bound his hand 
with it to staunch the fast-flowing blood. ' For- 
give a half-crazed being,' cried she, ' and regret 
not these few drops of blood. I am appeased, I 
am again myself. On my knees will I crave your 
pardon : leave me the comfort of healing you.' "— 
Vol. ii. pp. 128—132. 

Alternating with these agonies, we have 
many such scenes as the following. 

" ' 'Tis a pity, I declare,' said Serlo to Philina, 

I that we have no ballet ; else I would make you 
dance me a pas de duex with your first, and another 
with your second husband : the harper might be 
lulled to sleep by the measure ; and your bits of 
feet and ancles would look so pretty, tripping to 
and fro upon the side stage.' ' Of my ancles you 
do not know much,' replied she snappishly; ' and 
as to my bits of feet,' cried she, hastily reaching 
below the table, pulling off her slippers, and hold- 
ing them out to Serlo ; ' here are the cases of them, 
and I give you leave to find me nicer ones.' ' It 
were a serious task,' said he, looking at the elegant 
half-shoes. ' In truth, one does not often meet 
with any thing so dainty.' They were of Parisian 
workmanship ; Philina had obtained them as a pre- 
sent from the countess, a lady whose foot was 
celebrated for its beauty. ' A charming thing !' 
cried Serlo ; ' my heart leaps at the sight of them.' 
' What gallant throbs!' replied Philina. ' There is 
nothing in the world beyond a pair of slippers,' said 
he ; ' of such pretty manufacture, in their proper 

time and place ' Philina took her slippers 

from his hands, crying, ' You have squeezed them 
all ! They are far too wide for me !' She played 
with them, and rubbed the soles of them together. 
' How hot it is !' cried she, clapping the sole upon 
her cheek, then again rubbing, and holding it to 
Serlo. He was innocent enough to stretch out his 
hand to feel the warmth. ' Clip ! clap !' cried she, 
giving him a smart rap over the knuckles with the 
heel, that he screamed and drew back his hand ; 

I I will teach you how to use my. slippers better.' 

I And I will teach you also how to use old folk like 
children,' cried the other ; then sprang up, seized 
her, and plundered many a kiss, every one of which 
she artfully contested with a show of serious reluct- 
ance. In this romping, her long hair goot loase, 
and floated round the group ; the chair overset ; and 
Aurelia, inwardty indignant at such rioting, arose 
in great vexation." — Vol. ii. pp. 166, 167. 

This said Aurelia has a little boy called 
Felix — and dying at last of her sorrow, leaves 
a letter for her betrayer, which she had en- 
gaged our hero to deliver to him in person. 
But between the giving and execution of this 
mandate, the ingenious author has interpo- 
lated a separate piece, which he has entitled 

II the confessions of a fair Saint" — and which 
has no other apparent connection with the 
story, than that poor Aurelia' s physician had 
lent it to her to read in her last moments. 
The ugh eminently characteristic of the author 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



If? 



it need not detain us long. The first part is 
full of vulgarity and obscurity — the last ab- 
solutely unintelligible. This fair saint lived 
in her youth among a set of people whom she 
calls German courtiers, and says, with singu- 
lar delicacy, 

"Hook upon it as a providential guidance, that 
none of these many handsome, rich, and well- 
dressed men could take my fancy. They were 
rakes, and did not hide it ; this scared me back : 
their speech was frequently adorned with double 
meanings ; this offended me, and made me act with 
coldness towards them. Many times their impro- 
prieties surpassed belief! and I did not prevent my- 
self from being rude. Besides, my ancient coun- 
sellor had once in confidence contrived to tell me, 
that, with the greater part of these lewd fellows, 
health as well as virtue was in danger! I now 
shuddered at the sight of them ; I was afraid, if one 
of them in any way approached too near me. I 
would not touch their cups or glasses, even the 
chairs they had been sitting on ! Thus morally 
and physically I remained apart from them." 

She then falls in love with a certain Narciss, 
with whom her first acquaintance was formed 
at a ball, where, "after having jigged it for. a 
while in the crowd, he came into the room 
where I w r as, in consequence of a bleeding at 
the nose, with which he had been overtaken, 
and begun to speak about a multitude of 
things !" In spite of this promising beginning, 
however, the mutual flame is not caught till 
they meet again at a dinner, where, 

" Even at table, we had many things to suffer; 
for several of the gentlemen had drank too much: 
and after rising from it, they insisted on a game at 
forfeits. It went on with great vivacity and tumult. 
Narciss had lost a forfeit : they ordered him, by 
way of penalty, to whisper something pleasant in 
the ear of every member of the company. It seems, 
he staid too long beside my neighbour, the lady of 
a captain. The latter on a sudden struck him such 
a box with hisjist, that the powder flew about my 
eyes and blinded me! When I had cleared my 
sight, and in some degree recovered from my terror, 
I saw that both of them had drawn their swords. 
Narciss was bleeding; and the other, mad with 
wine, and rage, and jealousy, could scarcely be 
held back by all the company: I seized Narciss, 
led him by the arm up stairs ; and as I did not think 
my friend even here in safety from his frantic 
enemy, I shut the door and bolted it." 

After this they are soon betrothed; but she 
grows Methodistical, and he cold, — and their 
engagement flies off; — And then she becomes 
pious in good earnest, and is by turns a Hal- 
lean and a Herrnhuther, and we do not know 
how many other things, and raves through 
seventy or eighty pages, of which we have 
not courage to attempt any analysis. 

We now get rid in a great degree of plays 
and players, and emerge into the region of 
mysticism. Wilhelm goes to the country to 
deliver Aurelia's letter to Lothario ; but finds 
that worthy Baron so busy preparing to fight 
a duel, that he cannot find an opportunity to 
discharge himself of his mission. He remains, 
however, in the castle, and soon finds himself 
in the midst of several peremptory and om- 
niscient people, who make what they please 
of him. In discourse, they happen to make 
mention of a certain Count, a brother-in-law 
of Lothario's, who had grown melancholy, and 
talked of joining the Herrnhuthers, with his 



beautiful wife. Wilhelm immediately inquire; 
what Count they are speaking of. 

" ' One whom you know very well,' said Jarno 
' You yourself are the ghost that have chased the 
unhappy wiseacre into piety ; you are the villain 
who have brought his pretty wife to such a state, 
that she inclines accompanying him.' 'And she 
is Lothario's sister V cried our friend. ' No other ! ! 
— ' And Lothario knows V — ' The whole.' ' \er 
me fly !' cried Wilhelm : ' How shall I appear be 
fore him? What can he say to me?' 'That nc 
man should cast a stone at his brother; that when 
one composes long speeches, with a view to shame 
his neighbours, he should speak them to a looking- 
glass.' 'Do you know that also?' 'And many 
things beside,' said Jarno with a smile." 

From this moment our hero gives up the 
idea of reproaching the Baron with his perfidy 
to Aurelia, and offers his services to decoy 
away from him another love-sick damsel who 
is then in the house, and whose hysterics, it 
is thought, might retard the cure of the wound 
he has just received in his duel. He takes 
her away, accordingly, under some false pre- 
text, to a certain Theresa, another deserted 
love of Lothario, and who is distinguished by 
a singular passion for housekeeping and all 
manner of economical employments. The 
conception of this character, which is dwelt 
on at great length, is one of the most glaring 
absurdities and affectations in the book. The 
author has actually endeavoured, in serious 
earnest, to exalt the common qualifications 
of a domestic drudge, or notable housewife, 
into heroic virtues, and to elaborate his fa- 
vourite heroine out of these base materials. 
The wdiole scene is tinged, even beyond the 
average standard of the book, with the appa- 
rently opposite faults of vulgarity and extrava- 
gance. This is the debut. 

"She entered Wilhelm's room, inquiring if he 
wanted anything. 'Pardon me,' said she, 'for 
having lodged you in a chamber which the smell of 
paint still renders disagreeable: my little dwelling 
is but just made ready ; you are handselling this 
room, which is appointed for my guests; also, you 
will have many things to pardon. My cook has run 
away from me, at this unseasonable time ; and s 
serving-man has bruised his hand. I might be 
forced to manage all myself; and if it were so, we 
must just put up with it. One is plagued with no- 
body so much as with one's servants: not one of 
them will serve you, scarcely even serve himself.' 
She said a good deal more on different matters : in 
general she seemed to like to speak. 

They then take a walk together, and, on 
their return, 

" Wilhelm testified his admiration at her skill in 
husbandry concerns. ' Decided inclination, early 
opportunity, external impulse, and continued occu- 
pation in a useful business,' said she, ' make many 
things, which were at first far harder, possible in 
life.' On returning home, she sent him to her lhtle 
garden. Here he scarce could turn himself, so 
narrow were the walks, so thickly was it sown and 
planted. On looking over to the court, he could 
not keep from smiling: \\\e firewood was lying there, 
as accurately sawed, split, and piled, as it it had 
been part of the building, and had been intended to 
abide there constantly. The tubs and implements, 
all clean, were standing in their places: the house 
was -painted white and red; it was really pleasant 
to behold ! Whatever can be done by handicraft, 
that knows not beautiful proportions, but that la- 
bours for convenience, cheerfulness, and durability, 
appeared united on the spot." 



118 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



She then puts on mors clothes ! which, in- 
deed, she generally wore as most handy; and 
they have another walk, in the course of which 
she tells him her story. She was nobly born. 
But 7 

" ' From my earliest youth, the kitchen, the store- 
room, the granaries, the field, were my selected 
element! Cleanliness and order in the house 
seemed, even while I was playing in it, to be my 
peculiar instinct, my peculiar object. This tendency 
gave pleasure to my father ; and he by degrees af- 
tDrded it the most suitable employment. When we 
were by ourselves, when walking through the fields, 
when I was helping to examine his accounts, I 
could perceive what happiness he was enjoying.' " 

Her mother took great delight in a private 
theatre — "But I," she observed, " very seldom 
staid among the audience J however, I always 
snuffed their candles, and prepared the supper, 
— and put the wardrobe in order." After her 
father's death, her mother wastes the property, 
and she goes as a kind of steward or manager, 
into the family of a neighbouring lady, whom 
-'she faithfully assisted in struggling with her 
steward and domestics." 

"'I am neither of a niggardly nor grudging 
temper ; but we women are accustomed to insist, 
more earnestly than men, that nothing shall he 
wasted. Embezzlement of all sorts is intolerable 
to us. Here I was in my element once more.' " 

This is enough, we suppose, for the char- 
acter of Theresa. But the accomplished Lo- 
thario falls in love with this angel, and here 
are the grounds on which he justifies his pre- 
ference. 

" • What is the highest happiness of mortals, if 
not to execute what we consider right and good ; 
to be really masters of the means conducive to our 
aims? And where should or can our first and 
nearest aims be but within the house? All those 
indispensable, and still to be renewed supplies, 
where do we expect, do we require to find them, 
if it is not in the place where we arise and where 
we go to sleep, where kitchen and cellar, and every 
species of accommodation for ourselves and ours is 
to be always ready ? What unvarying activity is 
needed to conduct this constantly recurring series 
in unbroken living order ! It is when a woman has 
attained this inward mastery, that she truly makes 
the husband whom she loves a master: her atten- 
tion will acquire all sorts of knowledge for her ; her 
activity will turn them all to profit. Thus is she de- 
pendent upon no one ; and she procures her husband 
genuine independence, that which is interior and 
domestic : whatever he possesses he beholds se- 
cured ; what he earns, well employed.' " &c. 

They are engaged accordingly to be mar- 
ried ; but the match is broken off by an un- 
lucky discovery, that this gay Lothario had 
formerly had a love affair with Theresa's 
mother, when she was travelling abroad under 
a feigned name ! We are rather surprised, 
we confess, at the notable fair one's delicacy, 
in considering this as a bar to their union — for 
her notions on the subject of conjugal fidelity 
must be owned to be sufficiently liberal, 
having intimated, in reference to her lover's 
subsequent intrigues with Amelia and others, 
that 

"Even if he had been her husband, she would 
have had sufficient spirit to endure a matter of this 
kind, if it had not troubled her domestic order: at 
least she often used to say, that a wife, who pro- 
perly conducted her economy, should take no um- 



brage at such little fancies of her husband, but 1* 
always certain that he would return." 

Our hero returns to the castle quite en- 
chanted with this paragon of women — and 
his rising flame is fed by the conversation 
which takes place with regard to her. After 
amusing themselves with each telling confi- 
dentially their pretty love adventures, the 
accomplished Lothario holds forth in tlus 
edifying and decided manner. 

'"It is true,' observed Lothario, 'there can 
scarcely any feeling in the world be more agreea- 
ble, than when the heart, after a pause of indiffer- 
ence, again opens to love for some new object. Yet 
I would for ever have renounced that happiness, 
had fate been pleased to unite me with Theresa. 
What a heaven had I figured for myself beside 
Theresa ! Not the heaven of an enthusiastic bliss ; 
but of a sure life on earth : order in prosperity, 
courage in adversity, care for the smallest, and a 
spirit capable of comprehending and managing the 
greatest. You may well forgive me,' added he, 
and turned to Wilhelm with a smile, 'that I for- 
sook Aurelia for Theresa: with the one I could 
expect a calm and cheerful life, with the other not 
a happy hour.' ' I will confess,' said Wilhelm, 
' that in coming hither, I had no small anger in my 
heart against you ; that I proposed to eensure with 
severity your conduct to Aurelia.' ' It was really 
censurable,' said Lothario : ' I should not have ex- 
changed my friendship for her with the sentiment 
of love ; I should not, in place of the respect which 
she deserved, have intruded an attachment she was 
neither calculated to excite nor maintain. Alas ! 
she was not lovely when she loved! the greatest misery 
which can befall a woman.' " 

And in this cavalier manner is the subject 
dismissed. He denies, however, that Felix ia 
his child, or Aurelia's either; and avers that 
he was brought to her by the old woman 
Barbara, by whom the boy was generally 
attended. On this hint Wilhelm flies back 
to the town, finds out Barbara, in whom he 
at length recognises the attendant of his first 
love, Mariana, and learns from her that the 
boy Felix is the offspring of their early con- 
nexion, and that the unhappy mother died in 
consequence of his desertion, not only heart- 
broken but innocent ! He is long incredulous, 
and appoints the ancient crone to come to him 
again at night, and abide all his interroga- 
tions. — The scene which follows, we think, is 
very powerfully executed, and is the only part 
almost of the book which produces any thing 
of a pathetic effect. 

" Midnight was past, when something rustled at 
the half-open door, and Barbara came in with a 
little basket. 'I am 'to tell you the story of our 
woes,' said she ; ' and I must believe that you will 
sit unmoved at the recital ; that you are waiting for 
me but to satisfy your curiosity ; that you will now, 
as you did formerly, retire within your cold selfish- 
ness, while our hearts are breaking. But look you 
here ! Tims, on that happy evening, did I bring you 
the bottle of champagne ! thus did I place the three 
glasses on the table ! and as you then began, with 
soft nursery tales, to cozen us and lull us asleep, 
so will I now with stern truths instruct you and 
keep you waking.' 

" Wilhelm knew not what to say, when the crone 
in fact let go the cork, and filled three glasses to 
the brim. ' Drink !' cried she, having emptied at 
a draught her foaming glass. ' Drink, ere the spirit 
of it pass ! This third glass shall froth away un 
tasted, to the memory of my unhappy Mariana! 
How red were her lips, when she then drank your 



GOETHE'S WILHELM MEISTER. 



19 



health! Ah! and now for ever pale and cold!' 
'Sibyl! Fury!' Wilhelm cried, springing up, and 
striking the table with his fist. 'Softly, Mein 
Herr!' replied the crone; 'you shall not ruffle 
me. Your debts to us are deep and dark : the 
railing of a debtor does not anger one. But you 
are right : the simplest narrative will punish you 
sufficiently. Hear, then, the struggle and the vic- 
tory of Mariana striving to continue yours.' " 

She then tells a long story, explaining away 
the indications of perfidy, on the strength of 
which he had quitted her; and the scene 
ends in this very dramatic and truly touching 
manner. 

" < Good, dear Barbara !' cried Wilhelm, spring- 
ing up, and seizing the old woman by the hand, 
' we have had enough of mummery and prepara- 
tion ! Thy indifferent, thy calm, contented tone 
betrays thee. Give me back my Mariana ! She 
is living ! she is near at hand ! Not in vain didst 
thou choose this late lonely hour to visit me ; not 
in vain hast thou prepared me by thy most delicious 
narrative. Where is she? where hast thou hid 
her ? I believe all, I will promise to believe all. 
Thy object is attained. Where hast thou hid her ? 
Let me light thee with this candle, — let me once 
more see her fair and kindly face!' 

" He had pulled old Barbara from her chair : she 
stared at him ; tears started to her eyes ; wild pangs 
of grief took hold of her. ' What luckless error,' 
cried she, leaves you still a moment's hope ? Yes, 
I have hidden her — but beneath the ground ! nei- 
ther the light of the sun nor any social taper shall 
again illuminate her kindly face. Take the boy 
Felix to her grave, and say to him: " There lies 
thy mother, whom thy father doomed unheard." 
The heart of Mariana beats no longer with impa- 
tience to behold you. Not in a neighbouring 
chamber is she waiting the conclusion of my narra- 
tive, or fable; the dark chamber has received her, 
to which no bridegroom follows, from which none 
comes to meet a lover." She cast herself upon the 
floor beside a chair, and wept bitterly." 

She then shows him some of the poor girl's 
letters, which he had refused to receive, and 
another which she had addressed to him on 
her deathbed. One of the former is as follows. 

" ' Thou regardest me as guilty — and so I am ; 
but not as thou thtnkest. Come to me ! It in- 
volves the safety of a soul, it involves a life, two 
lives, one of which must ever be dear to thee. 
This, too, thy suspicion will discredit ; yet I will 
epeak it in the hour of death : the child which I 
carry underneath my heart, is thine. Since I 
began to love thee, no other man has even pressed 
my hand: O that thy love, that thy uprightness, 
had been the companions of my youth !' " 

After this he sends the boy and Mignon to 
his new love, Theresa, and goes back himself 
to Lothario, by whom, and his energetic 
friends, the touching tale he had to tell u is 
treated with indifference and levity." And 
now comes the mystery of mysteries. After 
a great deal of oracular talk, he is ordered, 
one morning at sunrise, to proceed to a part 
of the castle to which he had never before 
found access ; and when he gets to the end of 
a dark hot passage, he hears a voice call " En- 
ter J" and he lifts a tapestry and enters ! — 

" The hall, in which he now stood, appeared to 
have at one time been a chapel ; instead of the altar 
he observed a large table raised some steps above 
the floor, and covered with a green cloth hanging 
over it. On the top of this, a drawn curtain seemed 
as if it hid a picture ; on the sides were spaces beau- 
tifully worked, and covered in with fine wire net- 
ting, like the shelves of a library ; only here, instead 



of books, a multitude of rolls had been inserted. 
Nobody was in the hall. The rising sun shone 
through the window, right on Wilhelm, and kindly 
saluted him as he came in. 

" * Be seated!' cried a voice, which seemed^ to 
issue from the altar. Wilhelm placed himself in a 
small arm-chair, which stood against the tapestry 
where he had entered. There was no seat but this 
in the room ; Wilhelm was obliged to lake it, 
though the morning radiance dazzled him ; the 
chair stood fast, he could only keep his hand before 
his eyes. 

" But now the curtain, which hung down above 
the altar, went asunder with a gentle rustling ; and 
showed, within a picture-frame, a dark empty aper- 
ture. A man stept forward at it, in a common dress ; 
saluted the astonished looker-on, and said to him : 
' Do you not recognise me?' " 

We have not room, however, for the detail 
of all this mummery. A succession of figures, 
known and unknown, present themselves ; — 
among others, the ghost of Hamlet. At last, 
after a pause, 

" The Abbe came to view, and placed himself 
behind the green table. ' Come hither !' cried he 
to his marvelling friend. He went, and mounted 
up the steps. On the green cloth lay a little roll. 
' Here is your Indenture,' said the Abbe ; * take it 
to heart; it is of weighty import.' Wilhelm lifted, 
opened it, and read : 

" Indenture. — 

" Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, occa- 
sion transient. To act is easy, to think is hard ; to 
act according to our thought is troublesome. Every 
beginning is cheerful ; the threshold is the place of 
expectation. The boy stands astonished, his im- 
pressions guide him ; he learns sportfully, serious- 
ness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born 
with us ; what should be imitated is not easy to 
discover. The excellent is rarely found, more 
rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to 
it do not ; with the summit in our eye, we love to 
walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that 
can be taught ; the artist needs it all. Who knows 
it half, speaks much and is always wrong ; who 
knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom 
or late. The former have no secrets and no force ; 
the instruction they can give is like baked bread, 
savoury and satisfying for a single day ; but flour 
cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be 
ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. 
The best is not to be explained by words. The 
spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action 
can be understood and again represented by the 
spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing, while 
he acts rightly ; but of what is wrong we are always 
conscious. Whoever works with symbols only, is 
a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are 
many such, and they like to be together. Their 
babbling detains the scholar ; their obstinate medi- 
ocrity vexes even the best. The instruction, which 
the true artist gives us, opens up the mind ; for 
where words fail him, deeds speak. The true 
scholar learns from the known to unfold the m- 
known, and approaches more and more to beir a 
master. 

"'Enough!' cried the Abbe; ' the rest in due 
time. Now, look round you among these cases.' 

" Wilhelm went and read the titles of the rolls. 
With astonishment, he found Lothario s Apprentice- 
ship, Jarnoi's Apprenticeship, and his own Appren- 
ticeship placed there, with many others whose 
names he did not know. ' May I hope to cast a 
look into these rolls ?' ' In this chamber, there is 
now nothing hid from you.' 'May I put a ques. 
tion ?' ' Ask not,' said the Abbe. ' Hail to thee, 
young man ! Thy apprenticeship is done ; Nature 
has pronounced thee free.' " 

When he afterwards inspects this roll, he 



120 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



finds "his whole life delineated with large, 
sharp strokes, and a number of bland and 
general reflections!" We doubt whether 
there is any such nonsense as this, any 
where else in the universe. 

After this illumination, the first step he 
takes, with the assent of these oracular sages, 
is to propose for Theresa, in a long letter. 
But while waiting for her answer, he is sent 
by Lothario to visit his sister, to whose care, 
it appears, poor Mignon had been transferred 
by Theresa. This sister he takes, of course, 
for the Countess from whom he had parted 
so strangely in the castle, and is a little em- 
barrassed at the thought of meeting her. But 
he discovers on the road that there is another 
sister ; and that she is the very healing an- 
gel who had given him the great coat when 
wounded in the forest, and had haunted his 
fancy ever since. 

" He entered the house ; he found himself in the 
most earnest, and, as he almost felt, the holiest 
place, which he had ever trod. A pendent dazzling 
lustre threw its light upon a broad and softly rising 
stair, which lay before him, and which parted into 
two divisions at a turn above. Marble statues and 
busts were standing upon pedestals, and arranged in 
niches ; some of them seemed known to him. The 
impressions of our childhood abide with us, even 
in their minutest traces. He recognised a Muse 
which had formerly belonged to his grandfather." 

He finds poor Mignon in a wretched state 
of health — and ascertains that it is a secret 
passion for him that is preying on her deli- 
cate form. In the mean time, and just as his 
romantic love for Natalia (his fair hostess) 
has resumed its full sway, she delivers him 
Theresa's letter of acceptance — very kind and 
confiding, but warning him not to lay out any 
of his money, till she can assist and direct him 
about the investment. This letter perplex- 
es him a little, and he replies, with a bad 
grace, to the warm congratulations of Natalia 
— when, just at this moment Lothario's friend 
steps in most opportunely to inform them, 
that Theresa had been discovered not to be 
the daughter of her reputed mother ! — and 
that the bar to her union with Lothario was 
therefore at an end. Wilhelm affects great 
magnanimity in resigning her to his prior 
claims — but is puzzled by the warmth of her 
late acceptance — and still more, when a still 
more ardent letter arrives, in which she sticks 
to her last choice, and assures him that " her 
dream of living with Lothario has wandered 
far away from her soul;" and the matter 
•seems finally settled, when she comes post- 
haste in her own person, flies into his arms, 
a,nd exclaims, "My friend — my love — my 
husband ! Yes, for ever thine ! amidst the 
warmest kisses" — -and he responds, "O my 
Theresa!" — and kisses in return. In spite 
•of all this, however, Lothario and his friends 
come to urge his suit ; and, with the true Ger- 
man taste for impossibilities and protracted 
agonies, the whole party is represented as 
living together quite quietly and harmonious- 
ly for several weeks — none of the parties 
pressing for a final determination, and all of 
them occupied, in the interval, with a variety 
of tasks, duties, and dissertations. At last 



the elective affinities prevail. Theresa begins 
to cool to her new love ; and, on condition of 
Natalia undertaking to comfort Wilhelm, con- 
sents to go back to her engagements with Lo- 
thario — and the two couples, and some more, 
are happily united. 

This is the ultimate catastrophe — though 
they who seek it in the book will not get at it 
quite so easily — there being an infinite varie- 
ty of other events intermingled or premised. 
There is the death of poor Mignon — and her 
musical obsequies in the Hall of the Past — 
the arrival of an Italian Marchese, who turns 
out to be her uncle, and recognises his brother 
in the old crazy harper, of whom, though he 
has borne us company all along, we have not 
had time to take notice — the return of Phili- 
na along with a merry cadet of Lothario's 
house, as sprightly and indecorous as ever — 
the saving of Felix from poisoning, by his 
drinking out of the bottle instead of the glass 
— and the coming in of the Count, whom 
Wilhelm had driven into dotage and piety by 
wearing his clothes — and the fair Countess, 
who is now discovered to have suffered for 
years from her momentary lapse in the castle 
— the picture of her husband having, by a 
most apt retribution, been pressed so hard to 
her breast in that stolen embrace, as to give 
pain at the time, and to afflict her with fears 
of cancer for very long after ! Besides all 
this, there are the sayings of a very decided 
and infallible gentleman called Jarno — and 
his final and not very intelligible admission, 
that all which our hero had seen in the hall 
of the castle was "but the relics of a youthful 
undertaking, in which the greater part of the 
initiated were once in deep earnest, though 
all of them now viewed it with a smile." 

Many of the passages to which we have 
now alluded are executed with great talent ; 
and we are very sensible are better worth ex- 
tracting than many of those we have cited. 
But it is too late now to change our selections 
— and we can still less afford to add to them. 
On the whole, we close the book with some 
feelings of mollification towards its faults, 
and a disposition to abate, if possible, some 
part of the censure we were impelled to be- 
stow on it at the beginning. It improves cer- 
tainly as it advances — and though nowhere 
probable, or conversant indeed either with 
natural or conceivable characters, the invent- 
ive powers of the author seem to strengthen 
by exercise, and come gradually to be less 
frequently employed on childish or revolting 
subjects. While we hold out the work there- 
fore as a curious and striking instance of that 
diversity of national tastes, which makes a 
writer idolized in one part of polished Europe, 
who could not be tolerated in another, we 
would be understood as holding it out as an 
object rather of wonder than of contempt; 
and though the greater part certainly could 
not be endured, and indeed could not have 
been written in England, there are many pas- 
sages of which any country might reasonably 
be proud, and which demonstrate, that if taste 
be local and variable, genius is permanent and 
universal. 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 



12 



(©ttobtr, 1804.) 

The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson. Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles 
Grandison ; selected from the original Manuscripts bequeathed to his Family. To which are 
prefixed, a Biographical account of that Author, and Observations on his Writings. By Anna 
Ljetitia Barbauld. 6 vols. 8vo. Phillips, London: 1804. 



The public has great reason to be satisfied, 
we think, with Mrs. Barbauld's share in this 
publication. She has contributed a very well 
written Introduction ; and she has suppressed 
about twice as many letters as are now pre- 
sented to our consideration. Favourably as 
we are disposed to think of all for which 
she is directly responsible, the perusal of the 
whole six volumes has fully convinced us 
that we are even more indebted to her for- 
bearance than to her bounty. 

The fair biographer unquestionably posses- 
ses very considerable talents, and exercises 
her powers of writing with singular judgment 
and propriety. Many of her observations are 
acute and striking, and several of them very 
fine and delicate. Yet this is not, perhaps, 
the general character of her genius; and it 
must be acknowledged, that she has a tone 
and manner which is something formal and 
heavy ; that she occasionally delivers trite and 
obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity 
of important discoveries, and sometimes at- 
tempts to exalt and magnify her subject by 
a very clumsy kind of declamation. With 
all those defects, however, we think the life 
and observations have so much substantial 
merit, that most readers will agree with us 
in thinking that they are worth much more 
than all the rest of the publication. 

She sets off indeed with a sort of formal 
dissertation upon novels and romances in 
general; and, after obligingly recapitulating 
the whole history of this branch of literature, 
from the Theagenes and Chariclea of Helio- 
dorus to the Gil Bias and Nouvelle Heloise 
of modern times, she proceeds to distinguish 
these performances into three several classes, 
according to the mode and form of narration 
adopted by the author. The first, she is 
pleased to inform us, is the narrative or epic 
form, in which the whole story is put into the 
mouth of the author, who is supposed, like 
the Muse, to know every thing, and is not 
obliged to give any account of the sources of 
his information ; the second is that in which 
the hero relates his own adventures; and the 
third is that of epistolary correspondence, 
where all the agents in the drama successive- 
ly narrate the incidents in which they are 
principally concerned. It was with Richard- 
son, Mrs. Barbauld then informs us, that this 
last mode of novel writing originated ; and 
she enters into a critical examination of its ad- 
vantages and disadvantages, and of the com- 
parative probability of a person dispatching a 
narrative of every interesting incident or con- 
versation in his life to his friends by the post, 
16 



and of his sitting down, after his adventures 
are concluded, to give a particular account of 
them to the public. 

There is something rather childish, we 
think, in all this investigation ; and the prob- 
lem of comparative probability seems to be 
stated purely for the pleasure of the solution. 
No reader was ever disturbed, in the middle 
of an interesting story, by any scruple about 
the means or the inducements which the nar- 
rator may be presumed to have had for tell- 
ing it. While he is engaged with the story, 
such an inquiry never suggests itself; and 
when it is suggested, he recollects that the 
whole is a fiction, invented by the author for 
his amusement, and that the best way of 
communicating it must be that by which he 
is most interested and least fatigued. To us 
it appears very obvious, that the first of the 
three modes, or the author's own narrative, is 
by far the most eligible ; and for this plain 
reason, that it lays him under much less re- 
straint than either of the other two. He can 
introduce a letter or a story whenever he 
finds it convenient, and can make use of the 
dramatic or conversation style as often as 
the subject requires it. In epistolary writing 
there must be a great deal of repetition and 
egotism; and we must submit, as on the 
stage, to the intolerable burden of an insipid 
confidant, with whose admiration of the hero's 
epistles the reader may not always be dis- 
posed to sympathize. There is one species 
of novel indeed (but only one), to which the 
epistolary style is peculiarly adapted ; that is, 
the novel, in which the whole interest de- 
pends, not upon the adventures, but on the 
characters of the persons represented, and in 
which the story is of very subordinate im- 
portance, and only serves as an occasion to 
draw forth the sentiments and feelings of the 
agents. The Heloise of Rousseau may be 
considered as the model of this species of 
writing; and Mrs. Barbauld certainly over- 
looked this obvious distinction, when she as- 
serted that the author of that extraordinary 
work is to be reckoned among the imitators of 
Richardson. In the Heloise, there is scarcely 
any narrative at all ; and the interest may be 
said to consist altogether in the eloquent ex 
pression of fine sentiments and exalted pas- 
sion. All Richardson's novels, on the other 
hand, are substantially narrative ; and the 
letters of most of his characters contain little 
more than a minute journal of the conversa- 
tions and transactions in which they were 
successively engaged. The style of Richard- 
son might be perfectly copied, though the 



i22 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



epistolary form were to be dropped ; but no 
imitation of the Heloise could be recognised, 
if it were not in the shape of letters. 

After finishing her discourse upon Novels, 
Mrs. Barbauld proceeds to lay before her 
readers some account of the life and perform- 
ances of Richardson. The biography is very 
scanty, and contains nothing that can be 
thought very interesting. He was the son of 
a joiner in Derbyshire; but always avoided 
mentioning the town in which he was born. 
He was intended at first for the church; but 
his father, finding that the expense of his 
education would be too heavy, at last bound 
him apprentice to a printer. He never was 
acquainted with any language but his own. 
From his childhood, he was remarkable for 
invention, and was famous among his school- 
fellows for amusing them with tales and 
stories which he composed extempore, and 
usually rendered, even at that early age, the 
vehicle of some useful moral. He was con- 
stitutionally shy and bashful ; and instead of 
mixing with his companions in noisy sports 
and exercises, he used to read and converse 
with the sedate part of the other sex, or assist 
them in the composition of their love-letters. 
The following passage, extracted by Mrs. 
Barbauld from one of the suppressed letters, 
is more curious and interesting, we think, 
than any thing in those that are published. 

"As a bashful and not forward boy, I was an 
early favourite with all the young women of taste 
and reading in the neighbourhood. Half a dozen 
of them, when met to work with their needles, 
used, when they got a book they liked, and thought 
I should, to borrow me to read to them ; their 
mothers sometimes with them ; and both mothers 
and daughters used to be pleased with the observa- 
tions they put me upon making. 

"I was not more than thirteen, when three of 
these young women, unknown to each other, having 
an high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me 
their love-secrets in order to induce me to give them 
copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their 
lovers' letters ; nor did any of them ever know that 
I was the secretary to the others. I have been di- 
rected to chide, and even to repulse, when an 
offence was either taken or given, at the very time 
that the heart of the chider or repulser was open 
before me, overflowing with esteem and affection; 
and the lair repulser, dreading to be taken at her 
word, directing this word, or that expression, to be 
softened or changed. One highly gratified with 
her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting love, 
has,said, when I hive asked her direction — I can- 
not tell you what to write; but (her heart on her 
lips) you cannot write too kindly. All her fear 
was only that she should incur slight for her kind- 
ness." — Vol. i. Introduction, p. xxxix. xl. 

We add Mrs. Barbauld's observation oh 
this passage, for the truth of the sentiment it 
contains, though more inelegantly written 
than any other sentence in her performance. 

" Human nature is human nature in every class ; 
the hopes and the fears, the perplexities and the 
Btruggles, of these low-bred girls in probably an 
obscure village, supplied the future author with 
those ideas which, by their gradual development, 
produced the characters of a Clarissa and a Cle- 
mentina ; nor was he probably happier, or amused 
in a more lively manner, when sitting in his grotto, 
with a circle of the best informed women in Eng- 
land about him, who in after times courted his 



society, than in reading lo these girls in, it may be, 
a little back shop, or a mantua-maker's parlour 
with a brick floor." — p. xl. xli. 

During his apprenticeship, he distinguished 
himself only by exemplary diligence and 
fidelity ; though he informs us, that he even 
then enjoyed the correspondence of a gentle 
man, of great accomplishments, from whose 
patronage, if he had lived, he entertained the 
highest expectations. The rest of his worldly 
history seems to have been pretty nearly that 
of Hogarth's virtuous apprentice. He married 
his master's daughter, and succeeded to his 
business ; extended his wealth and credit by 
sobriety, punctuality, and integrity ; bought a 
residence in the country ; and, though he did 
not attain to the supreme dignity of Lord 
Mayor of London, arrived in due time at the 
respectable situation of Master of the Wor- 
shipful Company of Stationers. In this course 
of obscure prosperity, he appears to have 
continued till he had passed his fiftieth year, 
without giving any intimation of his future 
celebrity, and even without appearing to be 
conscious that he was differently gifted from 
the other flourishing traders of the metropolis. 
He says of himself, we observe, in one of 
these letters — "My business, till within these 
few years, filled all my time. I had no 
leisure : nor, being unable to write by a regu- 
lar plan, knew I that I had so much invention, 
till I almost accidentally slid into the writing 
of Pamela. And besides, little did I imagine 
that any thing I could write would be so 
kindly received by the world." Of the origin 
and progress of this first work he has himself 
left the following authentic account. 

"Two booksellers, my particular friends, en- 
treated me to write for them a little volume of 
letters, in a common style, on such subjects as 
might be of use to those country readers who were 
unable to indite for themselves. Will it be any 
harm, said I, in a piece you want to be written so 
low, if we should instruct them how they should 
think and act in common cases, as weil as indite? 
They were the more urgent with me to begin the 
little volume for this hint. I set about it ; and, in 
the progress of it, writing two or three letters to 
instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go 
out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the 
snares that might be laid against their virtue ; the 
above story recurred to my thought: and hence 
sprung Pamela." — Introd. p. liii. 

This publication, we are told, which made 
its first appearance in 1740, was received with 
a burst of applause. Dr. Sherlock recom- 
mended it from the pulpit. Mr. Pope said it 
would do more good than volumes of seimons; 
and another literary oracle declared, that if 
all other books were to be burnt, Pamela and 
the Bible should be preserved ! Its success 
was not less brilliant in the world of fashion. 
" Even at Ranelagh," Mrs. Barbauld assures 
us, "it was usual for the ladies to hold up the 
volumes to one another, to show they had got 
the book that every one was talking of." And, 
what will appear still more extraordinary, one 
gentleman declares, that he will give it to his 
son as soon as he can read, that he may have 
an early impression of virtue. — After faithfully 
reciting these and other testimonies of the 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 



123 



nigh estimation in which this work was once 
held by all ranks of people, Mrs. Barbauld 
fiubjoins some very acute and judicious ob- 
servations both on its literary merits and its 
moral tendency. We cannot find room for the 
whole of this critique ; but there is so much 
good sense and propriety in the following pas- 
sage, that we cannot refrain from inserting it. 
" So long as Pamela is solely occupied in schemes 
to escape from her persecutor, her virtuous resist- 
ance obiains our unqualified approbation ; but from 
the moment she begins to entertain hopes of mar- 
rying him, we admire her guarded prudence, rather 
than her purity of mind. She has an end in view, 
an interested end ; and we can only consider her as 
the conscious possessor of a treasure, which she is 
wisely resolved not to part with but for its just price. 
Her staying in his house a moment after she found 
herself at liberty to leave it, was totally unjustifiable: 
her repentant lover ought to have followed her to 
her father's cottage, and to have married her from 
thence. The familiar footing upon which she con- 
descends to live with the odious Jewkes, shows 
also, that her fear of offending the man she hoped 
to make her husband, had got the better of her 
delicacy and just resentment ; and the same fear 
leads her to give up her correspondence with honest 
Mr. Williams, who had generously sacrificed his 
interest with his patron in order to effect her deliv- 
erance. In real life, we should, at this period, con- 
sider Pamela as an interesting girl : but the author 
says, she married Mr. B. because be had won her 
affection : and we are bound, it may be said, to be- 
lieve an author's own account of his Characters. 
But again, it is quite natural that a girl, who had 
such a genuine love for virtue, should feel her heart 
attracted to a man who was endeavouring to destroy 
that virtue? Can a woman value her honour infi- 
nitely above her life, and hold in serious detestation 
every word and look contrary to the nicest purity, 
and yet be won by those very attempts against her 
honour to which she expresses so much repugnance? 
— His attempts were of the grossest nature; and 
previous to. and during those attempts, he endeav- 
oured to intimidate her by sternness. He puts on 
the master too much, to win upon her as the lover. 
Can affection be kindled by outrage and insult? 
Surely, if her passions were capable of being awa- 
kened in hi3 favour, during such a persecution, the 
circumstance would be capable of an interpretation 
very little consistent with that delicacy the author 
meant to give her. The other alternative is, that 
she married him for 

'The gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares.' 
Indeed, the excessive humility and gratitude ex- 
pressed by herself and her parents on her exaltation, 
shews a regard to rank and riches beyond the just 
measure of an independent mind. The pious good- 
man Andrews should not have thought his virtuous 
daughter so infinitely beneath her licentious mas- 
ter, who, after all, married her to gratify his own 
passions. — Introd. pp. lxiii. — lxvi. 

The first part of this work, which concludes 
with the marriage of the heroine, was written 
in three months ; and was founded, it seems, 
on a real story which had been related to 
Richardson by a gentleman of his acquaint- 
ance. It was followed by a second part, con- 
fessedly very inferior to the first, and was 
ridiculed by Fielding in his Joseph Andrews; 
an offence for which he was never forgiven. 

Within eight years after the appearance of 
Pamela, Richardson's reputation may be said 
to have attained its zenith, by the successive 
publication of the volumes of his Clarissa. 
We have great pleasure in laying before our 
readers a part of Mrs. Barbaul ! J s very judi- 



cious observations upon this popular and 
original performance. After a slight sketch 
of the story, she observes, 

" The plot, as we have seen, is simple, and no 
underplots interfere with the main design — no di- 
gressions, no episodes. It is wonderful that, without 
these helps of common writers, he could support a 
work of such length. With Clarissa it begins, — 
with Clarissa it ends. We do not come upon un- 
expected adventures and wonderful recognitions, by 
quick turns and surprises : We see her fate from 
afar, as it were through a long avenue, the gradual 
approach to which, without ever losing sight of the 
object, has more of simplicity and grandeur than the 
most cunning labyrinth that can be contrived by 
art. In the approach to the modern country seat, 
we are made to catch transiently a side-view of it 
through an opening of the trees, or to burst upon it 
from a sudden turning in the road ; but the old 
mansion stood full in the eye of the traveller, as he 
drew near it, contemplating its turrets, which grew 
larger and more distinct every step that he ad- 
vanced; and leisurely filling his eye and his imagin- 
ation with still increasing ideas of its magnificence. 
As the work advances, the character rises; the 
distress is deepened ; our hearts are torn with pity 
and indignation ; bursts of grief succeed one another, 
till at length the mind is composed and harmonized 
with emotions of milder sorrow ; we are calmed 
into resignation, elevated with pious hope, and dis- 
missed glowing with the conscious triumphs of vir- 
tue. — Introd. pp. lxxxiii. lxxxiv. 

She then makes some excellent remarks on 
the conduct of the story, and on the characters 
that enliven it ; on that of the heroine, she 
observes, 

"In one instance, however, Clarissa certainly 
sins against the delicacy of her character, that is, 
in allowing herself to be made a show of to the 
loose companions of Lovelace. But, how does her 
character rise, when we come to the more distress- 
ful scenes; the view of her horror, when, deluded 
by the pretended relations, she re-enters the fatal 
house; her temporary insanity after the outrage, in 
which she so affectingly holds up to Lovelace the li- 
cence he had procured, and her dignified behaviour 
when she first sees her ravisher, after the perpetra- 
tion of his crime ! What finer subject could be pre- 
sented to the painter, than the prison scene, where 
she is represented kneeling amidst the gloom and 
horror of that dismal abode ; illuminating, as it 
were, the dark chamber, her face reclined on her 
crossed arms, her white garments floating round 
her in the negligence of woe ; Belford contemplating 
her with respectful commiseration : Or, the scene 
of calmer but heart-piercing sorrow, in the interview 
Colonel Morden has with her in her dying mo- 
ments ! She is represented fallen into a slumber, in 
her elbow-chair, leaning on the widow Lovick, 
whose left arm is around her neck : one faded 
cheek resting on the good woman's bosom, the 
kindly warmth of which had overspread it with a 
faintish flush, the other pale and hollow, as if al- 
ready iced over by death ; her hands, the bluencss 
of the veins contrasting their whiteness, hanging 
lifeless before her — the widow's tears dropping un- 
felt upon her face — Colonel Morden, with his arms 
folded, gazing on her in silence, her coffin just ap- 
pearing behind a screen. What admiration, what 
reverence, does the author inspire us with for the 
innocent sufferer, the sufferings too of such a pecu- 
liar nature ! 

"There is something in virgin purity, to which 
the imagination willingly pays homage. In all ages, 
something saintly has been attached to the idea of 
unblemished chastity; but it was reserved foi 
Richardson to overcome all circumstances of dis- 
honour and disgrace, and to throw a splendour 
around the violated virgin, more radiant than she 
possessed in her first bloom. He has drawn tho 



124 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



triumph of mental chastity ; he has drawn it un- 
contaminaied. untarnished, and incapable of min- 
gling with pollution. — The scenes which follow the 
deaih of the heroine, exhibit grief in an affecting 
variety of forms, as it is modified by the characters 
of different survivors. They run into considerable 
length, but we have been so deeply interested, that 
we feel it a relief to have our grief drawn off, as it 
were, by a variety of sluices, and we are glad not 
to be dismissed till we have shed tears, even to 
satiety." — Introd. pp. xciii. — xcvii. 

This criticism we think is equally judicious 
and refined; and we could easily prolong this 
extract, in a style not at all inferior. With 
regard to the morality of the work, Mrs. Bar- 
bauld is very indignant at the notion of its 
being intended to exhibit a rare instance of 
female chastity. 

She objects with some reason, to the num- 
ber of interviews which Clarissa is represented 
to have had with Lovelace after the catas- 
trophe ; and adds, " If the reader, on casually 
opening the book, can doubt of any scene be- 
tween them, whether it passes before or after 
the outrage, that scene is one too much." — 
The character of Lovelace, she thinks, is very 
much of a fancy piece ; and affirms, that our 
national manners do not admit of the existence 
of an original. If he had been placed in 
France, she observes, and his gallantries di- 
rected to married women, it might have been 
more natural; "but, in England, Lovelace 
would have been run through the body, long 
before he had seen the face either of Clarissa 
or Colonel Morden." 

Mrs. Barbauld gives us a copious account 
of the praise and admiration that poured in 
upon the author from all quarters, on the pub- 
lication of this extraordinary work: he was 
overwhelmed with complimentary letters, 
messages, and visits. But we are most grati- 
fied with the enthusiasm of one of his female 
correspondents, who tells him that she is very 
sorry, "'that he was not a woman, and blest 
with the means of shining as Clarissa did ; for 
a person capable of drawing such a character, 
would certainly be able to act in the same 
manner, if in a like situation /" 

After Clarissa, at an interval of about five 
years, appeared his Sir Charles Grandison. 
Upon this work, also, Mrs. Barbauld has made 
many excellent observations, and pointed out 
both its blemishes and beauties, with a very 
delicate and discerning hand. Our limits will 
not permit us to enter upon this disquisition: 
we add only the following acute paragraph. 

" Sir Charles, as a Christian, was not to fight a 
duel ; yet he was to be recognised as the finished 
gentleman, and could not be allowed to want the 
most essential part of the character, the deportment 
of a man of honour, courage, and spirit. And, in 
order to exhibit his spirit and courage, it was neces- 
sary to bring them into action by adventures and 
rencounters. His first appearance is in the rescue 
of Miss Byron, a meritorious action, but one which 
must necessarily expose him to a challenge. How 
must the author untie this knot? He makes him 
so very good a swordsman, that he is always capa- 
ble of disarming his adversary without endangering 
either of their lives. But are a man's principles 
to depend on the science of his fencing-master? 
Every one oannot have the skill of Sir Charles ; 
•very one cannot be the best swordsman ; and the 



man whose study it is to avoid fighting is not quite 
so likely as another to be the best." 

Introd. pp. cxxvii. cxxviii. 

Besides his great works, Richardson pub- 
lished only a paper in the Rambler (the 97th); 
an edition of iEsop's Fables, with Reflections; 
and a volume of Familiar Letters for the use 
of persons in inferior situations. It was this 
latter work which gave occasion to Pamela : 
it is excellently adapted to its object, and we 
think may be of singular use to Mr. Words- 
worth and his friends in their great scheme 
of turning all our poetry into the language of 
the common people. In this view, we re- 
commend it very earnestly to their considera- 
tion. 

There is little more to be said of the trans- 
actions or events of Richardson's life. His 
books were pirated by the Dublin booksellers: 
at which he was very angry, and could obtain 
no redress. He corresponded with a great 
number of females ; and gradually withdrew 
himself from the fatigues of business to his 
country residence at Parson's Green ; where 
his life was at last terminated in 1761, by a 
stroke of apoplexy, at the age of seventy-two. 

His moral character was in the highest de- 
gree exemplary and amiable. He was tem- 
perate, industrious, and upright ; punctual and 
honourable in all his dealings; and with a 
kindness of heart, and a liberality and gene- 
rosity of disposition, that must have made him 
a very general favourite, even if he had never 
acquired any literary distinction. — He had a 
considerable share of vanity, and was observ- 
ed to talk more willingly on the subject of his 
own works than on any other. The lowness 
of his original situation, and the lateness of 
his introduction into polite society, had given 
to his manners a great shyness and reserve ; 
and a consciousness of his awkwardness and 
his merit together, rendered him somewhat 
jealous in his intercourse with persons in more 
conspicuous situations, and made him require 
more courting and attention, than every one 
was disposed to pay. He had high notions of 
parental authority, and does not seem always 
quite satisfied with the share of veneration 
which his wife could be prevailed on to*show 
for him. He was particularly partial to the 
society of females ; and lived, indeed, as Mrs. 
Barbauld has expressed it, in a flower-garden 
of ladies. Mrs. Barbauld will have it, that 
this was in the way of his profession as an 
author ; and that he frequented their society 
to study the female heart, and instruct him- 
self in all the niceties of the female charac- 
ter. From the tenor of the correspondence 
now before us, however, we are more inclin- 
ed to believe, with Dr. Johnson, that this par- 
tiality was owing to his love of continual 
superiority, and that he preferred the conver- 
sation of ladies, because they were more 
lavish of their admiration, and more easily en- 
gaged to descant on the perplexities of Sir 
Charles, or the distresses of Clarissa. His 
close application to business, and the seden- 
tary habits of a literary life, had materially 
injured his health : He loved to complain, as 
most invalids do who have any hope of teing 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 



125 



Ji&tened to. and scarcely writes a letter with- 
out some notice of his nervous tremors, his 
giddiness and catchings. " I had originally 
a good constitution," he says, in one place, 
"and hurt it by no intemperance, but that of 
application." 

In presenting our readers with this imper- 
fect summary of Mrs. Barbauld's biographical 
dissertation, we have discharged by far the 
most pleasing part of our task; and proceed 
to the consideration of the correspondence 
which it introduces, with considerable heavi- 
ness of spirit, and the most unfeigned reluct- 
ance. The letters are certainly authentic; 
and they were bought, we have no doubt, for 
a fair price from the legal proprietors : but 
their publication, we think, was both im- 
proper and injudicious, as it can only tend to 
lower a very respectable character, without 
communicating any gratification or instruction 
to others. We are told, indeed, in the pre- 
face, " that it was the employment of Mr. 
Richardson's declining years, to select and 
arrange the collection from which this publi- 
cation has been made ; and that he always 
looked forward to their publication at some 
distant period ;" nay, " that he was not with- 
out thoughts of publishing them in his life- 
time ; and that, after his death, they remain- 
ed in the hands of his last surviving daughter, 
upon whose decease they became the property 
of his grandchildren, and were purchased 
from them at a very liberal price by Mr. Phil- 
lips." We have no doubt that what Mrs. 
Barbauld has here stated to the public, was 
stated to her by her employers : But we can- 
not read any one volume of the letters, with- 
out being satisfied that the idea of such a 
publication could only come into the mind of 
Richardson, after his judgment was impaired 
by the infirmities of " declining years ;" and 
we have observed some passages in those 
which are now published, that seem tc prove 
sufficiently his own consciousness of the im- 
propriety of such an exposure, and the ab- 
sence of any idea of giving them to the world. 
In the year 1755, when nine-tenths of the 
whole collection must have been completed, 
we find him expressing himself in these words 
to his friend Mr. Edwards : 

"I am employing myself at present in looking 
over and sorting and classing my correspondences 
and other papers. This, when done, will amuse 
me, by reading over again a very ample corres- 
pondence, and in comparing the sentiments of my 
correspondents, at the time, with the present, and 
improving from both. The many letters and papers 
I shall destroy will make an executor's work the 
easier; and if any of my friends desire their letters 
to be returned, they will be readily come at for that 
purpose. Otherwise they will amuse and direct 
my children, and teach them to honour their father's 
friends in their closets for the favours done him." 
Vol. iii. pp. 113, 114. 

Accordingly, they remained in the closet 
till the death of the last of his children ; and 
then the whole collection is purchased by a 
bookseller, and put into the hands of an 
editor, who finds it expedient to suppress two- 
thirds of it ! 

Those who have looked into the volumes 



in question, will be at no loss to comprehend 
the reasons of the unqualified reprehension 
we are inclined to bestow on their publica- 
tion. For the information of those who have 
not had an opportunity of seeing them, we 
may observe that, so far from containing any 
view of the literature, the politics, or manners 
of the times — any anecdotes of the eminent 
and extraordinary personages to whom the 
author had access — or any pieces of elegant 
composition, refined criticism, or interesting 
narrative, they consist almost entirely of com- 
pliments and minute criticisms on his novels, 
a detail of his ailments and domestic con- 
cerns, and some tedious prattling disputations 
with his female correspondents, upon the 
duties of wives and children ; the whole so 
loaded with gross and reciprocal flattery, as 
to be ridiculous at the outset, and disgusting 
in the repetition. Compliments and the novels 
form indeed the staples of the whole corres- 
pondence : we meet with the divine Clarissa, 
and the more divine Sir Charles, in every 
page, and are absolutely stunned with the 
clamorous raptures and supplications with 
which the female train demand the conver- 
sion of Lovelace, and the death or restoration 
of Clementina. ' Even when the charming 
books are not the direct subject of the corres- 
pondence, they appear in eternal allusions, 
and settle most of the arguments by an au- 
thoritative quotation. In short, the Clarissa 
and Grandison are the scriptures of this con- 
gregation ; and the members of it stick as 
close to their language upon all occasions, as 
any of our sectaries ever did to that of the 
Bible. The praises and compliments, again, 
which are interchanged among all the parties, 
are so extremely hyperbolical as to be ludi- 
crous, and so incessant as to be excessively 
fatiguing. We shall trouble our readers with 
but a very few specimens. 

The first series of letters is from Aaron Hill, 
a poet of some notoriety, it seems, in his day; 
but, if we may judge from these epistles, a 
very bad composer in prose. The only amus- 
ing things we have met with in this volume 
of his inditing, are his prediction of his own 
great fame, and the speedy downfal of Pope's; 
and his scheme for making English wine of a 
superior, quality to any that can be imported. 
Of Pope he says, that he died " in the wane 
of his popularity ; and that it arose originally 
only from meditated little personal assiduities, 
and a certain bladdery swell of management." 
And a little after — 

"But rest his memory in peace! It will very 
rarely be disturbed by that time he himself is ashes. 
It is pleasant to observe the justice of forced fame ; 
she lets down those, at once, who got themselves 
pushed upward ; and lifts none above the fear of 
falling, but a few who never teased her. 

"What she intends to do with me, the Lord 
knows !" — Vol. i. p. 107. 

In another place he adds, " For my part, I 
am afraid to be popular ; I see so many who 
write to the living, and deserve not to live, 
that I content myself with a resurrection 
when dead :" And after lamenting the un- 
popularity of some of his writings, he says 
L 2 



126 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



" But there will arise a time in which they 
will be seen in a- far different light. I know 
it on a surer hope than that of vanity. 5 ' The 
wine project, which is detailed in many pages, 
requires no notice. As a specimen of the 
adulation with which Richardson was in- 
censed by all hi6 correspondents, we may 
add the following sentences. 

" Where will your wonders end? or how could 
I be able to express the joy it gives me to discern 
your genius rising with the grace and boldness of a 
pillar ! &c. Go on, dear sir (I see you will and 
must), to charm and captivate the world, and force 
a scribbling race to learn and practise one rare 
virtue — to be pleased with what disgraces them." 
— " There is a manner (so beyond the matter, ex- 
traordinary too as that is) in whatever you say or 
do, that makes it an impossibility to speak those 
sentiments which it is equally impossible not to 
conceive in reverence and affection for your good- 
ness." 

In allusion to the promise of Sir Charles, 
he says — 

" I am greatly pleased at the hint you gave of a 
design to raise another Alps upon this Appenine : 
we can never see too many of his works who has 
no equal in his labours." 

These passages, we believe, will satisfy 
most readers ; but those who have any desire 
to see more, may turn up any page in the 
volume : It may be of some use, perhaps, as 
a great commonplace for the materials of 
" soft dedication." 

The next series of letters is from Miss 
Fielding, who wrote David Simple, and Miss 
Collier, who assisted in writing The Cry. 
What modern reader knows any thing about 
the Cry, or David Simple % And if the elabo- 
rate performances of these ladies have not 
been thought worthy of public remembrance, 
what likelihood is there that their private and 
confidential letters should be entitled to any 
notice % They contain nothing, indeed, that 
can be interesting to any description of read- 
ers ; and only prove that Richardson was in- 
dulgent and charitable to them, and that their 
gratitude was a little too apt to degenerate 
into flattery. 

The letters of Mrs. Pilkington and of Colley 
Cibber appear to us to be still less worthy of 
publication. The former seems to have been 
a profligate, silly actress, reduced to beggary 
in her old age. and distressed by the miscon- 
duct of her ill-educated children. The com- 
passionate heart of Richardson led him to 
pity and relieve her ; and she repays him 
with paltry adulation, interlarded, in the bom- 
bastic style of the green room, with dramatic 
misquotations misapplied. Of the letters of 
Cibber, Mrs. B. says that " they show in 
every line the man of wit and the man of the 
world." We are sorry to dissent from so re- 
spectable an opinion ; but the letters appear 
to us in every respect contemptible and dis- 
gusting ; without one spark of wit or genius 
of any sort, and bearing all the traces of 
vanity, impudence, affectation, and superan- 
nuated debauchery, which might have been 
expected from the author. His first epistle 
is to Mrs. Pilkington (for the editor has more 
than once favoured us with letters that have 



no sort of relation to Richardson or his writ- 
ings), and sets off in this manner : 

" Thou frolicsome farce of fortune ! What ! Ta 
there another act of you to come then? I was 
afraid, some time ago, you had made your last exit. 
Well! but without wit or compliment, I am glad 
to hear you are so tolerably alive," &c. 

We can scarcely conceive that this pitiful 
slang could appear to Mis. Barbauld like the 
pleasantry of a man of fashion. His letters 
to Richardson are, if any thing, rather more 
despicable. After reading some of the proof 
sheets of Sir Charles, he writes, 

" Z ds ! I have not patience, till I know what 

has become of her. Why, you— I do not know 
what to call you ! — Ah ! ah ! you may laugh if you 
please : but how will you be able to look me in the 
face, if the lady should ever be able to show hers 

again ? What piteous, d d, disgraceful pickle 

have you plunged her in ? For God's sake send 
me the sequel ; or — I dont know what to say ! — " 

The following is an entire letter : 

M The delicious meal I made of Miss Byron on 
Sunday last has given me an appetite for another 
slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served 
up to the public table. If about five o'clock to- 
morrow afternoon will not be inconvenient, Mrs. 
Brown and I will come and piddle upon a bit more 
of her : but pray let your whole family, with Mrs. 
Richardson at the head of them, come in for their 
share. This, sir, will make me more and more 
yours," &c. 

After these polite effusions, we have a cor- 
respondence with Mr. Edwards, the author 
of the Canons of Criticism, a good deal of 
which is occupied as usual with flattery and 
mutual compliments, and the rest with con- 
sultations about their different publications. 
Richardson exclaims, " that you could re- 
solve to publish your pieces in two pretty 
volumes !" And Mr. Edwards sends him 
long epistles in exaltation of Sir Charles and 
Clarissa. It is in this correspondence that 
we meet with the first symptom of that most 
absurd and illiberal prejudice which Richard- 
son indulged against all the writings of Field- 
ing. He writes to Mr. Edwards — 

11 Mr. Fielding has met with the disapprobation 
you foresaw he would meet with, of his Amelia. 
He is, in every paper he publishes under the title 
of the Common Garden, contributing to his own 
overthrow. He has been overmatched in his own 
way by people whom he had despised, and whom 
he thought he had vogue enough, from the success 
his spurious brat Tom Jones so unaccountably met 
with, to write down, but who have turned his own 
artillery against him, and beat him out of the field, 
and made him even poorly in his Court of Criticism 
give up his Amelia, and promise to write no more 
on the like subjects." — Vol. hi. pp. 33 — 34. 

This, however, is but a small specimen of 
his antipathy. He says to his French trans- 
lator, " Tom Jones is a dissolute book. Its run 
is over, even with us. Is it true that France 
had virtue enough to refuse to license such a 
profligate performance V* But the worst of 
all is the following — 

n I have not been able to read any more than thi» 
first volume of Amelia. Poor Fielding ! I could 
not help tellivg his sister, that I was equally sur- 
prised at, and concerned for, his continued lowness 
Had your brother, said I, been born in a stable, or 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 



been a runner at a sponging house, we should have 
thought him a genius, and wished he had had the 
advantage of a liberal education, and of being ad- 
mitted into good company ; but it is beyond my 
conception, that a man of family, and who had 
some learning, and who really is a writer, should 
descend so excessively low in all his pieces. Who 
can care lor any of his people 1 A person of 
honour asked me, the o^her day, what he could 
mean, by saying, in his Covent Garden Journal, 
that he had followed Homer and Virgil in his 
Amelia ? I answered, that he was justified in say- 
ing so, because he must mean Cotton's Virgil Tra- 
vestied, where the women are drabs, and the men 
scoundrels." — Vol. vi. pp. 154, 155. 

It is lamentable that such things should 
have been written confidentially; it was sure- 
ly unnecessary to make them public. 

After the dismissal of Mr. Edwards, we 
meet with two or three very beautiful and 
interesting letters from Mrs. Klopstock, the 
first wife of the celebrated German poet. 
They have pleased us infinitely beyond any 
thing else in the collection ; but how far the)' 
are indebted for the charm we have found in 
them to the lisping innocence of the broken 
English in which they are written, or to their 
intrinsic merit, we cannot pretend to deter- 
mine. We insert the following account of 
her courtship and marriage. 

" After having seen him two hours, I was obliged 
to pass the evening in a company, which never had 
been so wearisome to me. I could not speak, I 
could not play ; I thought I saw nothing but Klop- 
stock. I saw him the next day, and the following, 
and we were very seriously friends. But. the fourth 
day he departed. It was an strong hour the hour 
©f his departure ! He wrote soon after, and from 
that time our correspondence began to be a very 
diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be 
friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing 
but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They 
raillied at me, and said I was in love. I raillied 
them again, and said that they must have a very 
friendshipless heart, if they had no idea of friend- 
ship to a man as well as to a woman. Thus it 
continued eight months, in which time my friends 
found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me. 
I perceived it likewise, but I would not believe it. 
At the last Klopstock said plainly that he loved ; 
and 1 startled as for a wrong thing. I answered, 
that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I 
felt for him ; we had not seen one another enough 
to love (as if love must have more time than friend- 
ship !) This was sincerely my meaning, and I had 
this meaning till Klopstock came again to Ham- 
burg. This he did a year after we had seen one 
another the first time. We saw, we were friends, 
we loved ; and we believed that we loved : and, a 
short time after, I could even tell Klopstock that I 
loved. But we were obliged to part again, and 
wait two years for our wedding. My mother 
would not let me marry a stranger. I could marry 
then without her consentment, as by the death of 
my father my fortune depended not on her; but 
this was an horrible idea for me ; and thank Hea- 
ven that I have prevailed by prayers ! At this 
time knowing Klopstock, she loves him as her 
lifely son, and thanks God that she has not per- 
sisted. We married, and I am the happiest wife 
in the world. In some few months it will be four 
vears that I am so happy, and still I dote upon 
Klopstock as if he was my bridegroom. 

"If you knew my husband, you would not 
wonder. If you knew his poem, I could describe 
him very briefly, in saying he is in all respects what 
he is as a poet. This I can say with all wifely mo- 
desty But I dare not to speak of my hus- 
band; I am all raptures when I do it. And as 



happy as I am in love, so happy am I in friendship, 
in my mother, two elder sisters, and five other 
women. How rich I am !" — Vol. hi. pp. 146 — 149. 

One of the best letters is dated from Tun- 
bridge in 1751. We shall venture on an extract. 

" But here, to change the scene, to see Mr. Walsh 
at eighty (Mr. Gibber calls him papa), and Mr. 
Cibber at seventy-seven, hunting after new faces j 
and thinking themselves happy if they can obtain 
the notice and familiarity of a fine woman ! — How 
ridiculous! — 

" Mr. Cibber was over head and ears in love with 
Miss Chudleigh. Her admirers (such was his hap- 
piness !) were not jealous of him ; but, pleased with 
that wit in him which they had not, were always 
for calling him to her. She said pretty things — for 
she was Miss Chudleigh. He said pretty things — 
for he was Mr. Cibber; and all the company, men 
and women, seemed to think they had an interest 
in what was said, and were half as well pleased as 
if they had said the sprightly things themselves; 
and mighty well contented were they to be second- 
hand repeaters of the pretty things. But once I 
faced the laureate squatted upon one of the benches, 
with a face more wrinkled than ordinary with dis- 
appointment, ' I thought,' said I, ' you were of the 
party at the tea treats — Miss Chudleigh is gone into 
the tea-room.' — ' Pshaw !' said he, ' there is no 
coming at her, she is so surrounded by the toupets.' 
—And I left him upon the fret — But he was called 
to soon after ; and in he flew, and his face shone 
again, and looked smooth. 

"Another extraordinary old man we have had 
here, but of a very different turn; the noted Mr. 
Whiston, showing eclipses, and explaining other 
phenomena of the stars, and preaching the millen- 
nium and anabaptism (for he is now, it seems, of 
that persuasion) to gay people, who, if they have 
white teeth, hear him with open mouths, though 
perhaps shut hearts ; and after his lecture is over, 
not a bit the wiser, run from him the more eagerly 
to C — r and W — sh, and to flutter among the loud- 
laughing young fellows upon the walks, like boys 
and girls at a breaking up." — Vol. iii. p. 316 — 319. 

As Richardson was in the habit of flattering 
his female correspondents, by asking their 
advice (though he never followed it) as to the 
conduct of his works, he prevailed on a cer - 
tain Lady Echlin to communicate a new 
catastrophe which she had devised for his 
Clarissa. She had reformed Lovelace, by 
means of a Dr. Christian, and made him die 
of remorse, though the last outrage is not 
supposed to be committed. How far Lady 
Echlin' s epistles are likely to meet with 
readers, in this fastidious age, may be Con- 
jectured, from the following specimen. 

" I heartily wish every Christain would read and 
wisely consider Mr. Skelton's fine and pious les- 
sons. I admire the warmth of this learned gentle- 
man's zeal ; it is laudable and necessary, ' especially 
in an age like this, which, for its coldness (he ob- 
serves) may be called the winter of Christianity.' 
A melancholy truth, elegantly expressed! I have 
only perused a small part of this divine piece, and 
am greatly delighted with what I have read. 
Surely he is a heavenly man. I am also very fond 
of Dr. Clark: and excellent good Seed! I thank 
you, sir, for introducing another wise charmer, not 
less worthy of every body's regard. He merits atten- 
tion, and religiously commands it." — Vol. v. p. 40. 

Next come several letters from the Rever- 
end Mr. Skelton, mostly on the subject of tne 
Dublin piracy, and the publication of some 
works of his own. He seems to have been a 
man of strong, coarse sense, but extremely 
irritable. Some delay in the publication of 



128 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



his sermons draws from him the following 
amusing piece of fretfulness. 

"Johnston kept them a month on the way; 
Wilson kept them three, and does nothing, only 
hints a sort of contemptuous censure of them to you, 
and huffs them out of his hands. The booksellers 
despise them, and I am forced to print them, when 
the season for sale is over, or burn them. God's 
will be done ! If I had wrote against my Saviour, 
or his religion, my work would long ago have been 
bought, and reprinted, and bought again. Millar 
would have now been far advanced in his third 
edition of it ! But why do I make these weak com- 
plaints? I know my work is calculated to serve 
the cause of God and truth, and by no means con- 
temptibly executed. I am confident also, I shall, 
if God spares me life to give it the necessary intro- 
duction, sell it to advantage, and receive the thanks 
of every good man for it. I will therefore be in the 
hands of God, and not of Mr. Millar, whose indif- 
ference to my performances invite me not to any 
overtures."— Vol. v. p. 234, 235. 

Although Richardson is not responsible for 
more than one fifth part of the dulness ex- 
hibited in this collection, still the share of it 
that may be justly imputed to him is so con- 
siderable, and the whole is so closely asso- 
ciated with his name, that it would be a sort 
of injustice to take our final leave of his works, 
without casting one glance back to those orig- 
inal and meritorious performances, upon 
which his reputation is so firmly established. 

The great excellence of Richardson's novels 
consists, we think, in the unparalleled minute- 
ness and copiousness of his descriptions, and 
in the pains he takes to make us thoroughly 
and intimately acquainted with every particu- 
lar in the character and situation of the per- 
sonages with whom we are occupied. It has 
been the policy of other writers to avoid all 
details that are not necessary or impressive, to 
hurry over all the preparatory scenes, and to 
reserve the whole of the reader's attention for 
those momentous passages in which some de- 
cisive measure is adopted, or some great 
passion brought into action. The consequence 
is, that we are only acquainted with their 
characters in their dress of ceremony, and 
that, as we never see them except in those 
critical circumstances, and those moments of 
strong emotion, which are but of rare occur- 
rence in real life, we are never deceived into 
any belief of their reality, and contemplate 
the whole as an exaggerated and dazzling 
illusion. With such authors we merely make 
a visit by appointment, and see and hear only 
what we know has been prepared for our re- 
ception. With Richardson, we slip, invisible, 
into the domestic privacy of his characters, 
and hear and see every thing that is said and 
done among them, whether it be interesting 
or otherwise, and whether it gratify our curi- 
osity or disappoint it. We sympathise with 
the former, therefore, only as we sympathise 
with the monarchs and statesmen of history, 
of whose condition as individuals we have but 
a very imperfect conception. We feel for the 
latter, as for our private friends and acquaint- 
ance, with whose whole situation we are 
familiar, and as to whom we can conceive 
exactly the effects that will be produced by 
every thing that may befal them. In this 



art Richardson is undoubtedly without an 
equal, and, if we except De Foe, without a 
competitor, we believe, in the whole history 
of literature. We are often fatigued, as we 
listen to his prolix descriptions, and the' repeti- 
tions of those rambling and inconclusive con- 
versations, in which so many pages are con- 
sumed, without any apparent progress in the 
story j but, by means of all this, we get so 
intimately acquainted with the characters, 
and so impressed with a persuasion of their 
reality, that when any thing really disastrous 
or important occurs to them, we feel as for old 
friends and companions, and are irresistibly 
led to as lively a conception of their sensa- 
tions, as if we had been spectators of a real 
transaction. This we certainly think the chief 
merit of Richardson's productions: For, great 
as his knowledge of the human heart, and his 
powers of pathetic description, must be ad- 
mitted to be, we are of opinion that he might 
have been equalled in those particulars by 
many, whose productions are infinitely less 
interesting. 

That his pieces were all intended to be 
strictly moral, is indisputable ; but it is not 
quite so clear, that they will uniformly be 
found to have this tendency. We have 
already quoted some observations of Mrs. 
Barbauld's on this subject, and shall only add, 
in general, that there is a certain air of irk- 
some regularity, gloominess, and pedantry, 
attached to most of his virtuous characters, 
which is apt to encourage more unfortunate 
associations than the engaging qualities with 
which he has invested some of his vicious 
ones. The mansion of the Harlowes, which, 
before the appearance of Lovelace, is repre- 
sented as the abode of domestic felicity, is a 
place in which daylight can scarcely be sup- 
posed to shine; and Clarissa, with her formal 
devotions, her intolerably early rising, her 
day divided into tasks, and her quantities of 
needle-work and discretion, has something in 
her much less winning and attractive than in- 
ferior .artists have often communicated to an 
innocent beauty of seventeen. The solem- 
nity and moral discourses of Sir Charles, his 
bows, minuets, compliments, and immoveable 
tranquillity, are much more likely to excite 
the derision than the admiration of a modern 
reader. Richardson's good people, in short, 
are too wise and too formal, ever to appear in 
the light of desirable companions, or to excite 
in a youthful mind any wish to resemble 
them." The gaiety of all his characters, too, 
is extremely girlish and silly, and is much 
more like the prattle of spoiled children, than 
the wit and pleasantry of persons acquainted 
with the world. The diction throughout is 
heavy, vulgar, and embarrassed : though the 
interest of the tragical scenes is too powerful 
to allow us to attend to any inferior considera- 
tion. The novels of Richardson, in short, 
though praised perhaps somewhat beyond 
their merits, will always be read with ad- 
miration ; and certainly can never appear to 
greater advantage than when contrasted with 
the melancholy farrago which is here entitled 
his Correspondence. 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



129 



(SltltJ, 1813.) 

Correspondence, Litteraire, Philosophique ct Critique. Addressee a un Sguverain d'Allemagnej 



depuis 1770 jusqu/d 1782. 
pp. 2250. Paris: 1812. 



This is certainly a very entertaining book 
— though a little too bulky — and, the greater 
part of it, not very important. We are glad 
to see it, however ; not only because we are 
glad to see any thing entertaining, but also 
because it makes us acquainted with a per- 
son, of whom every one has heard a great 
deal, and most people hitherto known very 
little. There is no name which comes oftener 
across us, in the modern history of French 
literature, than that of Grimm ; and none, 
perhaps, whose right to so much notoriety 
seemed to most people to stand upon such 
scanty titles. Coming from a foreign country, 
without rank, fortune, or exploits of any kind 
to recommend him, he contrived, one does not 
very well see haw, to make himself conspicu- 
ous for forty years in the best company of 
Paris : and at the same time to acquire great 
influence and authority among literary men 
of all descriptions, without publishing any 
thing himself, but a few slight observations 
upon French and Italian music. 

The volumes before us help, in part, to ex- 
plain this enigma • and not only give proof of 
talents and accomplishments quite sufficient 
to justify the reputation the author enjoyed 
among his contemporaries, but also of such a 
degree of industry and exertion, as entitle 
him, we think, to a reasonable reversion of 
fame from posterity. Before laying before 
our readers any part of this miscellaneous 
chronicle, we shall endeavour to give them a 
general idea of its construction — and to tell 
them all that we have been able to discover 
about its author. 

Melchior Grimm was bom at Ratisbon in 
1723, of very humble parentage; but, being 
tolerably well educated, took to literature at 
a very early period. His first essays were 
made in his own country — and. as we under- 
stand, in his native language — where he com- 
posed several tragedies, which were hissed 
upon the stage, and unmercifully abused in 
the closet, by Lessing, and the other oracles 
of Teutonic criticism. He then came to Paris, 
as a sort of tutor to the children of M. de 
Schomberg, and was employed in the humble 
capacity of readier to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, 
when he was first brought into notice by 
Rousseau, who was smitten with his enthusi- 
asm for music, and made him known to 
Diderot, the Baron d ; Holbach, and various 
other persons of eminence in the literary 
world. His vivacity and various accomplish- 
ments soon made nim generally acceptable ; 
while his uniform prudence and excellent 
good sense prevented him from ever losing 
any of the friends he had gained. Rousseau, 
indeed, chose to quarrel with him for lifej 
17 



Par le Baron de Grimm, et par Diderot. 5 tomes, 8vo. 



upon his sitting down one evening in a seal 
which he had previously fixed upon for him- 
self; but with Voltaire and D'Alembert. and 
all the rest of that illustrious society, both 
male and female, he continued always on the 
most cordial footing; and, while he is re- 
proached with a certain degree of obsequious- 
ness toward the rich and powerful, must be 
allowed to have used less flattery toward Ins 
literary associates than was usual in the in- 
tercourse of those jealous and artificial beings. 

When the Duke of Saxe-Gotha left Pans, 
Grimm undertook to send him regularly an 
account of every thing remarkable that oc- 
cured in the literary, political, and scandalous 
chronicle of that great city; and acquitted 
himself in this delicate office so much to the 
satisfaction of his noble correspondent, that 
he nominated him, in 1776, his resident at 
the court of France, and raised him at the 
same time to the rank and dignity of a Baron. 
The volumes before us are a part of the des- 
patches of this literary plenipotentiary ; and 
are certainly the most amusing state papers 
that have ever fallen under our obversation. 

The Baron de Grimm continued to exercise 
the functions of this philosophical diplomacy, 
till the gathering storm of the Revolution 
drove both ministers and philosophers from 
the territories of the new Republic. He then 
took refuge of course in the court of his mas- 
ter, where he resided till 1795; when Catha- 
rine of Russia, to whose shrine he had for- 
merly made a pilgrimage from Paris, gave 
him the appointment of her minister at the 
court of Saxony — which he continued to hold 
till the end of the reign of the unfortunate 
Paul, when the partial loss of sight obliged 
him to withdraw altogether from business, 
I and to return to the court of Saxe-Gotha, 
j where he continued his studies in literature 
j and the arts with unabated ardour, till he 
sunk at last under a load of years and infirmi- 
ties in the end of 1807. — He was of an un- 
comely and grotesque appearance — with huge 
! projecting e) r es and discordant features, which 
' he rendered still more hideous, by daubing 
them profusely with white and with red paint 
— according to the most approved costume of 
petits-maitres y in the year 1748, when he 
made his debiit at Paris. 

The book embraces a period of about twelve 
years only, from 1770 to 1782, with a gap for 
1775 and part of 1776. It is said in the title- 
page to be partly the work of Grimm, and 
partly that of Diderot, — but the contributions 
of the latter are few, and comparatively of 
little importance. It is written half in the 
style of a journal intended for the public, .and 
half in that of private and confidential cor- 



130 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



respondence ; and, notwithstanding the re- 
trenchments which the editor boasts of having 
made in the manuscript, contains a vast mis- 
cellany of all sorts of intelligence; — critiques 
upon all new publications, new operas, and 
new performers at the theatres J — accounts 
of all the meetings and elections at the acade- 
mies, — and of the deaths and characters of all 
the eminent persons who demised in the 
period to which it extends; — copies of the 
epigrams, and editions of the scandalous sto- 
ries that occupied the idle population of Paris 
during the same period — interspersed with 
various original compositions, and brief and 
pithy dissertations upon the general subjects 
that are suggested by such an enumeration. 
Of these, the accounts of the operas and the 
actors are (now) the most tedious, — the criti- 
cal and biographical sketches the most live- 
ly, — and the general observations the most 
striking and important. The whole, however, 
is given with great vivacity and talent, and 
with a degree of freedom which trespasses 
occasionally upon the borders both of pro- 
priety and of good taste. 

There is nothing indeed more exactly paint- 
ed in these graphical volumes, than the char- 
acter of M. Grimm himself ; — and the beauty 
of it is, that as there is nothing either natural 
or peculiar about it, it may stand for the char- 
acter of most of the wits and philosophers 
he frequented. He had more wit, perhaps, 
and more sound sense and information, than 
the greater part of the society in which he 
lived — But the leading traits belong to the 
whole class, and to all classes indeed, in 
similar situations, in every part of the world. 
Whenever there is a very large assemblage 
of persons who have no other occupation but 
to amuse themselves, there will infallibly be 
generated acuteness of intellect, refinement 
of manners, and good taste in conversation ; — 
and, with the same ceitainty, all profound 
thought, and all serious affection, will be 
generally discarded from their society. The 
multitude of persons and things that force 
themselves on the attention in such a scene, 
and the rapidity with which they succeed 
each other and pass away, prevent any one 
from making a deep or permanent impression ; 
and the mind, having never been tasked to 
any course of application, and long habituated 
to this lively succession and variety of objects, 
comes at last to require the excitement of 
perpetual change, and to find a multiplicity 
of friends as indispensable as a multiplicity 
of amusements. Thus the characteristics of 
large and polished society, come almost in- 
evitably to be, wit and heartlessness — acute- 
wess and perpetual derision. The same im- 
patience of uniformity, and passion for va- 
riety, which gives so much grace to their 
conversation, by excluding tediousness and 
pertinacious wrangling, make them incapable 
of dwelling for many minutes on the feelings 
and concerns of any one individual; while 
the constant pursuit of little gratifications, and 
the weak dread of all uneasy sensations, 
render them equally averse from serious sym- 
pathy and deep thought. They speedily find 



out the shortest and most pleasant way to all 
truths, to which a short and a pleasant way 
can readily be discovered ; and then lay it 
down as a maxim, that no others are worth 
looking after — and in the same way, they do 
such petty kindnesses, and indulge such light 
sympathies, as do not put them to any trouble, 
or encroach at all on their amusements > — 
while they make it a principle to wrap them- 
selves up in those amusements from the as- 
sault of all more engrossing or importunate 
affections. 

The turn for derision again arises naturally 
out of this order of things. When passion 
and enthusiasm, affection and serious occupa- 
tion have once been banished by a short-sight- 
ed voluptuousness, the sense of ridicule is 
almost the only lively sensation that remains; 
— and the envied life of those who have 
nothing to do but to enjoy themselves, would 
be utterly listless and without interest, if they 
were not allowed to laugh at each other. 
Their quickness in perceiving ordinary follies 
and illusions too, affords great encouragement 
to this laudable practice; — and as none of 
them have so much passion or enthusiasm 
left, as to be deeply wounded by the shafts 
of derision, they fall lightly, and without 
rankling, on the lesser vanities, which supply 
in them those master springs of human action 
and feeling. 

The whole style and tone of this publica- 
tion affords the most striking illustration of 
these general remarks. From one end of it 
to the other, it is a display of the most com- 
plete heartlessness, and the most uninterrupt- 
ed levity. It chronicles the deaths of half the 
author's acquaintance — and makes jests upon 
them all; and is much more serious in dis- 
cussing the merits of an opera dancer, than 
in considering the evidence for the being of a 
God, or the first foundations of morality. 
Nothing, indeed, can be more just or conclu- 
sive, than the remark that is forced from M. 
Grimm himself, upon the utter carelessness 
and instant oblivion, that followed the death 
of one of the most distinguished, active, and 
amiable members of his coterie; — "tant il 
est vrai que ce qui nous appellons la Societl, 
est ce qu'il y a de plus leger, de plus ingrat, 
et de plus frivole au monde !' ; 

Holding this opinion very firmly ourselves, 
it will easily be believed that we are very far 
from envying the brilliant persons who com- 
posed, or gave the tone to this exquisite so- 
ciety; — and while we have a due admiration 
for the elegant pleasantry, correct taste, and 
gay acuteness, of which they furnish, perhaps, 
the only perfect models, we think it more de- 
sirable, on the whole, to be the spectators, 
than the possessors of those accomplishments; 
and would no more wish to buy them at the 
price of our sober thinking, and settled affec- 
tions, than we would buy the dexterity of a 
fiddler, or a ropedancer, at the price of our 
personal respectability. Even in the days of 
youth and high spirits, there is no solid enjoy 
ment in living altogether with people who 
care nothing about us ; and when we begin to 
grow old and unamuseable, there can be 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



131 



nothing so comfortless as to be surrounded 
with those who think of nothing but amuse- 
ment. The spectacle, however, is gay and 
beautiful to those who look upon it with a 
good-natured sympathy, or indulgence; and 
naturally suggests reflections that may be in- 
teresting to the most serious. A judicious 
extractor, we have no doubt, might accom- 
modate both classes of readers, from the 
ample magazine that lies before us. 

The most figuring person in the work, and 
indeed of the age to which it belongs, was 
beyond all question Voltaire, — oi w r hom, and 
of whose character, it presents us with many 
very amusing traits. He receives no other 
name throughout the book, than " The Patri- 
arch 7 ' of the Holy Philosophical Church, of 
which the authors, and the greater part of 
their friends, profess to be humble votaries 
and disciples. The infallibility of its chief, 
however, seems to have formed no part of the 
creed of this reformed religion; for, with all 
his admiration for the wit, and playfulness. 
and talent of the philosophic pontiff, nothing- 
can exceed the freedoms in which M. Grimm 
indulges, both as to his productions, and his 
character. All his poetry, he says, after Tan- 
cred, is clearly marked with the symptoms 
of approaching dotage and decay; and his 
views of many important subjects he treats 
as altogether erroneous, shallow, and con- 
temptible. He is particularly offended with 
him for not adopting the decided atheism of 
the Systeme de la Nature, and for weakly stop- 
ping short at a kind of paltry deism. "The 
Patriarch," says he, " still sticks to his Re- 
munerateur-Venveur, without whom he fancies 
the world would go on very ill. He is reso- 
lute enough, I confess, for putting down the 
god of knaves and bigots, but is not for part- 
ing with that of the virtuous and rational. He 
reasons upon all this, too, like a baby — a very 
smart baby it must be owned — but a baby 
notwithstanding. He would be a little puz- 
zled, I take it, if he were asked what was 
the colour of his god of the virtuous and wise, 
&c. &c. He cannot conceive, he says, how 
mere motion.undirected by intelligence,should 
ever have produced such a world as we in- 
habit — and we verily believe him. Nobody 
can conceive it — but it is a fact nevertheless; 
and we see it — which is nearly as good." 
We give this merely as a specimen of the 
disciple's irreverence towards his master; for 
nothing can be more contemptible than the 
reasoning of M. Grimm in support of his own 
desolating opinions. He is more near being- 
right, where he makes himself merry with 
the Patriarch's ignorance of natural philoso- 
phy. Every Achilles however, he adds, has 
a vulnerable heel — and that of the hero of 
Ferney is his Physics.* 

* This is only true, however, with regard to nat- 
ural history and chemistry •, for as to the nobler 
part of physics, which depends on science, his at- 
tainments were equal perhaps to those of any of 
his age and country, with the exception of D' Alem- 
bert. Even his astronomy, however, though by 
no means "mince et raccounie," had a tendency 
to confirm him in. that paltry Deism, for which he 



M. Grimm, however, reveals v arse infirmi- 
ties than this in his great preceptor. There 
was a young Mademoiselle Raucour, it seems, 
who, though an actress, enjoyed an unblem- 
ished reputation. Voltaire, who had never 
seen her, chose one morning to write to the 
Marechal de Richelieu, by whom she was 
patronized, that she was a notorious prosti- 
tute, and ready to be taken into keeping by 
any one who would offer for her. This im- 
putation having been thoughtlessly communi- 
cated to the damsel herself, produced no little 
commotion ; and upon Voltaire's being re- 
monstrated with, he immediately retracted 
the whole story, which it seems was a piece 
of pure invention ; and confessed, that the 
only thing he had to object to Madlle. Raucour 
was, that he had understood they had put off 
the representation of a new play of his. in or- 
der to gratify the public with her appearance 
in comedy; — "and this was enough," says 
M. Grimm, " to irritate a child of seventy- 
nine, against another child of seventeen, w ho 
came in the way of his gratification !" 

A little after, he tells another story which 
is not only very disreputable to the Patriarch, 
but affords a striking example of the monstrous 
evils that arise from religious intolerance, in 
a country w T here the whole population is not 
of the same communion. A Mons. de B. in- 
troduced himself into a protestant family at 
Montauban, and after some time, publicly 
married the only daughter of the house, in the 
church of her pastor. He lived several years 
with her, and had one daughter — dissipated 
her whole property — and at last deserted her, 
and married another woman at Paris — upon 
the pretence that his first union was not bind- 
ing, the ceremony not having been performed 
by a Catholic priest. The Parliament ulti- 
mately allowed this plea ; and farther direct- 
ed, that the daughter should be taken from its 
mother, and educated in the true faith in a 
convent. The transaction excited general in- 
dignation; and the legality of the sentence, 
and especially the last part of it, was very 
much disputed, both in the profession and out 
of it ; — when Voltaire, to the astonishment of 
all the world, thought fit to put forth a pam- 
phlet in its defence ! M. Grimm treats the 
whole matter w T ith his usual coldness and 
pleasantry ; — and as a sort of. apology for this 
extraordinary proceeding of his chief, very 
coolly observes, "The truth is, that for some 
time past, the Patriarch has been suspected, 
and indeed convicted, of the most abominable 
cowardice. He defied the old Parliament in 
his youth with signal courage and intrepidity ; 
and now he cringes to the new one, and even 
condescends to be its panegyrist, from an ab- 
surd dread of being persecuted by it on the 
very brink of the tomb. " Ah ! Seigneur Pat- 



is so unmercifully rated by M. Grimm. We do 
not know many quartains in French poetry more 
beautiful than the following, which the Patriarch 
indited impromptu, one fine summer evening — 

"Tous ces vastes pays d'Azur et de Lumiere, 
Tir6e du sein du vide, et formed sans matiere, 
Arrondis sans compas, et tournans sans pivot, 
Ont a peine «out£ la depense d'un mot t" 



132 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



riarche !" he concludes, in the true Parisian 
accent, " Horace was much more excusable for 
flattering Augustus, who had honoured him, 
though he destroyed the republic, than you 
are, for justifying, without any intelligible mo- 
tive, a proceeding so utterly detestable, and 
upon which, if you had not courage to speak 
as became you, you were not called upon to 
say any thing." It must be a comfort to the 
reader to learn, that immediately after this sen- 
tence, a M. Vanrobais, an old and most re- 
spectable gentleman, was chivalrous enough, 
at the age of seventy, to marry the deserted 
widow, and to place her in a situation every 
way more respectable than that of which she 
had been so basely defrauded. 

There is a great deal, in the first of these 
volumes, about the statue that was voted to 
Voltaire by his disciples in 1770. — Pigalle the 
sculptor was despatched to Ferney to model 
him, in spite of the opposition he affects to 
make in a letter to Madame Necker, in which 
he very reasonably observes, that in order to 
be modelled, a man ought to have a face — 
but that age and sickness have so reduced 
him, that it is not easy to point out where- 
abouts his had been ; that his eyes are sunk 
into pits three inches deep, and the small 
remnant of his teeth recently deserted ; that 
his skin is like old parchment wrinkled over 
dry bones, and his legs and arms like dry 
spindles ; — in short, u qu'on n'a jamais sculpte 
tin pauvre homme dans cet etat." Phidias 
Pigalle, however, as he calls him, goes upon 
his errand, notwithstanding all these discour- 
agements; and finds him, according to M. 
Grimm, in a state of great vivacity. "He 
skips up stairs," he assures me, "more nimbly 
than all his subscribers put together, and is 
as quick as lightning in running to shut doors, 
and open windows : but, with all this, he is 
very anxious to pass for a poor man in the 
last extremities; and would take it much 
amiss if he thought that any body had dis- 
covered the secret of his health and vigour." 
Some awkward person, indeed, it appears, has 
been complimenting him upon the occasion ; 
for he writes me as follows: — "My dear 
friend — though Phidias Pigalle is the most 
virtuous of mortals, he calumniates me cruel- 
ly ; I understand he goes about saying that I 
am quite well, and as sleek as a monk ! — 
Such is the ungrateful return he makes for 
the pains I took to force my spirits for his 
amusement, and to puff up my buccinatory 
muscles, in order to look well in his eyes ! — 
Jean Jacques, to be sure, is far more puffed 
up than I am ; but it is with conceit — from 
which I am free." In another letter he says, 
— " When the peasants in my village saw Pi- 
galle laying out some of the* instruments of 
his art, they flocked round us with great glee. 
and said, Ah ! he is going to dissect him— 
how droll ! — so one spectacle you see is just 
as good for some people as another." 

The account which Pigalle himself gives 
of his mission, is extremely characteristic. 
For the first eight days, he could make noth- 
ing of his patient, — he was so restless and 
full of grimaces, starts, and gesticulations. 



He promised every night, indeed, to give him 
a long sitting next day, and always kept his 
word; — but then, he could no more sit still, 
than a child of three years old. He dictated 
letters all the time to his secretary ;. and, in 
the mean time, kept blowing peas in the air, 
making pirouettes round his chamber, or in- 
dulging in other feats of activity, equally fatal 
to the views of the artist. Poor Phidias was 
about to return to Paris in despair, without 
having made the slightest progress in his de- 
sign; when the conversation happening by 
good luck to turn upon Aaron's golden calf, 
and Pigalle having said that he did not think 
such a thing could possibly be modelled and 
cast in less than six months, the Patriarch 
was so pleased with him, that he submitted 
to any thing he thought proper all the rest of 
the day, and the model was completed that 
very evening. 

There are a number of other anecdotes, 
extremely characteristic of the vivacity, im- 
patience, and want of restraint which distin- 
guished this extraordinary person. One of 
the most amusing is that of the conge which 
he gave to the Abbe Coyer, who was kind 
enough to come to his castle at Ferney, with 
the intention of paying a long visit. The 
second morning, however, the Patriarch in- 
terrupted him in the middle of a dull account 
of his travels, with this perplexing question, 
" Do you know, M. L'Abbe, in what you differ 
entirely from Don Quixotte'?" The pooi 
Abbe was unable to divine the precise point 
of distinction ; and the philosopher was pleas- 
ed to add, " Why, you know the Don took all 
the inns on his road for castles, — but it ap- 
pears to me that you take some castles for 
inns." The Abbe decamped without waiting 
for a further reckoning He behaved still 
worse to a M. de Barthe, whom he invited to 
come and read a play to him, and afterwards 
drove out of the house, by the yawns and 
frightful contortions with which he amused 
himself, during the whole of the perform- 
ance. 

One of his happiest repartees is said to have 
been made to an Englishman, who had re- 
cently been on a visit to the celebrated Hal- 
ler, in whose praise Voltaire enlarged with 
great warmth, extolling him as a great poet, 
a great naturalist, and a man of universal 
attainments. The Englishman answered, that 
it was very handsome in M. De Voltaire to 
speak so well of Mr. Haller, inasmuch as he, 
the said Mr. Haller, was by no means so 
liberal to M. de Voltaire. "Ah!" said the 
Patriarch, with an air of philosophic indul- 
gence, " I dare say we are both of us very 
much mistaken." 

On another occasion, a certain M. de St. 
Ange, who valued himself on the graceful 
turn of his compliments, having come to see 
him, took his leave with this studied allusion 
to the diversity of his talents, "My visit to- 
day has only been to Homer — another morn- 
ing I shall pay my respects to Sophocles and 
Euripides — another to Tacitus — and another 
to Lucian." "Ah, Sir!" replied the Patri- 
arch, " I am wretchedly old, — could you not 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



133 



contrive to see all these gentlemen together ?" 
M. Mercier, who had \he same passion for 
fine speeches, told him one day, "You outdo 
every body so much in their own way, that I 
am sure you will beat Fontenelle even, in 
longevity." "No, no, Sir!" answered the 
Patriarch, " Fontenelle was a Norman ; and. 
you may depend upon it, contrived to trick 
Nature out of her rights." 

One of the most prolific sources of witti- 
cisms that is noticed in this collection, is the 
Patriarch's elevation to the dignity of temporal 
father of the Capuchins in his district. The 
cream of the whole, however, may be found 
in the following letter of his to M. De Riche- 
lieu. 

" Je voudrais bien, monseigneur, avoir le plaisir 
de vous dormer ma benediction avant de mourir. 
L'exnression vous parailra un peu forte : elle esi 
pourt'ant dans la verite. J'ai Phonneur d'etre ca- 
pucin. Noire general qui est a Rome, vient de 
nvenvoyer mes patentes; mon titre est; Frtre 
Spirituel et Fere Temporel des Capucifis. Man- 
dez-moi laquelle devos mattresses vous voulez re- 
tirer du purgatoire : je vous jure sur ma barbe 
q.u'elle n'y sera pas dans vingtquatre heures- 
Comme je dois me detacher des biens de ce 
monde, j 1 ai abandonne a me.s parens ce qui m'est 
du par la succession de feu madame la prineesse 
de Guise, et par M. votre intendant ; ils iront a 
ce snjet prendre vos ordres qu'ils regarderont 
comme un bienfait. Je vous donne ma benedic- 
tion. Signe Voltaire, Capucin indigne, et qui 
iVa pas encore eu de bonne fortune de capucin." — 
pp. 54, 55. 

We have very full details of the last days 
of this distinguished person. He came to 
Paris, as is well known, after twenty-seven 
years' absence, at the age of eighty-four; 
and the very evening he arrived, he recited 
himself the whole of his Irene to the players, 
and passed all the rest of the night in cor- 
recting the piece for representation. A few 
days after, he was seized with a violent vomit- 
ing of blood, and instantly called stoutly for 
a priest, saying, that they should not throw 
him out on the dunghill. A priest was ac- 
cordingly brought ; and the Patriarch very 
gravely subscribed a profession of his faith 
in the Christian religion — of which he was 
Ashamed, -and attempted to make a jest, as 
soon as he recovered. He was received with 
unexampled honours at the Academy, the 
whole members of which rose together, and 
came out to the vestibule to escort him into 
the hall ; while, on the exterior, all the ave- 
nues, windows, and roofs of houses, by which 
his carriage had to pass, were crowded with 
spectators, and resounded with acclamations. 
But the great scene of his glory was the thea- 
tre ; in which he no sooner appeared, than the 
whole audience rose up, and continued for 
upwards of twenty minutes in thunders of 
applause and shouts of acclamation that filled 
the whole house with dust and agitation. 
When the piece was concluded, the curtain 
was again drawn up, and discovered the bust 
ot their idol in the middle of the stage, while 
the favourite actress placed a crown of laurel 
on its brows, and recited some verses, the 
words of which could scarcely be distin- 
guished amidst the tumultuous shouts of the 



spectators. The whole scene, says M. Grimm, 
reminded us of the classic days of Greece and 
Rome. But it became more truly touching at 
the moment when its object rose to retire. 
Weakened and agitated by the emotions he 
had experienced, his limbs trembled beneath 
him ; and, bending almost to the earth, he 
seemed ready to expire under the weigh! of 
years and honours that had been laid vpon 
him. His eyes, filled with tears, still spaikled 
with a peculiar fire in the midst of his pale 
and faded countenance. All the beauty and 
all the rank of France crowded round him in 
the lobbies and staircases, and literally bore 
him in their arms to the door of his carriage. 
Here the humbler multitude took their turn ; 
and, calling for torches that' all might get a 
sight of him, clustered round his coach, and 
followed it to the door of his lodgings, with 
vehement shouts of admiration and triumph. 
This is the heroic part of the scene ; — but M. 
Grimm takes care also to let us know, that the 
Patriarch appeared on this occasion in long 
lace ruffles, and a fine coat of cut velvet, with 
a grey periwig of a fashion forty years old, 
which he used to comb every morning with 
his own hands, and to which nothing at all 
parallel had been seen for ages — except on 
the head of Bachaumont the novelist, who 
was known accordingly among the wits of 
Paris by the name of" Voltaire's wigblock." 
This brilliant and protracted career, how- 
ever, was fast drawing to a close. — Retaining 
to the last, that untameable spirit of activity 
and impatience which had characterized all 
his past life, he assisted at rehearsals and 
meetings of the Academy, with the zeal and 
enthusiasm of early youth. At one of the 
latter, some objections were started to his 
magnificent project, of giving an improved 
edition of their Dictionary ; — and he resolved 
to compose a discourse to obviate those ob- 
jections. To strengthen himself for this task, 
he swallowed a prodigious quantity of strong 
coffee, and then continued at work for up- 
wards of twelve hours without intermission. 
This imprudent effort brought on an inflam* 
mation in his bladder; and being told by M. 
De Richelieu, that he had been much relieved 
in a similar situation, by taking, at intervals, 
a few drops of laudanum, he provided him- 
self with a large bottle of that medicine, and 
with his usual impatience, swallowed the 
greater part of it in the course of the night- 
The consequence was, as might naturally 
have been expected, that he fell into a sort 
of lethargy, and never recovered the use of 
his faculties, except for a few minutes at a 
time, till the hour of his death, which hap- 
pened three days after, on the evening of the 
30th of May, 1778. The priest to whom ho 
had made his confession, and ; nother, entered 
his chamber a short time before he breathed 
his last. He recognized them with difficulty, 
and assured them of his respects. One ot 
them coming close up to him. he threw Ins 
I arm round his neck, as if to embrace him, 
But when M. le Cure, taking advantage of 
J this cordiality, proceeded to urge him to make 
| some sign or acknowledgment of his belief hi 
M 



134 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



the Christian faith, he gently pushed him 
back, and said, "Alas! let me die in peace." 
The priest turned to his companion, and with 
great moderation and presence of mind, ob- 
served aloud, "You see his faculties are quite 
gone." They then quietly left the apartment ; 
— and the dying man, having testified his 
gratitude to his kind and vigilant attendants, 
and named several times the name of his 
favourite niece Madame Denis, shortly after 
expired. 

Nothing can better mark the character of 
the work before us, and of its author, than to 
state, that the despatch which contains this 
striking account of the last hours of his illus- 
trious patron and friend, terminates with an 
obscene epigram of M. Rulhiere, and a gay 
critique on the new administration of the 
opera BufTa ! There are various epitaphs on 
Voltaire, scattered through the sequel of the 
volume : — we prefer this very brief one, by a 
lady of Lausanne. 

"Ci-git V enfant gate du monde qu'il gata." 

Among the other proofs which M. Grimm 
has recorded of the celebrity of this extra- 
ordinary person, the incredible multitude of 
his portraits that were circulated, deserves to 
be noticed. One ingenious artist, in particular, 
of the name of Huber, had acquired such a 
facility in forming his countenance, that he 
could not only cut most striking likenesses 
of him out of paper, wilh scissars held be- 
hind his back, but could mould a little bust 
of him in half a minute, out of a bit of bread, 
and at last used to make his dog manufacture 
most excellent profiles, by making him bite 
off the edge of a biscuit which he held to 
him in three or four different positions ! 

There is less about Rousseau in these 
volumes, than we should expect from their 
author's early intimacy with that great writer. 
What there is, however, is candid and judi- 
cious. M. Grimm agrees with Madame de 
Stael, that Rousseau was nothing of a French- 
man in his character; — and accordingly he 
observes, that though the magic of his style 
and the extravagance of his sentiments pro- 
cured him some crazy disciples, he never had 
any hearty partisans among the enlightened 
part of the nation. He laughs a good deal at 
his affectations and unpardonable animosi- 
ties. — but gives, at all times, the highest 
E raise to his genius, and sets him above all 
is contemporaries, for the warmth, the ele- 
gance, and the singular richness of his style. 
He says, that the general opinion at Paris was, 
that he had poisoned himself; — that his natu- 
ral disposition to melancholy had increased in 
an alarming degree after his return from Eng- 
land, and had been aggravated by the sombre 
and solitary life to which he had condemned 
himself; — that mind, he adds, at once too 
strong and too weak to bear the burden of 
existence with tranquillity, was perpetually 
prolific of monsters and of phantoms, that 
haunted all his steps, and drove him to the 
borders of distraction. There is no doubt, 
continues M. Grimm, that for many months 
before his death he had firmly persuaded 



himself that all the powers of Europe had 
their eyes fixed upon him as a most dangei- 
ous and portentous being, whom they should 
take the first opportunity to destroy. He was 
also satisfied that M. de Choiseul had pro- 
jected and executed the conquest of Corsica, 
for no other purpose but to deprive him of the 
honour of legislating for it ; and that Prussia 
and Russia had agreed to partition Poland 
upon the same jealous and unworthy con- 
sideration. While the potentates of Europe 
were thus busied in thwarting and mortifying 
him abroad, the philosophers, he was per- 
suaded, were entirely devoted to the same 
project at home. They had spies, he firmly 
believed, posted round all his steps', and were 
continually making efforts to rouse the popu- 
lace to insult and murder him. At ihe head 
of this conspiracy, of the reality of which he 
no more doubted than of his existence, he 
had placed the Due de Choiseul, his physi- 
cian Tronchin, M. D'Alembert, and our au- 
thor ! — But we must pass to characters less 
known or familiar. 

The gayest, and the most naturally gay 
perhaps of all the coterie, was the Abbe Go- 
Hani, a Neapolitan, who had resided for many 
years in Paris, but had been obliged, very 
much against his will, to return to his own 
country about the time that this.journal com- 
menced. M. Grimm inserts a variety of his 
letters, in all of which the infantine petulance 
and freedom of his character are distinctly 
marked, as well as the singular acuteness and 
clearness of his understanding. The first is 
written immediately after his exile from Paris 
in 1770. 

"Madame, je suis toujours inconsolable d'avoir 
quitte Paris; et encore plus inconsolable de n'avoir 
re§u aucune nonvelle ni de vons, ni dn paresseux 
philosophe. Est-il possible que ce monstre. dans 
son impassibilifie, ne seme pns a quel point mon 
honneur. ma gloire. donr je me fiche. mon plaisir 
et celui de mes amis, dont je me soucie beatiroup, 
sont impresses dans I'affaire que je Ini ai eonfjee, et 
combien je suis impatient d'apprendre qu'en fin la 
pacotille a double le cap et passe le terrible defile 
de la revision : car, aprcs cela, je serai tranquiile 
sur le resre. 

" Mon voyage a ete tres heureux sur Ja terre et 
surl'onde ; il a memee'ed'un bonheurinconcevable. 
Je n'ai jamais eu (baud, et toujours le vent en poupe 
sur le Rhone et sur la mer; il parn?t que tout me 
pouspe a m'eloigner de tout ce que j'aime au monde. 
L'heroisme sera done bien plus grand et bien plus 
memorable, de vaincre les elemens, la nature, les 
dieux conspire", et de retourner a Paris en depit 
d'eux. Oui, Paris est ma patrie ; on aura bpau 
m'en exiler. j'y retomberai. Attendez-vous done 
a. me voir etabli dans la rue Fromenteau, au quatri- 

eme, sur le derriere, chez la nominee , fille 

majeure. La demeurera le plus grand genie de 
not re age, en ppnsion a irente sous par jour; et i! 
sera heureux. Quel plaisir que de delirer \ Adieu. 
Je vous prie d'envoyer vos lettres toujours a 1' hotel 
de Pambassadeur. 

" Grimm est-il de retour de son voyage ?" 

Another to the Baron Holbach is nearly in 
the same tone. 

" Que faiies-vous, mon cher baron ? Vousamusez- 
vous ? La haronne se porte-t-elle bien ? Comment 
vont vos enfans? La philosophic, dont vons otea 
le premier maitre d'hotel, mange- t-elle toujours 
d'un aussi bon appetii ? 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



135 



"Pcur moi, je m'ennuie mortellement ici; je ne 
vois prrsonne, excepte deux ou trois Fran$ais. Je 
Ruis le Gulliver revenu du pays des Hoyinliyims, 

3uj ne fait plus societe qu'avec ses deux chevaux. 
e vais rendre des visites de devoir aux femmes 
des deux ministres d'etat et de finances ; et puis je 
dors ou je reve. Quelle vie ! Rien n'amuse ici : 
point d'edits. point de reductions, point de retenues, 
point de suspensions de paicmens : la vie y est d' une 
uniformite tuante ; on ne dispute de rien, pas meme 
de religion. Ah ! mon cher Paris ! ah ! que je te 
regrette! 

*' Donnez-moi quelques nouvelles litteraires, 
mais n'en attendez pas en revanche. Pour les 
grands evenemens en Europe, je cruis que nous en 
allons devenir le bureau. On dit, en effet, que la 
flolte Russe a enfin debarque a Patras, que toute la 
Moree s'est revoltee et declaree en faveur des de- 
barques, et que sans coup ferir ils s'en sont rendus 
maitres, excepte des villes de Corinthe et de Napoli 
de Romanie : cela merite confirmation. Quelle 
avanture ! Nous serons limitrophes des Russes ; 
et d' Otrante a Petersbourg il n'y aura plus qu'un 
pas, et un petit trajet de mer: Dux Jozmina facti. 
Une femtne aura fait cela ! Cela est trop beau pour 
etre vraL" 

The next is not such pure trifling. 

" Vous avez reconnu Voltaire dans son sermon ; 
moi je n'y reconnais que 1'echo de feu 3VI. de Vol- 
taire- Ah ! il rabache trop a present. Sa Catherine 
est une maitresse femme, parce qu'elle est intol- 
erante et ronquerante; tons les grands homines 
ont ete iniolerans, et il faut l'etre. Si Ton rencontre 
6ur 6on ehemin un prince sot, il faut lui precher la 
tolerance, afin qu'il donne dans le piege, et que le 
parti ecrase ait le temps de se relever par la tolerance 
qu'on lui accordc. et d'ecraserson adversaire a son 
tour. Ainsi le sermon sur la tolerance est un ser- 
mon fair aux sots ou aux gens dupes, ou a des gens 
qui n'ont aucnn interet dans la chose : voila pour- 
quoi, qiielquefois, un prince seculier di>it ecouter la 
tolerance; c'est lorsque 1' affaire interesse les p ret res 
sans interesser les souverains. Mais en Pologne, les 
eveques sont rout a la fbis pret reset souverains, el. 
s'ils le peuvent, ils feront fort bien de chasser les 
Russes. et d'envoyer au diable tons les Dissidens ; 
et Catherine fera fort bien d'ecraser les eveques si 
cela lui reussit. Moi je n'en erois rien ; je crois que 
les Russes ecraseront les Turcs par contre-coup. 
et ne feront qu'agrandir et reveiller les Polonais. 
comme Philippe II. et la maison d'Autriche ecra- 
serent 1' Allemagne et l'Lalie, en voulant troubler 
la France qu'ils ne firent qu'ennoblr: voila mes 
propheties." 

" Votre lettre du 8 juin n'est point gaie; il s'en 
faut meme beaucoup : vous avouez vo'us-meme que 
vous n'avez que quelques lueurs de gaiete ; je crains 
que cela ne lienne au physique, et que vous ne vous 
portiez pas bien*. voila. ce qui me fat-he. Pour moi, 
je fais tout ce que je puis pour vous egayer, et ce 
n'est pas un petit effort pour moi: car je suis si 
ennuye de mon existence ici, qu'en venie je deviens 
homme d'affaires et homme grave de jour en jour 
davantage, et je finirai par devenir Nepolitain, tout 
comme un auire." 

Another contains some admirable remarks 
on the character of Cicero, introduced in the 
game style of perfect ease and familiarity. 

" On pent regarder Ciceron comme litterateur, 
comme philosophe et comme homme d'etat. 11a 
ete un des plus grands lit) oral eurs qui aient jamais 
ete; il savait tout ce qu'on savait de son temps, 
excepte la geometrie et autres sciences de ce genre. 
II etait mediocre philosophe: ear il savait tout ce 
que les Grecs avaient pense, et le rendait avec une 
clarte admirable, mais il ne pensait rien et n'avait 
pas la force de rien imaginer. Comme homme 
d'etat, Ciceron. etant d'une basse extraction et 
voulant parvenir, aurait du se jeter dans le pan de 
1* opposition, de la chambre basse ou du peuple, si 



vous voulez. Cela lui etait d'autant plus aise, que 
Marius, fondateur de ce parti, etait de son pays. II 
en fut meme tcnte, car il debuta par attaquer Sylla 
et par se lier avec les gens du parti de f* opposition, 
a la (ete desquels, aprcs la mort de Marius, etaient 
Claudius, Catilina, Cesar. Mais le parti des grands 
avait besoin d'un jurisconsulte et d'un savant ; car 
les grands seigneurs, en general, ne savent ni lire 
ni ecrire ; il sentit done qu'on aurait plus besoin de 
lui dans le parti des grands, et qu'il y jouerait un 
role plus brillant. 11 s'y jeta, et deslors on vit un 
homme nouveau, un parvenu inele avec les pain- 
dens. Figurez-vous en Angleterre un avocat dont 
la cour a besoin pour faire un chancelier, et qui suit 
par consequent le parti du ministere. Ciceron brilla 
done a cote de Pompee, etc., toutes les Ibis qu'il 
etait quesiion de choses de jurisprudence; mais il 
lui manquait la naissance. les richesses ; et surtout 
n'ctant pas homme de guerre, il jouait de ce cote-la 
un role subalterne. D'itilleurs, par inclination 
nauirelie, il aimait le parti de Cesar, et il etait 
fatigue de la morgue des grands qui lui faisaient 
sentir souvent le prix des bienfaits dont on I'avait 
comble. II n'etait pas pusillanime, il etait incertain; 
il ne defendait pas des scelerats. il defendait les gens 
de son parti qui ne valaient guere mieux que ceux 
du parti contraire." 

We shall add only the following. 

"Le dialogue des tableaux du Louvre interesse 
peu a cinq cents lieues de Paris ; le baron de Glei- 
chen et moi, nous en avons ri: personnes ne nous 
aurait entendus. Au reste, a propos des tableaux, 
je remarque que le caraciere dominant des Francjais 
peree toujours; ils sont causeurs, rai-onneurs, badins 
par essence. Un mauvais tableau enlante une 
bonne brochure ; ainsi vous parlerez mieux des arts 
que vous ne les cultiverez jamais. II se trouvera 
au bout du compte, dans quelques siecles, que vous 
aurez le mieux raisonne, le mieux discute ce que 
toutes les autres nations aurout fait de mieux. 
Cherissez done rinipnmerie, c'est votre lot dans ce 
has monde. Mais vous avez mis un impot sur le 
papier. Quelle sottise! Plaisanterie a part, un 
impot sur le papier est la faute en politique la plus 
forte que sesoit rommise en France depuis un siecle. 
II valait mieux faire la banqueroute universe He, et 
laisser au Frangais le plaisir de parier a 1'Europe a 
peu de frais. Vous avez plus conquis de pays par 
les livres que par les armes. Vous ne devez la 
gloire de la nation qu'a vos ouvrages, et vous voulez 
vous forcer a vous taire !" 

*' Ma belle dame, s'il servait a quelque chose de 
pleure-r les morts. je viendrais pleurer avec vous la 
perte de notre Helvetius ; mais la mort n'est autre 
chose que le regret des vivans ; si nous ne le regret- 
tons pas, il n'est pas mort: tout comme si nous ne 
l'avions jamais ni connu ni aime, il ne serait pas ne. 
Tout ce qui existe. exis^e en nous par rapport a 
nous. Souvenez-vous que le petit prophete faisait 
de la metaphysique lorsqu'il etait triste ; j'en fais de 
meme a present. Mais enfin le mal de la perte 
d' Helvetius est le vide qu'il laisse dans la Iigne du 
baiaillon. Serrons done les lignes, aimons nous 
davantage, nous qui restons, et il n'y parattia pas. 
Moi qui suis le major de ce malheureux regiment, 
je vous crie a tons : serrez les lignes, avancez, leu ! 
On ne s'apercevra pas de notre perte. Ses en fans 
n'ont perdu ni jeunesse ni beaute par la mort de 
leur pere ; elles ont gagne la qualite d' heritiei'es ; 
pourquoi diable allez-vous pleurer sur leur sort? 
Elles se marieront, n'en doutez pas: cet oracle est 
plus sur que celui de CaJchas. Sa femme est plus a 
plaindre, a. moins qu'elle ne rencontre un gendre 
aussi raisonnable que son mari, ce qui n'est pas 
bien aise, mais plus aise a Paris qu'ailleurs. II y a 
encore bien des mceurs, des verius, de I'heroKsfB* 
dans votre Paris; il y en a plus qu'ailleura, oroyez- 
moi : c'est ce qui me le fait regretter, et me le {era 
peut-etre revoir un jour." 

The notice of the death of Helvetius, con- 
tained in this last extract, leads us naturally 



136 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



to turn to the passage in M. Grimm in which 
this event is commemorated; and we there 
find a very full and curious account of this 
zealous philosopher. Helvetius was of Dutch 
extraction ; and his father having been chief 
physician to the Queen, the son was speedily 
appointed to the very lucrative situation of 
Farmer-general of the Finances. He was re- 
markably good tempered, benevolent, and 
liberal ; and passed his youth in idle and vo- 
luptuous indulgence, keeping a sort of seraglio 
as a part of his establishment, and exercising 
himself with universal applause in the noble 
science of dancing, in which he attained such 
eminence, that he is said to have several 
times supplied the place of the famous Dupre 
in the ballets at the opera. An unhappy pas- 
sion for literary glory came, however, to dis- 
turb this easy life. The paradoxes and ef- 
frontery of Maupertuis had brought science 
into fashion ; and for a season, no supper was 
thought complete at Paris without a mathe- 
matician. Helvetius, therefore, betook him- 
self immediately to the study of geometry : 
But he could make no hand of it ; and for- 
tunately the rage passed away before he had 
time to expose himself in the eyes of the in- 
itiated. Next came the poetical glory of Vol- 
taire; — and Helvetius instantly resolved to be 
a poet — and did with great labour produce a 
long poem on happiness, which was not pub- 
lished however till after his death, and has 
not improved his chance for immortality. But 
it was the success of the President Montes- 
quieu's celebrated Esprit des Loix, that final- 
ly decided the literary vocation of Helvetius. 
That work appeared in 1749; and in 1750 the 
Farmer-general actually resigned his office ; 
married, retired into the country, spent ten 
long years in digesting his own book De 
V Esprit, by which he fondly expected to rival 
the fame of his illustrious predecessor. In 
this, however, he was wofully disappointed. 
The book appeared to philosophers to be 
nothing but a paradoxical and laborious repe- 
tition of truths and difficulties with which all 
good thinkers had long been familiar ; and it 
probably would have fallen into utter oblivion, 
had it not been for the injudicious clamour 
which was raised against it by the bigots and 
devotees of the court. Poor Helvetius. who 
had meant nothing more than to make him- 
self remarkable, was as much surprised at 
the outcries of the godly, as at the silence 
of the philosophers ; and never perfectly re- 
covered the shock of this double disappoint- 
ment. He still continued, however, his habits 
of kindness and liberality — gave dinners to 
the men of letters when at Paris, and hunted 
and compiled philosophy with great perse- 
verance in the country. His temper was so 
good, that his society could not fail to be 
agreeable ; but his conversation, it seems, was 
not very captivating ; he loved to push every 
matter of discussion to its very last results ; and 
reasoned at times so very loosely and largely, 
as to be in danger of being taken for a person 
very much overtaken with liquor. He died of 
gout in his stomach, at the age of fifty-six; 
andj as an author ; is now completely forgotten. 



Nobody knows a better or a more amiable 
figure in this book, than Madame Geoffrin, 
Active, reasonable, indulgent, and munificent 
beyond example for a woman in private life, 
she laid a sure claim to popularity by taking 
for her maxim the duty of "giving and for- 
giving;" and showed herself so gentle in her 
deportment to children and servants, that if 
she had not been overcome with an unlucky 
passion for intrigue aud notoriety, she might 
have afforded one exception at least to the 
general heartlessness of the society to which 
she belonged. Some of the repartees re- 
corded of her in these volumes, are very 
remarkable. M. de Rulhiere threatened to 
make public, certain very indiscreet remarks 
on the court of Russia, from the sale of which 
he expected great profits. Madame Geoffrin, 
who thought he would get into difficulties by 
taking such a step, offered him a very hand- 
some sum to put his manuscript in the fire. 
He answered her with many lofty and ani- 
mated observations on the meanness and un- 
worthiness of taking money to suppress truth. 
To all which the lady listened w T ith the utmost 
complacency; and merely replied, "Weill 
say yourself how much more you must have." 
Another mot of hers became an established 
canon at all the tables of Paris. The Comte 
de Coigny was wearying her one evening 
with some interminable story, when, upon 
somebody sending for a part of the di&h be- 
fore him, he took a little knife out of his 
pocket, and began to carve, talking all the 
time as before. "Monsieur le Comte," said 
Madame Goeffrin, a little out of patience, 
" at table there should only be large knives 
and short stories. In her old age she was 
seized with apoplexy; and her daughter, 
during her illness, refused access to the phi- 
losophers. When she recovered a little, she 
laughed at the precaution, and made her 
daughter's apology — by saying, "She had 
done like Godfrey of Bouillon — defended her 
tomb from the Infidels." The idea of her 
ending in devotion, however, occasioned much 
merriment and some scandal among her phi- 
losophical associates. 

The name of Marmontel occurs very often 
in this collection ; but it is not attended with 
any distinguished honours. M. Grimm ac- 
cuses him of want of force or passion in his 
style, and of poverty of invention and little- 
ness of genius. He says something, however, 
of more importance on occasion of the first 
representation of that writer's foolish little 
piece, entitled, "Silvain." The courtiers and 
sticklers for rank, he observes, all pretended 
to be mightily alarmed at the tendency of this 
little opera in one act ; and the Due de Noailles 
took the trouble to say, that its plain object 
was to show that a gentleman could do noth- 
ing so amiable as to marry his maid servant, 
and let his cottagers kill his game at their 
pleasure. It is really amusing, continues M. 
Grimm, to observe, how positive many people 
are, that all this is the result of a deep plot 
on the part' of the Encyclopedistes, and that 
this silly farce is the fruit of a solemn con- 
spiracy against the privileged orders, and la 



BARON 1 i GRIMM. 



137 



rapport of the horrible doctrine of universal 
equality. If they would only condescend t< 
consult me, however, he concludes, I caulo 
oblige them with a much simpler, though less 
magnificent solution of the mystery ; the truth 
being, that the extravagance of M. Marmon- 
tel's little plot proceeds neither from his love 
of equality, nor from the commands of an anti- 
social conspiracy, but purely from the poverty 
of his imagination, and his want of talent for 
dramatic composition. It is always much 
more easy to astonish by extravagance, than 
to interest by natural representations; and 
those commonplaces, of love triumphing over 
pride of birth, and benevolence getting the 
better of feudal prejudices, are among the 
most vulgar resources of those who are inca- 
pable of devising incidents at once probable 
and pathetic. 

This was written in the year 1770; — and 
while it serves to show us, that the imputa- 
tion of conspiracies against the throne and 
the altar, of which succeeding times were 
doomed to hear so much, were by no means 
an original invention of the age which gave 
them the greatest encouragement, it may 
help also to show upon what slight founda- 
tion such imputations are usually hazarded. 
Great national changes, indeed, are never the 
result of conspiracies — but of causes laid deep 
and wide in the structure and condition of so- 
ciety. — and which necessarily produce those 
combinations of individuals, who seem to be 
the authors of the revolution when it happens 
to be ultimately brought about by their in- 
strumentality. The Holy Church Philosophic 
of Paris, however, was certainly quite inno- 
cent of any such intention ; and, we verily be- 
lieve, had at no time any deeper views in its 
councils than are expressed in the following- 
extract from its registers. 

" Comme il est d'usage, dans notre sainte Eglise 
philosophique, de nons reunir quelquefois pour don- 
ner aux fideles de salutaires et utiles instructions 
Bur l'e:at actuel de la foi. les progres er bonnes 
ceuvres de nos freres, j'ai l'honneur de vous adres- 
ser les annoiwes et bans qui ont eu lieu a la suite de 
notre dernier sermon." 

" Fie re Thomas fait savoir qu'il a compose un 
Essai sur les Femmes, qui fera un onvrage con- 
siderable L'Eglise estime la putete de mceurs et 
les vertus de frere Thomas; elle craint qu'il ne 
connaisse pas encore assez les femmes ; e\<e lui 
conseille de se lier plus intimement, s'il se peut, 
avec quelques unes des heroines qu'il frequente, 

Eour le plu9 grand bien de son ouvrage ; et, pour 
i plus inland bien de son style, elle le conjure de 
considerer combien, suivant In decouverte de notre 
illustrc patriarohe, l'adjectif affaiblit sou vent le sub- 
stantia quoiqu'il s'y rapporte en cas, en nonibre et 
en genre. 

11 Soeur Necker fait savoir qu'elle donnera tou- 
jours a diner les vendredis : 1 Eglise s'y rendra, 
parce qu'elle. fait cas de sa personne et de celle de 
son epoux ; elle voudrait pouvoir en dire autant de 
6on cuisiuier. 

" Soeur de l'Espinasse fait savoir que sa fortune 
ne lui perms t pas d'ofTrir ni a diner, ni a souper, et 
qu'elle n'en a pas moins d'envie de recevoir chez 
elle les freres qui voudront y venir digerer. L' Eglise 
m'ordonne de lui dire qu'elle s'y rendra, et que, 
ouand on a autant d'esprit et de merite, on peut se 
^>as«er de bean'e et de fortune. 

" MAre GeofTrin fait savoir qu'elle renouvelle les 
defenses et lois prohibitive s des annees precedentes, 
18 



it qu'il ne sera pas plus permis que par le passe de 
>arler chez elle ni d'affaires interieuies ni d'affaires 

jxterieures ; ni d'allaucs de la cour, ni d'affaires do 
aville; ni de paix, ni de guerre; ni de religion, 
ni de gouvernement ; ni de theologie, ni de meta- 
pbysiquc ; ni de grammaire, ni de musique ; ni, en 
general, d'aucune matiere quelconque ; el qu'elle 
conimet dom Burigni, benedictin de robe courte, 
pour faire taire tout le monde, a. cause de sa dex- 
terite, connue, et du grand credit dont il ji-uit, et 
pour etre gronde par elle. en particulier, de toutes 
les contraventions a ces defenses. L'Esdise, con- 
siderant que le silence, et notamment sur les ma- 
tieies dont est question, n'est pas son fort, prornet 
d'obei'r autant qu'elle y sera contrainte par forme 
de violence." 

We hear a great deal, of course, of Diderot, 
in a work of which he was partly the author; 
and it is impossible to deny him the praise 
of ardour, originality, and great occasional 
eloquence. Yet we not only feel neither re- 
spect nor affection for Diderot — but can sel- 
dom read any of his lighter pieces without a 
certain degree of disgust. There is a tone of 
blackguardism — (we really can find no other 
word) — both in his indecency and his pro- 
fanity, which we do not recollect to have met 
with in any other good writer; and which is 
apt, we think, to prove revolting even to those 
who are accustomed to the licence of this 
fraternity. They who do not choose to look 
into his Religi&use for the full illustration of 
this remark — and we advise no one to look 
there for any thing — may find it abundantly, 
though in a less flagrant form, in a little essay 
on women, which is inserted in these volumes 
as a supplement or corrective to the larger 
work of M. Thomas on that subject. We 
must say, however, that the whole tribe of 
French writers who have had any pretensions 
to philosophy for the last seventy years, are 
infected with a species of indelicacy which is 
peculiar, we think, to their nation ; and strikes 
us as more shameful and offensive than any 
other. We do not know very well how to 
describe it, otherwise than by saying, that it 
consists in a strange combination of physical 
science with obscenity, and an attempt to 
unite the pedantic and disgusting details of 
anatomy and physiology, with images of vo- 
luptuousness and sensuality; — an attempt, 
we think, exceedingly disgusting and de- 
basing, but not in the least degree either 
seductive or amusing. Maupertuis and Vol- 
taire, and Helvetius and Diderot, are full of 
this. Buffon and d'Alembert are by no means 
free of it ; and traces of it may even be dis- 
covered in the writings of Rousseau himself. 
We could pardon some details in the Ensile 
— or the Confessions; — but we own it appears 
to us the most nauseous and unnatural of all 
things, to find the divine Julie herself inform- 
ing her cousin, with much complacency, that 
she had at last discovered, that " quoique son 
cceur trop tendre avoit besoin d'amour, sea 
sens n'avoient plus besoin d'un amant." 

The following epigram is a little in the 
taste we have been condemning; — but it has 
the merit of being excessively clever. Ma- 
dame du Chatelet had long lived separate 
from her husband, and was understood to re- 
ceive the homage of two lovers — Voltaire and 
M 2 



\ 



138 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY, 



M. de St. Lambert. She died in childbirth; 
and the following dramatic elegy was circu- 
lated all over Paris the week after that catas- 
trophe. 

u M. de Chatelet. — Ah! ce n'est pas ma 
faute ! 

a M. de Voltaire, — Je Pavais predit ! 

« M. de St. Lambert.— E\\e Pa voulu !» 

Crebillon the younger is naturally brought 
to our recollection by the mention of wit and 
indecency. We have an account of his death, 
and a just and candid estimate of his merits, 
in one of the volumes before us. However 
frivolous and fantastic the style of his novels 
may appear, he had still the merit of invent- 
ing that style, and of adorning it with much 
ingenuity, wit, and character. The taste for 
his writings, it seems, passed away very ra- 
pidly and completely in France ; and long 
before his death, the author of the Sopha, and 
Les Egaremens du Caur et de VEsprit, had 
the mortification to be utterly forgotten by 
the public. M. Grimm thinks this reverse of 
fortune rather unmerited ; and observes, that 
in foreign countries he was still held in esti- 
mation, and that few French productions had 
had such currency in London as the Sopha. 
The reason perhaps may be, that the manners 
and characters which the French at once 
knew to be unnatural, might be mistaken by 
us for true copies of French originals. It is a 
little more difficult, however, to account for 
the fact, that the perusal of his works inspired 
a young lady of good family in this country 
with such a passion for the author, that she 
ran away from her friends, came to Paris, 
married him, and nursed and attended him 
with exemplary tenderness and affection to 
his dying day. But there is nothing but luck, 
good or bad — as M. Grimm sagely observes — 
in this world. The author of a licentious 
novel inspires a romantic passion in a lady of 
rank and fortune, who crosses seas, and 
abandons her family and her native country 
for his sake ; — while the author of the Nouvelle 
Heloise, the most delicate and passionate of 
all lovers that ever existed, is obliged to clap 
up a match with his singularly stupid cham- 
bermaid ! 

Of all the loves, however, that are recorded 
in this chronicle, the loves of Madame du 
Defiant and M. de Ponte-de-Vesle, are the 
most exemplary ; for they lasted upwards of 
fifty years without quarrel or intermission. 
The secret of this wonderful constancy is, at 
all events, worth knowing : and we give it in 
the words of an authentic dialogue between 
this venerable Acme and Septimius. 

" Pont-de-Vesle ? — Madame ? — Oii efes-vous ? 
— Au coin de voire cheminee.— Couche les pieds 
eur les chenets, comme on est chez ses amis? — 
Oui, Madame. — II faut convenir qu'il est pen de 
liaisons aussi anciennes que la no; re. — Cela est 
vrai. — II y a cinquante ans. — Oui, cinquante ans 
passes — Et dans ce long infervalle aucun nuage, 
pas meme I'npparence d'une brouillerie. — C'est ce 
que j'ai toujours admire. — Mais, Pont-de-Vesle, 
cela ne viendrait-il point de ce qu'au fond nous 
avons tonjonrs ete fort indifferens Tun a. l'autre ? — 
Cela se. ponrrait bipn, Madame." 

The evening this veteran admirer died, she 



came rather late to a great supper in the neigh* 
bourhood ; and as it was known that she made 
it a point of honour to attend on him, the 
catastrophe was generally suspected. She 
mentioned it, however, herself, immediately 
on coming in ; — adding, that it was lucky he 
had gone off so early in the evening, as she 
might otherwise have been prevented from 
appearing. She then sate down to table, and 
made a very hearty and merry meal of it ! 

Besides Pont-de-Vesle, however, this cele* 
brated lady had a lover almost as ancient, in 
the President Henault — whom also she had 
the misfortune to survive j though he had the 
complaisance, as well as his predecessor, to 
live to near ninety years for her sake. The 
poor president, however, fell into dotage, be- 
fore his death* and one day, when in that 
state, Madame du Defiant having happened 
to ask him, whether he liked her or Madame 
de Castelmoron the best, he. quite unconscious 
of the person to whom he was speaking, not 
only declared his preference of the absent 
lady, but proceeded to justify it by a most 
feeling and accurate enumeration of the vices 
and defects of his hearer, in which he grew 
so warm and eloquent, that it was quite im- 
possible either to stop him, or to prevent all 
who were present from profiting by the com- 
munication. When Madame de Chatelet died, 
Madame du Defiant testified her grief for the 
most intimate of her female acquaintance, by 
circulating all over Paris, the very next morn- 
ing, the most libellous and venomous attack 
on her person, her understanding, and hei 
morals. When she came to die herself, how- 
ever, she met with just about as much sym- 
pathy as she deserved. Three of her dearest 
friends used to come and play cards every 
evening by the side of her couch — and as she 
chose to die in the middle of a very interest- 
ing game, they quietly played it out — and 
settled their accounts before leaving the apart- 
ment. We hope these little traits go near to 
justify what we ventured to say in the outset, 
of the tendency of large and agreeable society 
to fortify the heart; — at all events, they give 
us a pretty lively idea of the liaisons that 
united kindred souls at Paris. We might add 
to the number several anecdotes of the Presi- 
dent Henault — and of the Baron d'Holbach ? 
who told Helvefiu-s, a little time before the 
death of the latter, that though he had lived 
all his life with irritable and indigent men of 
letters, he could not recollect that he had 
either quarrelled with, or done the smallest 
service to, any one among them. 

There is a great deal of admirable criticism 
in this work, upon the writings and genius of 
almost all the author's contemporaries — Dorat 
Piron, Millot, Bernard, Mirabeau. Moncrif, 
Colardeau, and many others, more or less 
generally known in this country ; nor do we 
know any publication, indeed, so well calcu- 
lated to give a stranger a just and comprehen- 
sive view of the recent literature of France. 
The little we can afford to extract, however, 
must be hung upon names more notorious. * 

The publication of a stupid journal of Mon- 
taigne's Travels in Italy gives M. Grimm an 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



139 



opportunity of saying something of the Essays 
of that most agreeable veteran. Nothing can 
be more just than the greater part of the fol- 
io wing observations. 

" Quoi-qu'il y ait dans ses Essais une infinite de 
faits d'anecdotes et de citations, il n'est pas difficile 
de s'appercevoir que ses etudes n'etaient ni vastes 
ni profondes. II n'avait guere lu que quelqnes po- 
etes latins, quelques livres de voyage, et son Seneque 
et son Plutarque.'' 

" De tons les auteurs qui nous restent de Pan- 
tiquite, Plutarque est, sans contredit, celui qui a 
recueilli le plus de verites de fait et de speculation. 
Ses oeavres sont une mine i.nepuisable de lumieres 
et de connaissances : c'est vraiment 1' Encyclopedic 
des anciens. Montaigne nous en a donne la fleur, 
et il y a ajoute les reflexions les plus fines, et stir- 
tout les resultats les plus secrets de sa propre ex- 
perience. II me semble done que si j'avais a donner 
une idee de ses Essais, je dirais en deux mots que 
c'est un commentaire que Montaigne fit sur lui- 
meme en meditant les ecrits de Plutarque. . Je 
pense encore que je dirais mal: ce serait lui preter 
un projet. . .Montaigne n'en avait aucun. En met- 
tant la plume a la main, il parait n'avoir songe qu'au 
plaisir de causer familierement avec son lecteur. II 
lui rend compte de ses lectures, de ses pensees, de 
ses reflexions, sans suite, sans dessein : il vent avoir 
le plaisir de penser tout haut, et il en jouit a son 
aise. II cite souvent Plutarque, parce que Plu- 
tarque. etait son livre favori. La seule loi qu'il 
semble s'etre prescrite, c'est de ne jamais parler 
que de ce qui l'interessait vivemeut : de la I'energie 
et la vivafite de ses expressions, la grace et I'origi- 
nalite de son langage. Son esprit a cette assurance 
et cette franchise aimable que Ton ne trouve que 
dans ces enf'ans bien nes, dont la contrainte du 
monde et de l'education ne gena point encore les 
mouvemens faciles et naturels." 

After a still farther encomium on the sound 
sense of this favourite writer, M. Grimm con- 
cludes — 

" Personne n'a-t-il done pense plus que Mon- 
taigne? Je l'ignore. Mais ce que je crois bien 
savoir, c'est que personne n'a dit avec plus de sim- 
plicite ce qu'U a senti, ce qu'il a pense. On ne peut 
rien ajouter a l'eloge qu'il a fait, lui-meme de son 
ouvrage ; c' est ici ten livre de bonne foi. Cela est 
divin. et cela est exact." 

11 Qu'est-ce que toutes les connaissances hu- 
maines? le cercle en est si borne ! . . . . Et depuis 
quatre mille ans, qu'a-t-on fait pour I'ctendre? 
Montesquieu a dit quelque part, qu'il travaillait a 
Mi livre de dome pases, qui contiendrait. tout ce. que 
nous savons 'sur la Metaphysique, la Politique et la 
Morale, et tout ce que de grands auteurs ont oublie 
datis les volumes quails o?it donnes sur ces scie?2ces- 

la Je suis ties sericusement persuade qu'il 

ne tenait qu'a lui d'accomplir ce grand projet." 

Montesquieu, Buffon, and Raynal are the 
only authors, we think, of whom M. Grimm 
speaks with serious respect and admiration. 
Great praise is lavished upon Robertson's 
Charles V. — Young's Night Thoughts are said, 
and with justice, to be rather ingenious than 
pathetic ; and to show more of a gloomy im- 
agination than a feeling heart. — Thomson's 
Seasons are less happily stigmatized as ex- 
cessively ornate and artificial, and said to 
stand in the same relation to the Georgics, 
that the Lady of Loretto, with all her tawdry 
finery, bears to the naked graces of the Venus 
de Medici. — Johnson's Life of Savage is ex- 
tolled as exceedingly entertaining — though 
the author is laughed at, in the true Parisian 
!as f e, for T >ot having made a jest f f his hero. 



— Ha wkes worth's Voyages are also very much 
commended ; and Sir William Jones' letter to 
Anqmtil du Perron, is said to be capable, with 
a few retrenchments, of being made worthy 
of the pen of the Patriarch himself. — Mrs. 
Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare is also ap- 
plauded to the full extent of its merits; and, 
indeed, a very laudable degree of candour and 
moderation is observed as to our national taste 
in the drama. — Shakespeare, he observes, ia 
fit for us, and Racine for them ; and each 
should be satisfied with his lot. and would do 
well to keep to his own national manner. 
When we attempt to be regular and dignified. 
we are merely cold and stiff; and when they 
aim at freedom and energy, they become ab- 
surd and extravagant. The celebrity of Gar- 
rick seems to have been scarcely less at Paris 
than in London, — their greatest actor being 
familiarly designated " Le Garrick Francois." 
His powers of pantomime, indeed, were uni- 
versally intelligible, and seem to have made 
a prodigious impression upon the theatrical 
critics of France. But his authority is quoted 
by M. Grimm, for the observation, that there 
is not the smallest affinity in the tragic dec- 
lamation of the two countries ; — so that an 
actor who could give the most astonishing ef- 
fect to a passage of Shakespeare, would not, 
though perfectly master of French, be able to 
guess how a single line of Racine should be 
spoken on the stage. 

We cannot leave the subject of the drama, 
however, without observing, with what an 
agreeable surprise we discovered in M. Grimm, 
an auxiliary in that battle which we have for 
some time waged, though not without trepida- 
tion, against the theatrical standards of France, 
and in defence of our own more free and irreg- 
ular drama. While a considerable part of our 
own men of letters, carried away by the author- 
ity and supposed unanimity of the continental 
judges, were disposed to desert the cause of 
Shakespeare and Nature, and to recognize 
Racine and Voltaire, as the only true modele 
of dramatic excellence, it turns out that the 
greatest Parisian critic, of that best age of 
criticism, was of opinion that the very idea 
of dramatic excellence had never been de- 
veloped in France ; and that, from the very 
causes which we have formerly specified, 
there was neither powerful passion nor real 
nature on their stage. After giving some ac- 
count of a play of La Harpe's, he observes, 
"I am more and more confirmed in the 
opinion, that true tragedy, sveh as has never 
yet existed in France, must, after all. be writ- 
ten in prose; or at least can never accommo- 
date itself to the pompous and rhetorical tone 
of our stately versification. The ceremonious 
and affected dignity which belongs to such 
compositions, is quite inconsistent with the 
just imitation of nature, and destructive of all 
true pathos. It may be very fine and very po- 
etical; but it is not dramatic: — and accord- 
ingly I have no hesitation in maintaining, that 
all our celebrated tragedies belong to the epic 
and not to the dramatic division of poetry. 
The Greeks and Romans had a dramatic 
verse, which did not interfere with simplicity 



140 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



or famili irity of diction ; but as we have none, 
we must make up our minds to compose our 
tragedies in prose, if we ever expect to have 
any that may deserve the name. What then ?" 
he continues; "must we throw our Racines 
and Voltaires ill the fire? — by no means; — 
on the contrary, we must keep them, and 
study and admire them more than ever; — 
but with right conceptions of their true nature 
and merit — as masterpieces of poetry, and 
reasoning, and description ; — as the first works 
of the first geniuses that ever adorned any 
nation under heaven : — But not as tragedies. 
— not as pieces intended to exhibit natural 
characters and passions speaking their own 
language, and to prod nee that terrible impres- 
sion which such pieces alone can produce. 
Considered in that light, their coldness and 
childishness will be immediately apparent ; — 
and though the talents of the artist will al- 
ways be conspicuous, their misapplication 
and failure will not be less so. With the 
prospect that lies before us, the best thing, 
perhaps, that we can do is to go on, boasting 
of the unparalleled excellence we have at- 
tained. But how speedily should onr boastings 
be silenced if the present race of children 
should be succeeded by a generation of men I 
Here is a theory," concludes the worthy Baron, 
a little alarmed it would seem at his own te- 
merity, "which it would be easy to confirm 
and illustrate much more completely — if a 
man had a desire to be stoned to death before 
the door of the Theatre Francois I But, in the 
mean time, till I am better prepared for the 
honours of martyrdom, I must entreat you to 
keep the secret of my infidelity to yourself." 

Diderot holds very nearly the same lan- 
guage. After a long dissertation upon the 
difference between real and artificial dignity, 
he proceeds, — " What follows, then, from all 
this — but that tragedy is still to be invented 
in France ; and that the ancients, with all their 
faults, were probably much nearer inventing 
it than we have been ? — Noble actions and 
sentiments, with simple and familiar language, 
are among its first elements ; — and I strongly 
suspect, that for these two hundred years, we 
have mistaken the stateliness of Madrid for 
the heroism of Rome. If once a man of ge- 
nius shall venture to give to his characters 
and to his diction the simplicity of ancient 
dignity, plays and players will be very differ- 
ent things from what they are now. But how 
much of this," he adds also in a fit of sympa- 
thetic terror, " could I venture to say to any 
body but you ! I should be pelted in the 
streets, if I were but suspected of the blas- 
phemies I have just uttered." 

With the assistance of two such allies, we 
shall renew the combat against the Continental 
dramatists with fresh spirits and confidence; 
and shall probably find an early opportunity 
to brave the field, upon that important theme. 
In the mean time we shall only remark, that 
we suspect there is something more than an 
analogy between the government and political 
constitution of the two countries, and the char- 
acter of their drama. The tragedy of the 
Continent is conceived ii. the very genius and 



spirit of absolute monarchy — the same artifi- 
cial stateliness — the same slow moving of few 
persons — the same suppression of ordinary 
emotions, and ostentatious display of lofty 
sentiments, and. finally, the same jealousy of 
the interference of lower agents, and the same 
horror of vulgarity and tumult. When we 
consider too. that in the countries where this 
form of the drama has been established, the 
Court is the chief patron of the theatre, and 
courtiers almost its only supporters, we shall 
probably be inclined to think that this uni- 
formity of character is not a mere accidental 
coincidence, but that the same causes which 
have stamped those attributes on the serious 
hours of its rulers, have extended them to 
those mimic representations which were orig- 
inally devised for their amusement. In Eng- 
land, again, our drama has all along partaken 
of the mixed nature of our government, — 
persons of all degrees take a share in both, 
each in his own peculiar character and fashion : 
and the result has been, in both, a much 
greater activity, variety, and vigour, than was 
ever exhibited under a more exclusive system. 
In England, too, the stage has in general been 
dependent on the nation at large, and not on 
the favour of the Court; — and it is natwal to 
suppose that the character of its exhibitions 
has been affected by a due consideration of 
that of the miscellaneous patron "whose feel- 
ings it was its business to gratify and reflect. 
After having said so much about the stage, 
we cannot afford 100m either for the quarrels 
or witticisms of the actors, which are report- 
ed at great length in these volumes — or for 
the absurdities, however ludicrous, of the 
" Diou de Danse" as old Vestris ycleped him- 
self — or even the famous " affaire du Mcnuet" 
which distracted the whole court of France 
at the marriage of the late King. We can 
allow only a sentence indeed to the elaborate 
dissertation in which Diderot endeavours to 
prove that an actor is all the worse for having 
any feeling of the passions he represents, and 
is never so sure to agitate the souls of his 
hearers as when his own is perfectly at ease. 
We are persuaded that this is not correctly 
true; — though it might take more distinctions 
than the subject is worth, to fix precisely 
where the truth lies. It is plain we think, 
however, that a good actor must have a capa- 
city, at least, of all the passions whose lan- 
guage he mimics, — and we are rather inclined 
to think, that he must also have a transient 
feeling of them, -whenever his minrcry is 
very successful. That the emotion should be 
very short-lived, and should give way to tri- 
vial or comic sensations, with very little in- 
terval, affoids but a slender presumption 
against its reality, w T hen we consider how 
rapidly such contradictory feelings succeed 
each other, in light minds, in the real business 
of life. That real passion, again, never -would 
be so graceful and dignified as the counter- 
feited passion of the stage, is either an im- 
peachment of the accuracy of the copy, or a 
contradiction in terms. The real passion of a 
noble and dignified character must always be 
dignified and graceful, — and if Caesar, wheH 



BARON DE GRIMM. 



141 



actually bleeding in the Senate-house, folded 
his robe around him, that he might fall with 
decorum at the feet of his assassins, why- 
should we say that it is out of nature for a 
player, both to sympathise with the passions 
of his' hero, and to think of the figure he 
makes in the eyes of the spectators? Strong 
conception is, perhaps in every case, attended 
with a temporary belief of the reality of its 
objects; — and it is impossible for any one to 
copy with tolerable success the symptoms of 
a powerful emotion, without a very lively ap- 
prehension and recollection of its actual pre- 
sence. We have no idea, we own, that the 
copy can ever be given without some partici- 
pation in the emotion itself — or that it is pos- 
sible to repeat pathetic words, and with the 
true tone and gestures of passion, with the 
same indifference with which a schoolboy re- 
peats his task, or a juggler his deceptions. 
The feeling, we believe, is often very mo- 
mentary; and it is this which has misled 
those who have doubted of its existence. 
But there are many strong feelings equally 
fleeting and undeniable. The feelings of the 
spectators, in the theatre, though frequently 
more keen than they experience anywhere 
else, are in general infinitely less durable than 
those excited by real transactions ; and a lu- 
dicrous incident or blunder in the perform- 
ance, will carry the whole house, in an instant, 
from sobbing to ungovernable laughter : And 
even in real life, we have every day occasion 
to observe, how quickly the busy, the dissi- 
pated, the frivolous, and the very youthful, 
can pass from one powerful and engrossing 
emotion to another. The daily life of Vol- 
taire, we think, might have furnished Diderot 
with as many and as striking instances of the 
actual succession of incongruous emotions, as 
he has collected from the theatrical life of 
Sophie Arnoud, to prove that one part of the 
succession must necessarily have been ficti- 
tious. 

There are various traits of the oppressions 
and abuses of the government, incidentally 
noticed in this work, which maintains, on the 
whole, a very aristocratical tone of politics. 
One of the most remarkable relates to no less 
a person than the Marechal de Saxe. This 
great warrior, who is known never to have 
taken the field without a small travelling se- 
raglio in his suite, had engaged a certain 
Madlle. Chantilly to attend him in one of his 
campaigns. The lady could not prudently 
decline the honour of the invitation, because 
she was very poor; but her heart and soul 
were devoted to a young pastry cook of the 
name of Favart, for whose sake she at last 
broke out of the Marshal's camp, and took 
refuge in the arms of her lover ; who reward- 
ed her heroism by immediately making her 
his wife. The history of the Marshal's la- 
mentation on finding himself deserted, is 
purely ridiculous, and is very well told ; but 
our feelings take a very different character, 
when, upon reading a little farther, we find 
that this illustrious person had the baseness 
and brutality to apply to his sovereign for a 
lettre de cachet to force this unfortunate woman 



from the arms of her lawful husband, and to 
compel her to submit again to his embraces, — 
and that tht^ court was actually guilty of the 
incredible atrocity of granting such an order! 
It was not only granted, M. Grimm assures 
us, but executed, — and this poor creature was 
dragged from the house of her husband, and 
conducted by a file of grenadiers to the quar- . 
ters of his highness, where she remained till 
his death, the unwilling and disgusted victim 
of his sensuality ! It is scarcely possible to 
regret the subversion of a form of govern- 
ment, that admitted, if but once in a century, 
of abuses so enormous as this: But the tone 
in which M. Grimm notices it, as a mere foi- 
blesse on the part of le Grand Maurice, gives 
us reason to think that it was by no means 
without a parallel in the contemporary history. 
In England, we verily believe, there never 
was a time in which it would not have pro- 
duced insurrection or assassination. 

One of the most remarkable passages in 
this philosophical journal, is that which con- 
tains the author's estimate of the advantages 
and disadvantages of philosophy. Not being 
much more of an optimist than ourselves, M. 
Grimm thinks that good and evil are pretty 
fairly distributed to the different generations 
of men; and that, if an age of philosophy be 
happier in some respects than one of ignor 
ance and prejudice, there are particulars in 
which it is not so fortunate. Philosophy, he 
thinks, is the necessary fruit of a certain ex- 
perience and a certain maturity' ; and implies, 
in nations as well as individuals, the extinc- 
tion of some of the pleasures as well as the 
follies of early life. All nations, he observes, 
have begun with poetry, and ended with phi- 
losophy — or, rather, have passed through the 
region of philosophy in their way to that of 
stupidity and dotage. They lose the poetical 
passion, therefore, before they acquire the 
taste for speculation ; and, with it, they lose 
all faith in those Allusions, and all interest in 
those trifles which make the happiness of the 
brightest portion of our existence. If, in this 
advanced stage of society, men are less brutal, 
they are also less enthusiastic ; — if they are 
more habitually beneficent, they have less 
warmth of affection. They are delivered in- 
deed from the yoke of many prejudices; but 
at the same time deprived of many motives 
of action. They are more prudent, but more 
anxious — are more affected with the general 
interests of mankind, but feel less for their 
neighbours; and, while curiosity takes the 
place of admiration, are more enlightened, but 
far less delighted with the universe in which 
they are placed. 

The effect of this philosophical spirit on the 
arts, is evidently unfavourable on the whole. 
Their end and object is delight, and that of 
philosophy is truth; and the talent that seeks 
to instruct, will rarely condescend to aim 
merely at pleasing. Racine and Moliere, and 
Boileau, were satisfied with furnishing amuse- 
ment to such men as Louis XIV., and Colbert, 
and Turenne ; but the geniuses of the pres- 
ent day pretend to nothing less than enlight- 
ening their rulers; and the same young men 



142 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



who would Jormerly have made their deb&t 
with a. pastoral or a tragedy, now generally 
leave college with a new system of philoso- 
phy and government in their portfolios. The 
very metaphysical, prying, and expounding- 
turn of mind that is nourished by the spirit 
of philosophy, unquestionably deadens our 
sensibility to those enjoyments which it con- 
verts into subjects of speculation. It busies 
itself in endeavouring to understand those 
emotions which a simpler age was contented 
with enjoying; — and seeking, like Psyche, to 
have a distinct view of the sources of our 
pleasures, is punished, like her, by their in- 
stant annihilation. 

Religion, too, continues M. Grimm, consid- 
ered as a source of enjoyment or consolation 
in this world, has suffered from the progress 
of philosophy, exactly as the fine arts and af- 
fections have done. It has no doubt become 
infinitely more rational, and less liable to 
atrocious perversions ; but then it has also 
become much less enchanting and ecstatic — 
much less prolific of sublime raptures, bea- 
tific visions, and lofty enthusiasm. It has 
suffered, in short, in the common disenchant- 
ment ; and the same cold spirit which has 
chased so many lovely illusions from the earth, 
has dispeopled heaven of half its marvels and 
its splendours. 

We could enlarge with pleasure upon these 
just and interesting speculations; but it is 
time we should think of drawing this article 
to a close ; and we must take notice of a very 
extraordinary transaction which M. Grimm 
has recorded with regard to the final publica- 
tion of the celebrated Encyclopedie. The re- 
daction of this great work, it is known, was 
ultimately confided to Diderot ; who thought 
it best, after the disturbances that had been 
excited by the separate publication of some 
of the earlier volumes, to keep up the whole 
of the last ten till the printing was finished; 
and then to put forth the complete work at 
once. A bookseller of the name of Breton, 
who w r as a joint proprietor of the work, had 
the charge of the mechanical part of the con- 
cern ; but, being wholly illiterate, and indeed 
without pretensions to literature, had of 
course no concern with the correction, or even 
the perusal of the text. This person, how- 
ever, who had heard of the clamours and 
threatened prosecutions which were excited 
by the freedom of some articles in the earlier 
volumes, took it into his head, that the value 
and security of the property might be improv- 
ed, by a prudent castigation of the remaining 
parts ; and accordingly, after receiving from 
Diderot the last proofs and revises of the dif- 
ferent articles, took them home, and, with the 
assistance of another tradesman, scored out, 
altered, and suppressed, at their own discre- 
tion, all the passages which they in their wis- 
dom apprehended might give offence to the 
court, or the church, or any other persons in 
authority — giving themselves, for the most 
part, no sort of trouble to connect the disjoint- 
ed passages that were left after these mutila- 
tions — and sometimes soldering them together 
with masses of their own stupid vulgarity. 



After these precious ameliorations were com- 
pleted, they threw of the full impression; 
and. to make all sure and irremediable, con- 
signed both the manuscript and the original, 
proofs to the flames ! Such, says M. Grimm, 
is the true explanation of that mass of im- 
pertinences, contradictions, and incoherences, 
with which all the world has been struck, in 
the last ten volumes of this great compilation. 
It was not discovered till the very eve of the 
publication ; when Diderot having a desire to 
look back to one of his own articles, printed 
some years before, with difficulty obtained a 
copy of the sheets containing it from the 
warehouse of M. Breton — and found, to his 
horror and consternation, that it had been gar- 
bled and mutilated, in the manner we have 
just stated. His rage and vexation on the 
discovery, are well expressed in a long letter 
to Breton, which M. Grimm has engrossed in 
his register. The mischief however was ir- 
remediable, without an intolerable delay and 
expense ; and as it was impossible for the 
editor to take any steps to bring Breton to 
punishment for this "horrible forfait," with- 
out openly avowing the intended publication 
of a work which the court only tolerated by 
affecting ignorance of its existence, it was at 
last resolved, with many tears of rage and 
vexation, to keep the abomination secret — at 
least till it was proclaimed by the indignant 
denunciations of the respective authors whose 
works had been subjected to such cruel mu- 
tilation. The most surprising part of the 
story however is, that none of these authors 
ever made any complaint about the matter. 
Whether the number of 3-ears that had elaps- 
ed since the time when most of them had 
furnished their papers, had made them in- 
sensible of the alterations — whether they be- 
lieved the change effected by the base hand 
of Breton to have originated with Diderot, 
their legal censor — or that, in fact, the altera- 
tions were chiefly in the articles of the said 
Diderot himself, we cannot pretend to say; 
but M. Grimm assures us, that, to his aston- 
ishment and that of Diderot, the mutilated 
publication, when it at last made its appear- 
ance, was very quietly received by the in- 
jured authors as their authentic production, 
and apologies humbly made, by some of them, 
for imperfections that had been created by 
the beast of a publisher. 

There are many curious and original anec- 
dotes of the Empress of Russia in this book ; 
and as she always appeared to advantage 
where munificence and clemency to individu- 
als were concerned, they are certainly calcu- 
lated to give us a very favourable impression 
of that extraordinary woman. We can only 
afford room now for one, which characterises 
the nation as well as its sovereign. A popu- 
lar poet, of the name of Sumarokoff, had 
quarrelled with the leading actress at Moscow, 
and protested that she should never again 
have the honour to perform in any of his tra- 
gedies. The Governor of Moscow, however, 
not being aware of this theatrical feud, 
thought fit to order one of SumarokofT's trage- 
dies for representation, and also to command 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIER1. 



143 



the services of the offending actress on the 
occasion. Sumarokoff did not venture to take 
any step against his Excellency the Gover- 
nor; but when the heroine advanced in full 
Muscovite costume on the stage, the indig- 
nant poet rushed forward from behind the 
scenes, seized her reluctantly by the collar 
and waist, and tossed her furiously from the 
boards. He then went home, and indited two 
querulous and sublime epistles to the Em- 
press. Catherine, in the midst of her gigantic 
schemes of conquest and improvement, had 
the patience to sit down and address the fol- 
lowing good-humoured and sensible exhorta- 
tion to the disordered bard. 

"Monsieur SumarokofF, j'ai ete fort etonnee de 
votre leitre dn 28 Janvier, et encore plus de celie 
du premier Kevrier. Toutes deux coniiennent, a 
ce quM me semble, des plaintes contre la Belmon- 
tia qui pourtant n'a fait que suivre les ordres du 
comte Soltikoff. Le feld-marechal a desire de voir 
representer votre tragedie; cela vous fait honneur. 
II eiait convenablede vous conformer au desirde la 
premiere personne en autorite a Moscou ; mais si 
elle a jugc a propos d'ordonner que cetie piece fut 
representee, il fallait executer sa volonte sans con- 
testation. Je crois que vous savez mieux que per- 
sonne combien de respect meritent des homines qui 
ont servi avec gloire, et dont la tete est couverie de 
cheveux blancs; c'est pourquoi je vous conseille 
d'eviter de pareilles disputes a l'avenir. Par ce 
moyen vous conserverez la tranquillite d'ame qui 
est necessaire pour vos ouvrages, et il me sera tou- 
jours plus agreable devoir les passions representees 
dans vos drames que de les lire dans vos lettres. 

"Au surplus, je suis votre afFeetionnee. 

Signe Catherine." 

" Je conseille," adds 'M. Grimm, "a tout min- 
istre charge du departement des lettres de cachet, 
d'enregistrer ce formulaire a son greffe, et a tout 
hasard de n'en jamais delivrer d'autres aux poetes 
et a. tout ce qui a droit d'etre du genre irritable, 
c'est-a-dire enfant et fou par etat. Apres cette 
lettre qui nierile peut-etre autant l'immortalite que 
les monumens de la sagesse et de la gloire du regne 
actuel de la Russie, je meurs de peur de m'atTermir 
dans la pensee heretique que l'esprit ne gate jamais 
rien, meme sur le trone." 

But it is at last necessary to close these en- 
tertaining volumes, — though we have not 
been able to furnish our readers with any 
thing like a fair specimen of their various and 



miscellaneous contents. Whoever wishes to 
see the economist wittily abused — to read a 
full and picturesque account of the tragical 
rejoicings that filled Paris with mourning at 
the marriage of the late King — to learn how 
Paul Jones was a writer of pastorals and love 
songs — or how they made carriages of leather, 
and evaporated diamonds in 1772 — to trace 
the debut of Madame de Stael as an author at 
the age of twelve, in the year ! — to un- 
derstand M. Grimm's notions on suicide and 
happiness — to know in what the unique charm 
of Madlle. Thevenin consisted — and in what 
maimer the dispute between the patrons of 
the French and the Italian music was con- 
ducted — will do well to peruse the five thick 
volumes, in which these, and innumerable 
other matters of equal importance are dis- 
cussed, with the talent and vivacity with 
which the reader must have been struck, in 
the least of the foregoing extracts. 

We add but one trivial remark, which is 
forced upon us, indeed, at almost every page 
of this correspondence. The profession of lit- 
erature must be much wholesomer in France 
than in any other country: — for though the 
volumes before us may be regarded as a great 
literary obituary, and record the deaths, we 
suppose, of more than an hundred persons of 
some note in the world of letters, we scarcely 
meet with an individual who is less than 
seventy or eighty years of age — and no very 
small proportion actually last till near ninety 
or an hundred — although the greater part of 
them seem neither to have lodged so high, 
nor lived so low, as their more active and ab- 
stemious brethren in other cities. M. Grimm 
observes that, by a remarkable fatality, Eu- 
rope was deprived, in the course of little more 
than six months, of the splendid and com- 
manding talents of Rousseau, Voltaire, Haller, 
Linnaeus, Heidegger. Lord Chatham, and Le 
Kain — a constellation of genius, he adds, that 
when it set to us, must have carried a dazzling 
light into the domains of the King of Terrors, 
and excited no small alarm in his ministers — 
if they bear any resemblance to the ministers 
of other sovereigns. 



(Janaara, 1810.) 



Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Vic 



tor Alfieri. Written by Himself. 2 vols. 8vo. 
pp." 614. London: 1810. 



This book contains the delineation cf an 
extraordinary and not very engaging charac- 
ter; and an imperfect sketch of the rise and 
progress of a great poetical genius. It is de- 
serving of notice in both capacities — but 
chiefly in the first; as there probably never 
was an instance in which the works of an 
author were more likely to be influenced by 
his personal peculiarities. Pride and enthu- 
siasm — irrepressible vehemence and ambition 
—and an arrogant, fastidious, and somewhat 
narrow system of taste and opinions, were the 



great leading features in the mind of Alfieri. 
Strengthened, and in some degree produced, 
by a loose and injudicious education, those 
traits were still further developed by the pre- 
mature and protracted indulgences of a very 
dissipated youth; and when, at last, .they ad- 
mitted of an application to study, imparted 
their own character of impetuosity to those 
more meritorious exertions : — converted a 
taste into a passion; and left him, for a great 
part of his life, under the influence of a true 
and irresistible inspiration. Every thing in 



144 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



him, indeed, appears to have been passion and 
ungovemed impulse; and, while he was 
raised above the common level of his degene- 
rate countrymen by a stern and self-willed 
haughtiness, that might have become an an- 
cient Roman, he was chiefly distinguished 
from other erect spirits by the vehemence 
which formed the basis of his character, and 
by the uncontrolled dominion which he al- 
lowed to his various and successive propensi- 
ties. So constantly and entirely, indeed, was 
he under the. influence of these domineering 
attachments, that his whole life and character 
might be summed up by describing him as 
the victim, successively, of a passion for 
horses — a passion for travelling — a passion for 
literature — and a passion for what he called 
independence. 

The memoirs of such a life, and the con- 
fessions of such a man, seem to hold out a 
promise of no common interest and amuse- 
ment. Yet, though they are here presented 
to us with considerable fulness and apparent 
fidelity, we cannot say that we have been 
much amused or interested by the perusal. 
There is a proud coldness in the narrative, 
which neither invites sympathy, nor kindles 
the imagination. The author seems to dis- 
dain giving himself en spectacle to his readers ; 
and chronicles his various acts of extrava- 
gance and fits of passion, -with a sober and 
languid gravity, to which we can recollect no 
parallel. In this review of the events and 
feelings of a life of adventure and agitation, 
he is never once betrayed into the genuine 
language of emotion ; but dwells on the scenes 
of his childhood without tenderness, and on 
the struggles and tumults of his riper years 
without any sort of animation. We look in 
vain through the whole narrative for one 
gleam of that magical eloquence by which 
Rousseau transports us into the scenes he de- 
scribes, and into the heart which responded 
to those scenes, — or even for a trait of that 
social garrulity which has enabled Marmontel 
and Cumberland to give a grace to obsolete 
anecdote, and to people the whole space 
around them with living pictures of the beings 
among whom they existed. There is not one 
character attempted, from beginning to end 
of this biography ; — which is neither lively, in 
short, nor eloquent — neither playful, impas- 
sioned, nor sarcastic. Neither is it a mere 
unassuming outline of the author's history and 
publications, like the short notices of Hume 
or Smith. It is, on the contrary, a pretty co- 
pious and minute narrative of all his feelings 
and adventures; and contains, as we should 
suppose, a tolerably accurate enumeration of 
his migrations, prejudices, and antipathies. It 
is not that he does not condescend to talk 
about trifling things, but that he will not talk 
about them in a lively or interesting manner; 
and systematically declines investing any part 
of his statement with those picturesque de- 
tails, and that warm colouring, by which alone 
the story of an individual can often excite 
much interest among strangers. Though we 
have not been able to see the original of these 
Memoirs, we will venture to add, that they 



are by no means well written; and that they 
will form no exception to the general obser- 
vation, that almost all Italian prose is feeblo 
and deficient in precision. There is some- 
thing, indeed, quite remarkable in the wordi- 
ness of most of the modern writers in this 
language, — the very copiousness and smooth- 
ness of which seems to form an apology for 
the want of force or exactness — and to hide, 
with its sweet and uniform flow, both from 
the writer and the reader, that penury of 
thought, and looseness of reasoning, which 
are so easily detected wdien it is rendered into 
a harsher dialect. Unsatisfactory, however, 
as they are in many particulars, it is still im- 
possible to peruse the memoirs of such a man 
as Alfieri without interest and gratification. 
The traits of ardour and originality that are 
disclosed through all the reserve and gravity 
of the style, beget a continual expectation and 
curiosity; and even those parts of the story 
which seem to belong rather to his youth, 
rank, and education, than to his genius or pe- 
culiar character, acquire a degree of import- 
ance, from considering how far those very 
circumstances may have assisted the forma- 
tion, and obstructed the development of that 
character and genius; and in what respects 
its peculiarities may be referred to the obsta- 
cles it had to encounter, in misguidance, 
passion, and prejudice. 

Alfieri was born at Asti, in Piedmont, of 
noble and rich, but illiterate parents, in Janu- 
ary 1749. The history of his childhood, 
which fills five chapters, contains nothing 
very remarkable. The earliest thing he re- 
members, is being fed with sweetmeats by 
an old uncle with square-toed shoes. He was 
educated at home by a good-natured, stupid 
priest ; and having no brother of his own age, 
was without any friend or companion for the 
greater part of his childhood. When about 
seven years old, he falls in love with the 
smooth faces of some male novices in a neigh- 
bouring church ; and is obliged to walk about 
with a green net on his hair, as a punishment 
for fibbing. To the agony which he endured 
from this infliction, he ascribes his scrupulous 
adherence to truth through the rest of his life; 
— all this notwithstanding, he is tempted to 
steal a fan from an old lady in the family, 
and grows silent, melancholy, and reserved ; 
— at last, when about ten years of age, he is 
sent to the academy at Turin. 

This migration adds but little to the interest 
of the narrative, or the improvement of the 
writer. The academy was a great, ill-regu- 
lated establishment; in one quarter of which 
the pages of the court, and foreigners of dis- 
tinction, were indulged in every sort of dissi- 
pation — while the younger pupils were stowed 
into filthy cells, ill fed, and worse educated. 
There he learned a little Latin, and tried, in 
vain, to acquire the elements of mathematics; 
for, after the painful application of several 
months, he was never able to comprehend 
the fourth proposition of Euclid ; and found 5 
he says, all his life after, that he had "a com- 
pletely anti-geometrical head/' From the 
bad diet, and preposterously early hours of 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIERI. 



145 



the academy, he soon fell into wretched 
health, and. growing more melancholy and 
solitary than ever, became covered over with 
sores and ulcers. Even in this situation, 
however, a little glimmering of literary ambi- 
tion became visible. He procured a copy of 
Ariosto from a voracious schoolfellow, by giv- 
ing up to him his share of the chickens which 
fonned their Sunday regale ; and readMetas- 
tasio and Gil Bias with great ardour and de- 
light. The inflammability of his imagination, 
however, was more strikingly manifested in 
the effects of the first opera to which he was 
admitted, when he was only about twelve 
years of age. 

" This varied and enchanting music," he ob- 
serves, sunk deep into my soul, and made the most 
astonishing impression on my imagination ; — it agi- 
tated the inmost recesses of my heart to such a 
degree, that for several weeks I experienced the 
most profound melancholy, which was not, how- 
ever,, wholly unattended with pleasure. I became 
tired and disgusted with my studies, while at the 
same time the most wild and whimsical ideas took 
such possession of my mind, as would have led me 
to portray them in the most impassioned verses, 
had I not been wholly unacquainted with the true 
nature of my own feelings. It was the first time 
music had produced such a powerful effect on my 
mind. I had never experienced any thing similar, 
and it long remained engraven on my memory. 
When I recollect the feelings excited by the repre- 
sentation of the grand operas, at which I was pre- 
sent during several carnivals, and compare them 
with those which I now experience, on returning 
from the performance of a piece I have not wit- 
nessed for some time, I am fully convinced that 
nothing acts so powerfully on my mind as all spe- 
cies of music, and particularly the sound of female 
voices, and of contro-alto. Nothing excites more 
various or terrific sensations in my mind. Thus 
the plots of the greatest number of my tragedies 
were either formed while listening to music, or a 
few hours afterwards." — p. 71 — 73. 

With this tragic and Italian passion for 
Music, he had a sovereign contempt and ab- 
horrence for Dancing. His own account of 
the origin of this antipathy, and of the first 
rise of those national prejudices, which he 
never afterwards made any effort to over- 
come ; is among the most striking and charac- 
teristic passages in the earlier part of the 
story. 

"To the natural hatred I had to dancing, was 
joined an invincible antipathy towards my master 
— a Frenchman newly arrived from Paris. He 
possessed a certain air of polite assurance, which, 
joined to his ridiculous motions and absurd dis- 
course, greatly increased the innate aversion I felt 
towards this frivolous art. So unconquerable was 
this aversion, that, after leaving school, I could 
never be prevailed on to join in any dance what- 
ever. The very name of this amusement still 
makes me shudder, and laugh at the same time — 
a circumstance by no means unusual with me. I 
attribute, also, in a great measure, to this dancing- 
master the unfavourable, and perhaps erroneous, 
opinion I have formed of the French people! who, 
nevertheless, it must be confessed, possess many 
agreeable and estimable qualities. But it is diffi- 
cult to weaken or efface impressions received in 
early youth. Two other causes also contributed to 
render me from my infancy disgusted with the 
French character. The first was the impression 
made on my mind by the sight of the ladies who 
accompanied the Duchess of Parma in her journey 
19 



to Asti, and were all bedaubed with rouge — the 
use of which was then exclusively confined to the 
French. I have frequently mentioned this circum- 
stance several years afterwards, not being able to 
account for such an absurd and ridiculous practice, 
which is wholly at variance with nature ; lor when 
me?i, to disguise the effects of sickness, or other 
calamities, besmear themselves with this detestable 
rouge, — they carefully conceal it ; well knowing 
that, when discovered, it only excites the laughter 
or pity of the beholders. These painted French 
figures left a deep and lasting impression on my 
mind, and inspired me with a certain feeling of dis- 
gust towards the females of this nation. 

" From my geographical studies resulted another 
cause of antipathy to that nation. Having seen on 
the chart the gieat difference in extent and popula- 
tion between England or Prussia and France ; and 
hearing, every time news arrived from the armies, 
that the French had been beaten by sea and land ; 
— recalling to mind the first ideas of my infancy, 
during which I was told that the French had fre- 
quently been in possession of Asti ; and that during 
the last time, they had suffered themselves to be 
taken prisoners to the number of six or seven 
thousand, without resistance, after conducting them- 
selves, while they remained in possession of the 
place, with the greatest insolence and tyranny ; — 
all these different circumstances, being associated 
with the idea -of the ridiculous dancing-master! tend- 
ed more and more to rivet in my mind an aversion 
to the French nation." — pp. 83—86. 

At the early age of fourteen, Alfieri was 
put in possession of a considerable part of his 
fortune : and launched immediately into every 
sort of fashionable folly and extravagance. 
His passion for horses, from which he was 
never entirely emancipated, now took entire 
possession of his soul ; and his days were 
spent in galloping up and down the environs 
of Turin, in company chiefly with the young 
English who were resident in that capital. 
From this society, and these exercises, he 
soon derived such improvement, that in a 
short time he became by far the most skilful 
jockey, farrier, and coachman, that modern 
Italy could boast of producing. 

For ten or twelve years after this period, 
the life of Alfieri presents a most humiliating, 
but instructive picture of idleness, dissipation, 
and ennui. It is the finest and most flattering- 
illustration of Miss Edgeworth's admirable 
tale of Lord Glenthorn; and, indeed, rather 
outgoes, than falls short of that high-coloured 
and apparently exaggerated representation. — 
Such, indeed, is the coincidence between the 
traits of the fictitious and the real character, 
that if these Memoirs had been published when 
Miss Edgeworth's story was written, it would 
have been impossible not to suppose that she 
had derived from them every thing that is strik- 
ing and extraordinary in her narrative. For 
two or three years, Alfieri contented himself 
with running, restless and discontented, over 
the different states and cities of Italy : almost 
ignorant of its language, and utterly indiffer- 
ent both to its literature and its arts. Con- 
sumed, at every moment of inaction, with the 
most oppressive discontent and unhappiness, 
he had no relief but in the velocity of his 
movements and the rapidity of his transitions. 
Disappointed with every thing, and believing 
himself incapable of application or reflection 
he passed his days in a perpetual fever cr 
N 



146 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



impatience and dissipation ; — apparently pur- 
suing enjoyment with an eagerness which 
was in reality inspired by the vain hope of 
escaping from misery. There is much gene- 
ral truth, as well as peculiar character, in the 
following simple confession. 

"In spite, however, of this constant whirl of 
dissipation, my being master of my own actions; 
notwithstanding I had plenty of money, was in the 
heyday of youth, and possessed a prepossessing 
figure ; I yet felt every where satiety, ennui, and 
disgust. My greatest pleasure consisted in attend- 
ing the opera buffa, though the gay and lively 
music left a deep and melancholy impression in my 
mind. A thousand gloomy and mournful ideas 
assailed my imagination, in which I delighted to 
indulge by wandering alone on the shores near the 
Chiaja and Portici."— Vol. i. p. 128. 

When he gets to Venice, things are, if pos- 
sible, still worse, — though like other hypo- 
chondriacs, he is disposed to lay the blame 
on the winds and the weather. The tumult 
of the carnival kept him alive, it seems, for a 
few days. 

" But no sooner was the novelty over, than my 
habitual melancholy and ennui returned. I passed 
several days together in complete solitude, never 
leaving the house nor stirring from the window, 
whence I made signs to a young lady who lodged 
opposite, and with whom I occasionally exchanged 
a few words. During the rest of the day, which 
hung very heavy on my hands, I passed my time 
either in sleeping or in dreaming, I knew not which, 
and frequently in weeping without any apparent 
motive. I had lost my tranquillity, and 1 was unable 
even to divine what had deprived me of it. A few 
years afiervvards, on investigating the cause of this 
occurrence, I discovered that it proceeded from a 
malady which attacked me every spring, some- 
times in April, and sometimes in June : its dura- 
tion was longer or shorter, and its violence very 
different, according as my mind was occupied. 

" I likewise experienced that my intellectual 
faculties resembled a barometer, and that I pos- 
sessed more or less talent for composition, in pro- 
portion to the weight of the atmosphere. During the 
prevalence of the solstitial and equinoctial winds, 
l was always remarkably stupid, and uniformly 
ernced less penetration in the evening than the 
morning. I likewise perceived that the force of 
my imagination, the ardour of enthusiasm, and ca- 
pability of invention, were possessed by me in a 
higher degree in the middle of winter, or in the 
middle of summer, than during the intermediate 
periods. This materiality, which I believe to be 
common to all men of a delicate nervous system, 
has greatly contributed to lessen the pride with 
which the good I have done might have inspired 
me, in like manner as it has tended to diminish 
the shame I might have felt for the errors I have 
committed, particularly in my own art." — Vol. i. 
pp. 140—142. 

In his nineteenth year, he extends his 
travels to France, and stops a few weeks at 
Marseilles, where he passed his evenings 
exactly as Lord Glenthorn is represented to 
have done his at his Irish castle. To help 
away the hours, he went every night to the 
play, although his Italian ears were disgusted 
with the poverty of the recitation ; and, 

— "after the performance was over, it was my 
regular practice to bathe every evening in the sea. 
I was induced to indulge myself in this luxury, in 
consequence of finding a very agreeable spot, on a 
tongue of land lying to the right of the harbour, 
where, seated on the sand, with my back leaning 



against a rock, I could beho'd the sea and sky 
without interruption. In the contemplation oi these 
objects, embellished by the rays of the setting sun, 
I passed my time dreaming of future dolights." — 
Vol. i. pp. 150, 151. 

In a very short time, however, these reve- 
ries became intolerable ; and he ver} nearly 
killed himself and his horses in rushing, with 
incredible velocity, to Paris. This is his own 
account of the impression which was made 
upon him by his first sight of this brilliant 
metropolis. 

"It was on a cold, cloudy, and rainy morning, 
between the 15th and 20ih of August, that I 
entered Paris, by the wretched suburb of St. Mar- 
ceau. Accustomed to the clear and serene sky of 
Italy and Provence, I felt much surprised at the 
thick fog which enveloped the city, especially at 
this season. Never in my life did I experience 
more disagreeable feelings than on entering the 
damp and dirty suburb of St. Germain, where I 
was to take up my lodging. What inconsiderate 
haste, what mad folly had led me into this sink 
of filth and nastiness ! On entering the inn, I felt 
myself thoroughly undeceived; and I should cer- 
tainly have set offagain immediately, had not shame 
and fatigue withheld me. My illusions were still 
further dissipated when I began to ramble through 
Pari3. The mean and wretched buildings ; the 
contemptible ostentation displayed in a few houses 
dignified with the pompous appellation of hotels 
and palaces ; the filthiness of the Gothic churches ; 
the truly vandal-like construction of the public 
theatres at that time, besides innumerable other 
disagreeable objects, of which not the least dis- 
gusting to me was the plastered countenances 
of many very ugly women, far outweighed in my 
mind the beauty and elegance of the public walks 
and gardens, the infinite variety of fine carriages, 
the lofty facade of the Louvre, as well as the num- 
ber of spectacles and entertainments of every 
kind."— Vol. i. pp. 153, 154. 

There, then, as was naturally to be ex- 
pected, he again found himself tormented 
"by the demon of melancholy; 77 and, after 
trying in vain the boasted stimulant of play, 
he speedily grew wearied of the place and 
all its amusements, and resolved to set off, 
without delay, for England. To England, 
accordingly, he goes, at midwinter ; and with 
such a characteristic and compassionable cra- 
ving for all sorts of powerful sensations, that 
" he rejoiced exceedingly at the extreme cold, 
which actually froze the wine and bread in his 
carriage during a part of the journey. 77 Pre- 
pared, as he was, for disappointment, by the 
continual extravagance of his expectation, 
Alfieri was delighted with England. "The 
roads, the inns, the horses, and, above all, the 
incessant bustle in the suburbs, as well as in 
the capital, all conspired to fill my mind with 
delight. 77 He passed a part of the winter in 
good society, in London ; but soon "becoming 
disgusted with assemblies and routs, deter- 
mined no longer to play the lord in the 
drawing-room, but the coachman at the gate ! 7> 
and accordingly contrived to get through 
three laborious months, by being " five or 
six hours every morning on horseback, and 
being seated on the coachbox for two or three 
hours every evening, whatever was the state 
of the weather. 77 Even these great and 
meritorious exertions, however, could not 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIERI. 



147 



long keep down his inveterate malady, nor 
quell the evil spirit that possessed him; and 
he was driven to make a hasty tour through 
the west of England, which appears to have 
afforded him very considerable relief. 

" The country then so much enchanted me that 
[ determined to settle in it ; not that I was much 
attached to any individual, but because I was de- 
lighted with the scenery, the simple manners of the 
inhabitants, the modesty and beauty of the women, 
and, above all. with the enjoyment of political lib- 
erty, — all which made me overlook its mutable 
climate, the melancholy almost inseparable from it, 
and the exorbitant price of all the necessaries of 
life."— Vol. i. pp. 162, 163. 

Scarcely, however, was this bold resolution 
of settling adopted, when the author is again 
u seized with the mania of travelling;" and 
skims over to Holland in the beginning of 
summer. And here he is still more effec- 
tually diverted than ever, by falling in love 
with a young married lady at the Hague, who 
was obliging enough to return his affection. 
Circumstances, however, at last compel the 
fair one to rejoin her husband in Switzer- 
land ; and the impetuous Italian is affected 
with such violent despair, that he makes a 
desperate attempt on his life, by taking off 
the bandages after being let blood ; and re- 
turns sullenly to Italy, without stopping to 
look at any thing, or uttering a single word to 
his servant during the whole course of the 
journey. 

This violent fit of depression, however, and 
the seclusion by which it was followed, led 
him, for the first time, to look into his books; 
and the perusal of the Lives of Plutarch seems 
to have made such an impression on his ardent 
and susceptible spirit that a passion for liberty 
and independence now took the lead of every 
other in his soul, and he became for life an 
emulator of the ancient republicans. He read 
the story of Timoleon, Brutus, &c, he assures 
us, with floods of tears, and agonies of admi- 
ration. "I was like one beside himself; and 
shed tears of mingled grief and rage at having 
been born at Piedmont ; and at a period, and 
under a government, where it was impossible 
to conceive or execute any great design." 
The same sentiment, indeed, seems to have 
haunted him for the greater part of his life; 
and is expressed in many passages of these 
Memoirs besides the following. 

" Having lived two or three yenrs almost wholly 
among the English ; having heard their power and 
riches everywhere, celebrated ; having contemplated 
their great political influence, and on the other hand 
viewing Italy wholly degrnded from her rank as a 
nation, and the Italians divided, weak, and enslaved, 
I was ashamed of being an Italian, and wished not 
to possess any thing in common with this nation." — 
Vol. i. p. 121. 

" I was naturally attached to a domestic life ; but 
after having visited England at nineteen, and read 
Plutarch with the greatest interest at twenty years 
of age, I experienced the most insufferable repug- 
nance at marrying and having my children born at 
Turin."— Vol. i. p. 175. 

The time, however, was not yet come 
when study was to ballast and anchor this 
agitated spirit. Plutarch was soon thrown 
aside ; and the patriot and his horses gallop 



off to Vienna. The state of his mmd, both 
as to idleness and politics, is strikingly repre- 
sented in the following short passage. 

" I might easily, during my stay at Vienna, have 
been introduced to the celebrated poet Metastasio, 
at whose house our minister, the old and respecta- 
ble Count Canale, passed his evenings in a select 
company of men of letters, whose chief amusement 
consisted in reading portions from the Greek, La- 
tin, and Italian classics. Having taken an affec- 
tion for me, he wished, out of pity to my idleness, 
to conduct me thither. But I declined accompany- 
ing him, either from my usual awkwardness, or 
from the contempt which the constant habit of 
reading French works had given me for Italian pro- 
ductions. Hence I concluded, that this assemblnge 
of men of letters, with their classics, could be only 
a dismal company of pedants. Besides, I had seen 
Metastasio, in the gardens of Schoenbrunn. perform 
the customary genuflexion to Maria Theresa in 
such a servile and adulatory manner, that f, who 
had my head stuffed with Plutarch, and who exag- 
gerated every tiling I conceived, could not think of 
binding myself, either by the ties of familial ity or 
friendship, with a poet who had sold himself to a 
despotism which I so cordially detested." 

Vol. i. pp. 182, 183. 

From Vienna he flew to Prussia, which, he 
says, looked all like one great guardhouse; 
and where he coifid not repress u the horror 
and indignation he felt at beholding oppres- 
sion and despotism assuming the mask of 
virtue/*' From Prussia he passed on to Den- 
mark; where his health was seriously affect- 
ed by the profligacy in which he indulged ; 
and where the only amusement he could rel- 
ish, consisted in '-'driving a sledge with in- 
conceivable velocity over the snow." In this 
way he wandered on through Sweden and 
Finland to Russia ; and experienced, as usual, 
a miserable disappointment on arriving at St. 
Petersburg. 

" Alas! no sooner had I reached this Asiatic as- 
semblage of wooden huts, than Rome, Genoa, Ve- 
nice, and Florence rose to my recollection ; and I 
could not refrain from laughing. What I after- 
wards saw of this country tended still more strongly 
to confirm my first impression, that it merited not 
to be seen. Every thing, except their beards and 
their horses, disgusted me so much, that, during six 
weeks I remained among these savages, I deter- 
mined not to become acquainted with any one ; nor 
even to see the two or three youths with whom I 
had associated at Turin, and who were descended 
from the first families of the country. I took no 
measure to be presented to the celebrated Auto- 
cratrix Catherine II. ; nor did I even behold the 
countenance of a sovereign who in our days has 
outstripped fame. On investigating, at a future pe- 
riod, the reason of such extraordinary conduct, I 
became convinced that it proceeded from a certain 
intolerance of character, and a hatred to every spe- 
cies of tyranny, and which in this particular instance 
attached itself to a person suspected of the most 
horrible crime — the murder of a defenceless hus- 
band."— Vol. i. pp. 194, 195. 

This rage for liberty continued to possess 
him in his return through Prussia, and really 
seems to have reached its acme when it dic- 
tated the following most preposterous pas- 
sage, — which, w r e carnot help suspecting, 13 
indebted for part of its absurdity to the trans- 
lator. 

" I visited Zorndorff, a spot rendered famous by 
the sanguinary battle fought between the Russians 
and Prussians, where thousands of men on both 



.48 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



sides were immolated on the altar of despotism, 
and thus escaped from the galling yoke which op- 
pressed them. The place of their interment was 
easily recognised by its greater verdure, and by 
yielding more abundant crops than the barren and 
unproductive soil in its immediate vicinity. On this 
occasion, I reflected, with sorrow, that slaves seem 
everywhere o?ily born to fertilize the soil on which 
they vegetate" — Vol. i. pp. 196, 197. 

After this he meets with a beautiful ass at 
Gottingen, and regrets that his indolence pre- 
vented him from availing himself of this 
excellent opportunity for writing some im- 
measurably facetious verses " upon this ren- 
counter of a German and an Italian ass. in so 
celebrated an university ! " After a hasty ex- 
pedition to Spa. he again traverses Germany 
and Holland, and returns to England in the 
twenty-third year of his age; where he is 
speedily involved in some very distressing 
and discreditable adventures. He engages in 
an intrigue with an English lady of rank, and 
is challenged, and slightly wounded by her 
husband. After this eclat, he consoles him- 
self with the thought of marrying the frail 
fair, with whom he is, as usual, most heroic- 
ally in love ; when he discovers, to his infi- 
nite horror and consternation, that, previous 
to her connection with him, she had been 
equally lavish of her favours to her husband's 

f room I whose jealous resentment had led 
im to watch and expose this new infidelity. 
After many struggles between shame, resent- 
ment, and unconquerable love, he at last tears 
himself from this sad sample of English vir- 
tue, and makes his way to Holland, bursting 
with grief and indignation ; but without 
seeming to think that there was the slightest 
occasion for any degree of contrition or self- 
condemnation. From Holland he goes to 
France, and from France to Spain — as idle, 
and more oppressed with himself than ever 
— buying and caressing Andalusian horses, 
and constantly ready to sink under the heavy 
burden of existence. At Madrid he has set 
down an extraordinary trait of the dangerous 
impetuosity of his temper. His faithful ser- 
vant, in combing his hair one day, happened 
accidentally to give him pain by stretching- 
one hair a little more than the rest, upon 
which, without saying a word, he first seized 
a candlestick, and felled him to the ground 
with a huge wound on his temple, and then 
drew his sword to despatch him, upon his 
offering to make some resistance. The sequel 
of the story is somewhat more creditable to 
his magnanimity, than this part of it is to his 
self-command. 

" I was shocked at the brutal excess of passion 
into which I had fallen. Though Elias was some- 
what calmed, he still appeared to retain a certain 
degree of resentment ; yet I was not disposed to 
display towards him the smallest distrust. Two 
hours after nis wound was dressed I went to bed, 
leaving the door open, as usual, between my apart- 
ment and the chamber in which he slept ; notwith- 
standing the remonstrance of the Spaniards, who 
pointed out to me the absurdity of putting ven- 
geance in the power of a man whom I had so much 
irritated. I said even aloud to Elias, who was al- 
ready in bed, that he might kill me, if he was so 
inclined, during the night ; and that I justly merited 
such a fate. But this brave man, who possessed as 



much elevation of soul as myself, took no other re« 
venge for my outrageous conduct, except preserv- 
ing for several years two handkerchiefs stained with 
blood which had been bound round his head, and 
which he occasionally displayed to my view. It is 
necessary to be fully acquainted with the character 
and manners of the Piedmontese, in order to com- 
prehend the mixture of ferocity and generosity dis- 
played on both sides in this affair. 

" When at a more mature age, I endeavoured to 
discover the cause of this violent transport of rage. 
I became convinced that the trivial circumstance 
which gave rise to it, wcs, so to speak, like the last 
drop poured into a vessel ready to run over. My 
irascible temper, which must have been rendered 
still more irritable by solitude and perpetual idle- 
ness, required only the slightest impulse to cause it 
to burst forth. Besides, I never lifted a hand 
against a domestic, as that would have been putting 
them on a level with myself. Neither did I ever 
employ a cane, nor any kind of weapon in order to 
chastise them, though I frequently threw at them 
any moveable that fell in my way, as many young 
people do, during the first ebullitions of anger; yet 
I dare to affirm that I would have approved, and 
even esteemed the domestic who should on such 
occasions have rendered me back the treatment he 
received, since I never punished them as a master, 
but only contended with them as one man with 
another." — Vol. i. pp. 244—246. 

At Lisbon he forms an acquaintance with a 
literary countryman of his own, and feels, for 
the first time of his life, a glow of admiration 
on perusing some passages of Italian poetry. 
From this he returns to Spain. and, after 
lounging over the whole of that kingdom, re- 
turns through France to Italy, and arrives at 
Turin in 1773. Here he endeavours to main- 
tain the same unequal contest of dissipation 
against ennui and conscious folly, and falls 
furiously in love, for the third time, with a 
woman of more than doubtful reputation, ten 
years older than himself. Neither the in- 
toxication of this passion, however, nor the 
daily exhibition . of his twelve fine horses, 
could repress the shame and indignation 
which he felt at thus wasting his days in in- 
glorious licentiousness ; and his health was at 
last seriously affected by those compunctious 
visitings of his conscience. In 1774, while 
watching by his unworthy mistress in a fit of 
sickness, he sketched out a few scenes of a 
dramatic work in Italian, which was thrown 
aside and forgotten immediately on her re- 
covery; and it was not till the year after, 
that, after many struggles, he formed the reso- 
lution of detaching himself from this degrad- 
ing connection. The efforts which this cost 
him, and the means he adopted to ensure his 
own adherence to his ^resolution, appear al 
together wild and extravagant to our northern 
imaginations. In the first place, he had him- 
self lashed with strong cords to his elbow 
chair, to prevent him from rushing into the 
presence of the syren ; and, in the next place, 
he entirely cut off his hair, in order to make 
it impossible for him to appear with decency 
in any society ! The first fifteen days, he 
assures us, he spent entirely " in uttering the 
most frightful groans and lamentations," and 
the next in riding furiously through all the 
solitary places in the neighbourhood. At last, 
however, this frenzy of grief began to sub- 
side ; and, most fortunately for the world and 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIERI. 



149 



the author gave plaee to a passion for litera- 
ture, which absorbed the powers of this fiery 
spirit during the greater part Gf his future ex- 
istence. The perusal of a wretched tragedy 
on the story of Cleopatra, and the striking re- 
semblance he thought he discovered between 
his own ease and that of Antony, first inspired 
him with the resolution of attempting a dra- 
matic piece on the same subject ; and, after 
encountering the most extreme difficulty from 
his utter ignorance of poetical diction, and of 
pure Italian, he at last nammered out a trage- 
dy, which was represented with tolerable 
success in 1775. From this moment his whole 
heart was devoted to dramatic poetry; and 
literary glory became the idol of his imagi- 
nation. 

In entering upon this new and arduous ca- 
reer, he soon discovered that greater sacrifices 
were required of him than he had hitherto 
offered to any of the former objects of his 
idolatry. The defects of his education, and 
his long habits of indolence and inattention to 
every thing connected with letters, imposed 
upon him far more than the ordinary labour 
t)f a literary apprenticeship. Having never 
been accustomed to the use of the pure Tus- 
can, and being obliged to speak French during 
\o many years of travelling, he found himself 
shamefully deficient in the knowledge of that 
Oeautiful language, in which he proposed to 
enter his claims to immortality ; and began, 
therefore, a course of the most careful and 
critical reading of the great authors who had 
adorned it. Dante and Petrarca were his 
great models of purity ; and, next to them, 
Ariosto and Tasso ; in which four writers, he 
gives it as his opinion, that there is to be 
found the perfection of every style, except 
that fitted for dramatic poetry — of which, he 
more than insinuates, that his own writings 
are the only existing example. In order to 
acquire a perfect knowledge and command 
of their divine language, he not only made 
many long visits to Tuscany, but absolutely 
interdicted himself the use of every other 
sort of reading, and abjured for ever that 
French literature which he seems to have 
always regarded with a mixture of envy and 
disdain. To make amends for this, he went 
resolutely back to the rudiments of his Latin; 
and read over all the classics in that language 
with a most patient and laborious attention. 
He likewise committed to memory many thou- 
sand lines from the authors he proposed to 
imitate; and sought, with the greatest assi- 
duity, the acquaintance of all the scholars and 
critics that came in his way, — pestering them 
with continual queries, and with requesting 
their opinion upon the infinite quantity of bad 
verses which he continued to compose by way 
of exercise, His two or three first tragedies 
he composed entirely in French prose ; and 
afterwards translated, with infinite labour, into 
Italian verse. 

" In this manner, without any other judge than 
my own feelings, I have only finished those, the 
sketches of which I had written with energy and 
enthusiasm; or, if I have finished any other, I 
have at least neyer taken the trouble to clothe them 



in verse. This was the case with Charles I., which 
I began to write in French prose, immediately alter 
finishing Philippe. When I had reached to about 
the middle of the third act, my heart and my hand 
became so benumbed, that I found it impossible to 
hold my pen. The same thing happened in regard 
to Romeo and Juliet, the whole of which I nearly 
expanded, though with much labour to myself, and 
at long intervals. On repernsing this sketch, I 
found my enthusiasm so much lowered, that, traris- 
p red with rage against myself, I could proceed no 
further, but threw my work into the fire." — Vol. ii. 
pp. 48—51. 

Two or three years were passed in these 
bewitching studies; and, during this time, 
nine or ten tragedies, at least, were in a con- 
siderable state of forwardness. In 1778, the 
study of Machiavel revived all that early zeal 
for liberty which he had imbibed from the 
perusal of Plutarch; and he composed with 
great rapidity his two books of " La Tiranide ; ; ' 
— perhaps the most nervous and eloquent of 
all his prose compositions. About the same 
period, his poetical studies experienced a still 
more serious interruption, from the commence- 
ment of his attachment to the Countess of 
Albany, the wife of the late Pretender; — an 
attachment that continued to soothe or to 
agitate all the remaining part of his existence. 
This lady, who was by birth a princess of the 
house of Stolberg, was then in her twenty- 
fifth year, and resided with her ill-matched 
husband at Florence. Her beauty and ac- 
complishments made, from the first,*' a pow« 
erful impression on the inflammable heart of 
Alfieri, guarded as it now was with the love 
of glory and of literature ; and the loftiness 
of his character, and the ardour of his admi- 
ration, soon excited corresponding sentiments 
in her, who had suffered for some time from, 
the ill temper and gross vices of her super- 
annuated husband. Though the author takes 
the trouble to assure us that " their intimacy 
never exceeded the strictest limits of honour/' 
it is not difficult to understand, that it should 
have aggravated the ill-humour of the old 
husband ; which increased, it seems, so much, 
that the lady was at last forced to abandon 
his society, and to take refuge with his brother, 
the Cardinal York, at Rome. To this place 
Alfieri speedily followed her; and remained 
there, divided between love and study, for 
upwards of two years ; "when her holy guar- 
dian becoming scandalized at their intimacy, 
it was thought necessary for her reputation, 
that they should separate. The effects of 
this separation he has himself described in 
the following short, but eloquent passage. 

"For two years I remained incapable of any 
kind of study whatever, so different was my pres- 

* His first introduction to her, we have been in- 
formed, was in the great gallery of Florence; — a 
circumstance which led him to signalize his admira- 
tion by an extraordinary act of gallantry. As :hey 
stopped to examine the picture of Charles XII. of 
Sweden, the Countess observed, that the singular 
uniform in which that prince is usually painted, au- 
peared to her extremely becoming. Noihing moro 
was said at the time ; but, in two days after, Alfieri 
appeared in the streets in the exact costume of that 
warlike sovereign, — to the utter consternation of 
all the peaceful inhabitants. 

w 2 



150 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



cnt forlorn state from the happiness I enjoyed 
during; my late residence in Rome : — there ihe Villa 
Strozzi near to the warm baths of Dioclesian, af- 
forded me a delightful retreat, where I passed my 
mornings in study, only riding for an hour or two 
through the vast solitudes which, in the neighbour- 
hood of Rome, invite to melancholy, meditation, 
and poetry. In the evening, I proceeded to the 
city, and found a relaxation from study in the so- 
ciety of her who constituted the charm of my ex- 
istence; and, contented and happy, I returned to 
my solitude, never at a later hour than eleven 
o'clock. It was impossible to find, in the circuit 
of a great city, an abode more cheerful, more re- 
tired,— or better suited to my taste, my character, 
and my pursuits. Delightful spot! — the remem- 
brance of which I shall ever cherish, and which 
through life I shall long to revisit." — Vol. ii. pp. 
121, 122. 

Previously to this time, his extreme love of 
independence, and his desire to be constantly 
with the mistress of his affections, had in- 
duced him to take the very romantic step of 
resigning his whole property to his sister \ 
reserving to himself merely an annuity of 
14,000 livres, or little more than 500/. As 
this transference was made with the sanction 
of the King, who was very well pleased, on 
the whole, to get rid of so republican a sub- 
ject, it was understood, upon both sides, as a 
tacit compact of expatriation; so that, upon 
his removal from Rome, he had no house or 
fixed residence to repair to. In this desolate 
and unsettled state, his passion for horses re- 
vived with additional fury; and he undertook 
a voyage to England, for the sole purpose of 
purchasing a number of those noble animals; 
and devoted eight months " to the study of 
noble heads, fine necks, and well-turned but- 
tocks, without once opening a book or pursuing 
any literary avocation." In London, he pur- 
chased fourteen horses, — in relation to the 
number of his tragedies* 1 — and this whimsical 
relation frequently presenting itself to his 
imagination, he would say to himself with a 
smile — " Thou hast gained a horse by each 
tragedy I"' — Truly the noble author must have 
been far gone in love, when he gave way to 
such innocent deliration. — He conducted his 
fourteen friends, however, with much judg- 
ment across the Alps; and gained great glory 
and notoriety at Sienna, from their daily pro- 
cession through the streets, and the feats of 
dexterity he exhibited in riding and driving 
them. 

In the mean time, he had printed twelve 
of his tragedies; and imbibed a sovereign 
contempt for such of his countrymen as pre- 
tended to find them harsh, obscure, or affect- 
edly sententious. In 1784, after an absence 
of more than two years, he rejoined his mis- 
tress at Baden in Alsace; and, during a stay 
of two months with her, sketched out three 
new tragedies. On his return to Italy, he 
took up his abode for a short time at Pisa, — 
where, in»a fit of indignation at the faults of 
Pljny'g Panegyric on Trajan , he composed in 
five days that animated and eloquent piece 
of the same name, which alone, of all his 
works have fallen into our hands, has left on 
out minds the impression of ardent and flow- 
ing eloquence. His rage for liberty likewise 



prompted him to compose several odes on the 
subject of American independence, and seve- 
ral miscellaneous productions of a similar 
character: — at last, in 1786, he is permitted 
to take up his permanent abode with his mis- 
tress, whom he rejoins at Alsace, and never 
afterwards abandons. In the course of the 
following year, they make a journey to Paris, 
with which he is nearly as much dissatisfied 
as on his former visit. — and makes arrange- 
ments with Didot for printing his tragedies in 
a superb form. In 1788, however, he tesolves 
upon making a complete edition of his whole 
works at Kehl } and submits, for the accom- 
modation of his fair friend, to take up his 
residence at Paris. There they receive in- 
telligence of the death of her husband, 
which seems, however, to make no change in 
their way of life; — and there he continues 
busily employed in correcting his various 
works for publication, till the year 1790, when 
the first part of these memoirs closes with 
anticipations of misery from the progress of 
the revolution, and professions of devoted at- 
tachment to the companion whom time had 
only rendered more dear and respected. 

The supplementary part bears date in May 
1803 — but a few months prior to the death of 
the author. — and brings down his history, 
though in a more summary maimer, to that 
period. He seems to have lived in much un- 
easiness and fear in Paris, after the com- 
mencement of the revolution ; from all appro- 
bation, or even toleration of which tragic 
farce, as he terms it, he exculpates himself 
with much earnestness and solemnity ; but, 
having vested the greater part of his fortune 
in that country, he could not conveniently 
abandon it. In 1791, he and his companion 
made a short visit to England, with which he 
was less pleased than on any former occasion, 
— the damp giving him a disposition to gout, 
and the late hours interfering with his habits 
of study. The most remarkable incident in 
this journey, occurred at its termination. As 
he was passing along the quay at Dover, on 
his way to the packet-boat, he caught a 
glimpse* of the bewitching woman on w hose 
account he had suffered so much, in his for- 
mer visit to this country nearly twenty years 
before ! She still looked beautiful, he says, 
and bestowed on him one of those enchanting 
smiles which convinced him that he was re- 
cognised. Unable to control his emotion, he 
rushed instantly aboard — hid himself below 
— and did not venture to look up till he was 
landed on the opposite shore. From Calais 
he addressed a letter to her of kind inquiry 
and offers of service ; and received an answer 
which, on account of the singular tone of can- 
dour and magnanimity which it exhibits, he 
has subjoined in the appendix. It is un- 
doubtedly a very remarkable production, and 
shows bolh a strength of mind and a kindness 
of disposition which seem worthy of a nappies 
foitune. 

In the end of 1792, the increasing fury of 
the revolution rendered Paris no longer a place 
of safety for foreigners of high birth; and 
Alfieri and his countess with some difficulty 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIERI. 



151 



effected their escape from it, and established 
themselves, with a diminished income, at his 
beloved Florence. Here, with his usual im- 
petuosity, he gave vent to his anti-revolution- 
ary feelings, by composing an apology for 
Louis XVI. j and a short satirical view of the 
French excesses, which he entitled "The 
Antigallican." He then took to acting his 
own plays j and, for two or three years, this 
new passion seduced him in a good degree 
from literature. In 1795, however, he tried 
his hand in some satirical productions; and 
began, with much zeal, to reperuse and trans- 
late various passages from the Latin classics. 
Latin naturally led to Greek; and, in the 
forty-ninth year of his age, he set seriously to 
the study of this language. Two whole years 
did this ardent genius dedicate to solitary 
drudgery, without being able to master the 
subject he had undertaken. At last, by dint 
of perseverance and incredible labour, he be- 
gan to understand a little of the easier authors ; 
and, by the time he had completed his fiftieth 
year, succeeded in interpreting a considerable 
part of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Homer. 
The perusal of Sophocles, in the following 
year, impelled him to compose his last trage- 
dy of Alceste in 1798. In the end of this 
year, the progress of the French armies threat- 
ened to violate the tranquillity of his Tuscan 
retreat ! and, in the spring following, upon 
the occupation of Florence, he and his friend 
retired to a small habitation in the country. 
From this asylum, however, they returned so 
precipitately on the retreat of the enemy, 
that they were surprised by them on their 
second invasion of Tuscany in 1800 ; but had 
more to suffer, it appears, from the importu- 
nate civility, than from the outrages of the 
conquerors. The French general, it seems, 
was a man of letters, and made several at- 
tempts to be introduced to Alfieri. When 
evasion became impossible, the latter made 
the following haughty but guarded reply to 
his warlike admirer : — 

" If the general, in his official capacity, com- 
mands his presence. Victor Alfieri. who never re- 
sists constituted authority of any kind, will imme- 
diately hasten- to obey the order; but if, on the 
contrary, he requests an interview only as a private 
individual, Alfieri begs leave to observe, that be- 
ing of a very retired turn of mind, he wishes not to 
form any new acquaintance; and therefore entreats 
the French general to hold him excused." — Vol. ii. 
pp. 286, 287. 

Under these disastrous circumstances, he 
was suddenly seized with the desire of sig- 
nalizing h ; mself in a new field of exertion ; 
and sketched out no fewer than six comedies 
at once, which were nearly finished before 
the end of 1802. His health, during this year, 
was considerably weakened by repeated at- 
tacks of irregular gout and inflammatory af- 
fections: and the memoir concludes with the 
description of a collar and medal which he 
had invented, as the badge of " the order of 
Homer," which, in his late sprung ardour for 
Greek literature, he had founded and en- 
dowed. Annexed to this record is a sort of 
postscript, addressed, by his friend the Abbe 
Caluso 7 to ihe Countess of Albany ; from which 



it appears, that he was carried off by an in- 
flammatory or gouty attack in his bowels, 
which put a period to his existence after a 
few days' illness, in the month of October 
1803. We have since learned, that the pub- 
lication of his posthumftus works, which had 
been begun by the Countess of Albany at 
Milan, has been stopped by the French gov- 
ernment; and that several of the manuscripts 
have, by the same authority, been committed 
to the flames. 

We have not a great deal to add to this 
copious and extraordinary narrative. Many 
of the peculiarities of Allien may be safely 
referred to the accident of his birth, and the 
errors of his education. His ennui, arrogance, 
and dissipation, are not very unlike those of 
many spoiled youths of condition ; nor is there 
any thing very extraordinary in his subse- 
quent application to study, or the turn of his 
first political opinions. The peculiar nature of 
his pursuits, and the character of his literary 
productions, afford more curious matter for 
speculation. 

In reflecting on the peculiar misery which 
Alfieri and some other eminent persons are 
recorded to have endured, while their minds 
were withheld from any worthy occupation, 
we have sometimes been tempted to con- 
clude, that to suffer deeply from ennui is an 
indication of superior intellect : and that it is 
only to minds destined for higher attainments 
that the want of an object is a source of real 
affliction. Upon a little reflection, however, 
we are disposed to doubt of the soundness of 
this opinion ; and really cannot permit all the 
shallow coxcombs who languish under the 
burden of existence, to take themselves, on 
our authority, for spell-bound geniuses. The 
most powerful stream, indeed, will stagnate 
the most deeply, and will burst out to more 
wild devastation when obstructed in its peace- 
ful course; but the weakly current is, upon 
the whole, most liable to obstruction ; and will 
mantle and rot at least as dismally as its bet- 
ters. The innumerable blockheads, in short, 
who betake themselves to suicide, dram- 
drinking, or dozing in dirty nightcaps, will not 
allow us to suppose that there is any real 
connection between ennui and talent ; or that 
fellows who are fit for nothing but mending- 
shoes, may not be very miserable if they are 
unfortunately raised above their proper occu- 
pation. 

If it does frequently happen that extraor- 
dinary and vigorous exertions are found to 
follow this heavy slumber of the faculties, 
the phenomenon, we think, may be explained 
without giving any countenance to the sup- 
position, that vigorous faculties are most liable 
to such an obscuration. In the first place, the 
relief and delight of exertion must act with 
more than usual force upon a mind which has 
suffered from the want of it; and will be apt 
to be pushed further than in cases where the 
exertion has been more regular. The crn'ef 
cause, however, of the signal success which 
has sometimes attended those who have been 
rescued from ennui, we really believe to be 
their ignorance of the difficulties they have 



122 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



to encounter, and that inexperience which 
makes them venture on undertakings which 
more prudent calculators would decline. We 
have already noticed, more than once, the 
effect of early study and familiarity with the 
best models in repressing emulation by de- 
spair; and have endeavoured, upon this prin- 
ciple, to explain why so many original authors 
have been in a great degree without educa- 
tion. Now, a youth spent in lassitude and 
•dissipation leads necessarily to a manhood of 
ignorance and inexperience; and has all the 
advantages, as well as the inconveniences, of 
such a situation. If any inward feeling' of 
strength, ambition, or other extraordinary im- 
pulse, therefore, prompt such a person to at- 
tempt any thing arduous, it is likely that he 
will go about it with all that rash and vehe- 
ment courage which results from unconscious- 
ness of the obstacles that are to be overcome; 
and it is needless to say how often success is 
ensured by this confident and fortunate auda- 
city. Thus Alfieri, in the outset of his literary 
career, ran his head against dramatic poetry, 
almost before he knew what was meant either 
by poetry or the drama; and dashed out a 
tragedy while but imperfectly acquainted 
with the language in which he was writing, 
and utterly ignorant either of the rules that 
had been delivered, or the models which had 
been created by the genius of his great prede- 
cessors. Had he been trained up from his 
early youth in fearful veneration for these 
rules and these models, it is certain that he 
would have resisted the impulse which led 
him to place himself, with so little prepara- 
tion, within their danger ; and most probable 
that he would never have thought himself 
qualified to answer the test they required of 
him. In giving way, however, to this pro- 
pensity, with all the thoughtless freedom and 
vehemence which had characterised his other 
indulgences, he found himself suddenly em- 
barked in an unexpected undertaking, and in 
sight of unexpected distinction. The success 
he had obtained with so little knowledge of 
the subject, tempted him to acquire what was 
wanting to deserve it ; and justified hopes and 
stimulated exertions which earlier reflection 
would, in all probability, have for ever pre- 
vented. 

The morality of Alfieri seems to have been 
at least as relaxed as that of the degenerate 
nobles, whom in all other things he professed 
to reprobate and despise. He confesses, with- 
out the slightest appearance of contrition, that 
his general intercourse with women was pro- 
fligate in the extreme ; and has detailed the 
particulars of three several intrigues with 
married women, without once appearing to 
imagine that they could require any apology 
or expiation. On the contrary, while record- 
ing the deplorable consequences of one of 
them, he observes, with great composure, 
that it was distressing to him to contemplate 
a degradation, of which he had, "though in- 
nocently," been the occasion. The general 
arrogance of his manners, too, and the occa- 
sional brutality of his conduct towards his 
inferiors, are far from giving us an amiable 



impression of his general character; nor have 
we been able to find, in the whole of theso 
confessions, a single trait of kindness of heart, 
or generous philanthropy, to place in the bal- 
ance against so many indications of selfish 
ness and violence. There are proofs enough, 
indeed, of a firm, elevated, ami manly spirit j 
but small appearance of any thing gentle, or 
even, in a moral sense, of any thing very re- 
spectable. In his admiration, in short, of the 
worthies of antiquity, he appears to have 
copied their harshness and indelicacy at least 
as faithfully as their loftiness of character; 
and, at the same time, to have combined with 
it all the licentiousness and presumption of a 
modern Italian noble. 

We have been somewhat perplexed with 
his politics. After speaking as we have seen, 
of the mild government of the kings of Sar- 
dinia, — after adding that, "when he had read 
Plutarch and visited England, he felt the most 
unsurmountable repugnance at marrying, or 
having his children born at Turin,"' — after re- 
cording that a monarch is a master, and a 
subject a slave, — and "that he shed tears of 
mingled grief and rage at having been born 
in such a state as Piedmont;" — after all this 
— after giving up his estates to escape from 
this bondage, and after writing his books on 
the Tiranide, and his odes on American lib- 
erty, — we really were prepared to find him 
taking the popular side, at the outset at least 
of the French Revolution, and exulting in the 
downfal of one of those hateful despotisms, 
against the whole system of which he had 
previously inveighed with no extraordinary 
moderation. Instead of this, however, we 
find him abusing the revolutionists, and ex- 
tolling their opponents with all the zeal of a 
professed antijacobin, — writing an eulogium 
on the dethroned monarch like Mr. Pybus, 
and an Antigalliean like Peter Porcupine. 
Now, we are certainly veiy far from saying, 
that a true friend of liberty might not exe- 
crate the proceedings of the French revolu- 
tionists; but a professed hater of royalty 
might have felt more indulgence for the new 
republic ; such a crazy zealot for liberty, as 
Alfieri showed himself in Italy, both by his 
writings and his conduct, might well have 
been carried away by that promise of eman- 
cipation to France, which deluded sounder 
heads than his in all the countries of Europe. 
There are two keys, we think, in the work 
before us, to this apparent inconsistency. 
Alfieri, with all his abhorrence of tyrants, 
was, in his heart, a great lover of aristocracy; 
and, he had a great spite and antipathy at 
the French nation, collectively and individ- 
ually. 

Though professedly a republican, it is easy 
to see, that the republic he wanted was one 
on the Roman model, — where there were 
Patricians as well as Plebeians, and where a 
man of great talents had even a good chance 
of being one day appointed Dictator. He did 
not admire kings indeed,— -because he did not 
happen to be born one, and because they 
were the only beings to whom he was bora 
inferior: but he had the utmost veneration 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR ALFIERI. 



53 



(or nobles, — because fortune had placed him 
in that order, and because the power and dis- 
tinction which belonged to it were agreeable 
to him, and, he thought, would be exercised 
for the good of his inferiors. When he heard 
that Voltaire had written a tragedy on the 
story of Brutus, he fell into a great passion, 
and exclaimed, that the subject was too lofty 
for "a French plebeian, who, during twenty 
years, had subscribed himself gentleman in 
ordinary to the King!" 

This love of aristocracy, however, will not 
explain the defence of monarchy and the abuse 
of republics, which formed the substance of his 
Antigallican. But the truth is, that he was 
antigallican from his youth up: and would 
never have forgiven that nation, if they had 
succeeded in establishing a free government, 
— especially while Italy -was in bondage. 
The contempt which Voltaire had expressed 
for Italian literature, and the general degra- 
dation into which the national character had 
fallen, had sunk deep into his fierce and 
haughty spirit, and inspired him with an 
antipathy towards that people by whom his 
own countrymen had been subdued, ridiculed, 
and outshone. This paltry and vindictive feel- 
ing leads him, throughout this whole work, 
to speak of them in the most unjust and un- 
candid terms. There may be some truth in 
his remarks on the mean and meagre articu- 
lation of their language, and on their "horri- 
ble u, with their thin lips drawn in to pro- 
nounce it, as if they were blowing hot soup." 
Nay, we could even excuse the nationality 
which leads him to declare, that "he would 
rather be the author of ten good Italian verses, 
than of volumes written in English or French, 
or any such harsh and unharmonious jargon, — 
though their cannon and their armies should 
continue to render these languages fashion- 
able." But we cannot believe in the sinceri- 
ty of an amorous Italian, who declares, that 
he never could get through the first volume 
of Rousseau's Heloise ; or of a modern author 
of regular dramas, who professes to see nothing 
at all admirable in the tragedies of Racine or 
Voltaire. It is evident to us, that he grudged 
those great writers the glory that was due to 
them, out of a vindictive feeling of national 
resentment ; and that, for the same reason, 
he grudged the French nation the freedom, in 
which lie would otherwise have been among 
the first to believe and to exult. 

It only remains to say a word or two of the 
literary productions of this extraordinary per- 
son ; — a theme, however interesting and at- 
tractive, upon which we can scarcely pretend 
to enter on the present occasion. We have 
not yet been able to procure a complete copy 
of the works of Alfieri ; and, even of those 
which have been lately transmitted to us, we 
will confess that a considerable portion re- 
mains to be perused. We have seen enough, 
however, to satisfy us that they are deserving 
of a careful analysis, and that a free and en- 
lightened estimate of their merit may be ren- 
dered both interesting and instructive to the 
greater part of our readers. We hope soon to 
be in a condition to attempt this task; and 
20 



shall, in the mean time, confine ourseives to 
a very few observations suggested by the 
style and character of the tragedies with 
which we have been for some time ac- 
quainted. 

These pieces approach much nearer to the 
ancient Grecian model, than any other mod- 
ern production with which we are acquaint- 
ed; in the simplicity of the plot, the fewness 
of the persons, the directness of the action, 
and the uniformity and elaborate gravity of 
the composition. Infinitely less declamatory 
than the French tragedies, they have less 
brilliancy and variety, and a deeper tone of 
dignity and nature. As they have not adopt- 
ed the choral songs of the Greek stage, how- 
ever, they are, on the whole, less poetical 
than those ancient compositions; although 
they are worked throughout with a fine and 
careful hand, and diligently purified from 
every thing ignoble or feeble in the expres- 
sion. The author's anxiety to keep clear of 
figures of mere ostentation, and to exclude all 
showpieces of fine writing in a dialogue of 
deep interest or impetuous passion, has be- 
trayed him, on some occasions, into too sen- 
tentious and strained a diction, and given an 
air of labour and heaviness to many parts of 
his composition. He has felt, perhaps a little 
too constantly, that the cardinal virtue of a 
dramatic writer is to keep his personages to 
the business and the concerns that lie before 
them; and by no means to let them turn to 
moral philosophers, or rhetorical describersof 
their own emotions. But, in his zealous ad- 
herence to this good maxim, he seems some- 
times to have forgotten, that certain passions 
are declamatory in nature as well as on the 
stage; and that, at any rate, they do not all 
vent themselves in concise and pithy sayings, 
but run occasionally into hyperbole and am- 
plification. As' it is the great excellence, so 
it is occasionally the chief fault of Alfieri's 
dialogue, that every word is honestly em- 
ployed to help forward the action of the play, 
by serious argument, necessary narrative, or 
the direct expression of natural emotion. 
There are no excursions or digressions, — no 
episodical conversations, — and none but the 
most brief moralizings. This gives a certain 
air of solidity to the whole structure of the 
piece, that is apt to prove oppressive to an or- 
dinary reader, and reduces the entire drama 
to too great uniformity. 

We make these remarks chiefly with a ref- 
erence to French tragedy. For our own 
part, we believe that those who are duly sen- 
sible of the merits of Shakespeare, will never 
be much struck with any other dramatical 
compositions. There are no other plays, in- 
deed, that paint human nature, — that strike 
off the characters of men with all the fresh- 
ness and sharpness of the original, — and 
speak the language of all the passions, not 
like a mimic, but an echo — neither softer nor 
louder, nor differently modulated from the 
spontaneous utterance of the heart. In these 
respects he disdains all comparison with Al- 
fieri, or with any other mortal : nor is it fair, 
perhaps, to suggest a comparison, where no 



.54 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



rivalry can be imagined. Alfieri, like all the 
continental dramatists, considers a tragedy as 
a poem. In England, we look upon it rather 
as a representation of character and passion. 
With them, of course, the style and diction, 
and the congruity and proportions of the 
piece, are the main objects: — with us, the 
truth and the force of the imitation. It is suf- 
ficient for them, if there be character and 
action enough to prevent the composition from 
languishing, and to give spirit and propriety 
to the polished dialogue of which it consists; 
— we are satisfied, if there be management 
enough in the story not to shock credibility 
entirely, and beauty and polish enough in the 
diction to exclude disgust or derision. In his 
own way, Alfieri. we think, is excellent. His 
fables are all admirably contrived and com- 
pletely developed; his dialogue is copious and 
progressive; and his characters all deliver 
natural sentiments with great beauty, and 
often with great force of expression. In our 
eyes, however, it is a fault that the fable is too 
simple, and the incidents too scanty: and that 
all the characters express themselves with 
equal felicity, and urge their opposite views 
and pretensions with equal skill and plausi- 
bility. We see at once, that an ingenious 
author has versified the sum of a dialogue ; 
and never, for a moment, imagine that we 
hear the real persons contending. There may 
be more eloquence and dignity in this style 
of dramatising; — there is infinitely more de- 
ception in ours. 

With regard to the diction of these pieces, 
it is not for tramontane critics to presume to 



j offer any opinion. They aie considered, in 
I Italy, we believe, as the purest specimens of 
i the favella Toscana that late ages have pro- 
I duced. To us they certainly seem to want 
j something of that flow and sweetness to which 
we have been accustomed in Italian poetry. 
J and to be formed rather upon the model of 
Dante than of Petrarca. At all events, it is 
obvious that the style is highly elaborate and 
artificial; and that the author is constantly 
striving to give it a sort of factitious force and 
I energy, by the use of condensed and em- 
' phatic expressions, interrogatories, antitheses, 
; and short and inverted sentences. In all 
J these respects, as well as in the chastised 
' gravity of the sentiments, and the temperance 
and propriety of all the delineations of pas- 
sion, these pieces are exactly the reverse of 
what we should have expected from the fiery, 
fickle, and impatient character of the author. 
From all that Alfieri has told us of himself, 
we should have expected to find in his plays 
great vehemence and irregular eloquence — 
sublime and extravagant sentiments — pas- 
siors rising to frenzy — and poetry swelling 
into bombast. Instead of this, we have a sub- 
dued and concise representation of energetic 
discourses — passions, not loud but deep — and 
a style so severely correct and scrupulously 
pure, as to indicate, even to unskilful eyes, 
the great labour which must have been be- 
stowed on its purification. No characters can 
be more different than that which we should 
infer from reading the tragedies of Alfieri, and 
that which he has assigned to himself in these 
authentic memoirs. 



(■april, 1803.) 



The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cow t per, Esq. With an Introductory Letter 
to the Right Honourable Earl Cowpcr. By William Hayley, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. Chi- 
chester: 1803. 



This book is too long; but it is composed 
on a plan that makes prolixity unavoidable. 
Instead of an account of the poet's life, and a 
view of his character and performances, the 
biographer has laid before the public a large 
selection from his private correspondence, and 
merely inserted as much narrative between 
each series of letters, as was necessary to pre- 
serve their connection, and make the subject 
of them intelligible. 

This scheme of biography, which was first 
introduced, we believe, by Mason, in his life 
of Gray, has many evident advantages in 
point of liveliness of colouring, and fidelity 
of representation. It is something intermediate 
between the egotism of confessions, and the 
questionable narrative of a surviving friend, 
who must be partial, and may be mistaken : 
It enables the reader to judge for himself, 
from materials that were not provided for the 
purpose of determining his judgment j and 
holds up to him, instead of a flattering or un- 
faithful portrait, the living lineaments and 



features of the person it intends to commemo- 
rate. It is a plan, however, that requires so 
much room for its execution, and consequently 
so much money and so much leisure in those 
who wish to be masters of it, lhat it ought to 
be reserved, we conceive, for those great and 
eminent characters that are likely to excite 
an interest among all orders and generations 
of mankind. While the biography of Shake- 
speare and Bacon shrinks into the coiner of 
an octavo, we can scarcely help v> ordering 
that the history of the sequestered life and 
solitary studies of Cowper should have ex- 
tended into two quarto volumes. 

The little Mr. Hayley writes in these vo 1 
umes is by no means well written; though 
certainly distinguished by a very amiable 
gentleness of temper, and the strongest ap- 
pearance of sincere veneration and affection 
for the departed friend to whose memory it is 
consecrated. It will be very hard, too, if they 
do not become popular ; as Mr. Hayley seems 
to have exerted himself to conciliate readers 



HAYLEY'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



155 



of every description, not only by the most 
lavish and indiscriminate praise of every in- 
dividual he has occasion to mention, but by a 
general spirit of approbation and indulgence 
towards every practice and opinion which he 
has found it necessary to speak of. Among 
the other symptoms of book making which this 
publication contains, we can scarcely forbear 
reckonin g the expressions of this too obsequious 
and unoffending philanthropy. 

The constitutional shyness and diffidence 
of Cowper appeared in his earliest childhood, 
and was not subdued in any degree by the 
bustle and contention of a Westminster edu- 
cation ; where, though he acquired a consid- 
erable portion of classical learning, he has 
himself declared, that " he was never able to 
raise his eye above the shoe-buckles of the 
elder boys, who tyrannized over him." From 
this seminary, he seems to have passed, with- 
out any academical preparation, into the So- 
ciety of the Inner Temple, where he continued 
to reside to the age of thirty-three. Neither 
his biographer nor his letters give any satis- 
factory account of the way in which this large 
and most important part of his life was spent. 
Although Lord Thurlow was one of his most 
intimate associates, it is certain that he never 
made any proficiency in the study of the law; 
and the few slight pieces of composition, in 
which he appears to have been engaged in 
this interval, are but a scanty produce for fif- 
teen years of literary leisure. That a part of 
those years was very idly spent, indeed, ap- 
pears from his own account of them. In a 
letter to his cousin, in 1786, he says, 

" I did actually live three years with Mr. Chap- 
man, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years 
in his house ; but I lived, that is to say, I spent my 
days in Sou'hampton Row, as you very well re- 
member. There was I, and the future Lord Chan- 
cellor, constantly employed, from morning tonight, 
in gisgling, and making giggle, instead of studying 
the law."— Vol. i. p. 178. 

And in a more serious letter to Mr. Rose, 
he makes the following just observations. 

" The colour of our whole life is generally such 
as the three or four first years, in which we are our 
own masters, make it. Then it is that we may be 
said to >hape our own destiny, and to treasure up 
fur ourselves a series of future successes or disap- 
pointments. Had I employed my lime as wisely as 
you, in a si'ua'inn very similar to yours, [ had never 
been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have 
acquired a character of more importance in soci- 
ety ; a situaii m in which my friends would have 
been better pleased to see me. But three years 
misspent in an attorney's office, were almost of 
course followed by several more equally misspent 
in the Temple; and the consequence has been, as 
the Italian epi'aph says, ** Stoqui" — The only use 
I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to 
serve in terrorem to others, when occasion may 
happen to offer, that they may escape (so far as my 
admo litions can have any weight with them) my 
folly and my fate."— Vol. i. pp. 333, 334. 

Neither the idleness of this period, however, 
nor the gaiety in which it appears to have 
been wasted, had corrected that radical defect 
in his constitution, by which he was disabled 
from making any public display of his acqui- 
sitions ; and it was the excess of this diffi- 



dence, if we rightly understand his biographer, 
that was the immediate cause of the unfor- 
tunate derangement that overclouded the re- 
mainder of his life. In his thirty-first year, 
his friends procured for him the office of 
reading-clerk to the House of Lords ;. but the 
idea of reading in public, was the source of 
such torture and apprehension to him, that he 
very soon resigned that place, and had interest 
enough to exchange it for that of clerk of the 
journals, which was supposed to require no 
personal attendance. An unlucky dispute in 
Parliament, however, made it necessary for 
him to appear in his. place ; and the conse- 
quences of this requisition are stated by Mr. 
Hayley. in the following, not very lucid, ac- 
count. 

" His terrors on this occasion arose to such an 
astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed 
his reason: for although he had endeavoured to 
prepare himself for his public duty, by attending 
closely at the office for several months, to examine 
the parliamentary journals, his application was ren- 
dered useless by that excess of diffidence, which 
made him conceive, that whatever knowledge he 
might previously acquire, it would all forsake him 
at the bar of the House. This distressing appre- 
hension increased to such a degree, a3 the time for 
his appearance approached, that when the day so 
anxiously dreaded arrived, he was unable to make 
the experiment. The very friends, who called on 
him for the purpose of attending him to the House 
of Lords, acquiesced in the cruel necessity of relin- 
quishing the prospect of a station so severely for- 
midable to a frame of such singular sensibility." 

"The conflict between the wishes ofiust affec- 
tionate ambition, and the terrors of diffidence, so 
entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that 
after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John 
Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Mar- 
tin Madan, his first cousin) had vainly endeavoured 
to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind, by 
friendly and religious conversation, it was found 
necessary to remove him to St. Alban's, where he 
resided a considerable time, under the care of that 
eminent physician Dr. Cotton, a scholar and a poet, 
who added to many accomplishments a peculiar 
sweetness of manners, in very advanced life, when 
I had I he pleasure of a personal acquaintance with 
him." — Vol*, i. pp. 25, 26. 

In this melancholy state he continued for 
upwards of a year, when his mind began 
slowly to emerge from the depression under 
which it had laboured, and to seek for con- 
solation in the study of the Scriptures, and 
other religious occupations. In the city of 
Huntingdon, to which he had been removed 
in h's illness, he now formed an acquaintance 
with the family of the Reverend Mr. Unwin, 
with whose widow 7 the greater part of his after 
life was passed. The series of letters, which 
Mr. Hayley has introduced in this place, are 
altogether of a devotional cast, and bear evi- 
dent symptoms of continuing depression and 
anxiety. He talks a great deal of his conver- 
sion, of the levity and worldliness of his 
former life, and of the grace which had at last 
been vouchsafed toJiim J and seems so entirely 
and constantly absorbed in those awful medi- 
tations, as to consider not only the occupations 
of his earlier days, but all temporal business 
or amusement, as utterly unworthy of his at- 
tention. We do not think it necessary to make 



156 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



any extract from this part of the publication ; 
and perhaps Mr. Hayley might have spared 
6ome of the methodistical raptures and dissert- 
ations that are contained in those letters, 
without any injury either to the memory of 
his friend, or the reputation of his own per- 
formance. 

' After the death of Mr. Unwin, he retired 
with his widow to the village of Olney in 
1768, where he continued in the same pious 
and sequestered habits of life till the year 
1772, when a second and more protracted 
visitation of the same tremendous malady ob- 
scured his faculties for. a melancholy period 
of eight years ; during which he was attended 
by Mrs. Unwin with a constancy and tender- 
ness of affection, which it was the great busi- 
ness of his after life to repay. In 1780, he 
began gradually to recover; and in a letter 
of that year to his cousin, describes himself 
in this manner : 

"You see me sixteen years older, at the least, 
than when I saw you last ; but the effects of time 
seem to have taken place rather on the outside of 
my head than within it. What was brown is be- 
come grey, but what was foolish remains foolish 
still. Green fruit must rot before it ripens, if the 
season is such as to afford it nothing but cold winds 
and dark clouds, that interrupt every ray of sunshine. 
My days steal away silently, and march on (as poor 
mad King Lear would have made his soldiers 
march) as if they were shod with felt ! Not so 
silently but that I hear them ; yet were it not that I 
am always listening to their flight, having no in- 
firmity that I had not when I was much younger, I 
should deceive myself with an imagination that I 
am still young." — Vol. i. pp. 96, 97. 

One of the first applications of his returning 
powers was to the taming and education of 
the three young hares, which he has since 
celebrated in his poetry : and, very soon after, 
the solicitations of his affectionate companion 
first induced him to prepare some moral pieces 
for publication, in the hope of giving a salu- 
tary employment to his mind. At the age of 
fifty, therefore, and at a distance from all the 
excitements that emulation and ambition usu- 
ally hold out to a poet, Cowper began to write 
for the public, with the view of diverting his 
own melancholy, and doing service to the 
cause of morality. Whatever effect his pub- 
lications had on the world, the composition 
of them certainly had a most beneficial one 
on himself. In a letter to his cousin he says, 

11 Dejection of spirits, which I suppose may have 
prevented many a man from becoming an author, 
made me one. I find constant employment neces- 
sary, and therefore take care to be constantly em- 
ployed.-^Manual occupations do not engage the 
mind sufficiently, as I know by experience, having 
tried many. But composition, especially of verse, 
absorbs it wholly. I write, therefore, generally 
three hours in a morning, and in an evening I 
transcribe. I read also, but less than I write." — 
Vol. i. p. 147. 

There is another passage in which he talks 
of his performance in so light and easy a 
manner, and assumes so much of the pleasing, 
though antiquated language of Pope and Ad- 
dison, that we cannot resist extracting it. 

" My labours are principally the production of 
last winter ; all indeed, except a few of the minor 



pieces. When I can find no other occupation, ' 
think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it in 
rhyme. Hence it conies to pass, that the season 
of the year which generally pinches off the flowers 
of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, and 
crowns me with a winter garland. In th's respect, 
therefore, I and my contemporary bards are by no 
means upon a par. They write when the delightful 
influence of fine weather, fine prospects, and a brisk 
motion of the animal spirits, make poetry almost the 
language of nature ; and I, when icicles depend from 
all the leaves of the Parnassian laurel, and when a 
reasonable man would as little expect to succeed in 
verse, as to hear a blackbird whistle. This must 
be my apology to you for whatever want of fire and 
animation you may observe in what you will shortly 
have the perusal of. As to the public, if they like 
me not, there is no remedy." — Vol. i. pp. 105, 106. 

The success of his first volume, which ap- 
peared in the end of the year 1781, was by 
no means such as to encourage him to proceed 
to a second ) and, indeed, it seems now to be 
admitted by every body but Mr. Hayley, that 
it was not well calculated for becoming popu- 
lar. Too serious for the general reader, it 
had too much satire, wit, and criticism, to be 
a favourite with the devout and enthusiastic ; 
the principal poems were also too long and 
desultory, and the versification throughout was 
more harsh and negligent, than the public had 
yet been accustomed to. The book therefore 
was very little read, till the increasing fame 
of the author brought all his works into notice ; 
and then, indeed, it was discovered, that it 
contained many traits of strong and original 
genius, and a richness of idiomatical phrase- 
ology, that has been but seldom equalled in 
our language. 

In the end of this year, Cowper formed an 
accidental acquaintance with the widow of Sir 
Thomas Austen, which, in spite of his insuper- 
able shyness, ripened gradually into a mutual 
and cordial friendship, and was the immediate 
source of some of his happiest hours, and 
most celebrated productions. — The facetious 
history of " John Gilpin" arose from a sug- 
gestion of that lady, in circumstances and in 
a way that marks the perilous and moody 
state of Cowper's understanding more strik- 
ingly perhaps than any general description. 

"It happened one afternoon, in those years, 
when his accomplished friend Lady Austen made a 
part of his little evening circle, that she observed 
him sinking into increasing dejection ; it was her 
custom, on these occasions, to try all the resources 
of her sprightly powers for his immediate relief. 
She told him the story of John Cilpin (which had 
been treasured in her memory from her childhood) to 
dissipate the gloom of the passing hour. Its effects 
on the fancy of Cowper had the air of enchantment. 
He informed her the next morning, that convulsions 
of laughter, brought on by his recollection of her 
story, had kept him waking during the greatest part 
of the night ! and that he had turned it into a ballad. 
—So arose the pleasant poem of John Gilpin."-— 
Vol. i. pp. 128, 129. 

In the course of the year 1783, however, 
Lady Austen was fortunate enough to direct 
the poet to a work of much greater importance ; 
and to engage him, from a very accidental 
circumstance, in the composition of "The 
Task," by far the best and the most popular 
of all his performances. The anecdote, which 
is such as the introduction of that poem has 



RAYLEY'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



157 



probably suggested to most readers, is given 
in this manner by Mr. Hayley. 

Ji This lady happened, as an admirer of Milton, 
to be pariial to blank verse, and often solicited her 
poetical friend to try his powers in that species of 
composition. After repeated solicitation, he pro- 
mised her, if she would furnish the subject, to com- 
ply with her request. ' Oh !' she replied, 'you can 
aever be in want of a subject , — you can write upon 
any — write upon this sola !' The poet obeyed her 
command; and, from the lively repartee of familiar 
conversation, arose apoemofmany thousand verses, 
unexampled, perhaps, both in its origin and excel- 
lence." — Vol. i. p. 135. 

This extraordinary production was finished 
in less than a year, and became extremely 
popular from the very first month of its publica- 
tion. The charm of reputation, however, could 
tot draw Cowper from his seclusion; and his 
solitude became still more dreary about this 
period, by the cessation of his intercourse 
with Lady Austen, with whom certain little 
jealousies on the part of Mrs. Unwin (which 
the biographer might as well have passed 
over in silence) obliged him to renounce any 
farther connection. Besides the Task and 
John Gilpin, he appears to have composed 
several smaller poems for this lady, which are 
published, for the first time, in the work now 
before us. We were particularly struck with 
a ballad on the unfortunate loss of the Royal 
George, of which the following stanzas may 
serve as a specimen. 

" Toll for the brave! 

Brave Kempenfelt is gone ; 
His last seafight is fought ; 
His work of glory done. 

" It was not in the battle ; 

No tempest gave the shock ; 
She sprang no fatal leak ; 
She ran upon no rock. 

•' His sword was in its sheath ; 
His fingers held the pen, 
When Kempenfelt went down, 
With twice four hundred men. 

Vol. i. p. 127. 

The same year that saw the conclusion of 
u The Task," found Cowper engaged in the 
translation of Homer. This laborious under- 
taking, is said, by Mr. Hayley, to have been 
first suggested to him by Lady Austen also; 
though there is nothing in the correspondence 
he has published, that seems to countenance 
that idea. The work was pretty far advanced 
before he appears to have confided the secret 
of it to any one. In a letter to Mr. Hill, he 
explains his design in this manner : 

" Knowing it to have been universally the opinion 
of the literati, ever since they have allowed them- 
selves to consider the matter coolly, that a transla- 
tion, properly so called, of Homer, is, notwithstand- 
ing what Pope has done, a desideratum in the 
English language, it struck me, that an attempt to 
supply the deficiency would be an honourable one ; 
and having made myself, in former years, some- 
what critically a master of the original, I was, by 
this double translation, induced to make the attempt 
myself. I am now translating into blank verse 
the last book of the Iliad, and mean to publish by 
subscription." — Vol. i. p. 154. 

Some observations that were made by Dr. 
Maty and others, upon a specimen of his 



translation, about this time, seem to have 
drawn from him the following curious and 
unaffected delineation of his own thoughts and 
feelings. 

" I am not a-hamed to confess, that having com- 
menced an author, I am most abundantly desirous 
to succeed as such. I have {what perhaps you little 
suspect me of) in my nature, an infinite share oj am- 
bition. But with it, I have at the same time, as 
you well know, an equal share of diffidence. To 
this combination of opposite qualities it has been 
owing, that, till lately, I stole through life without 
undertaking any thing, yet always wishing to dis- 
tinguish myself. At last I ventured : ventured, too, 
in the only path that, at so late a period, was yet 
open to me ; and I am determined, if God hath not 
determined otherwise, to work my way through 
the obscurity that hath been so long my portion, 
into notice." — Vol. i. p. 190. 

As he advanced in his work, however, he 
seems to have become better pleased with 
the execution of it; and in the year 1790, 
addresses to his cousin the following candid 
and interesting observations : though we can- 
not but regret that we have not some speci- 
mens at least of what he calls the quaint and 
antiquated style of our earlier poets : and are 
not without our suspicions that we should 
have liked it better than that which he ulti- 
mately adopted. 

" To say the truth, 1 have now no fears about 
the success of my translation, though in time past 
I have had many. I knew there was a style some- 
where, could I but find it, in which Homer ought 
to be rendered, and which alone would suit him. 
Long time I blundered about it, ere I could attain 
to any decided judgment on the matter. At first I 
was betrayed, by a desire of accommodating my 
language to the simplicity of his, into much of the 
quaintness that belonged to our writers of the fif- 
teenth century. In the course of many revisals, I 
have delivered myself from this evil, I believe, en- 
tirely : but I have done it slowly, and as a man 
separates himself from his mistress, when he is 
going to marry. I had so strong a predilection in 
favour of this style, at first, that I was crazed to 
find that others were not as much enamoured with 
it as myself. At every passage of that sort, which 
I obliterated, I groaned bitterly, and said to myself, 
I am spoiling my work to please those who have 
no taste for the simple graces of antiquity. But in 
measure, as I adopted a more modern phraseology, 
I became a convert to their opinion : and in the last 
revisal, which I am now making, am not sensible 
of having spared a single expression of the obsolete 
kind. I see my work so much improved by this 
alteration, that I am filled with wonder at my own 
backwardness to assent to the necessity of it ; and 
the more, when I consider, that Milton, with 
whose manner I account myself intimately ac- 
quainted, is never quaint, never twangs through the 
nose, but is every where grand and elegant, without 
resorting to musty antiquity for his beauties. On 
the contrary, he took a long stride forward, left the 
language of his own day far behind him, and antic- 
ipated the expressions of a century yet to come." 
—Vol. i. pp. 360, 361. 

The translation was finished in the year 
1791, and published by subscription imme- 
diately after. Several applications were made 
to the University of Oxford for the honour of 
their subscription, but without success. Their 
answer was, " That they subscribed to noth- 
ing." — "It seems not a little extraordinary. '* 
says the offended poet on this occasion- " tiiat 




158 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



peisons so nobly patronised themselves on the 
score of literature, should resolve to give no 
encouragement to it in return. ' ; We think 
so too. 

The period that elapsed from the publica- 
tion of his first volume in 178 1, to that of his 
Homer in 1791, seems to have been by far 
the happiest and most brilliant part of Cow- 
per's existence. It was not only animated by 
the vigorous and successful exertions in which 
he was engaged, but enlivened, in a very 
pleasing manner, by the correspondence and 
society of his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who re- 
newed, about this time, an intimacy that 
seems to have endeared the earlier days of 
their childhood. In his letters to this lady, 
we have found the most interesting traits of 
his simple and affectionate character, com- 
bined with an innocent playfulness, and viva- 
city, that charms the more, when contrasted 
with the gloom and horror to which it suc- 
ceeded, and by which it was unfortunately 
replaced. Our limits will not allow us to 
make many extracts from this part of the 
publication. We insert, however, the follow- 
ing delightful letter, in answer to one from 
Lady Hesketh, promising to pay him a visit 
during the summer. 

" I shall see you again ! — I shall hear your voice — 
we shall take walks together: I will show you my 
prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse, and iis 
banks, every thing that I have described. I antici- 
pate the pleasure of those days not very far distant, 
and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk not of 
an inn ; mention it not for your life. We have 
never had so many visitors, but we could easily ac- 
commodate them all, though we have received 
Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son, 
all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till 
the end of May, or beginning of June, because be- 
fore that time rny green-house will not be ready to 
receive us ; and it is the only pleasant room be- 
longing to us. When the plants go out, we go in. 
I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats, 
and there you shall sit with a bed of mignonette at 
your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and 
jesmine; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle 
every day. Sooner than the time I mention, the 
country will not be in complete beauty. And I 
will tell you what you shall find at your first en- 
trance. Imprimis, As soon as you have entered 
the vestibule, if you cast a look on either side of 
you, you "shall see on the right hand a box of my 
making. It is the box in which have been lodged 
all my hares, and in which lodges puss at present. 
But he, poor fellow, is worn out with age, and pro- 
mises to die before you can see him. On the right 
hand stands a cupboard, the work of the same 
author. It was once a dove-cage, but I transform- 
ed it. Opposite to you stands a table, which I also 
made ; but a merciless servant having scrubbed it 
until it became paralytic, it serves no purpose now 
but of ornament ; and all my clean shoes stand 
under it. On the left hand, at the farther end of 
this superb vestibule, you will find the door of the 

Jarlour into which I shall conduct you, and where 
will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin (unless we 
should meet her before), — and where we will be as 
happy as the day is long ! Order yourself, my 
cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you 
shall find me ready to conduct you to Olney. 

" My dear, I have told Homer what you say 
about casks and urns: and have asked him whether 
he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps 
his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it 
will never be any thing better than a cask to eternity. 
So if the god is content with it, we must even 



wonder at his taste, and be so too.' 
161—163. 



-Vol. i pp. 



The following is very much in the samp 

style. 

" This house, accordingly, since it has been oc- 
cupied by us and our Meubles, is as much superior 
to what it was when you saw it as you can imagine. 
The parlour is even elegant. When I say that the 
parlour is elegant, I do not mean to insinuate that 
the study is not so. It is neat, warm, and silent, 
and a much better study than 1 deserve, if I do not 
produce in it an incomparable translation of Homer. 
I think every day of those lines of Milton, and con- 
gratulate myself on having obtained, before I am 
quite superannuated, what he seems not to have 
hoped for sooner. 

' And may at length my weary age 
Find out the peaceful hermitage.' 

For if it is not a hermitage, at least it is a much 
better thing; and you must always understand, 
my dear, that when poets talk of cottages, hermit- 
ages, and such like things, they mean a house with 
six sashes in front, two comfortable parlours, a 
smart staircase, and three bedchambers of conve- 
nient dimensions ; in short, exactly such a house 
as this."— Vol. i. pp. 227, 228. 

In another letter, in a graver humour, he 
says — 

" I am almost the only person at Weston, known 
to you, who have enjoyed tolerable health this 
winter. In your next letter give us some account 
of your own state of health, for I have had my 
anxieties about you. The winter has been mild ; 
but our winters are in general such, that, when a 
friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I 
always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that 
we have possibly met for the last time, and that the 
robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before 
the return of summer. 

" Many thanks for the cuckow, which arrived 
perfectly safe, and goes well, to the amusement 
and amazement of all who hear it. Hannah lies 
awake to hear it ; and I am not sure that we have 
not others in the house that admire his music as 
much as she." — Vol. i. p. 331. 

In the following passage, we have all the 
calmness of a sequestered and good-natured 
man, and w r e doubt whether there was another 
educated and reflecting individual to be found 
in the kingdom, who could think and speak 
so dispassionately of the events which were 
passing in 1792. 

" The French, who, like all lively folks, are ex- 
treme in every thing, are such in their zeal for 
freedom ; and if it were possible to make so noble 
a cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting ii 
could not fail to do so. Princes and peers reduced 
to plain gentlemanship, and gentles reduced to a 
level with their own lackeys, are excesses of which 
they will repent hereafter. Difference of rank and 
subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, 
and, consequently, essential to the well-being of 
society: but what we mean by fanaticism in reli- 
gion, is exactly that which animates their politics; 
and, unless time should sober them, they will, 
after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps it de- 
serves not much to be wondered at, that at their 
first escape from tyrannic shackles, they should 
act extravagantly, and treat their kings as they have 
sometimes treated their idols. To these, however, 
they are reconciled in due time again ; but their 
respect for monarchy is at an end. They want 
nothing now but a little English sobriety, and that 
they want extremely. I heartily wish them some 
wit in their anger; for it were great pity that so 
many millions should be miserable for want of it." 
—Vol. i. p. 379. 



HAYLEY'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



159 



Homer was scarcely finished, when a pro- 
posal was made to the indefatigable translator 
to engage in a magnificent edition of Milton, 
for wh;ch he was to furnish a version of his 
Latin and Italian poetry, and a critical com- 
mentary upon his whole works. Mr. Hayley 
had, at this time, undertaken to write a life 
of Milton : and some groundless reports, as 
to an intended rivalry between him and Cow- 
per, led to a friendly explanation, and to a 
very cordial and affectionate intimacy. In 
the year 1792, Mr. Hayley paid a visit to his 
newly acquired friend at Weston ; and hap- 
pened to be providentially present with him 
when the agony which he experienced from 
the sight of a paralytic attack upon Mrs. Un- 
win; had very nearly affected his understand- 
ing. The anxious attention of his friend, and 
the gradual recovery of the unfortunate pa- 
tient, prevented any very calamitous effect 
from this unhappy occurrence : But his spirits 
appear never to have recovered the shock ; 
and the solicitude and apprehension which he 
constantly felt for his long tried and affection- 
ate companion, suspended his literary exer- 
tions, aggravated the depression to which he 
had always been occasionally liable, and ren- 
dered the remainder of his life a very preca- 
rious struggle against that overwhelming mal- 
ady by which it was at last obscured. In the 
end of summer, he returned Mr. Hayley's visit 
at Eartham; but came back again to Weston, 
with spirits as much depressed and forebod- 
ings as gloomy as ever. His constant and 
tender attention to Mrs Unwin, was one cause 
of his neglect of every thing else. li I cannot 
sit," he says in one of his letters, "with my 
pen in my hand, and my books before me, while 
she is, in effect, in solitude — silent, and look- 
ing in the fire." A still more powerful cause 
was, the constant and oppressive dejection 
of spirits that now began again to overwhelm 
him. Cf It is in vain," he says, "that I have 
made several attempts to write since I came 
from Sussex. Unless more comfortable days 
arrive, than I have now the confidence to look 
for, there is an end of all writing with me ! 
I have no spirits. When Rose came, I was 
obliged to prepare for his coming, by a nightly 
dose of laudanum." 

In the course of the year 1793, he seems 
to have done little but revise his translation 
of Homer, of which he meditated an im- 
proved edition. Mr. Hayley came to see him 
a second time at Weston, in the month of 
November ; and gives this affecting and pro- 
phetic account of his situation — 

" He possessed completely at this period all the 
admirable faculties of his mind, and all the native 
tenderness of his heart ; but there was something 
indescrihable in his appearance, which led me to 
apprehend, that, without some signal event in his 
favour, to re-animate his spirits, they would gradu- 
ally sink into hopeless dejection. The state of his 
aged infirm companion, afforded additional ground 
for increasing solicitude. Her cheerful and benefi- 
cent spirit could hardly resist her own accumulated 
maladies, so far as to preserve ability sufficient to 
watch over the tender health of him whom she had 
watched and guarded so long. Imbecility of body 
and mind must gradually render this tender and 
heroic woman unfit for the charge which she had 
so laudably sustained. The signs of such imbe- 



cility were beginning to he painfully visible ; nor 
can nature present a spectacle more truly pitiable, 
than imbecility in such a shape, eagerly grasping 
lor dominion, which it knows not eiihtr how to 
retain, or how to relinquish." — Vol. ii. pp. 161, 162. 

From a part of these evils, however, the 
poet was relieved, by the generous compas- 
sion of Lady Hesketh, who nobly took upon 
herself the task of superintending thismelan 
choly household. We will not withhold from 
our readers the encomium she has so well 
earned from the biographer. 

" Those only, who have lived with the super- 
annuated and melancholy, can properly appreciate 
the value of such magnanimous friendship; or per- 
fectly apprehend, what personal sufferings it must 
cost the mortal who exerts it, if that mortal has 
received from nature a frame of compassionate 
sensibility. The lady, to whom I allude, has felt 
but too severely, in her own health, the heavy tax 
that mortality is forced to pay for a resolute perse- 
verance in such painful duty." — Vol. ii. p. 177. 

It was impossible, however, for any care or 
attention to arrest the progress of that dread- 
ful depression, by which the faculties of thig 
excellent man were destined to be extin- 
guished. In the beginning of the year 1794, 
he became utterly incapable of any sort of 
exertion, and ceased to receive pleasure from 
the company or conversation of his friends. 
Neither a visit from Mr. Hayley, nor his 
Majesty's order for a pension 300/. a-year. 
was able to rouse him from that languid and 
melancholy state into which he had gradually 
been sinking; and, at length, it was thought 
necessary to remove him from the village of 
Weston to Tuddenham in Norfolk, where he 
could be under the immediate superintend- 
ence of his kinsman, the Reverend Mr. John- 
son. After a long cessation of all correspond- 
ence, he addressed the following very moving 
lines to the clergyman of the favourite vil- 
lage, to which he was no more to return : 

" I will forget, for a moment, that to whomso- 
ever I may address myself, a letter from me can no 
otherwise be welcome, than as a curiosity. To 
you, sir, I address this, urged by extreme penury 
of employment, and the desire I feel to learn some- 
thing of what is doing, and has been done, at 
Weston (my beloved Weston!) since I left it? 
No situation, at least when the weather is clear 
and bright, can be pleasanter than what we* have 
here ; which you will easily credit, when 1 add, 
that it imparts something a little resembling plea- 
sure even to me. — Gratify me with news of Wes- 
ton ! — If Mr. Gregson and the Courtney's are 
there, mention me to them in such terms as you 
see good. Tell me if my poor birds are living! 
f never see the herbs I used to give them, without 
a recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to 
gather them, forgetting that I am not at home. — 
Pardon this intrusion." 

In summer 1796, there were some faint 
glimmerings of returning vigour, and he again 
applied himself, for some time, to the revisal 
of his translation of Homer. In December, 
Mrs. Unwin died ; and such was the severe 
depression under which her companion then 
laboured, that he seems to have suffered but 
little on the occasion. He never afterwards 
mentioned her name ! At intervals, in the 
summer, he continued to work at the revisa] 
of his Homer, which he at length finished in 
1799; and afterwards translated some of 



160 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



Gay's Fables into Latin verse, and made 
English translations of several Greek and 
Latin Epigrams. This languid exercise of 
his once-vigorous powers was continued till 
the month of January 1800, when symptoms 
of dropsy became visible in his person, and 
soon assumed a very formidable appearance. 
After a very rapid but gradual decline, which 
did not seem to affect the general state of his 
spirits, he expired, without struggle or agita- 
tion, on the 25th of April, 1800. 

Of the volumes now before us, we have 
little more to say. The biography of Cowper 
naturally terminates with this account of his 
death; and the posthumous works that are 
now given to the public, require very few 
observations. They consist chiefly of short 
and occasional poems, that do not seem to 
have been very carefully finished, and will 
not add much to the reputation of their 
author. The longest is a sort of ode upon 
Friendship, in which the language seems to 
be studiously plain and familiar, and to which 
Mr. Hayley certainly has not given the highest 
poetical praise, by saying that it " contains the 
essence of every thing that has been said on 
the subject, by the best writers of different 
countries." Some of the occasional songs 
and sonnets are good ; and the translations 
from the anthologia, which were the employ- 
ment of his last melancholy days, have a 
remarkable closeness and facility of expres- 
sion. There are two or three little poetical 
pieces, written by him in the careless days 
of his youth, while he resided in the Temple, 
that are, upon the whole, extremely poor and 
unpromising. It is almost inconceivable, that 
the author of The Task should ever have been 
guilty of such verses as the following : 
" 'Tis not with eiiher of these views, 
That I presume to address the Muse ; 
But to divert a fierce banditti, 
(Sworn foes to every thing that's witty !) 
That, with a black infernal train, 
Make cruel inroads in my brain, 
And daily threaten to drive thence 
My little garrison of sense : 
The fierce banditti which I mean, 
Are gloomy thoughts, led on by spleen. 
Then there's another reason yet, 
Which is, that I may fairly quit 
The debt which justly became due 
The moment when I heard from you : 
And you might grumble, crony mine, 
If paid in any other coin." — Vol. i. p. 15. 
It is remarkable, however, that his prose 
was at this time uncommonly easy and ele- 
gant. Mr. Hayley has preserved three num- 
bers of the Connoisseur, which were written 
by him in 1796, and which exhibit a great 
deal of that point and politeness, which has 
been aimed at by the best of our periodical 
essayists since the days of Addison. 

The personal character of Cowper is easily 
estimated, from the writings he has left, ana" 
the anecdotes contained in this publication. 
He seems to have been chiefly remarkable 
for a certain feminine gentleness, and deli- 
cacy of nature, that shrunk back from all 
that was boisterous, presumptuous, or rude. 
His secluded life, and awful impressions of 
religion, concurred in fixing upon his man- 



ners, something of a saintly purity and de- 
corum, and in cherishing that pensive and 
contemplative turn of mind, by which he was 
so much distinguished. His temper appears 
to have been yielding and benevolent ; and 
though sufficiently steady and confident in 
the opinions he had adopted, he Mas very 
little inclined, in general, to force them upon 
the conviction of others. The warmth of his 
religious zeal made an occasional exception : 
but the habitual temper of his mind was 
toleration and indulgence; and it would be 
difficult, perhaps, to name a satirical and 
popular author so entirely free from jealousy 
and fastidiousness, or so much disposed to 
make the most liberal and impartial estimate 
of the. merit of others, in literature, in poli- 
tics, and in the virtues and accomplishments 
of social life. No angry or uneasy passions, 
indeed, seem at any time to have found a 
place in his bosom ; and, being incapable of 
malevolence himself, he probably passed 
through life, without having once excited 
that feeling in the breast of another. 

As the whole of Cowper's works are now 
before the public, and as death has finally 
closed the account of his defects and excel- 
lencies, the public voice may soon be expect- 
ed to proclaim the balance ; and to pronounce 
that impartial and irrevocable sentence which 
is to assign him his just rank and station in the 
poetical commonweal th, and to ascertain the 
value and extent of his future reputation. As 
the success of his works has, in a great mea- 
sure, anticipated this sentence, it is the less pre- 
sumptuous in us to offer our opinion of them. 
\ The great merit of this writer appears to 
us to consist in the boldness and originality 
of his composition, and in the fortunate au- 
dacity Math M T hich he has carried the do- 
minion of poetry into regions that had been 
Considered as inaccessible to her ambition. 
The gradual refinement of taste had, for nearly 
a century, been weakening the force of origi- 
nal genius. Our poets had become timid and 
fastidious, and circumscribed themselves both 
In the choice and the management of their 
■subjects, by the observance of a limited num- 
ber of models, who w T ere thought to have ex- 
hausted all the legitimate resources of the art. 
Cowper was one of the first who crossed this 
enchanted circle ; w T ho reclaimed the natural 
liberty of invention, and M'alked abroad in the 
open field of observation as freely as those by 
M'hom it M T as originally trodden. He passed 
from the imitation of poets, to the imitation 
of nature, and ventured boldly upon the rep- 
resentation of objects that had not been sanc- 
tified by the description of any of his prede- 
cessors. In the ordinary occupations and 
duties of domestic life, and the consequences 
of modern manners, in the common scenery 
of a rustic situation, and the obvious contem- 
plation of our public institutions, he has found 
a multitude of subjects for ridicule and re- 
flection, for pathetic and picturesque descrip- 
tion, for moral declamation, and devotional 
rapture, that M-ould have been looked upon 
Math disdain, or M T ith despair, by most of oui 
poetical adventurers. He took as wide a 



HAYLEY'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



161 



range in language too, as in matter; and. 
shaking off the tawdry incumbrance of that 
poetical diction which had nearly reduced 
the art to the skilful collocation of a set of 
conventional phrases, he made no scruple to 
set down in verse every expression that would 
have been admitted in prose, and to take ad- 
vantage of all the varieties with which our 
language could supply him. 

But while, by the use of this double licence, 
he extended the sphere of poetical composi- 
tion, and communicated a singular character 
of freedom, force, and originality to his ow r n 
performances, it must not be dissembled, that 
the presumption which belongs to most inno- 
vators, has betrayed him into many defects. 
In disdaining to follow the footsteps of others, 
he has frequently mistaken the way, and has 
been exasperated, by their blunders, to rash 
into opposite extremes. In his contempt for 
their scrupulous selection of topics, he has 
introduced some that are unquestionably low 
and uninteresting; and in his zeal to strip off 
the tinsel and embroidery of their language, 
he has sometimes torn it (like Jack's coat in 
the Tale of a Tub) into terrible rents and 
beggarly tatters. He is a great master of 
English, and evidently values himself upon 
his skill and facility in the application of its 
rich and diversified idioms : but he has in- 
dulged himself in this exercise a little too 
fondly, and has degraded some grave and 
animated passages by the unlucky introduc- 
tion of expressions unquestionably too collo- 
quial and familiar. His impatience of control, 
and his desire to have a great scope and va- 
riety in his compositions, have led him not 
only to disregard all order and method so en- 
tirely in their construction, as to have made 
each of his larger poems professedly a com- 
plete miscellany, but also to introduce into 
them a number of subjects, that prove not to 
be very susceptible of poetical discussion. 
There are specimens of argument, and dia- 
logue, and declamation, in his works, that 
partake very little of the poetical character, 
and make rather an awkward appearance in 
a metrical production, though they might 
have had a lively and brilliant effect in an 
essay or a sermon. The structure of his sen- 
tences, in like manner, has frequently much 
more of the copiousness and looseness of 
oratory, than the brilliant compactness of 
poetry; and he heaps up phrases and circum- 
stances upon each other, with a profusion that 
is frequently dazzling, but which reminds us as 
often of the exuberance of a practised speaker, 
as of the holy inspiration of a poet. 

Mr. Hayley has pronounced a warm eulo- 
gium on the satirical talents of his friend : 
but it does not appear to us, either that this 
was the style in which he was qualified to 
excel, or that he has made a judicious selec- 
tion of subjects on which to exercise it. — 
There is something too keen and vehement 
in his invective, and an excess of austerity in 
his doctrines, that is not atonecl for by the 
truth or the beauty of his descriptions. Fop- 
pery and affectation are not such hateful and 
gigantic vices, as to deserve all the anathemas 
21 



that are bestowed upon them ; nor can we 
believe that soldiership, or Sunday music, 
have produced all the terrible effects which 
he ascribes to them : There is something very 
undignified, too, to say no worse of them, in 
the protracted parodies and mock-heroic pas- 
sages with which he seeks to enliven some 
of his gravest productions. The Sofa (for 
instance, in the Task) is but a feeble imita- 
tion of -'The Splendid Shilling; the Monitor 
is a copy of something still lower ; and the 
tedious directions for raising cucumbers, which 
begin with calling a hotbed "a stercorarious 
heap," seem to have been intended as a 
counterpart to the tragedy of Tom Thumb. 
All his serious pieces contain some fine devo- 
tional passages : but they are not without a 
taint of that enthusiastic intolerance whick 
religious zeal seems but too often to produce. 

It is impossible to say any thing of the de- 
fects of Cowper's writings, without taking 
notice of the occasional harshness and inele- 
gance of his versification. From his corre- 
spondence, however, it appears that this was 
not with him the effect of negligence merely, 
but that he really imagined that a rough and 
incorrect line now and then had a very agree- 
able effect in a composition of any length. 
This prejudice, we believe, is as old as Cow- 
ley among English writers ; but we do not 
know that it has of late received the sanction 
of any one poet of eminence. In truth, it 
does not appear to us to be at all capable of 
defence. The very essence of versification 
is uniformity; and while anything like versi- 
fication is preserved, it must be evident that 
uniformity continues to be aimed at. What 
pleasure is to be derived from an occasional 
failure in this aim, we cannot exactly under- 
stand. It must afford the same gratification, 
we should imagine, to have one of the but- 
tons on a coat a little larger than the rest, or 
one or two of the pillars in a colonnade a little 
out of the perpendicular. If variety is want- 
ed, let it be variety of excellence, and not a 
relief of imperfection : let the writer alter the 
measure of his piece, if he thinks its uni- 
formity disagreeable ; or let him interchange 
it every now and then, if he thinks proper, 
with passages of plain and professed prose ; 
but do not let him torture an intractable scrap 
of prose into the appearance of verse, nor slip 
in an illegitimate line or two among the 
genuine currency of his poem. 

There is another view of the matter, no 
doubt, that has a little more reason in it. A 
smooth and harmonious verse is not so easilv 
written, as a harsh and clumsy one ; and, in 
order to make it smooth and elegant, the 
strength and force of the expression must 
often be sacrificed. This seems to have been 
Cowper's view of the subject, at least in one 
passage. " Give me," says he, in a letter to 
his publisher, "a manly rough line, with a 
deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole 
poem full of musical periods, that have noth- 
ing but their smoothness to recommend them." 
It is obvious, however, that this is not a de- 
fence of harsh versification, but a confession 
of inability to write smoothly. Why should 
o 2 



162 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



not harmony and meaning go together ? It is 
difficult, to" be sure; and so it is, to make 
meaning and verse of any kind go together : 
But it is the business of a poet to overcome 
these difficulties, and if he do not overcome 
them both, he is plainly deficient in an ac- 
complishment that others have attained. To 
those who find it impossible to pay due at- 
tention both to the sound and the sense, we 
would not only address the preceding exhort- 
ation of Cowper, but should have no scruple 
to exclaim, "Give us a sentence of plain 
prose, full of spirit and meaning, rather than 
a poem of any kind that has nothing but its 
versification to recommend it." 

Though it be impossible, therefore, to read 
the productions of Cowper, without being de- 
lighted with his force, his originality, and his 
variety; and although the enchantment of 
his moral enthusiasm frequently carries us 
insensibly through all the mazes of his digres- 
sions, it is equally true, that we can scarcely 
read a single page with attention, without 
being offended at some coarseness orlowness 
of expression, or disappointed by some " most 
lame and impotent conclusion." The dignity 
of his rhetorical periods is often violated by 
the intrusion of some vulgar and colloquial 
idiom, and the full and transparent stream of 
his diction broken upon some obstreperous 
verse, or lost in the dull stagnation of a piece 
of absolute prose. The effect of his ridicule 
is sometimes impaired by the acrimony with 
which it is attended ; and the exquisite 
beauty of his moral painting and religious 
views, is injured in a still greater degree by 
the darkness of the shades which his enthu- 
siasm and austerity have occasionally thrown 
upon the canvas. With all these defects, 
however, Cowper will probably very long re- 
tain his popularity with the readers of Eng- 
lish poetry. The great variety and truth of 
his descriptions; the minute and correct 
painting of mose home scenes, and private 
feelings with which every one is internally fa- 
miliar ; the sterling weight and sense of most 
of his observations, and, above all, the great 
appearance of facility with which every thing 
is executed, and the happy use he has so 
often made of the most common and ordinary 
language : all concur to stamp upon his poems 
the character of original genius, and remind 
us of the merits that have secured immor- 
tality to Shakespeare. 

After having said so much upon the original 
writings of Cowper, we cannot take our leave 
of him without adding a few words upon the 
merits of the translation with which we have 
found him engaged for so considerable a por- 
tion of his life. The views with which it was 
undertaken have already been very fully ex- 

Elained in the extracts we have given "from 
is correspondence ; and it is impossible to 
deny, that his chief object has been attained 
in a very considerable degree. That the 
translation is a great deal more close and lite- 
ral than any that had previously been at- 
tempted in English verse, probably will not 
be disputed by those wno are the least dis- 
jKised to admire it; that the style into which 



it is translated, is a true English style, though 
not perhaps a very elegant or poetical one, 
may also be assumed ; but we are not sure 
that a rigid and candid criticism will go far- 
ther in its commendation. The language is 
often very tame, and even vulgar; and there 
is by far too great a profusion of antiquated 
and colloquial forms of expression. In the 
dialogue part, the idiomatical and familiar 
turn of the language has often an animated 
and happy effect ; but in orations of dignity, 
this dramatical licence is frequently abused, 
and the translation approaches to a parody. 
In the course of one page, we observe that 
Nestor undertakes u to entreat Achilles to a 
calm." Agamemnon calls him, " this wrangler 
here." And the godlike Achilles himself 
complains of being treated u like a felloiv of 
no worth." 

" Ye critics say, 
How poor to this was Homer's style !" 

In translating a poetical writer, there are 
two kinds of fidelity to be aimed at. Fidelity 
to the matter, and fidelity to the manner of the 
original. The best translation would be that, 
certainly, which preserved both. But, as this 
is generally impracticable, some concessions 
must be made upon both sides : and the largest 
upon that which will be least regretted by 
the common readers of the translation. Now, 
though antiquaries and moral philosophers, 
may take great delight in contemplating the 
state of manners, opinions, and civilization, 
that prevailed in the age of Homer, and be 
offended, of course, at any disguise or modem 
embellishment that may be thrown over his 
representations, still, this will be but a second- 
ary consideration with most readers of poet- 
ry; and if the smoothness of the verse, the 
perspicuity of the expression, or the vigour 
of the sentiment, must be sacrificed to the 
observance of this rigid fidelity, they will 
generally be of opinion, that it ought rather 
to have been sacrificed to them ; and that the 
poetical beauty of the original was better 
worth preserving than the literal import of 
the expressions. The splendour and magnifi- 
cence of the Homeric diction and versification 
is altogether as essential a part of his compo- 
sition, as the sense and the meaning which 
they convey. His poetical reputation depends 
quite as much on the one as on the other ; and 
a translator must give but a very imperfect and 
unfaithful copy of his original, if he leave out 
half of those qualities in which the excellence 
of the original consisted. It is an indispensa- 
ble part of his duty, therefore, to imitate the 
harmony and elevation of his author's lan- 
guage, as well as to express his meaning; and 
he is equally unjust and unfaithful to his 
original, in passing over the beauties of his 
diction, as in omitting or disguising his sen- 
timents. In Cowper's elaborate version, there 
are certainly some striking and vigorous pas- 
sages, and the closeness of the translation 
continually recals the original to the memory 
of a classical reader; but he will look in vain 
for the melodious and elevated language of 
Homer in the unpolished verses and collo- 
quial phraseology of his translator. 



HAYLEYS LIFE OF COWPER. 



163 



(Ittig, 1804.) 



The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, Esq. With an Introductory Letter 
to the Right Honourable Earl Cowper. By William Hayley, Esq. Vol. III. 4to. pp. 
416. Johnson, London: 1804. 



This is the continuation of a work of which 
we recently submitted a very ample account 
and a very full character to our readers: On 
that occasion, we took the liberty of observ- 
ing, that two quarto volumes seemed to be 
almost as much as the biography of a seclud- 
ed scholar was entitled to occupy; and, with 
a little judicious compression, we are still of 
opinion that the life and correspondence of 
Cowper might, be advantageously included in 
somewhat narrower limits. We are by no 
means disposed, however, to quarrel with this 
third volume, which is more interesting, if 
possible, than either of the two former, and 
will be read, we have no doubt, with general 
admiration and delight. 

Though it still bears the title of the life of 
Cowper, this volume contains no further par- 
ticulars of his history; but is entirely made 
up of a collection of his letters, introducedby 



in general, from the pen of his biographer. 
This prologue, we think, possesses no pecu- 
liar merit. The writer has no vigour, and 
very little vivacity; his mind seems to be 
cultivated, but not at all fertile ; and, while 
he always keeps at a safe distance from ex- 
travagance or absurdity, he does not seem to 
be uniformly capable of distinguishing affect- 
ation from elegance, or dulness from good 
judgment. This discourse upon letter-writ- 
ing, in short, contains nothing that might not 
have been omitted with considerable advan- 
tage to the publication ; and we are rather 
inclined to think, that those who are ambi- 
tious of being introduced to the presence of 
Cowper, will do well not to linger very long 
in the antichamber with Mr. Hayley. 

Of the letters themselves, we may safely 
assert, that we have rarely met with any 
similar collection, of superior interest or 
beauty. Though the incidents to which they 
relate be of no public magnitude or moment, 
and the remarks which they contain are not 
uniformly profound or original, yet there is 
something in the sweetness and facility of the 
diction, and more, perhaps, in the glimpses 
they afford of a pure and benevolent mind, 
that diffuses a charm over the whole collec- 
tion, and communicates an interest that is not 
often commanded by performances of greater 
dignity and pretension. This interest was 
promoted and assisted, no doubt, in a consid- 
erable degree, by that curiosity which always 
seeks to penetrate into the privacy of celebrat- 
ed men, and which had been almost entirely 
frustrated in the instance of Cowper, till the 
appearance of this publication. Though his 
writings had long been extremely popular, 
the author himself was scarcely known to the 



public; and having lived in a state of entire 
seclusion from the world, there were no anec- 
dotes of his conversation, his habits or opin- 
ions, in circulation among his admirers. The 
publication of his correspondence has in a 
great measure supplied this deficiency ; and 
we now know almost as much of Cowper as 
we do of those authors who have spent their 
days in the centre and glare of literary or 
fashionable notoriety. These letters, however, 
will continue to be read, long after the curi- 
osity is gratified to which perhaps they owed 
their first celebrity: for the character with 
which they make us acquuinied, will always 
attract by its rarity, and engage by its ele- 
gance. The feminine delicacy and purity of 
Cowper's manners and disposition, the ro- 
mantic and unbroken retirement in which his 
innocent life was passed, and the singular 
gentleness and modesty of his whole charac- 
ter, disarm him of those terrors that so often 
shed an atmosphere of repulsion around the 
persons of celebrated writers, and make us 
more indulgent to his weaknesses, and more 
delighted with his excellences, than if he had 
been the centre of a circle of wits, or the ora- 
cle of a literary confederacy. The interest 
of this picture is still further heightened by 
the recollection of that tremendous malady, 
to the visitations of which he was subject, and 
by the spectacle of that perpetual conflict 
which was maintained, through the greater 
part of his life, between the depression of those 
constitutional horrors, and the gaiety that re- 
sulted from a playful imagination, and a heart 
animated by the mildest affections. 

In the letters now before us, Cowper dis- 
plays a great deal of all those peculiarities by 
which his character was adorned or distin- 
guished ; he is frequently the subject of his 
own observations, and often delineates the 
finer features of his understanding with all the 
industry and impartiality of a stranger. But 
the most interesting traits are those which are 
unintentionally discovered, and which the 
reader collects from expressions that were em- 
ployed for very different purposes. Among 
the most obvious, perhaps, as well as the most 
important of these, is that extraordinary com- 
bination of shyness and ambition, to which 
we are probably indebted for the very exist- 
ence of his poetry. Being disqualified, by 
the former, from vindicating his proper place 
in the ordinary scenes either of business or of 
society, he was excited, by the latter, to at- 
tempt the only other avenue to reputation that 
appeared to be open, and to assert the veal 
dignity of the talents with which he felt that 
he was gifted. If he could only have mus- 
tered courage enough to read the journals oi 



164 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



the House of Lords, or been able to get over 
the diffidence which fettered his utterance in 
general society, his genius would probably 
have evaporated in conversation, or been con- 
tented with the humbler glory of contributing 
to the Rolliad or the Connoisseur. 

As the present collection relates to no par- 
ticular set of subjects or occurrences, but 
exhibits a view of the author's miscellaneous 
correspondence with the few intimate friends 
he had retained, it is impossible to give any 
abstract of its contents, or to observe any 
order in the extracts that may be made from 
it. We shall endeavour, however, to intro- 
duce as great a variety as possible. 

Though living altogether in retirement, 
Cowper appears to have retained a very nice 
perception of the proprieties of conduct and 
manners, and to have exercised a great deal 
of acuteness and sagacity upon the few sub- 
jects of practical importance which he had 
occasion to consider. The following sketch 
is by a fine and masterly hand ; and proves 
how much a bashful recluse may excel a gen- 
tleman from the grand tour in delicacy of ob- 
servation and just notions of politeness. 

" Since I wrote last, we had a visit from . I 

did not feel myself vehemently disposed to receive 
him with that complaisance, from which a stranger 
generally infers that he is welcome. By his man- 
ner, which was rather hold than easy, I judged that 
there was no occasion for it ; and that it was a trifle 
which, if he did not meet with, neither would he 
feel the want of. He has the air of a travelled man, 
but not of a travelled gentleman ; is quite delivered 
from that reserve, which is so common an ingre- 
dient in the English character, yet does not open 
himself gently and gradually, as men of polite be- 
haviour do, but bursts upon you all at once. He 
talks very loud ; and when our poor little robins 
hear a great noise, they are immediately seized with 
an ambition to surpass it — the increase of their vo- 
ciferation occasioned an increase of his ; and his, in 
return, acted as a stimulus upon theirs— neither side 
entertained a thought of giving up the contest, which 
became continually more interesting to our ears 
during the whole visit. The birds, however, sur- 
vived it, — and so did we. They perhaps flatter 
themselves they gained a complete victory, but I 

believe Mr. would have killed them both in 

another hour." — pp. 17, 18. 

Cowper's antipathy to public schools is well 
known to all the readers of his poetry. There 
are many excellent remarks on that subject 
in these letters. We can only find room for 
the following. 

" A public education is often recommended as the 
most effectual remedy for that bashful and awkward 
restraint, so epidemical among the youth of our 
country. But I verily believe, that, instead of being 
a cure, it is often the cause of it. For seven or 
eight years of his life, the boy has hardly seen or 
conversed with a man, or a woman, except the 
mails at his boarding house. A gentleman or a 
lady, are consequently such novelties to him, that 
he is perfectly at a loss to know what sort of beha- 
viour he should preserve before them. He plays 
with his buttons, or the strings of his hat, he blows 
his nose, and hangs down his head, is conscious of 
his own deficiency to a degree that makes him quite 
unhappy, and trembles lest any one should speak to 
him, because that would quite overwhelm him. Is 
not all this miserable shyness the effect of his edu- 
cation ? To me it appears to be so. If he saw good 
company every day, he would never be terrified at 
the sight of it, and a room full of ladies and gentle- 



men, would alarm him no more than the chairs they 
sit on. Such is the effect of custom." — p. 60. 

There is much acuteness in the following 
examination of Dr. Paley's argument in favour 
of the English hierarchy. 

" He says first, that the appointment of various 
orders in the church, is at (ended with this good 
consequence, that each class of people is supplied 
with a clergy of their own level and description, 
with whom they may live and associate on terms 
of equality. But in order to effect this good pur- 
pose, there ought to be at least three parsons in 
every parish ; one for the geniry, one for the traders 
and mechanics, and one for the lowest of the vul- 
gar. Neither is it easy to find many parishes, 
where the laity at large have any society with their 
minister at all: this therefore is fanciful, and a mere 
invention. In the next place, he says it gives a 
dignity to the ministry itself; and the clergy share 
in the respect paid to their superiors. Much good 
may such participation do them ! They themselves 
know how little it amounts to. The dignity a cu- 
rate derives from the lawn sleeves and square cap 
of his diocesan, will never endanger his humility. 
Again — ' Rich and splendid situations in the church, 
have been justly regarded as prizes, held out to in- 
vite persons of good hopes and ingenious attain- 
ments.' Agreed. But the prize held out in the 
Scripture, is of a very different kind ; and our ec- 
clesiastical baits are too often snapped by the worth- 
less, and persons of no attainments at all. They 
are indeed incentives to avarice and ambition, but 
not to those acquirements, by which only the min- 
isterial function can be adorned, zeal for the salva- 
tion of men, humility, and self-denial. Mr. Paley 
and I therefore cannot agree." — pp. 172, 173. 

One of the most remarkable things in this 
volume, is the great profusion of witty and 
humorous passages which it contains; though 
they are usually so short, and stand so much 
connected with more indifferent matter, that 
it is not easy to give any tolerable notion of 
them by an extract. His style of narrative is 
particularly gay and pleasing, though the in- 
cidents are generally too trifling to bear a 
separation from the whole tissue of the cor- 
respondence. We venture on the following 
account of an election visit. 

"As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the 
water finds its way into creeks and holes of rocks, 
which in its calmer state it never reaches, in like 
manner the effect of these turbulent times is felt 
even at Orchard-side, where in general we live as 
undisturbed by the political element, as shrimps or 
cockles that have been accidently deposited in some 
hollow beyond the water-mark, by the usual dash- 
ing of the waves. We were sifting yesterday after 
dinner, the two ladies and myself, very composedly, 
and without the least apprehension of any sudi in- 
trusion, in our snug parlour, one lady knitting, the 
other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted, 
when, to our unspeakable surprise, a mob appeared 
before the window, a smart rap was heard at the 
door, the boys halloo'd, and the maid announced 

Mr. G . Puss* was unfortunately let out of her 

box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends 
at his heels, was refused admittance at the grand 
entry, and referred to the back door, as the only 
possible way of approach. 

" Candidates are creatures not very susceptible 
of affronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in 
at the window than be absolutely excluded. In a 
minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlour were 

filled. Mr. G , advancing toward me, shook 

me by the hand with a degree of cordiality thit was 
extremely seducing. As soon as he, and as <nany 

• His tame hare. 



HAYLEY'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



165 



as could find chairs were seated, he began to open 
the intent of his visit. I told him I had no vote, lor 
which he readily gave me credit. I assured him I 
had no influence, which he was not equally inclined 

to believe, and the less no doubt because Mr. G , 

addressing himself to me at that moment, informed 
me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I could 
not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing 
it, I ventured to confirm my first assertion, by say- 
ing, that if I had any, I was utterly at a loss to 
imagine where it could be, or wherein it consisted. 
Thus ended the conference. Mr. G— squeezed 
me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and with- 
drew. He kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen ; 
and seemed upon the whole a most loving, kissing, 
kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, gen- 
teel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good 
eyes in his head, which not being sufficient as it 
should seem for the many nice and difficult purposes 
of a senator, he had a third also, which he wore 
suspended by a riband from his button-hole. The 
boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered ; 
the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, 
withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with 
the adventure, and in a short time settled into our 
former tranquillity, never probably to be thus inter- 
rupted more. I thought myself, however, happy 
in being able to affirm truly, that I had not that in- 
fluence for which he sued, and for which, had I 
been possessed of it, with my present views of the 
dispute between the Crown and the Commons, I 
must have refused him, for he is on the side of the 
former. It is comfortable to be of no consequence 
in a world where one cannot exercise any without 
disobliging somebody.' ' — pp. 242 — 244. 

Melancholy and dejected men often amuse 
themselves with pursuits that seem to indicate 
the greatest levity. Swift wrote all sorts of 
doggrel and absurdity while tormented with 
spleen, giddiness, and misanthropy. Cowper 
composed John Gilpin during a season of most 
deplorable depression, and probably indited 
the rhyming letter which appears in this col- 
lection, in a moment equally gloomy. For 
the amusement of our readers, we annex the 
concluding paragraph, containing a simile, of 
which we think they must immediately feel 
the propriety. 

" I have heard before of a room, with a floor laid 
upon springs, and such like things, with so much 
art, in every part, that when you went in, you was 
forced to begin a minuet pace, with an air and a 
grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with 
a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or 
string, or any such thing ; and now I have writ, in 
a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as 
you advance, will keep you still, though against 
your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you 
come to an end of what I have penn'd ; which that 
you may do, ere madam and you, are quite worn 
out, with jiggling about, I take my leave ; and here 
you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, 
from your humble me — W. C." — p. 89. 

As a contrast to this ridiculous effusion, we 
idd the following brief statement, which, not- 
withstanding its humble simplicity, appears 
c us to be an example of the true pathetic. 

11 You never said a better thing in your life, than 

when you assured Mr. of the expedience of a 

j^ift of bedding to the p^or of Olney. There is no 
one article of this world's comforts with which, as 
Falstaff says, they are so heinously unprovided. 
When a poor woman, whom we know well, carried 
home two pair of blankets, a pair for herself and 
husband, and a pair for her six children, as soon as 
the children saw them, they jumped out of their 
straw, caught them in their arms, kissed them, 
blessed them and danced for joy. Another old 



woman, a very old one, the first night that she 
found herself so comfortably covered, could not 
sleep a wink, being kept awake by the contrary 
emotions, of transport on the one hand, and the fear 
of not being thankful enough on the other." 

pp. 347. 348. 
The correspondence of a poet may be ex- 
pected to abound in poetical imagery and 
sentiments. They do not form the most 
prominent parts of this collection, but they 
occur in sufficient profusion ; and we have 
been agreeably surprised to find in these let- 
ters the germs of many of the finest passages 
in the "Task." There is all the ardour of 
poetry and devotion in the following passages. 

" Oh ! I could spend whole days, and moon-light 
nights, in feeding upon a lovely prospect ! My eyea 
drink the rivers as they flow. If every human be- 
ing upon earth could think for one quarter of an 
hour, #s I have done for many years, there might 
perhaps be many miserable men among them, but 
not an unawakened one could be found, from the 
arctic to the antarctic circle. At present, the dif- 
ference between them and me is greatly to their 
advantage. I delight in baubles, and know ihem to 
be so; for, rested in, and viewed without a refer- 
ence to their Author, what is the earth, what are 
the planets, what is the sun itself, but a bauble ? 
Better for a man never to have seen them, or to see 
them with the eyes of a brute, stupid and uncon- 
scious of what he beholds, than not to be able to 
say, ' The Maker of all these wonders is my friend !' 
Their eyes have never been opened, to see that 
they are trifles; mine have been, and will be, till 
they are closed for ever. They think a fine estate, 
a large conservatory, a hot-house rich as a West In- 
dian garden, things of consequence; visit them 
with pleasure, and muse upon them with ten times 
more. I am pleased with a frame of four lights, 
doubtful whether the few pines it contains will ever 
be worth a farthing; amuse myself with a green- 
house, which Lord Bute's gardener could take upon 
his back, and walk away with; and when I have 
paid it the accustomed visit, and watered it, and 
given it air, I say to myself— This is not mine, 'tis 
a plaything lent me for the present, I must leave it 
soon."— pp. 19, 20. 

: ' We keep no bees ; but if I lived in a hive, I 
should hardly hear more of their music. All the 
bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mig- 
nonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for 
the honey they get out of it, by a hum, which, 
though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my 
ear, as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds 
lhat nature utters are delightful, at least in this 
country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of 
lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing ; 
but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not 
account musical, save and except always the braying 
of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls 
please me, without one exception. I should not in- 
deed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might 
hang him up in the parlour, for the sake of his mel- 
ody ; but a goose upon a common, or in a farm 
yard, is no bad performer. And as to insects, if the 
black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will 
keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of 
the rest ; on the contrary, in whatever key they 
sing, from the knat's fine treble to the bass of the 
humble bee, I admire them all. Seriously, how- 
ever, it strikes me as a very observable instance of 
providential kindness to man, that such an exact 
accord has been contrived between his ear and the 
sounds with which, at least in a rural siiua;ion, it is 
almost every moment visited. All the world is 
sensible of the uncomfortable effect that certain 
sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently 
upon the spirits ; and if a sinful world had been 
filled with such as would have curdled the blood, 
and have made the sense of hearing a perpetual in 



LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. 



convenience, I do not know that we should have 
had a right to complain. — There is somewhere in in- 
finite space, a world that does not roll within the 
precincts of mercy ; and as it is reasonable, and even 
scriptural, to suppose that there is music in heaven, 
in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is 
found. Tones so dismal, as to make woe itself 
more insupportable, and to acuminate even despair. 
But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw 
the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy 
into deeps with which she is but too familiar. 

pp. 287—289. 

The following short sketches, though not 
marked with so much enthusiasm, are con- 
ceived with the same vigour and distinctness. 

"When we look back upon our forefathers, we 
seem to look back upon the people of another na- 
tion, almost upon creatures of another species. 
Their vast rambling mansions, spacious halls, and 
painted casements, their Gothic porches smothered 
with honeysuckles, -their little gardens ancr high 
walls, their box-edgings, balls of holly, and yew- 
tree statues, are become so entirely unfashionable 
now, that we can hardly believe it possible that a 
people who resembled us so little in their taste, 
should resemble us in any thing else. But in every 
thing else, I suppose, they were our counterparts 
exactly ; and time, that has sewed up the slashed 
sleeve, and reduced the large trunk-hose to a neat 
pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just 
where it found it. The inside of the man, at least, 
has undergone no change. His passions, appetites, 
and aims are just what they ever were. They wear 
perhaps a handsomer disguise than they did in days 
of yore ; for philosophy and literature will have their 
effect upon the exterior ; but in every other respect 
a modern is only an ancient in a different dress." 

p. 48. 

"I am much obliged to you for the voyages, 
which I received, and began to read last night. My 
imagination is so captivated upon these occasions, 
that I seem to partake with the navigators in all the 
dangers they encountered. I lose my anchor ; my 
main-sail is rent into shreds ; 1 kill a shark, and by 
signs converse with a Patagonian, — and all this 
without moving from the fire-side. The principal 
fruits of these circuits that have been made around 
the globe, seem likely to be the amusement of those 
that staid at home. Discoveries have been made, 
but such discoveries as will hardly satisfy the ex- 
pense of such undertakings. We brought away an 
Indian, and, having debauched him, we sent him 
home again to communicate the infection to his 
country — fine sports to be sure, but such as will 
not defray the cost. Nations that live upon bread- 
fruit, and have no mines to make them worthy of 
our acquaintance, will be but little visited for the 
future. So much the better for them ; their poverty 
is indeed their mercy." — -pp. 201, 202. 

Cowper's religious impressions occupied too 
great a portion of his thoughts, and exercised 
too great an influence on his character, not to 
make a prominent figure in his correspond- 
ence. They form the subject of many elo- 
quent and glowing passages ; and have some- 
times suggested sentiments and expressions 
that cannot be perused without compassion 
and regret. The following passage, however, 
is liberal and important. 

• ' No man was ever scolded out of his sins. The 
heart, corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows 
angry if it be not treated with some management 
and good manners, and scolds again. A surly mas- 
tiff will bear perhaps to be stroked, though he will 
growl even under that operation ; but if you touch 
him roughly, he will bite. There is no grace that 
the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success 
than a religious zeal. A man thinks he is fighting 



for Christ, when he is fighting for his own notions. 
He thinks that he is skilfully searching the hearts 
of others, while he is only gratifying the malignity 
of his own ; and charitably supposes his hearers 
destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more 
in his own eyes by comparison." — pp. 179, 180. 

The following, too, is in a fine style of 
eloquence. 

" We have exchanged a zeal that was no better 
than madness, for an indifference equally pitiablo 
and absurd. The holy sepulchre has lost its im- 
portance in the eyes of nations called Christian; 
not because the light of true wisdom had delivered 
them from a superstitious attachment to the spot, 
but because he that was buried in it is no longer 
regarded by them as the Saviour of the world. 
The exercise of reason, enlightened by philosophy, 
has cured them indeed of the misery of an abused 
understanding; but, together with the delusion, 
•they have lost the substance, and, for the sake of 
the lies that were grafted upon it, have quarrelled 
with the truth itself. Here, then, we see the ne 
plus ultra of human wisdom, at least in affairs of 
religion. It enlightens the mind with respect to 
non-essentials ; but, with respect to that in which 
the essence of Christianity consists, leaves it per- 
fectly in the dark. It can discover many errors, 
that in different ages have disgraced the faith ; but 
it is only to make way for the admission of one 
more fatal than them all, which represents that 
faith itself as a delusion. Why those evils have 
been permitted, shall be known hereafter. One 
thing in the meantime is certain ; that the folly and 
frenzy of the professed disciples of the gospel have 
been more dangerous to its interest than all the 
avowed hostilities of its adversaries." — pp. 200, 201. 

There are many passages that breathe the 
very spirit of Christian gentleness and sober 
judgment. But when he talks of his friend 
Mr. Newton's prophetic intimations (p. 35.), 
and maintains that a great proportion of the 
ladies and gentlemen who amuse themselves 
with dancing at Brighthelmstone, must nec- 
essarily be damned (p. 100.), we cannot feel 
the same respect for his understanding, and 
are repelled by the austerity of his faith. 
The most remarkable passage of this kind, 
however, is that in which he supposes the 
death of the celebrated Captain Cook to have 
been a judgment on him for having allowed 
himself to be worshipped at Owhyhee. Mr. 
Hayley assures us, in a note, that Cowper 
proceeded altogether on a misapprehension of 
the fact. The passage, however, is curious, 
and shows with what eagerness his powerful 
mind followed that train of superstition into 
which his devotion was sometimes so unfortu- 
nately betrayed. 

" The reading of those volumes afforded me 
much amusement, and I hope some instruction. 
No observation, however, forced itself upon me 
with more violence than one, that I could not help 
making, on the death of Captain Cook. God is a 
jealous God ; and at Owhyhee the poor man was 
content to be worshipped! From that moment, 
the remarkable interposition of Providence in his 
favour, was converted into an opposition that 
thwarted all his purposes. He left the scene of his 
deification, but was driven back to it by a most 
violent storm, in which he suffered more than in 
any that had preceded it. When he departed, he 
left his worshippers still infatuated with an idea of 
his godship, consequently well disposed to serve 
him. At his return, he found them sullen, dis- 
trustful, and mysterious. A trifling theft was com- 
mitted, which, by a blunder of his own in pursuing 



HAYLEr'S LIFE OF COWPER. 



167 



the thief afier the property had been restored, was 
magnified to an affair of the last importance. One 
of their favourite chiefs was killed, too, by a blun- 
der. Nothing, in short, but blunder and mistake 
attended him, till he fell breathless into the water 
— and then all was smooth again! The world in- 
deed will not take notice, or see that the dispensa- 
tion bore evident marks of divine displeasure ; but 
a mind. I think, in any desree spiritual, cannot 
overlook them."— pp. 293, 294. 

From these extracts, our readers will now 
be able to form a pretty accurate notion of 
the contents and composition of this volume. 
Its chief merit consists in the singular ease, 
elegance, and familiarity with which every 
thing is expressed, and in the simplicity and 
sincerity in which every thing appears to be 
conceived. Its chief fault, perhaps, is the too 
frequent recurrence of those apologies for dull 
letters, and complaints of the want of sub- 
jects, that seem occasionally to bring it down 
to the level of an ordinary correspondence, 
and to represent Cowper as one of those Mho 
make every letter its own subject, and cor- 
respond with their friends by talking about 
their correspondence. 

Besides the subjects, of which we have 
exhibited some specimens, it contains a good 
deal of occasional criticism, of which we do 
not think very highly. It is not easy, indeed, 
to say to what degree the judgments of those 
who live in the world are biassed by the 
opinions that prevail in it ; but, in matters of 
this kind, the general prevalence of an opinion 
is almost the only test we can have of its 
truth ; and the judgment of a secluded man 
is almost as justly convicted of error, when it 
runs counter to that opinion, as it is extolled 
for sagacity, when it happens to coincide with 
it. The critical remarks of Cowper furnish 
us with instances of both sorts 3 but perhaps 
with most of the former. His admiration of 
Mrs. Maeaulay's History, and the rapture 
with which he speaks of the Henry and 
Emma of Prior, and the compositions of 
Churchill, will not, we should imagine, at- 
tract the sympathy of many readers, or sus- 
pend the sentence which time appears to be 
passing on those performances. As there is 
scarcely any thing of love in the poetry of 
Cowper, it is not very wonderful that there 
should be nothing of it in his correspondence. 
There is something very tender and amiable 
in his affection for his cousin Lady Hesketh; 
but we do not remember any passage where 
he approaches to the language of gallantry, 
or appears to have indulged in the sentiments 
that might have led to its employment. It is 
also somewhat remarkable, that during the 
whole course of his retirement, though a good 
deal embarrassed in his circumstances, and 
frequently very much distressed for want of 
employment, he never seems to have had an 
idea of betaking himself to a profession. The 
solution of this difficulty is probably to be 
found in the infirmity of his mental health: 
but there were ten or twelve years of his life, 
when he seems to have been fit for any exer- 
tion that did not require a public appearance, 
and to have suffered very much from the 
Want of all occupation. 



This volume closes with a fragment of a 
poem by Cowper, which Mr. Hayley Mas for- 
tunate enough to discover by accident among 
some loose papers which had been found in 
the poet's study. It consists of something 
less than two hundred lines, and is addressed 
to a very ancient and decayed oak .in the 
vicinity of Weston. We do "not think quite 
so highly jf this production as the editor ap- 
pears to do; at the same time that we con- 
fess it '.o be impressed with all the marks 
of Cowpers most vigorous hand : we do not 
know any of his compositions, indeed, that 
affords a more striking exemplification of 
most of the excellences and defects of his 
peculiar style, or might be more fairly quoted 
as a specimen of his manner. It is full of the 
conceptions of a vigorous and poetical fancy, 
expressed in nervous and familiar language ; 
but it is rendered harsh by unnecessary in- 
versions, and debased in several places by 
the use of antiquated and vulgar phrases. 
The following are about the best lines which 
it contains. 

" Thou wast a bauble once ; a cup and ball, 
Which babes might play with ; and the thievish 

jay 
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin' d 
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down 
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs, 
And all thine embryo vastness, as a gulp! 
But late thy growth decreed ; autumnal rains, 
Beneath thy parent tree, mellow'd the soil 
Design'd thy cradle, and a skipping deer. 
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepar'd 
The soft receptacle, in which secure 
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through. n 

"Time made thee what thou wast — King of the 
woods ! 
And time hath made thee what thou art — a cave 
For owls to roost in ! Once thy spreading boughs 
O'erhungthe champaign, and the numerous flock 
That graz'd it, stood beneath that ample cope 
Unerowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm ! 
No flock frequents thee now ; thou hast outliv'd 
Thy popularity ; and art become 
(Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing 
Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth!" 

" One man alone, the father of us all, 
Drew not his life from woman; never gaz'd, 
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw, 
On all around him ; learn' d not by degrees, 
Nor ow'd articulation to his ear ; 
But moulded by his Maker into man 
At once, upstood intelligent ; survey'd 
All creatures; with precision understood 
Their purport, uses, properties; assign'd 
To each his name significant, and, fill'd 
With love and wisdom, rendered back to heaven, 
In praise harmonious, the first air he drew ! 
He was excus'd the penalties of dull 
Minority; no tutor charg'd his hand 
With the thought-tracing quill, or task'd his mind 
With problems; History, not wanted yet, 
Lcan'd on her elbow, watching time, whose cause 
Eventful, should supply her with a theme." 

pp. 415, 416. 

On the whole, though we complain a little 
of the size and the price of the volumes now 
before us, we take our leave of them with 
reluctance; and lay down our pen with no 
little regret, to think that we shall review no 
more of this author's productions. 



HISTOEY 



AND 



HISTORICAL MEMOIES. 



(©ttobtr, 1808.) 

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and Town. 
Representative of the County of Nottingham in the Long Parliament, and. of the Town of 
Nottingham in the First Parliament of Charles II. fyc; with Original Anecdotes of many of 
the most distinguished of his Contemporaries, and a summary Review of Public Affairs : 
Written by his Widow, Lucy, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, fyc. 
Now first published from the Original Manuscript, by the Rev. Julius Hutchinson, &c. 
&c. To which is prefixed, the Life of Mrs. Hutchinson, written by Herself, a Fragment, 
pp. 446. 4to. London, Longman and Co. : 1806. 



We have not often met with any thing more 
interesting and curious than this volume. In- 
dependent of its being a contemporary nar- 
rative of by far the most animating and im- 
portant part of our history, it challenges our 
attention as containing an accurate and lu- 
minous account of military and political affairs 
from the hand of a woman ; as exhibiting the 
most liberal and enlightened sentiments in 
the person of a puritan : and sustaining a high 
tone of aristocratical dignity and pretension, 
though the work of a decided republican. 
The views which it opens into the character of 
the writer, and the manners of the age, will 
be to many a still more powerful attraction. 

Of the* times to which this narrative be- 
longs — times to which England owes all her 
freedom and all her glory — we can never hear 
too much, or too often : and though their story 
has been transmitted to us, both with more 
fulness of detail and more vivacity of colour- 
ing than any other portion of our annals, every 
reflecting reader must be aware that our in- 
formation is still extremely defective, and 
exposes us to the hazard of great misconcep- 
tion. The work before us, we think, is cal- 
culated in a good degree to supply these de- 
ficiencies, and to rectify these errors. 

By §3 r the most important part of history, 
as we Lave formerly endeavoured to explain, 
is that which makes us acquainted with the 
character, dispositions, and opinions of the 
great and efficient population by whose mo- 
tion or consent all things are ultimately gov- 
erned. After a nation has attained to any 
degree of intelligence, evepy other principle 
of action becomes subordinate ; and, with re- 
lation to our own country in particular, it may 
be said with safety, that we can know nothing 
Of" its past history, or of the applications of 
168 



that history to more recent transactions, if we 
have not a tolerably correct notion of the 
character of the people of England in the 
reign of Charles I., and the momentous pe- 
riods which ensued. This character depended 
very much on that of the landed proprietors 
and resident gentry ; and Mrs. Hutchinson's 
memoirs are chiefly valuable, as containing a 
picture of that class of the community. 

Agriculture was at this period still the 
chief occupation of the people ; and the truly 
governing part of society was consequently 
the rustic aristocracy. The country gentle- 
men — who have since been worn down by 
luxury and taxation, superseded by the ac- 
tivity of office, and eclipsed by the opulence 
of trade — were then all and all in England j 
and the nation at large derived from them its 
habits, prejudices, and opinions. Educated 
almost entirely at home, their manners were 
not yet accommodated to a general European 
standard, but retained all those national pecu- 
liarities which united and endeared them to 
the rest of their countrymen. Constitutionally 
serious, and living much with their families, 
they had in general more solid learning, and 
more steady morality than the gentry of other 
countries. Exercised in local magistracies, 
and frequently assembled for purposes of 
national cooperation, they became conscious 
of their power, and jealous of their privileges : 
and having been trained up in a dread and 
detestation of that popery which had been 
the recent cause of so many wars and perse- 
cutions, their religious sentiments had con- 
tracted somewhat of an austere and polemical 
character, and had not yet settled from the 
ferment of reformation into tranquil and regu- 
lated piety. It was upon this side, accord- 
ingly, that they were most liable to error: 



LIFE OF COLONEL HUTCHINSON. 



169 



and the extravagances into which a part of 
them -was actually betrayed, has been the 
chief cause of the misrepresentations to which 
they were then exposed, and of the miscon- 
ception which still prevails as to their char- 
acter and principles of action. 

In the middle of the reign of Charles I. al- 
most the whole nation was serious and devout. 
Any licence and excess which existed was 
mostly encouraged and patronised by the 
Royalists; who made it a point of duty to 
deride the sanctity and rigid morality of their 
opponents ; and they again exaggerated, out 
of party hatred, the peculiarities by which 
they were most obviously distinguished from 
their antagonists. Thus mutually receding 
from each other, from feelings of general 
hostility, they were gradually led to realize 
the imputations of which they were recipro- 
cally the subjects. The cavaliers gave way 
to a certain degree of licentiousness ; and the 
adherents of the parliament became, for the 
most part, realty morose and enthusiastic. At 
the Restoration, the cavaliers obtained a com- 
plete and final triumph over their sanctimo- 
nious opponents; and the exiled monarch 
and his nobles imported from the Continent a 
taste for dissipation, and a toleration for de- 
bauchery, far exceeding any thing that had 
previously been known in England. It is 
from the wits of that court, however, and the 
writers of that party, that the succeeding and 
the present age have derived their notions of 
the Puritans. In reducing these notions to 
the standard of truth, it is not easy to deter- 
mine how large an allowance ought to be 
made for the exaggerations of party hatred, 
the perversions of witty malice, and the illu- 
sions of habitual superiority. It is certain, 
however, that ridicule, toleration, and luxury 
gradually annihilated the Puritans in the 
higher ranks of society : and after-times, seeing 
their practices and principles exemplified only 
among the lowest and most illiterate of man- 
kind, readily caught the tone of contempt 
which had been assumed by their triumphant 
enemies ; and found no absurdity in believing 
that the base and contemptible beings who 
were described under the name of Puritans 
by the courtiers of Charles II., were true 
representatives of that valiant and conscien- 
tious party which once numbered half the 
gentry of England among its votaries and 
adherents. 

That the popular conceptions of the auster- 
ities and absurdities of the old Roundheads 
and Presbyterians are greatly exaggerated, 
will probably be allowed by every one at all 
conversant with the subject; but we know 
of nothing so well calculated to dissipate the 
existing prejudices on the subject, as this 
book of Mrs. Hutchinson. Instead of a set 
of gloomy bigots waging war with all the 
elegancies and gaieties of life, we find, in this 
calumniated order, ladies of the first birth 
and fashion, at once converting their husbands 
to Anabaptism, and instructing their children 
in music and dancing, — valiant Presbyterian 
colonels refuting the errors of Arminius, col- 
lecting pictures, and practising, with great 
22 



applause, on the violin, — stout esquires, at 
the same time, praying and quaffing October 
with their godly tenants, — and noble lords 
disputing with their chaplains on points of 
theology in the evening, and taking them out 
a-hunting in the morning. There is nothing, 
in short, more curious and instructive, than 
the glimpses which we here catch of the old 
hospitable and orderly life of the country 
gentlemen of England, in those days when 
the national character was so high and so 
peculiar, — when civilization had produced all 
its effects, but that of corruption, — and when 
serious studies and dignified pursuits had not 
yet been abandoned to a paltry and effeminate 
derision. Undoubtedly, in reviewing the an- 
nals of those times, we are struck with a 
loftier air of manhood than presents itself in 
any after era; and recognize the same char- 
acters of deep thought and steady enthusiasm, 
and the same principles of fidelity and self- 
command, which ennobled the better days of 
the Roman Republic, and have made every 
thing else appear childish and frivolous in 
the comparison. 

One of the most striking and valuable 
things in Mrs. Hutchinson's performance, is 
the information which it affords us as to the 
manners and condition of women in the period 
with which she is occupied. This is a point 
in which all histories of public events are 
almost necessarily defective ; though it is evi- 
dent that, without attending to it, our notions 
of the state and character of any people must 
be extremely imperfect and erroneous. Mrs. 
Hutchinson, however, enters into no formal 
disquisition upon this subject. What we 
learn from her in relation to it, is learnt inci- 
dentally — partly on occasion of some anec- 
dotes which it falls in her way to recite — but 
chiefly from what she is led to narrate or dis- 
close as to her own education, conduct, or 
opinions. If it were allowable to take the 
portrait which she has thus indirectly given 
of herself, as a just representation of her fair 
contemporaries, we should form a most exalt- 
ed notion of the republican matrons of Eng- 
land. Making a slight deduction for a few 
traits of austerity, borrowed from the bigotry 
of the age, We do not know where to look for 
a more noble and engaging character than 
that under which this lady presents herself to 
her readers ; nor do we believe that any age 
of the world has produced so worthy a coun- 
terpart to the Valerias and Portias of antiquity. 
With a high-minded feeling of patriotism and 
public honour, she seems to have been pos- 
sessed by the most dutiful and devoted at- 
tachment to her husband ; and to have com- 
bined a taste for learning and the arts with 
the most active kindness and munificent hos- 
pitality to all who came within the sphere of 
her bounty. To a. quick perception of char- 
acter, she appears to have united a masculine 
force of understanding, and a singular capacity 
for affairs ; and to have possessed and exer- 
cised all those talents, without affecting any 
superiority over the rest of her sex, or aban 
doning for a single instant the delicacy ind 
reserve which were then its most indisp'ensa- 



170 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



ble ornaments. Education, certainly, is far 
more generally diffused in our days, and ac- 
complishments infinitely more common ; But 
the perusal of this volume has taught us to 
doubt, whether the better sort of women were 
not fashioned of old by a better and more ex- 
alted standard, and whether the most eminent 
female of the present day would not appear 
to disadvantage by the side of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son. There is, for the most part, something 
intriguing and profligate and theatrical in the 
clever women of this generation ; and if we 
are dazzled by their brilliancy, and delighted 
with their talent, we can scarcely ever guard 
against some distrust of their judgment or 
some suspicion of their purity. There is 
something, in short, in the domestic virtue, 
and the calm and commanding mind of our 
English matron, that makes the Corinnes and 
Heloises appear small and insignificant. 

The admirers of modern talent will not ac- 
cuse us of choosing an ignoble competitor, if 
we desire them to weigh the merits of Mrs. 
Hutchinson against those of Madame Roland. 
The English revolutionist did not indeed 
compose weekly pamphlets and addresses to 
the municipalities ; — because it was not the 
fashion, in her days, to print every thing that 
entered into the heads of politicians. But she 
shut herself up with her husband in the gar- 
rison with which he was intrusted, and shared 
his counsels as well as his hazards. She en- 
couraged the troops by her cheerfulness and 
heroism — ministered to the sick — and dressed 
w ith her own hands the wounds of the cap- 
tives, as well as of their victors. When her 
husband was imprisoned on groundless sus- 
picions, she laboured, without ceasing, for his 
deliverance — confounded his oppressors by 
her eloquence and arguments — tended him 
with unshaken fortitude in sickness and soli- 
tude—and, after his decease, dedicated her- 
self to form his children to the example of his 
virtues ; and drew up the memorial which is 
now before us, of his worth and her own 
genius and affection. All this, too, she did 
without stepping beyond the province of a 
private woman — without hunting after com- 
pliments to her own genius or beauty — with- 
out sneering at the dulness, or murmuring at 
the coldness of her husband — without hazard- 
ing the fate of her country on the dictates of 
her own enthusiasm, or fancying for a moment 
that she was born with talents to enchant and 
regenerate the world. With equal power of 
discriminating character, with equal candour 
and eloquence and zeal for the general good, 
she is elevated beyond her French competitor 
by superior prudence and modesty, and by a 
certain simplicity and purity of character, of 
which, it appears to us, that the other was 
unable to form a conception. 

After detaining the reader so long with 
these general observations, we shall only with- 
hold him from the quotations which we mean 
to lay before him, while we announce, that 
Mrs. Hutchinson writes in a sort of lofty, 
classical, translated style ; which is occasion- 
ally diffuse and pedantic, but often attains to 
great dignity and vigour, and still more fre- 



quently charms us by a sort of antique sim. 
plicity and sweetness, admirably in ut.ison 
with the sentiments and manners it is em- 
ployed to represent. 

The fragment of her own history, with 
which the volume opens, is not the least in- 
teresting, and perhaps the most characteristic 
part of its contents. The following brief ac- 
count of her nativity, will at once make the 
reader acquainted with the pitch of this lady's 
sentiments and expressions. 

" It was one the 29th day of January, in the yeare 
of our Lord 16^, that in the Tower of London, 
the principall citie of the English Isle. I was about 
4 of the clock in the morning brought forth to be- 
hold the ensuing light. My father was Sr. Allen 
Apsley, leiftenant of the Tower of London ; my 
mother, his third wife, was Lucy, the youngest 
daughter of Sr. John St. John, of Lidiard Tregoz, 
in Wiltshire, by his second wife. My father had 
then living a sonne and a daughter by his former 
wives, and by my mother three sonns, I being her 
eldest daughter. The land was then att peace (it 
being towards the latter end of the reigne of King 
James), if that quiettnesse may be call d a peace, 
which was rather like the calme and smooth surface 
of the sea, whose darke womb is allready impreg- 
nated of a horrid tempest." — pp. 2, 3. 

She then draws the character of both her 
parents in a very graceful and engaging man- 
ner, but on a scale somewhat too large to 
admit of their being transferred entire into 
our pages. We give the following as a speci- 
men of the style and execution. 

" He was a most indulgent husband, and no lesse 
kind to his children; a most noble master; who 
thought it not enough to maintaine his servants 
honourably while they were with him, but, for all 
that deserv'd it, provided offices or settlements as 
for children. He was a father to all his prisoners, 
sweetning with such compassionate kindnesse their 
restraint, that the afliction of a prison was not felt 
in his dayes. He had a singular kindnesse for all 
persons that were eminent eiiher in learning or 
amies ; and when, through the ingratitude and vice 
of that age, many of the wives and chilidren of 
Queene Elizabeth's glorious captaines were redur.'d 
to poverty, his purse was their common treasury, 
and they knew not the inconvenience of decay'd 
fortunes till he was dead : many of those valliant 
seamen he maintain'd in prison ; many he redeem'd 
out of prison and cherisht with an extraordinary 
bounty. He was severe, in the radiating of hia 
famely ; especially would not enaure the least im- 
modest behaviour or dresse in any woman under 
his roofe. There was nothing he hated more than 
an insignificant gallant, that could only make his 
leggs and prune himself, and court a lady, but had 
not braines to employ himselfe in things more sute- 
able to man's nobler sex. Fidelity in his trust, love 
and loyalty to his piince, were not the least of his 
vertues, but those wherein he was not excell'd by 
any of his owne or succeeding times. He gave my 
mother a noble allowance of 300Z. a yeare for her 
owne private expence, and had given her all her 
owne portion to dispose of how she pleas'd, as 
soone as she was married ; which she suffer' d tr en- 
crease in her friend's hands; and what my father 
allowed her she spent not in vanities, although she 
had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but 
she lay'd most of it out in pious and charitable uses, 
Sr. Walter Rawleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners 
in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chimis- 
trie, she suffer' d them to make their rare experi- 
ments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the 
poore prisoners, and partly to gaine the knowledge 
of their experiments, and the medicines to helpe 
such poore people as were not able to seeke to phi 



LIFE OF COLONEL HUTCHINSON. 



171 



eitians. By these means she acquir'd a greate deale 
of skill, which wa3 very profitable to many all her 
life. She was not only to ihese, but to all the other 
prisoners that came into the Tower, as a mother. 
All the time she dwelt in the Tower, if any were 
sick she made them broths and restoratives with her 
owne hands, visited and took care of them, and 
provided them all necessaries: If any were aflicted 
she comforted them, so that they felt not the incon- 
venience of a prison who were in that place. She 
was not lesse bountifull to many poore widdowes 
and orphans, whom officers of higher and lower 
rank had left behind them as objects of charity. 
Her owne house was fill'd with distressed families 
of her relations, whom she supplied and maintained 
in a noble way." — pp. 12 — 15. 

For herself, being her mother's first daugh- 
ter, unusual pains were bestowed on her edu- 
cation ; so that, when she was seven years of 
age, she was attended, she informs us, by no 
fewer than eight several tutors. In conse- 
quence of all this, she became very grave and 
thoughtful; and withal very pious. But her 
early attainments in religion seem to have 
been by no means answerable to the notions 
of sanctity which she imbibed in her maturer 
years. There is something very innocent and 
natural in the Puritanism of the following 
passage. 

" It pleas'd God that thro' the good instructions 
of my mother, and the sermons she carried me to, 
I was convinc'd that the knowledge of God was 
the most excellent study ; and accordingly applied 
myselfe to it, and to practise as I was taught. I 
us'd to exhort my mother's maides much, and to 
turne their idle discourses to good subjects ; but I 
thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, 
and every day perform'd my due taskes of reading 
and praying, that then I was free to anie thing that 
was not sin ; for I was not. at that time convinc'd of 
the vanity of conversation which was not scandal- 
ously wicked ; I thought it no sin to learne or heare 
wittie songs and amorous sonnets or poems, and 
twenty things of that kind ; wherein I was so apt 
that I became the confident in all the loves that 
were managed among my mother's young women : 
and there was none of them but had many lovers 
and some particular friends belov'd above the rest ; 
among these I have ." — p. 17, 18. 

Here the same spirit of austerity which 
dictated the preceding passage, had moved 
the fair writer, as the editor informs us, to 
tear away many pages immediately following 
the words with which it concludes — and thus 
to defraud the reader of the only love story 
with which he had any chance of being 
regaled in the course of this narrative. 
Although Mrs. Hutchinson's abhorrence of 
any thing like earthly or unsanctified love, 
has withheld her on ajl occasions from the 
insertion of any thing that related to such 
feelings, yet it is not difficult, we think, to 
perceive that she was originally constituted 
w T ith an extraordinary sensibility to all power- 
ful emotions ; and that the suppression of 
those deep and natural impressions has given 
a singular warmth and animation to her des- 
criptions of romantic and conjugal affection. 
In illustration of this, we may refer to the 
following story of her husband's grandfather 
and grandmother, which she recounts with 
much feeling and credulity. After a very 
ample account of their mutual love and love- 
liness, she proceeds — 



"But while the incomparable mother shin'd in 
all the humane glorie she wisht, and had the crowne 
of all outward ielicity to the full in the enjoyment 
of the mutuall love of her most beloved husband, 
God in one moment tooke it away, and alienated 
her most excellent understanding in a difficult child- 
birth, wherein she brought forth two daughters 
which liv'd to be married; and one more that died, 
I think assoone or before it was borne. But alter 
'that, all the art of the best physitians in England 
could never restore her understanding. Yet she 
was not frantick, but had such a pretty deliration, 
that her ravings were more delightful than other 
weomen's most rationall conversations. Upon thia 
occasion her husband gave himselfe up to live re- 
tired with h«r, as became her condition. The 
daughters and the rest of the children as soon as 
they grew up were married and disperst. I think 
I have heard she had some children after that 
childbirth which distemper'd her; and then my 
lady Hutchinson must have bene one of them. I 
have heard her servants say, that even after her 
marriage, she would steale many melancholy houres 
to sitt and weepe in remembrance of her. Meane- 
while her parents were driving on their age, in no 
lesse constancy of love to each other, when even 
that distemper which had estrang'd her mind in all 
things elce. had left her love and obedience entire 
to her husband, and he retein'd the same fond- 
nesse and respect for her, after she was distemper'd, 
as when she was the glory of her age ! He had 
two beds in one chamber, and she being a little sick, 
two weomen watcht by her, some time before she 
died. It was his custome, as soon as ever he un- 
clos'd his eies, to aske hovr she did ; but one night, 
he being as they thought in a deepe sleepe, she 
quietly departed towards the morning. He was 
that day to have gone a hunting, his usuall exercise 
for his health ; and it was his custome to have his 
chaplaine pray with him before he went out: the 
weomen, fearfull to surprise him with the ill 
newes, knowing his deare affection to her, had 
stollen out and acquainted the chaplaine, desiring 
him to informe him of it. Sr. John waking, did 
not that day, as was his custome, ask for her ; bat 
call'd the chaplaine to prayers, and ioyning with 
him, in the middst of the prayer, expir'd ! — and 
both of them were buried together in the same 
grave. Whether he perceiv'd her death and 
would not take notice, or whether some strange 
sympathy in love or nature tied up their lives in 
one, or whether God was pleased to exercise an 
unusuall providence towards them, preventing 
them both from that bitter sorrow which such 
separations cause, it can be but conjectur'd," &c. 
—p. 26—28. 

The same romantic and suppressed sensi- 
bility is discernible, we think, in her whole 
account of the origin and progress of her 
husband's attachment to her. As the story 
is in many respects extremely characteristic 
of the times as well as the persons to which 
it relates, we shall make a pretty large extract 
from it. Mr. Hutchinson had learned, it 
seems, to " dance and vault" with great 
agility, and also attained to "great mastery 
on the violl" at the University; and, upon 
his return to Nottingham, in the twentieth 
year of his age, spent much of his time with 
a licentious but most accomplished gentle- 
man, a witty but profane physician, and a 
pleasant but cynical old schoolmaster. In 
spite of these worldly associations, however, 
we are assured that he was a most godly 
and incorruptible person ; and, in particular, 
proof against all the allurements of the fair 
sex, whom he frequently "reproved, but in a 
handsome way of raillery, far their pride and 



172 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



vanity." In this hopeful frame of mind, it 
was proposed to him to spend a few summer 
months at Richmond, where the young princes 
then held their court. 

"Mr. Hutchinson considering this, resolv'd to 
accept his offer; and that day telling a gentleman 
of the house whither he was going, the gentleman 
bid him take heed of the place, for it was so fatal! 
for love, that never any young disengag'd person 
went thither, who return'd again free. Mr. 
Hutchinson laught at him ; but he, to confirme 
it, told him a very true story of a gentleman, 
who not long before had come for some lime to 
ledge there, and found all the people he came in 
company with, bewailing the death of a gentle- 
woman that had lived there. Hearing her so much 
deplor'd, he made enquiry after her, and grew so 
in love with the description, that no other discourse 
could at first please him, nor could he at last endure 
any other; he grew desperately melancholly, and 
would goe to a mount where the print of her foote 
was cutt, and lie there pining and kissing of it all 
the day long, till att length death in some months 
space concluded his languishment. This story was 
very true ; but Mr. Hutchinson was neither easie 
to believe it, nor frighted at the example; thinking 
himselfe not likely to make another." — p. 37, 38. 

He goes accordingly to Richmond, and 
boards with his music-master; in whose 
house a younger sister of his future wife 
happened* then to be placed, — she herself 
having gone into Wiltshire with her mother, 
with some expectations of being married be- 
fore her return. 

" This gentlewoman, that was left in the house 
with Mr. Hutchinson, was a very child, her elder 
sister being at that time scarcely past it ; but a 
child of such pleasantnesse and vivacity of spiritt, 
and ingenuity in the quallity she practis'd, that Mr. 
Hutchinson tooke pleasure in hearing her practise, 
and would fall in discourse with her. She having 
the keyes other mother's house, some halfe a mile 
distant, would some times aske Mr. Hutchinson, 
when she went over, to walk along with her: one 
day when he was there, looking upon an odejp 
byshelf, in her sister's closett, he found a few 
Latine bookes ; asking whose they were, he was 
told they were her elder sister's ; whereupon, en- 
quiring more after her, he began first to be sorrie 
she was gone, before he had seene her, and gone 
upon such an account, that he was not likely to see 
her ; then he grew to love to heare mention of 
her ; and the other gentleweomen who had bene 
her companions, used to talke much to him of her, 
telling him how reserv'd and studious she was, and 
other things which they esteem'd no advantage ; 
but it so much inflam'd Mr. Hutchinson's desire of 
seeing her, that he began to wonder at himselfe, 
that his heart, which had ever had such an indiffer- 
ency for the most excellent of weomenkind, should 
have so strong impulses towards a stranger he 
never saw." — " While he was exercis'd in this, 
many days past not, but a foote-boy of my lady 
her mothers came to young Mrs. Apsley as they 
were at dinner, bringing riewes that her mother 
and sister would in lew dayes return ; and when 
they enquir'd of him, whether Mrs. Apsley was 
married, having before bene instructed to make 
them believe it, he smiled, and pull'd out some 
bride laces, which were given at a wedding in the 
house where she was, and gave them to the young 
gentlewoman and the gentleman's daughter of the 
house, and told them Mrs. Apsley bade him tell 
no news, but give them those tokens, and carried 
the matter so, that all the companie believ'd she 
had bene married. Mr. Hutchinson immediately 
turned pale as ashes, and felt a fainting to seize 
his spiritts, in that extraordinary manner, that 
finding himselfe ready to sinke att table, he was 



faine to pretend something had offended his sto- 
mach, and to retire from the table into the garden, 
where the gentleman of the house going with him. 
it was not necessary for him to feigne sickness, for 
the distemper of his mind had infected his body with 
a cold sweate and such a dispersion of spiritt, that 
all the courage he could at present recollect was 
little enough to keep him allive. While she so 
ran in his thoughts, meeting the boy againe, he 
found out, upon a little stricter examination of 
him, that she was not married, and pleas'd him- 
selfe in the hopes of her speedy returne, when 
one day, having bene invited by one of the ladies 
of that neighbourhood, to a noble treatment at 
Sion Garden, which a courtier, that was her ser- 
vant, had made for her and whom she would bring, 
Mr. Hutchinson, Mrs. Apsley, and Mr. Coleman's 
daughter were of the partie, and having spent the 
day in severall pleasant divertisements, att evening 
they were att supper, when a messenger came to 
tell Mrs. Apsley her mother was come. She 
would immediately have gone; but Mr. Hutchin- 
son, pretending civility to conduct her home, made 
her stay 'till the supper was ended, of which he 
eate no more, now only longing for that sight, 
which he had with such perplexity expected. This 
at length he obteined ; but his heart being prepos- 
sesst with his owne fancy, was not free to dis- 
cerne how little there was in her to answer so 
greate an expectation. She was not ugly — in a 
carelesse riding-habitt, she had a melancholiy negli- 
gence both of herselfe and others, as if she neither 
affected to please others, nor tooke notice of anie 
thing before her ; yet spite of all her indifferency, 
she was surpris'd with some unusual liking in her 
soule, when she saw this gentleman, who had haire, 
eies, shape, and countenance enough to begett love 
in any one at the first, and these sett off with a 
gracefull and a generous mine, which promis'd an 
extraordinary person. Although he had but an 
evening sight of her he had so long desir'd, and 
that at disadvantage enough for her, yett the pre- 
vailing sympathie of his soule, made him thinke all 
his paynes well pay'd, and this first did whett his 
desire to a second sight, which he had by accident 
the next day, and to his ioy found she was wholly 
disengaged from that treaty which he so much 
fear'd had been accomplisht ; he found withall, that 
though she was modest, she was accostable, and 
willing to entertaine his acquaintance. This soone 
past into a mutuall friendship betweene them, and 
though she innocently thought nothing of love, yet 
was she glad to have acquir'd such a friend, who 
had wisedome and vertue enough to be trussed 
with her councells. Mr. Hutchinson, on the other 
side, having bene told, and seeing how she shunn'd 
all other men, and how civilly she entertain'd him, 
believ'd that a secret power had wrought a mutuall 
inclination betweene them, and dayly frequented 
her mother's house, and had the opportunitie of 
conversing with her in those pleasant walkes, 
which, at that sweete season of the spring, invited 
all the neighbouring inhabitants to seeke their 
ioys; where, though they were never alone, yet 
they had every day opportuni:y for converse with 
each other, which the rest shar'd not in, while 
every one minded their own delights." — pp. 33 — 44. 

Here the lady breaks off her account of this 
romantic courtship, as of "matters that are 
to be forgotten as the vanities of youth, and 
not worthy mention among the greater trans- 
actions of their lives. " The consent of 
parents having been obtained on both sides, 
she was married at the age of eighteen. 

" That day that the friends on both sides met to 
conclude the marriage, she fell sick of the small- 
pox, which was many ways a greate triall upon 
him ; first her life was allmost in desperate hazard, 
and then the disease, for the present, made her the 
most deformed person that could be seene, for a 



LIFE OF COLONEL HUTCHINSON. 



173 



greate while after she rec#ver'd ; yett he was noth- 
ing troubled at it, but married her assoone as she 
was able to quitt the chamber, when the priest and 
all that saw her were affrighted to looke on her! 
but God recompenc'd his iusiice and constancy, by 
restoring her. though she was longer than ordinary 
before she recover'd, as well as before." — pp. 45, 46. 

There is a good deal more of this affection- 
ate and romantic style of writing throughout 
the book; but the Shade of Mrs. Hutchinson 
would not forgive us ; if we were to detain the 
reader longer with these "vanities of her 
youth." We proceed, therefore, to graver 
matters. 

We might cull many striking specimens of 
eloquence from her summary account of the 
English Constitution and of the Reformation; 
but the following view of the changes whieh 
took place on the accession of James and of 
Charles, are more characteristic of the age 
«nd of the party to which she belongs. 

"The honor, wealth, and glory of the nation, 
wherein Queene Elizabeth left it, were soone pro- 
digally wasted by this thrift lesse heire, the nobility 
of the land utterly debas'd by setting honors to pub- 
lick sale, and 'conferring them on persons that had 
neither blood nor meritt fitt to weare, nor estates to 
beare up their tides, but were faine to invent pro- 
jects to pill* the people, and pick their purses for 
the maintenance of vice and lewdnesse. The gene- 
rality of the gentry of the land soone learnt the 
court fashion, and every greate house in the country 
became a sty of uncleannesse. To keepe the peo- 
ple in their deplorable security, till vengeance over- 
tooke them, they were entertain'd with masks, 
stage playes, and sorts of ruder sports. Then be- 
gan murther, incest, adultery, drunkennesse, swear- 
ing, fornication, and all sorts of ribaldry, -to be no 
conceal' d but countenanc'd vices; because they 
held such conformity with the court example." — 
" And now the ready way to preferment there, was 
to declare an opposition to the power of godlinesse,. 
under that name ; so that their pulpitts might iustly 
be called the scorner's chair, those sermons only 
pleasing that flatter'd them in their vices, and told 
the poore king that he was Solomon ! — that his sloth 
and cowardize, by which he betrey'd the cause of 
God and honour of the nation, was gospell meeke- 
nesse and peaceablenesse, for which they rays'd him 
up above the heavens, while he lay wallowing like 
a swine in the mire of his lusts. He had a little 
learning, — and this they call'd the spiritt of wise- 
dome, and so magnified him, so falsely flatter'd him, 
that he could not endure the words of truth and 
soundnesse, but rewarded these base, wicked, un- 
faithfull fawners with rich preferments, attended 
with pomps and titles, which heav'd them up above 
a humane heighth : With their pride their envie 
swell' d against the people of God, whom they be- 
gan to proiect how they might roote out of the land ; 
and when they had once given them a name, what- 
ever was odious or dreadfull to the king, that they 
fixt upon the Puritane, which, according to their 
character, was nothing but a factious hypocrite." 

pp. 59—61. 

" The face of the court was much chang'd in the 
change of the king; for King Charles was temper- 
ate, chast, and serious; so that the fooles and 
bawds, mimicks and catamites of the former court 
grew out of fashion; and the nobility and courtiers, 
who did not quite abandon their debosheries, had 
yet that reverence to the king, to retire into corners 
to practise them : Men of learning and ingenuity in 
all arts were in esteeme, and receiv'd encourage- 
ment from the king ; who was a most excellent 
'tidge and a greate lover of paintings, carvings, 



* " Pill— pillage, plunder. 



gravings, and many other ingenuities, less offensive 
then the prophane abusive wilt, which was the only 
exercise of the other court." — p. 65. 

The characters of this king's counsellors 
are drawn, in general, with great force and 
liveliness; and with a degree of candour 
scarcely to have been expected in the widow 
of a regicide. We give that of Lord Strafford 
as an example. 

" But there were two above all the rest, who led 
the van of the king's evill councellors, and these 
were Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, a fellow of 
meane extraction and arrogant pride, and the earl 
of Strafford, who as much outstript all the rest in 
favour as he did in abilities, being a man of deep 
policy, steme resolution, and ambitious zeale to 
keepe up the glory of his own greatnesse. In the 
beginning of this king's reigne, this man had bene 
a strong assertor of the liberties of the people, 
among whom he had gain'd himselfe an honorable 
reputation, and was dreadfull to the court party, 
who thereupon strew' d snares in his way, and when 
they found a breach at his ambition, his soule was 
that way enter'd and captivated. He was ad- 
vane'd first to be lord president of the councell in 
the north, to be a baron, after an earle, then deputy 
of Ireland ; the neerest to a favourite of any man 
since the death of the duke of Buckingham, who 
was rays'd by his first master, and kept up by the 
second, upon no account of personall worth or any 
deserving abilities in him, but only upon violent and 
private inclinations of the princes ; but the earle of 
Strafford wanted not any accomplishment that 
could be desir'd in the most serviceable minister of 
state : besides, he having made himselfe odious to 
the people, by his revolt from their interest to "that 
of the oppressive court, he was now oblig'dto keep 
up his owne interest with his new party, by all the 
mallitious practises that pride and revenge could in- 
spire him with." — pp. 68, 69. 

One of Mrs. Hutchinson's great talents, in- 
deed, is the delineation of characters; and 
though her affections are apt to throw rather 
too glowing or too dark a tint over the canvas, 
yet this very warmth carries with it an im- 
pression of sincerity, which adds not a little 
to the interest of her pictures. We pass by 
her short sketches, — of the Earl of Newcas- 
tle, who was " a prince in his own country, 
till a foolish ambition of glorious slavery 
carried him to court;" — the Earl of Kingston, 
"whose covetousness made him divide his 
sons between the two parties, till his fate 
drew him over to the king's side, where he 
behaved himself honourably, and died re- 
markably;" — the Earl of Clare, "'who was 
very often of both parties, and, I think, never 
advantaged either," — and a great number of 
other persons, who are despatched with equal 
brevity; and venture to put her talents to a 
severer test, by trying whether they can inter- 
est the reader in a description of the burghers 
and private gentlemen of Nottingham, at the 
breaking out of these great disturbances. 

"There were seven aldermen in the towne, and 
of these only alderman James, then mayor, own'd 
the parliament. He was a very honest, bold man, 
but had no more but a burgher's discretion; he was 
yett very well assisted by his wife, a weoman of 
greate zeal and courage, and more understanding 
than weomen of her ranke usually have. All the 
devout people of the towne were very vigorous and 
ready to offer their lives and famelies, but there wa9 
not halfe the halfe of the towne that consisted of 
these. The ordinary civill sort of people coldly 
P2 



174 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



adher'd to the better ; but all the debosht, and such 
as had liv'd upon the bishops persecuting courts, 
and bene the lacqueys of proiectors and monopo- 
lizers, and the like, ihey were all bitterly malig- 
nant. Yett God awed them, that they could not at 
that time hinder his people, whom he overrul'd 
some of their greatest enemies to assist, such as 
were one Chadwick and Plumptre, two who, at 
the first, put themselves most forward into the 
businesse. 

" Plumptre was a doctor of phisick, an inhabitant 
of Nottingham, who had learning, naturall parts, 
and understanding enough to discerne betweene 
naturall civill righteousnesse and iniustice, but he 
was a horrible atheist, and had such an intollerable 
pride, that he brook'd no superiours, and having 
some witt, tooke the boldnesse to exercise it, in the 
abuse of all the gentlemen wherever he came." — 
" This man had sence enough to approove the par- 
liament's cause, in poynt of civill right, and pride 
enough to desire to breake the bonds of slavery, 
whereby the king endeavour'd to chaine up a free 
people ; and upon these scores, appearing high for 
the parliament's interest, he was admitted into the 
consultations of those who were then putting the 
country into a posture of defence. 

" Chadwick was a fellow of a most pragmaticall 
temper, and, to say truth, had strangely wrought 
himselfe into a station unfitt for him. He was at 
first a boy that scraped trenchers in the house of one 
of the poorest iustices in the county, but yet such a 
one as had a greate deale of fo»maUity and under- 
standing of the statute law, from whom this boy 
pick'd such ends of law, that he became first the 
iustice's, then a lawyer's clearke. Then, I know 
not how, gott to be a parcell-iudge in Ireland, and 
came over to his owne country swell'd with the 
reputation of it, and sett on foote a base, absolute, 
arbitrary court there, which the Conqueror of old 
had given to one Peverel his bastard," &c. — 
" When the king was in towne a little before, this 
man so insinuated into the court that, comming to 
kisae the king's hand, the king told him he was a 
rery honest man ; yet by flatteries and dissimula- 
tions he kept up his creditt with the godly, cutting 
his haire, and taking up a forme of godlinesse, the 
better to deceive. In some of the corrupt times he 
had purchas'd the honor of a barrister, though he 
had neither law nor ler.rning, but he had a voluble 
tongue, and was crafty ; and it is allmost incredible 
that one of his meane education and poverty should 
arrive to such things as he reacht. This baseness 
he had, that all the iust reproaches in the world 
could not moove him, but he would fawne upon any 
man that told him of his villanies to his face, even 
at the very time. Never was a truer Judas, since 
Iscariott's time, than he; for he would kisse the 
man he had in his heart to kill ; he naturally de- 
lighted in mischiefe and treachery, and was so ex- 
quisite a villaine, that he destroy'd those designes 
he might have thriven by, with overlaying them 
with fresh knaveries." — pp. 110 — 113. 

We have not room for many of the more 
favourable delineations with which these are 
contrasted ; but we give the following short 
sketch of Mr. Thornhagh, who seems to have 
been a great favourite of Mrs. Hutchinson's. 

"Mr. Francis Thornhagh, the eldest sonne of 
Sr. Francis Thornhagh, was a man of a most up- 
right, faithfull heart to God and God's people, and 
to his countrie's true interest, comprehended in the 
parliament's cause ; a man of greater vallour or 
more noble daring fought not for them ; nor indeed 
ever drew sword in any cause ; he was of a most 
excellent good nature to all men, and zealous for 
his friend; he wanted councell and deliberation, 
and was sometimes too facile to flatterers, but had 
iudgment enough to discerne his errors when they 
were represented to him, and worth enough not to 
persist in an iniurious mistake because he had once 
•ntertained it. ' — p. 114. 



This gallant gentleman afterwards fell at 
the battle of Preston. Mrs. Hutchinson has 
given the following animated description of 
his fate. 

" In the beginning of this battle, the vailiant Coll. 
Thornhagh was wounded to death. Being at the 
beginning of the charge on a horse as courageous 
as became such a master, he made such furious 
speed, to sett upon a company of Scotch lanciers, 
that he was singly engaged and mortally wounded, 
before it was possible lor hi.s regiment, though a3 
brave men as ever drew sword, and too afectionate 
to their collonell to be slack in following him, tc 
come time enough to breake the furie of that body, 
which shamed not to unite all their force against 
one man. His soule was hovering to take her flight 
out of his body, but that an eager desire to know 
the successe of that battle kept it within, till the 
end of the day, when the newes being brought him, 
he clear'd his dying countenance, and say'd, 'I 
now reioyce to die, since* God hath lett me see ihe 
overthrow of this perfidious enemy ; I could no: lose 
my life in a better cause, and I have the favour from 
God to see my blood aveng'd.' So he died ; with 
a large testimony of love to his souldiers, but more 
to the cause, and was by mercy remoov'd, that the 
temptations of future times might not prevaile to 
corrupt his pure soule. A man of greater courage 
and integritie fell not nor fought not in this glorious 
cause; he had also an excellent good nature, but 
easie to be wrought upon by flatterers, yett as flexi- 
ble to the admonitions of his friends ; and this virt ue 
he had, that if sometimes a cunning insinuation 
prevail'd upon his easie faith, when his error was 
made known to him, notwithstanding all his greate 
courage he was readier to acknowledge and repaire, 
then to pursue his mistake." — pp. 289, 290. 

The most conspicuous person by far, of the 
age to which Mrs. Hutchinson belongs, was 
Cromwell; and there is no character, accord- 
ingly, which she appears to have studied 
more, or better comprehended. Her work 
contains a great number of original anecdotes 
with regard to him ; and with all the advan- 
tages which later times have derived from the 
collation of various* authorities, and from con- 
sidering, at a dispassionate distance, the vari- 
ous turns of his policy, we doubt whether any 
historian has yet given a more just or satis- 
factory account of this extraordinary personage 
than this woman, who saw him only in the 
course of his obliquities, and through the 
varying medium of her own hopes and appre- 
hensions. The profound duplicity and great 
ambition of his nature, appear to have been 
very early detected by Colonel Hutchinson, 
whose biographer gives this account of his 
demeanour to the Levellers and Presbyte- 
rians, who were then at the height of their 
rivalry. 

" These were they," says she, speaking of the 
former, " who first began to discover the ambition 
of Lieftenant-general Cromwell and his idolaters, 
and to suspect and dislike it. About this time, he 
was sent downe, after his victory in Wales, to en- 
counter Hamilton in the north. When he went 
downe, the chiefe of these levellers following him 
out. of the towne, to take their leaves of him, re- 
ceiv'd such professions from him, of a spiritt bent 
to pursue the same iust and honest things that they 
desir'd, as they went away with greate satisfaction,— 
'till they heard that a coachfull of Presbyterian 
priests comming after them, went away no less 
pleas'd; by which it was apparent he dissembled 
with one or the other, and by so doing lost his 
creditt with both. 



LIFE OF COLONEL HUTCHINSON. 



175 



" When he came to Nottingham, Coll. Hutchin- 
son went to see him, whom he embrae'd with all 
the expressions of kindnesse that one friend could 
make to another, and then retiring with him, prest 
him to tell him what thoughts his friends, the 
levellers, had of him. The collonell, who was the 
freest man in the world from concealing truth from 
his friend, especially when it was requir'd of him 
in love and plainnesse, not only told him what others 
thought of him, but what he himselfe conceiv'd, and 
how much it would darken all his glories, if he 
should become a slave to his owne ambition, and 
be guilty of what he gave the world iust cause to 
suspect, and therefore begg'd of him to weare his 
heart in his lace, and to scorne to delude his enemies, 
but to make use of his noble courage, to maintaine 
what he believ'd iust, against all greate oposers. 
Cromwell made mighty professions of a sincere 
heart to him, but it is certeine that for this and such 
like plaine dealing with him, he dreaded the collonell, 
and made it his particular businesse to keepe him 
out of the armie ; but the collonell, never desiring; 
command, to serve himselfe, but his country, would 
not use that art he detested in others, to procure 
himselfe any advan age." — pp. 285 — 287. 

An after scene is still more remarkable, and 
mote characteristic of both the actors. After 
Cromwell had possessed himself of the sove- 
reignty, Colonel Hutchinson came accidentally 
to the knowledge of a plot which had been laid 
for his assassination; and was moved, by the 
nobleness of his own nature, and his regard 
for the Protector's great qualities — though he 
had openly testified against his usurpation, 
and avoided his presence since the time of 
it — to give such warning of it to Fleetwood, 
as might enable him to escape that hazard, 
but at the same time without betraying the 
names of any of the conspirators. 

" Afier Collonell Hutchinson had given Fleet- 
wood that caution, he was going into the country, 
when the protector sent to search him out with all 
the earnestnesse and haste that could possibly be, 
and the collonell went to him ; who mett him in one 
of the galleries, and receiv'd him with open armes 
and the kindest embraces that could be given, and 
complain'd that the collonell should be so unkind 
as never to give him a visitt, professing how well- 
come he should have bene, the most wcllcome 
person in the land ; and with these smooth insinu- 
ations led him allong to a private place, giving him 
thankes for the advertisement he had receiv'd from 
Fleetwood, and using all his art to gett out of the 
collonell the knowledge of the persons engag'd in 
the conspiracy against him. But none of his cun- 
ning, nor promises, nor flatteries, could prevaile 
with the collonell to informe him more than he 
thought necessary to prevent the execution of the 
tiesigne ; which when the protector perceiv'd, he 
gave him most infinite thankes for what he had 
told him, and acknowledg'd it open'd to him some 
misteries that had perplext him, and agreed so with 
other intelligence he had, that he must owe his 
preservation to him : ' But,' says he, ' deare collo- 
nell, why will not you come in and act among us ?' 
The collonell told him plainly, because he liked not 
any of his wayes since he broke the parliament, as 
being those which led to certeine and unavoydable 
destruction, not only of themselves, but of the whole 
parliament party and cause, and thereupon tooke 
occasion, with his usuall freedom, to tell him into 
what a sad hazard all thing9 were put, and how 
apparent a way was made for the restitution of all 
former tyranny and bondage. Cromwell seem'd 
to receive this honest plainnesse with the greatest 
affection that could be, and acknowledg'd his pre- 
cipitatencsse in some things, and with teares com- 
plained how Lambert had put him upon all those 
violent actions, for which he now accus'd him and 



sought his ruine. He expresst an earnest desire to 
restore the people's liberties, and to take and pursuo 
more safe and sober councells, and wound up all 
with a very fair courtship of the collonell to engage 
with him, offering him any thing he would account 
worthy of him. The collonell told him, he could 
not be forward to make his owne advantage, by 
serving to the enslaving of his country. The other 
told him, he intended nothing more then the re- 
storing and confirming the liberties of the good 
people, in order to which he would employ such 
men of honor and interest as the people should re- 
joyce, and he should not refuse to be one of them. 
And after, with all his arts, he had endeavour'd to 
excuse his publique actions, and to draw in the 
collonell, he dismist him with such expressions as 
were publickely taken notice of by all his little 
courtiers then about him ; when he went to the end 
of the gallery with the collonell, and there, embrac- 
ing him, sayd allowdto him, ' Well, collonell, satis- 
fied or dissatisfied, you shall be one of us, for wee 
can no longer exempt a person so able and faiihfull 
from the publique service, and you shall be satisfied 
in all honest things.' The collonell left him with 
that respect that became the place he was in ; when 
immediately the same courtiers, who had some 
of them past him by without knowing him when 
he came in, although they had bene once of his 
familiar acquaintance ; and the rest, who had look'd 
upon him with such disdainfull neglect as those 
little people use to those who are not of their fac- 
tion, now fiockt ^bout him, striving who should 
expresse most respect, and, by an extraordinary 
officio usnesse, redeeme their late slightings. Some 
of them desir'd he would command their service in 
any businesse he had with their lord, and a thou- 
sand such frivolous compliments, which the collonell 
smiled att, and, quitting himselfe of them as soone 
as he could, made haste to returne into the country. 
There he had not long bene but that he was in- 
form'd, notwithstanding all these faire shewes, the 
protector, finding him too constant to be wrought 
upon to serve his tirannie, had resolv'd to secure 
his person, least he should head the people, who 
now grew very weary of his bondage. But though 
it was certainly confirm'd to the collonell how much 
he was afraid of his honesty and freedome. and 
that he was resolv'd not to let him longer be att 
liberty, yet, before his guards apprehended the 
collonell, death imprison'd himselle, and confin'd 
all his vast ambition, and all his cruell designes into 
the narrow compasse of a grave." — pp. 340 — 342. 

Two other anecdotes, one very discreditable 
to Cromwell, the other affording a striking 
proof of his bravery and knowledge of man- 
kind, may be found at p. 308. and 316. But 
we dismiss the subject of this "great bad 
man," with the following eloquent representa- 
tion of his government after he had attained 
the height of his ambition ; — a representation 
in which the keen regrets of disappointed 
patriotism are finely mingled with an indig- 
nant contempt for those who submitted to 
tyranny, and a generous admission of the tal- 
ents and magnanimity of the tyrant. 

" In the interim Cromwell and his armie grew 
wanton with their power, and invented a thousand 
tricks of government, which, when nobody oppos'd, 
they themselves fell to dislike and vary every day. 
First he calls a parliament out of his owne pockett, 
himselfe naming a sort of godly men for every 
county, who meeting and not agreeing, a part of 
them, in the name of the people, give up the sove- 
reignty to him. Shortly after, he makes up seve- 
rall sorts of mock parliaments, but not finding one 
of them absolutely for his turne, turn'd them off 
againe. He soone quitted himselfe of his triumvirs, 
and first thrust out Harrison, then tooke away 
Lambert's commission, and would have bene king 



176 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



but for feare of quitting his generallship. He weed- 
ed, in a few months time, above a hundred and 
fifty godly officers out of the armie, with whom 
rnany of the religious sou'diers went off, and in their 
roonie abundance of the king's dissolute souldiers 
were enteriain'd, and the armie was almost chang'd 
from that godly religious armie, whose vallour God 
had crown'd with triumph, into the dissolute armie 
they had beaten, bearing yett a better name. His 
wife and children too, were setting up for princi- 
pality, which suited no better with any of them than 
Scarlett on the ape ; only, to speak the truth of him- 
selfe, he had much naturall greatnesse, and well 
became the place he had usurp'd. His daughter 
Fleetewood was humbled, and not exalted, with 
these things; but the rest were insolent fooles. 
Cleypoote, who married his daughter, and his son 
Henry, were two debauch'd ungodly cavaliers. 
Richard was a peasant in his nature ; yet gentle and 
vertuous ; but became not greatnesse. His court 
was full of sinne and vanity, and the more abomi- 
nable, because they had not yett quite cast away 
the name of God, but prophan'd it by taking it in 
vaine upon them. True religion was now almost 
lost, even among the religious party, and hipocrisie 
became an epidemicall disease, to the sad griefe of 
Collonell Hutchinson, and all true-hearted Chris- 
tians and Englishmen. Almost all the ministers 
every where fell in and worshipt this beast, and 
courted and made addresses to him. So did the 
city of London, and many of the degenerate lords 
of the land, with the poore spirted gentry. The 
cavaliers, in pollicy, who saw that while Cromwell 
reduc'd all the exercise of tirannicall power under 
another name, there was a doore open'd for the re- 
storing of their party, fell much in with Cromwell, 
and heighten'd all his disorders. He at last ex- 
ercis'd such an arbitrary power, that the whole 
land grew weary of him, while he sett up a com- 
ptnie of silly meane fellows, call'd maior-generalls, 
as governors in every county. These rul'd, accord- 
ing to their wills, by no law but what seem'd good 
in their owne eies ; imprisoning men, obstructing 
the course of iustice betweene man and man, per- 
verting right through partiallity, acquitting some 
that were guilty, and punishing some that were 
innocent as guilty. Then he exercised another 
proiect to rayse mony, by decimation of the estates 
of all the king's party, of which actions 'tis said 
Lambert was the instigator. At last he tooke 
upon him to make lords and knights; and wanted 
not many fooles, both of the armie and gentry, to 
accept of and strutt in his mock titles. Then the 
Earle of Warwick's grandchild and the Lord Fal- 
conbridge married his two daughters ; such pittifull 
slaves were the nobles of those dayes. Att last 
Lambert, perceiving himselfe to have bene all this 
while deluded with hopes and promises of succes- 
sion, and seeing that Cromwell now intended to 
confirme the government in his own famely, fell 
off' from him, but behav'd himselfe very pittifully 
and meanely, was turn'd out of all his places, and 
return'd againe to plott new vengeance at his house 
at Wimbledon, where he fell to dresse his flowers 
in his garden, and worke at the needle with his 
wife and his maides ! while he was watching an 
oppertunity to serve againe his ambition, which had 
this difference from the protector's ; the one was 
gallant and greate, the other had nothing but an 
unworthy pride, most insolent in prosperity, and as 
abiect and base in adversity." — p. 335 — 338. 

In making these miscellaneous extracts, for 
the amusement of our readers, we are afraid 
that we have too far lost sight of the worthy 
colonel, for whose honour the whole record 
was designed; and though the biography of a 
private person, however eminent, is seldom 
of much consequence to the general reader, 
except where it illustrates the manners of the 
times, oi connects with the public history of 



the nation, there is something in this account 
of Colonel Hutchinson which appears to ua 
deserving of notice with reference to both 
these particulars. 

Soon after his marriage, he retired to hia 
house at Owthorpe, where he took to the study 
of divinity; and having his attention roused 
to the state of public affairs, by the dreadful 
massacres of Ireland, in 1641, set himself 
diligently to read and consider all the disputea 
which were then begun between the King 
and Parliament ; the result of which was, a 
steady conviction of the justice of the pre- 
tensions maintained by the latter, with a 
strong anxiety for the preservation of peace. 
His first achievement (we are sorry to say) 
was, to persuade the parson of his parish to 
deface the images, and break the painted 
glass in the windows of his church, in obe- 
dience to an injunction of the parliament; 
his next, to resist Lord Newark in an illegal 
attempt to carry off the ammunition belonging 
to the county, for the use of the King. His 
deportment upon this last occasion, when he 
was only twenty-five years of age, affords a 
very singular proof of temper and firmness,— 
perfect good breeding, and great powers of 
reasoning. 

When the King set up his standard at Not 
tingham, Mr. Hutchinson repaired to the camp 
of Essex, the parliamentary general ; but "did 
not then find a clear call from the Lord to join 
with him." His irresolution, however, was 
speedily dissipated, by the persecutions of the 
Royalists, who made various efforts to seize 
him as a disaffected person. He accordingly 
began to consult with others in the same pre- 
dicament : and having resolved to try to defend 
the town and castle of Nottingham against the 
assaults of the enemy, he was first elected 
governor by his associates, and afterwards 
had his nomination confirmed by Fairfax and 
by the Parliament. A great deal too much 
of the book is occupied with an account of the 
petty enterprises in which this little garrison 
was engaged ; the various feuds and dissen- 
sions which arose among the different officers 
and the committees who were appointed as 
their council; the occasional desertion and 
treachery cf various individuals, and the many 
contrivances, and sacrifices, and exertions by 
which Colonel Hutchinson was enabled to 
maintain his post till the final discomfiture of 
the Royal party. This narrative contains, no 
doubt, many splendid examples of courage 
and fidelity on both sides ; and, for the variety 
of intrigues, cabals, and successful and un- 
successful attempts at corruption which it 
exhibits, may be considered as a complete 
miniature of a greater history. But the insig- 
nificance of the events, and the obscurity of 
the persons, take away all interest from the 
story; and our admiration of Colonel Hutch- 
inson's firmness, and disinterestedness and 
valour, is scarcely sufficient to keep our atten- 
tion alive through the languishing narrative 
of the obscure warfare in which he was em* 
ployed. 

It has often been remarked, and for the 
honour of our country can never be too often 



LIFE OF COLONEL HUTCHINSON. 



177 



lepeated, that history affords no example of a 
civil contest carried on for years at the point 
of the sword, and yet producing so little fero- 
city in the body of the people, and so few 
instances of particular violence or cruelty. 
No proscriptions — no executions — no sacking 
of cities, or laying waste of provinces — no 
vengeance wreaked, and indeed scarcely any 
severity inflicted, upon those who were noto- 
riously hostile, unless found actually in arms. 
Some -passages in the wars of Henry IV., as 
narrated by Sully, approach to this character: 
but the horrible massacres with which that 
contest was at other stages attended, exclude 
it from all parallel with the generous hostility 
of England. This book is full of instances, not 
merely of mutual toleration, but of the most 
cordial friendship subsisting between indi- 
viduals actually engaged in the opposite par- 
ties. In particular, Sir Allan Apsley, Mrs. 
Hutchinson's brother, who commanded a troop 
of horse for the King, and was frequently 
employed in the same part of the country 
where Colonel Hutchinson commanded for 
the Parliament, is represented throughout as 
living on a footing of the greatest friendship 
and cordiality with this valiant relative. Un- 
der the protection of mutual passes, they pay 
frequent visits to each other, and exchange 
various civilities and pieces of service, with- 
out any attempt on either side to seduce the 
other from the cause to which his conscience 
had attached him. In the same way, the 
houses and families of various royalists are 
left unmolested in the district commanded by 
Colonel Hutchinson's forces: and officers con- 
ducting troops to the siege of the castle, are 
repeatedly invited to partake of entertain- 
ments with the garrison. It is no less curious 
and unique to find Mrs. Hutchinson officiating 
as a surgeon to the wounded ; and the Colonel 
administering spiritual consolation to some 
of the captives who had been mortally hurt 
by the men whom he had led into action. 

After the termination of the war, Colonel 
Hutchinson was returned to Parliament for 
the town which he had so resolutely defended. 
He was appointed a member of the High 
Court of Justice, for the trial of the King; — 
and after long hesitation, and frequent prayer 
to God to direct him aright in an affair of so 
much moment, he deliberately concurred in 
the sentence which was pronounced by it : — 
Mrs. Hutchinson proudly disclaiming for him 
the apology, afterwards so familiar in the 
mouths of his associates, of having been over- 
awed by Cromwell. His opinion of the Pro- 
tector, and of his government, has been pretty 
fully explained in tfie extracts we have already 
given. During that usurpation, he lived in 
almost unbroken retirement, at Owthorpe ; 
where he occupied himself in superintending 
the education of his children, whom he him- 
self instructed in music and other elegant 
accomplishments; in the embellishment of 
his residence by building and planting; in 
administering justice to his neighbours, and 
in making a very choice collection of painting 
and sculpture, for which he had purchase^ a 
numbe r of articles out of the cabinet of the 
23 



late King. Such were the liberal pursuits 
and elegant recreations of one whom all our 
recent histories would lead us to consider as 
a gloomy fanatic, and barbarous bigot ! 

Upon the death of the Protector, he again 
took his seat in Parliament, for the county of 
Nottingham: and was an indignant spectator 
of the base proceedings of Monk, and the 
headlong and improvident zeal of the people 
in the matter of the restoration. In the course 
of the debate on the treatment to be dealt to 
the regicides, such of them as were members 
of the House rose in their places, and made 
such a defence of their conduct as they re- 
spectively thought it admitted of. The fol- 
lowing passage is very curious, and gives us 
a high idea of the readiness and address of 
Colonel Hutchinson in a situation of extraor- 
dinary difficulty. 

" When it came to Inglesbies turne, he, with 
many leares, profest his repentance for that murther ; 
and told a false tale, how Cromwell held his hand, • 
and fore'd him to subscribe the sentence ! and made 
a most whining recantation; after which he retir'd, 
and another had almost ended, when Collonell 
Hutchinson, who was not there at the beginning, 
came in, and was told what they were about, and 
that it would be expected he should say something. 
He was surpriz'd with a thing he expected not ; yet 
neither then, nor in any the like occasion, did he 
ever faile himselfe, but told them, ' That for his 
actings in those dayes, if he had err'd, it was the 
inexperience of his age, and the defect of his Judge- 
ment, and not the malice of his heart, which had 
ever prompted him to persue the generall advantage 
of his country more then his owne ; and if the sacri- 
fice of him might conduce to the publick peace and 
settlement, he should freely submit his life and for- 
tunes to their dispose ; that the vain expence of his 
age, and the greate debts his publick employments 
had runne him into, as they were testimonies that 
neither avarice nor any other interest had carried 
him on, so they yielded him iust cause to repent 
that he ever forsooke his owne blessed quiett, to 
embarque in such a troubled sea, where he had 
made shipwrack of all things but a good conscience ; 
and as to that particular action of the king, he de- 
sir'd them to believe he had that sence of it that be- 
fitted an Englishman, a Christian, and a gentle- 
man.'' Assoone as the collonell had spoken, he 
retir'd into a roome, where Inglesbie was, with his 
eies yet red, who had call'd up a little spirit to suc- 
ceed his "hinings, and embracing Collonell Hut- 
chinson, ' O collonell,' say'dhe, '.did I ever imagine 
wee could be brought to this ? Could I have sus- 
pected it, when I brought them Lambert in the 
other day, this sword should.have redeem'd us from 
being dealt with as crimi nails, by that people, for 
whom we had so gloriously exposed ourselves.' 
The collonell told him, he had foreseene, ever since 
those usurpers thrust out the lawfull authority of 
the land, to enthrone themselves, it could end in 
nothing else ; but the integrity of his heart, in all 
he had done, made him as chearefully ready to 
suffer as to triumph in a good cause. The result 
of the house that day was to suspend Collonell 
Hutchinson and the rest from sitting in the house. 
Monke, after all his greate professions, now sate 
still, and had not one word to interpose for any per- 
son, but was as forward to sett vengeance on foot 
as any man." — pp. 367 — 369. 

He was afterwards comprehended in the 
act of amnesty, and with some difficulty ob- 
tained his pardon : upon which he retired to 
the country ; but was soon after brought to 
town, in order to see if he could not be pre- 
vailed on to give evidence against such of the 



178 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



regicides as it was resolved to bring to trial. 
The Inglesby who is commemorated in the 
preceding extract, is known to have been the 
chief informer on that occasion ; and Colonel 
Hutchinson understood, that it was- by his in- 
stigation that he also had been called as a 
witness. His deportment, when privately ex- 
amined by the Attorney-General, is extremely 
characteristic, and includes a very fine and 
bitter piece of irony on his base associate, 
who did not disdain to save himself by false- 
hood and treachery, When pressed to specify 
some overt acts against the prisoners, 

— "the collonell answered him, that in a busi- 
ness transacted so many years agoe, wherein life 
was concern'd, he durst not beare a testimony ; 
having at that time bene so little an observer, that 
he could not remember the least title of that most 
eminent circumstance, of Cromwell 's forcing Collo- 
nell Inglesby to sett to his unwilling hand, which, if 
his life had depended on that circumstance, he could 
not have affirm 'd-' ' And then, sir,' sayd he, ' if I 
have lost so great a thing as that, it cannot be ex- 
pected lesse eminent passages remaine with me.' " 

p. 379. 

It was not thought proper to examine him 
on the trial ; and he was allowed, for about a 
year, to pursue his innocent occupations in 
the retirement of a country life. At last he 
was seized, upon suspicion of being concern- 
ed in some treasonable conspiracy; and, 
though no formal accusation was ever exhib- 
ited against him, and no sort of evidence spe- 
cified as the ground of his detention, was 
conveyed to London, and committed a close 
prisoner to the Tower. In this situation, he 
was treated with the most brutal harshness ; 
all which he bore with great meekness of 
spirit, and consoled himself in the constant 
study of the Scriptures, and the society of 
his magnanimous consort, who, by the power- 
ful intercession of her brother, was at last ad- 
mitted to his presence. After an imprison- 
ment of ten months, during which the most 
urgent solicitations could neither obtain his 
deli verance, nor the specification of the charges 
against him, he was suddenly ordered down 
to Sandown castle in Kent, and found, upon 
his arrival, that he was to be closely confined 
in a damp and unwholesome apartment, in 
which another prisoner, of the meanest rank 
and most brutal manners, was already estab- 
lished. This aggravated oppression and in- 
dignity, however, he endured with a cheerful 
magnanimity; and conversed with his wife 
and daughter, as she expresses it, " with as 
pleasant and contented a spirit as ever in his 
whole life. Sir Allen Apsley at last procured 
an order for peimitting him to walk a certain 



time every day on the beach ; but this mitiga- 
tion came too late. A sort of aguish fever, 
brought on by damp and confinement, had 
settled on his constitution ; and, in little more 
than a month after his removal from the 
Tower, he was delivered by death from the 
mean and cowardly oppression of those whom 
he had always disdained either to flatter 01 
betray. 

England should be proud, we think, ol 
having given birth to Mrs. Hutchinson and 
her husband ; and chiefly because their char- 
acters are truly and peculiarly English : ac- 
cording to the standard of those times in which 
national characters were most distinguishable. 
Not exempt, certainly, from errors and defects, 
they yet seem to us to hold out a lofty example 
of substantial dignity and virtue ; and to possess 
most of those talents and principles by which 
public life is made honourable, and privacy 
delightful. Bigotry must at all times debase, 
and civil dissension embitter our existence; 
but, in the ordinary course of events, we may 
safely venture to assert, that a nation which 
produces many such wives and mothers as 
Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, must be both great 
and happy. 

For the Reverend Julius Hutchinson, the 
editor of these Memoirs, it is easy to see that 
he is considerably perplexed and distracted, 
between a natural desire to extol those illus- 
trious ancestors, and a fear of being himself 
mistaken for a republican. So he gives us 
alternate notes in laud of the English levellers, 
and in vituperation of the atheists and jaco- 
bins of Fiance. From all this, our charity 
leads us to infer, that the said Reverend Julius 
Hutchinson has not yet obtained that prefer- 
ment in the church which it would be conve- 
nient for him to possess; and that, when he 
is promoted according to his merits, he will 
speak more uniformly in a manner becoming 
his descent. In the mean time, we are very 
much obliged to him for this book, and for the 
pains he has taken to satisfy us of its authen- 
ticity, and of the accuracy of its publication. 
We do not object to the old spelling, which 
occasions no perplexity; but When the work 
comes to another edition, we would recom- 
mend it to him to add a few dates on the 
margin, to break his pages into more para- 
graphs, and to revise his punctuation. He 
would make the book infinitely more saleable, 
too, if, without making the slightest variation 
in what is retained, he would omit about two 
hundred pages of the siege of Nottingham, 
and other parish business; especially as the 
whole is now put beyond the reach of loss 01 
corruption by the present full publication. 



MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE. 



179 



( (October, 1829.) 

Memoirs of Lj»rr Fanshawe, Wife of the Right Honourable Sir Richard Fanshawe, Baronet, 
Ambassador from Charles the Second to the Court of Madrid in 1665. Written by herself. 
To which are added. Extracts from the Correspondence of Sir Richard Fanshawe. 8vo. pp. 
360. London: 1829. 



There is not much in this book, either of 
individual character, or public story. It is, 
indeed, but a small affair — any way ; but yet 
pleasing, and not altogether without interest 
or instruction. Though it presents us with no 
traits of historical importance, and but few of 
personal passion or adventure, it still gives us 
a peep at a scene of surpassing interest from 
anew quarter; and at all events adds one 
other item to the great and growing store of 
those contemporary notices which are every 
day familiarizing us more and more with the 
living character of by-gone ages J and without 
which we begin, at last, to be sensible, that we 
can neither enter into their spirit, nor even un- 
derstand their public transactions. Writings 
not meant for publication, nor prepared lor 
purposes of vanity or contention, are the only 
memorials in which the true " form and pres- 
sure" of the ages which produce them are 
ever completely preserved ; and, indeed, the 
only documents from which the great events 
which are blazoned on their records can ever 
be satisfactorily explained. It is in such 
writings alone, — confidential letters — private 
diaries — family anecdotes — and personal re- 
monstrances, apologies, or explanations, — that 
the true springs of action are disclosed — as 
well as the obstructions and impediments, 
whether in the scruples of individuals or the 
general temper of society, by which their 
operation is so capriciously, and, but for these 
revelations, so unaccountably controlled. — 
They are the true key to the cipher in which 
public annals are almost necessarily written ; 
and their disclosure, after long intervals of 
time, is almost as good as the revocation of 
their writers from the dead — to abide our in- 
terrogatories, and to act over again, before us, 
in the very dress and accents of the time, a 
portion of the scenes which they once guided 
or adorned. It is not a very striking portion, 
perhaps, that is thus recalled by the publica- 
tion before us; but whatever interest it pos- 
sesses is mainly of this character. It belongs 
to an era, to which, of all others in our history, 
curiosity will always be most eagerly directed ; 
and it constantly rivets our attention, by ex- 
citing expectations which it ought, in truth, 
to have fulfilled ; and suggesting how much 
more interesting and instructive it might so 
easily have been made. 

Lady Fanshawe was, as is generally known, 
the wife of a distinguished cavalier, in the 
Heroic Age of the civil wars and the Protec- 
torate ; and survived till long after the Res- 
toration. Her husband was a person of no 
mean figure in those great transactions ; and 
she, who adhered to him with the most de- 



voted attachment, and participated not un- 
worthily in all his fortunes and designs, was, 
consequently, in continual contact with the 
movements which then agitated society; and 
had her full share of the troubles and triumphs 
which belonged to such an existence. Her 
memoirs ought, therefore, to have formed an 
interesting counterpart to those of Mrs. Hutch- 
inson ; and to have recalled to us, with equal 
force and vivacity, the aspect under which 
those great events presented themselves to a 
female spectatress and sufferer, of the oppo- 
site faction. But, though the title of the book, 
and the announcements of the editor, hold 
out this promise, we must say that the body of 
it falls far short of performance : and, whether 
it be that her side of the question did not admit 
of the same force of delineation or loftiness of 
sentiment ; or, that the individual chronicler 
has been less fortunately selected, it is certain 
that, in point both of interest and instruction ; 
in traits of character, warmth of colouring, or 
exaltation of feeling, there is no sort of com- 
parison between these gossiping, and, though 
affectionate, yet relatively cold and feeble, 
memoranda, and the earnest, eloquent, and 
graphic representations of the puritan heroine. 
Nor should it be forgotten, even in hinting at 
such a parallel, that, in one important respect, 
the royalist cause also must be allowed to 
have been singularly happy in its female rep- 
resentative. Since, if it may be said with 
some show of reason, that Lucy Hutchinson 
and her husband had too many elegant tastes 
and accomplishments to be taken as fair speci- 
mens of the austere and godly republicans ; 
it certainly may be retorted, with at least equal 
justice, that the chaste and decorous Lady- 
Fan shawe, and her sober diplomatic lord, 
shadow out rather too favourably the general 
manners and morals of the cavaliers. 

After all, perhaps, the true secret of her 
inferiority, in all at least that relates to politi- 
cal interest, may be found in the fact) that the 
fair writer, though born and bred a royalist, 
and faithfully adhering to her husband in his 
efforts and sufferings in the cause, was not 
naturally, or of herself, particularly studious 
of such matters ; or disposed to occupy her- 
self more than was necessary with any public 
concern. She seems to have followed, like a 
good wife and daughter, where her parents or 
her husband led her; and to have adopted 
their opinions with a dutiful and implicit con- 
fidence, but without being very deeply moved 
by the principles or passions which actuated 
those from whom they were derived ; whila 
Lucy Hutchinson not only threw her whole 
heart and soul into the cause of her party 



180 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



but. like Lady Macbeth or Madame Roland, 
imparted her own fire to her more phlegmatic 
helpmate, — "chastised him," when neces- 
sary, " with the valour of her tongue," and 
cheered him on, by the encouragement of her 
high example, to all. the ventures and sacri- 
fices, the triumphs or the martyrdoms, that 
lay visibly across her daring and lofty course. 
The Lady Fanshawe, we take it, was of a less 
passionate temperament; and her book, ac- 
cordingly, is more like that of an ordinary 
woman, though living in extraordinary times. 
She begins, no doubt, with a good deal of love 
and domestic devotion, and even echoes, from 
that sanctuary, certain notes of loyalty ; but, 
in very truth, is chiefly occupied, for the best 
part of her life, with the sage and serious 
business of some nineteen or twenty accouche- 
mens. which are happily accomplished in dif- 
ferent parts of Europe ; and seems, at last, to 
be wholly engrossed in the ceremonial of 
diplomatic presentations, — the description of 
court dresses, state coaches, liveries, and 
jewellery, — the solemnity of processions, and 
receptions by sovereign princes, — and the due 
interchange of presents and compliments with 
persons of worship and dignity. Fully one- 
third of her book is taken up with such goodly 
matter ; and nearly as much with the geneal- 
ogy of her kindred, and a faithful record of 
their marriages, deaths, and burials. From 
the remainder, nowever, some curious things 
may be gathered ; and we shall try to extract 
what strikes us as most characteristic. We 
may begin with something that preceded her 
own recollection. The following singular le- 
gend relates to her mother ) and is given, it 
will be observed, on very venerable author- 
ity: 

" Dr. Howlsworth preached her funeral sermon, 
in which, upon his own knowledge, he told, before 
many hundreds of people, this accident following: 
That my mother, being sick to death of a fever three 
months after I was born, which was the occasion 
she gave me suck no longer, her friends and ser- 
vants thought, to all outward appearance, that she 
was dead, and so lay almost two days and a night ; 
but Dr. Winston, coming to comfort my father, 
went into my mother's room, and looking earnest- 
ly on her face, said she was so handsome, and now 
looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead ; and 
suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with 
it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this, 
he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed 
again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she 
came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her 
kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knollys and 
my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, 
as the fashion then was, and said, Did not you 
promise me fifteen years, and are you come again 
already ? which they not understanding, persuaded 
her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness 
wherein she then was; but, some hours after, she 
desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be 
left alone with her, to whom she said, I will ac- 
quaint you, that, during the time of my trance, 1 
was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither 
distinguish nor describe ; but the sense of leaving 
my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, 
remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I 
saw two by me, cloathed in long white garments, 
and methought I fell down with my face in the 
dust ; and they asked me why I was troubled in so 
great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same 
grant givon to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen 



years, to see my daughter a woman ; to which they 
answered. It is done : and then, at that instant, I 
awoke out of my trance; and Dr. Howlsworth 
did there affirm, that that day she died made just 
fifteen years from that time." — pp. 26 — 28. 

This gift of dreaming dreams, or seeing 
visions, seems, indeed, to have been heredi- 
tary in the family ; for the following is given on 
the credit of the fair writer's own experience. 
When she and her husband went to Ireland, 
on their way to Portugal, they were honour- 
ably entertained by all the distinguished royal- 
ists who came in their way. Among others, 
she has recorded that, 

" We went to the Lady Honor O'Brien's, a lady 
that went for a maid, but few believed it ! She 
was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Thomond. 
There we staid three nights. The first of which I 
was surprised by being laid in a chamber, where, 
about one o'clock, I heard a voice that wakened 
me. I drew the curtain, and, in the casement of 
the window, I saw, by the light of the moon, a 
woman leaning into the window, through the case- 
ment, in white, with red hair, and pale and ghastly 
complexion. She spoke loud, and in a tone I had 
never heard, thrice, 'A horse!' and then, with a 
sigh more like the wind than breath, she vanished, 
and, to me, her body looked more like a thick cloud 
than substance. I was so much frightened, that 
my hair stood on end, and my night-clothes fell off. 
I pulled and pinched your father, who never woke 
during the disorder I was in ; but at last was much 
surprised to see me in this fright, and more%o when 
I related the story and showed him the window 
opened. Neither of us slept any more that night, 
but he entertained me with telling me how much 
more these apparitions were usual in this country 
than in England! and we concluded the cause to 
be the great superstition of^the Irish, and the want 
of that knowing faith, which should defend them 
from the power of the devil, which he exercises 
among them very much." 

Ingenious and orthodox as this solution of 
the mystery must be allowed to be, we con- 
fess we should have been inclined to prefer 
that of the fair sleeper having had a fit of 
nightmare ; had it not been for the conclusive 
testimony of the putative virgin of the house 
of Thomond, who supplies the .following as- 
tonishing confirmation; and leads us rather 
to suspect that the whole might have been a 
trick, to rid herself the sooner, of their scru- 
pulous and decorous company. 

"About five o'clock," continues Lady Fan- 
shawe, "the lady of the house came to see us, 
saying she had not been in bed all night, because 
a cousin O'Brien of hers, whose ancestors had 
owned that house, had desired her to stay with 
him in his chamber, and that he died at two o'clock, 
and she said, • I wish you to have had no dis- 
turbance, for 'tis the custom of the place, that, 
when any of the family are dying, the shape of a 
woman appears in the window every night till they 
be dead. This woman was many ages ago got 
with child by the owner of this place, who mur- 
dered her in his garden, and flung her into the river 
under the window, but truly 1 thought not of it 
when I lodged you here, it being the best room in 
the house.' We made little reply to her speech, 
but disposed ourselves to be gone suddenly." 

We shall close this chapter, of the super- 
natural, with the following rattier remarkable 
ghost story, which is calculated, we think, to 
make a strong impression on the imagination. 
Our diligent chronicler picked it up, it seems, 



MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE. 



181 



on he! waj tnrough Canterbury in the year 
1663; and it is thus nonourably attested: 

11 And here I cannot omit relating (he ensuing 
tstory, confirmed by Sir Thomas Batten, Sir Arnold 
Breanies, the Dean of Canterbury, with many more 
gentlemen and persons of this town. 

" There lives not far from Canterbury a gentle- 
man, called Colonel Colepeper, whose mother 
was widow unto the Lord Strangford: this gentle- 
man had a sister, who lived with him, as the world 
e-aid, in too much love. She married Mr. Porter. 
This brother and sister being both atheists and 
living a life according to their profession, went in 
a frolick into a vault of their ancestors, where, be- 
fore they returned, they pulled some of their father's 
and mother's hairs ! Within a very few days after, 
Mrs. Porter fell sick and died. Her brother kept 
her body in a coffin set up in his buttery, saying it 
would not be long before he died, and then they 
would be both buried together ; but from the night 
after her death, until the time that we were told the 
Btory, which was three months, they say that a head, 
as cold as death, with curled hair like his sister's, 
did ever lie by him wherever he slept, notwith- 
standing he removed to several places and countries 
to avoid it ; and several persons told us they also 
Lad felt this apparition." 

We may now go back a little to the affairs of 
this world. Deep and devoted attachments are 
more frequently conceived in circumstances 
of distress and danger than in any other: 
and, accordingly, the love and marriage of 
Sir Richard Fanshawe and liis lady befef dur- 
ing their anxious and perilous residence with 
the court at Oxford, in 1644. The following- 
little sketch of the life they passed there is 
curious and interesting: 

" My father commanded my sister and myself to 
come to him to Oxford, where the Court then was: 
but we, that had till that hour lived in great plenty 
and great order, found ourselves like fishes out of 
the water, and the scene so changed, that we knew 
not at all how to act any part but obedience; for, 
from as good a house as any gentleman of England 
had, we came to a baker's house in an obscure 
street; and from rooms well furnished, to lie in a 
very bad bed in a garret, to one dish of meat, and 
that not the best ordered, no money, for we were 
as poor as Job, nor clothes more than a man or two 
brought in their cloak bags: we had the perpetual 
discourse of losing and gaining towns and men : at 
the windows the sad spectacle of war, sometimes 
plagues, sometimes sicknesses of other kind, by 
reason of so many people being packed together, 
as, I believe, there never was before of that quality ; 
always in want, yet I must needs say, that most 
bore it with a martyr-like cheerfulness. For my 
own part, I began to think we should all, like 
Abraham, live in tents all the days of our lives. 
The king sent my father a warrant for a baronet, 
but he returned it with thanks, saying he had too 
much honour of his knighthood, which his majesty 
had honoured him with some years before, for the 
fortune he now possessed." — pp. 35 — 37. 

They were married very privately the year 
after ) and certainly entered upon life with lit- 
tle but their mutual love to cheer and support 
them ; but it seems to have been sufficient. 

"Both his fortune and my promised portion, 
which was made 10,0O0Z , were both at that time in 
expectation; and we might truly be called merchant 
adventurers, for the stock we set up our trading 
with did not amount to twenty pounds betwixt us; 
but, however, it was to us as a little piece of armour 
is against a bullet, which, it it be right placed, 
though no bigger than a shilling, serves as well as 
s whole suit of armour; so our stock bought pen, 



ink, and paper, which was your father's trade, and 
by it, I assure you, we lived better than those who 
were born to 20007. a year, as long as he had his 
liberty."— pp. 37, 38. 

The next scene presents both of them in so 
amiable and respectable a light, that we think 
it but justice to extract it, though rather long, 
without any abridgment. It is, indeed, one 
of the most pleasing and interesting passages 
in the book. They had now gone to Bristol, 
in 1645. 

•'My husband had provided very good lodgings 
for us, and as soon as he could come home from 
the council, where he was at my arrival, he with 
all expressions of joy received me in his arms, and 
gave me a hundred pieces of gold, saying, ' 1 know 
thou that keeps my heart so well, will keep my 
fortune, which from this time I will ever put into 
thy hands as God shall bless me with increase ;' 
and now I thought myself a perfect queen, and 
my husband so glorious a crown, that I more valued 
myself to be called by his name than born a 
princess ; for I knew him very wise and very good, 
and his s*oul doated on me, — upon which confidence 
I will tell you what happened. My Lady Rivers, 
a brave woman, and one that had suffered many 
thousand pounds loss for the king, and whom I had 
a grea* reverence for, and she a kindness for me as 
a kinswoman, in discourse she tacitly commended 
the knowledge of state affairs; and that some 
women were very happy in a good understanding 
thereof, as my Lady Aubigny, Lady Isabel Thynne, 
and divers others, and yet none was at first more 
capable than I; that in the night she knew there 
came a po6t from Paris from the queen, and that 
she would be extremely glad to hear what the 
queen commanded the king in order to his affairs; 
saying, if I would ask my husband privately, he 
would tell me what he found in the packet, and I 
might tell her. I, that was young and innocent, and 
to that day had never in my mouth 4 What news?' 
began to think there was more in inquiring into 
public affairs than I thought of; and that it being a 
fashionable thing would make me more beloved of 
my husband, if that had been possible, than I was. 
When my husband returned home from council, 
after welcoming him, as his custom ever was, he 
went with his handful of papers into his study for an 
hour or more ; I followed him ; he turned hastily, and 
said, 'What wouldst thou have, my life?' I told 
him, I heard the prince had received a packet from 
-the queen, and I guessed it was that in his hand, and 
I desired to know what was in it ; he smilingly re- 
plied, ' My love, I will immediately come to thee ; 
pray thee go, for I am very busy :' when he came 
out of his closet I revived my suit ; he kissed me, 
and talked of other things. At supper I would eat 
nothing ; he as usual sat by me, and drank often to 
me, which was his custom, and was full of discourse 
to company that was at table. Going to bed I asked 
again ; and said I could not believe he loved me if 
he refused to tell me all he knew ; but he answer- 
ed nothing, but stopped my mouth with kisses. So 
we went to bed ; I cried, and he went to sleep ! 
Next morning early, as his custom was, he called 
to rise, but began to discourse with me first, to 
which I made no reply ; he rose, came on the olher 
side of the bed and kissed me, and drew the cur- 
tains softly, and went to court. When he came 
home to dinner, he presently came to me as was 
usual, and when I had him by the hand, I said, 
' Thou dost not care to see me troubled ;' to which 
he, taking me in his arms, answered, ' My dearest 
soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like that: 
But when you asked me of my business, it was 
wholly out of my power to satisfy thee ; for my life 
and fortune shall be thine, and every thought of 
my heart in which the trust I am in may not be 
revealed: But my honour is my own; which I 
cannot preserve if I communicate the prince's 



182 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



affairs ; and, pray thee, with this answer rest satis- 
fied.' So great was his reason and goodness, that, 
upon consideration, it made my folly appear to me 
so vile, that from that day until the day of his 
death, I never thought fit to ask him any business, 
but what he communicated freely to me, in order 
to his estate or family." 

After the ill success of the royal arms had 
made it necessary for the Prince to retire be- 
yond seas, Lady Fanshawe and her husband 
attended him to the Scilly Islands. We give 
this natural and simple picture of their dis- 
comforts on that expedition : — 

" The next day, after having been pillaged, and 
extremely sick and big with child, I was set on 
shore, almost dead, in the island of Scillv ; when 
we had got to our quarters near the castle, where 
the prince lay, I went immediately to bed, which 
was so vile that my footman ever lay in a better, 
and we had but three in the whole house, which 
consisted of four rooms, or rather partitions, two 
low rooms, and two little lofts, with a ladder to go 
up: in one of these they kept dried fish, which was 
his trade, and in this my husband's two clerks lay ; 
one there was for my sister, and one for myself, 
and one amongst the rest of the servants ; but 
when 1 waked in the morning, I was so cold I 
knew not what to do ; but the daylight discovered 
that my bed was near swimming with the sea, 
which the owner told us afterwards it never did — 
but at spring tides." 

We must not omit her last interview with 
her unfortunate Sovereign, which took place 
at Hampton Court, when his star was hastening 
to its setting! It is the only interview with 
that unhappy Prince of which she has left 
any notice ; and is, undoubtedly, very touch- 
ing and amiable. 

" During his stay at Hampton Court, my hus- 
band was with him ; to whom he was pleased to 
talk much of his concerns, and gave him three 
credentials for Spain, with private instructions, and 
letters for his service : But God, for our sins, dis- 
posed his Majesty's affairs otherwise. I went three 
times to pay my duty to him, both as 1 was the 
daughter of his servant, and wife of his servant. 
The last time I ever saw him, when I took my 
leave, I could not refrain from weeping, When he 
had saluted me, I prayed to God to preserve his 
majesty with long life and happy years; he stroked 
me on the cheek, and said, ' Child, if God pleaseth 
it shall be so ! both you and I must submit to God's 
will, and you know in what hands I am in ;' then 
turning to your father, he said, 'Be sure, Dick, to 
tell my son all that I have said, and deliver those 
letters to my wife; pray God bless her! I hope I 
shall do well:' and taking him in his arms, said, 
'Thou hast ever been an honest man, and I hope 
God will bless thee, and make thee a happy ser- 
vant to my son, whom I have charged in my letter 
to continue his love, and trust to you;' adding, 'J 
do promise you, that if ever I am restored to my 
dignity, I will bountifully reward you for both your 
service and sufferings.' Thus did we part from 
ihat glorious sun, that within a few months after 
was murdered, to the grief of all Christians that 
were not forsaken by God." 

These are almost sufficient specimens of 
the work before us ; for it would not be fair to 
extract the whole substance of it. However, 
we must add the following striking trait of 
heroism and devoted affection, especially as 
we have spoken rather too disparagingly of 
(he fair writers endowment of those qualities. 
In point of courage and love to her husband 
it is auite on a level, perhaps with any of the 



darings of Mrs. Hutchinson, — though we can- 
not say that the occasion called so clearly for 
their display. During their voyage to Portu 
gal, and — 

" When we had just passed the Straits, we saw 
coming towards us, with full sails, a Turkish galley, 
well manned, and we believed we should be all 
carried away slaves, for this man had so laden his 
ship with goods for Spain, that his guns were use- 
less, though the ship carried sixty guns. He called 
for brandy, and alter he had well drunken, and all 
his men, which were near two hundred, he called 
for arms, and cleared the deck as well as he could, 
resolving to fight rather than lose his ship, which 
was worth 30,000Z. This was sad for us passengers : 
but my husband bid us be sure to keep in the cabin, 
and not appear, the women, which would make the 
Turks think that we were a man-of-war, but if 
they saw women, they would take us lor merchants, 
and board us. He went upon the deck, and took a 
gun and bandoliers, and sword, and, with the rest 
of the ship's company, stood upon deck expecting 
the arrival of the Turkish man-of-war. This beast, 
the captain, had locked me up in the cabin ; I knock- 
ed and called long to no purpose, until at length the 
cabin-boy came and opened the door. I, all in 
tears, desired him to be so good as to give me his 
blue thrum cap he wore, and his tarred coat, which 
he did, and I gave him half-a-crown, and putting 
them on, and flinging away my night-clothes, I 
crept up softly and stood upon the deck by my 
husband's side, as free from sickness and fear as, I 
confess, from discretion ; but it was the effect of 
that passion which I could never master. 

" By this time the two vessels were engaged in 
parley, and so well satisfied with speech and sight 
of each other's forces, that the Turks' man-of-war 
tacked about, and we continued our course. But 
when your father saw it convenient to retreat, look- 
ing upon me. he blessed himself, and snatched me 
up in his arms, saying, ' Good God, that love cart 
make this change V and though he seemingly chid 
me, he would laugh at it as often as he remembered 
that voyage." 

What follows is almost as strong a proof of 
that "love which casteth out fear;' 7 while it 
is more unexceptionable on the score of pru- 
dence. Sir Richard, being in aims for the 
King at the fatal battle of Worcester, was af- 
terwards taken prisoner, and brought to Lon- 
don; to which place his faithful consort im- 
mediately repaired, where, in the midst of 
her anxieties, 

" I met a messenger from him with a letter, 
which advised me of his condition, and told me ho 
was very civilly used, and said little more, but that 
I should be in some room at Charing Cross, where 
he had promise from his keeper that he should rest 
there in my company at dinner-time ; this was 
meant to him as a great favour. I expected him. 
with impatience, and on the day appointed provided 
a dinner and room, as ordered, in which 1 was with 
my father and some more of our friends, where, 
about eleven of the clock, we saw hundreds of 
poor soldiers, both English and Scotch, march all 
naked on foot, and many with your fa'her, who 
was very cheerful in appearance ; who, after he had 
spoken and saluted me and his friends there, said, 
'Pray let us not lose time, for I know not how 
little I have to spare ; this is the chance of war ; 
nothing venture, nothing have; so let us sit down 
and be merry whilst we may ;' then taking my 
hand in his, and kissing me, ' Cease weeping, no 
other thing upon earth can move me; remember 
we are all at God's disposal.' 

" During the time of his imprisonment, I failed 
not constantly to go, when the clock struck four irt 
the morning, with a dark lantern in my hand ail 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



183 



alone and on foot, from my lodging in Chancery 
Lane, at my cousin Young's, to Whitehall, in at 
the entry that went out of King Street into the 
bowling-green. There I would go under his window 
and softly call him ; he, after the first time except- 
ed, never failed to put out his head at the first call ; 
thus we talked together, and sometimes I was so 
wet with the rain, that it went in at my neck and 
out at my heels. He directed how I should make 
my addresses, which I did ever to their general, 
Cromwell, who had a great respect for your father, 
and would have bought him off to his service, upon 
any terms. 

" Being one day to solicit for my husband's 
liberty for a time, he bid me bring, the next day, a 
certificate from a physician that he was really ill. 
Immediately I went to Dr. Batters, that was by 
chance both physician to Cromwell and to our 
family, who gave me one very favourable in my 
husband's behalf. I delivered it at the Council 
Chamber, at three of the clock that afiernoon, as 
he commanded me, and he himself moved, that 
seeing they could make no use of his imprisonment, 
whereby to lighten them in their business, that he 
might have his liberty upon 4000Z. bail, to take a 
course of physic, he being dangerously ill. Many 
spake against it ; but most Sir Henry Vane, who 
said he would be as instrumental, for ought he 
knew, to hang them all that sat there, if ever he 
had opportunity ; but if he had liberty for a time, 
that he might take the engagement before he went 
out ; upon which Cromwell said, ' I never knew 
that the engagement was a medicine for the scor- 
butic !' They, hearing their general say so, thought 
it obliged him, and so ordered him his liberty upon 
bail." 

These are specimens of what we think oest 
in the work : but. as there may be readers i 
who would take an interpat ha her description 
of court ceremonies, or, at least, like to see 
how she manages them, we shall conclude 
with a little fragment of such a description. 

" This afternoon I went to pay my visit to the 
Duchess of Albuquerque. When I came to take 



coach, the soldiers stood to their arms, and the 
lieutenant that held the colours displaying them, 
which is never done to any one but kings, or such 
as represent their persons: I stood still all the 
while, then at the lowering of the colours to the 
ground, they received for them a low courtesy from 
me, and for himself a bow ; then taking coach, with 
very many persons, both in coaches and on foot, I 
went to the duke's palace, where I was again re- 
ceived by a guard of his excellency's, with the 
same ceremony of the king's colours as before. 
Then I was received by the duke's brother and 
near a hundred persons of quality. I laid my hand 
upon the wrist of his excellency's right hand; he 
putting his cloak thereupon, as the Spanish fashion 
is, went up the stairs, upon the top of which stood 
the duchess and her daughter, who received me with 
great civility, putting me into every door, and all 
my children, till we came to sit down in her excel- 
lency's chamber, where she placed me upon her 
right hand, upon cushions, as the fashion of this 
court is, being very rich, and laid upon Persian 
carpets." 

"The two dukes embraced my husband with 
great kindness, welcoming him to the place, and 
the Duke of Medina Celi led me to my coach, an 
honour that he had never done any but once, when 
he waited on your queen to help her on the like 
occasion. The Duke d'AIcala led my eldest daugh- 
ter, and the younger led my second, and the Gov- 
ernor of Cadiz, Don Antonio de Pimentel, led the 
third. Mrs. Kestian carried Betty in her arms." 

There is great choice of this sort for those 
who like it; and not a little of the more 
solemn and still duller discussion of diplomatic 
etiquette and precedence. But, independent 
of these, and of the genealogies and obitua- 
ries, which are not altogether without interest, 
there is enough both of heart, and sense, and 
observation, in these memoirs, at once to re- 
pay gentle and intelligent readers for the 
trouble of perusing them, and to stamp a 
character of amiableness and respectability 
on the memory of their author. 



(Wovtmbtv 1825.) 

Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reign of Charles 
II. and James II, comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John 
Smith, A. B., of St. John's College, Cambridge, from the original Shorthand MS. in the 
Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by Richard 
Lord Braybrooke. 2 vols. 4to. London: 1825. 



We have a great indulgence, we confess, 
for the taste, or curiosity, or whatever it may 
be called, that gives its value to such publica- 
tions as this ; and are inclined to think the 
desire of knowing, pretty minutely, the man- 
ners and habits of former times, — of under- 
standing, in all their details, the character and 
ordinary way of life and conversation of our 
forefathers — a very liberal and laudable de- 
sire ; and by no means to be confounded with 
that hankering after contemporary slander, 
with which this age is so miserably infested, 
and so justly reproached. It is not only curi- 
ous to see from what beginnings, and by what 
steps, we have come to be what we are : — 
But it is most important, for the future and 
foi *he present, to ascertain what practices, 



and tastes, and principles, have been com- 
monly found associated or disunited: And 
as, in uncultivated lands, we can often judge 
of their inherent fertility by the quality of the 
weeds they spontaneously produce — so we 
may learn, by such an inspection of the moral 
growths of a country, compared with its sub 
sequent history, what prevailing manners are 
indicative of vice or of virtue — what existing 
follies foretell approaching wisdom — what 
forms of licentiousness give promise of com 
ing purity, and what of deeper degradation — 
what uncertain lights, in short, announce the 
rising, and what the setting sun ! While, in 
like manner, we may trace in the same records 
the connection of public and private morality, 
and the mutual action and reaction of govern- 



jS4 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



ment and manners ; — and discover what indi- 
vidual corruptions spring from political dis- 
honour — what domestic profligacy leads to 
the sacrifice of freedom — and what national 
virtues are most likely to resist the oppres- 
sions, or yield to the seductions of courts. 

Of all these things History tells us little — 
and yet they are the most important that she 
could have been employed in recording. She 
has been contented, however, for the most 
part,, with detailing merely the broad and ap- 
parent results — the great public events and 
transactions, in which the true working prin- 
ciples of its destiny have their end and con- 
summation 3 and points only to the wrecks or 
the triumphs that float down the tide of human 
affairs, without giving us any light as to those 
ground currents by which its central masses 
are governed, and of which those superficial 
appearances are, in most cases, the necessary 
though unsuspected effects. 

Every one feels, we think, how necessary 
this information is, if we wish to understand 
what antiquity really was, and what manner 
of men existed in former generations. How 
vague and unsatisfactory, without it, are all 
public annals and records of dynasties and 
battles — of how little interest to private indi- 
viduals — of how little use even to philosophers 
and statesmen ! Before we can apply any 
example in history, or even comprehend its 
actual import, we must know something of 
the character, both of the age and of the per- 
sons to which it belongs — and understand a 
good deal of the temper, tastes, and occupa- 
tions, both of the actors and the sufferers. — 
Good and evil, in truth, change natures, with 
a change of those circumstances ; and we 
may be lamenting as the most intolerable of 
calamities, what was scarcely felt as an inflic- 
tion, by those on whom it fell. Without this 
knowledge, therefore, the most striking and 
important events are mere wonders, to be 
stared at — altogether barren of instruction — 
and probably leading us astray, even as occa- 
sions of sympathy or moral emotion. Those 
minute details, in short, which History has so 
often rejected as below her dignity, are indis- 
pensable to give life, certainty, or reality to 
her delineations ; and we should have little 
hesitation in asserting, that no history is really 
worth any thing, unless it relate to a people 
and an age of which we have also those hum- 
bler and more private memorials. It is not in 
the grand tragedy, or rather the epic fictions, 
of History, that we learn the true condition of 
former ages — the real character of past gene- 
rations, or even the actual effects that were 
Eroduced on society or individuals at the time, 
y the great events that are there so solemnly 
recorded. If we have not some remnants or 
some infusion of the Comedy of middle life, 
we neither have any idea of the state and 
colour of the general existence, nor any just 
understanding of the transactions about which 
we are reading. 

For what we know of the ancient Greeks 
for example — for all that enables us to ima- 
gine what sort of thing it would have been to 
have lived among them, or even what effects 



were produced on the society of Athens or 
Sparta by the battles of Marathon or Salami's, 
we are indebted not so much to the histories 
of Herodotus, Xenophon. or Thucydides, as 
to the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus — the anec- 
dotes of Plutarch — the introductory and inci- 
dental passages of the Platonic dialogues — 
the details of some of the private orations — 
and parts of the plays of Plautus and Terence, 
apparently copied from the Greek comedies. 
For our personal knowledge of the Romans, 
again, we do not look to Livy, or Dionysius — 
or even to Caesar, Sallust, or Tacitus; but to 
Horace, Petronius, Juvenal, and the other 
satirists — to incidental notices in the Orations 
and Dialogues of Cicero — and above all to his 
invaluable letters, — followed up by those of 
Pliny, — to intimations in Plutarch, and Seneca, 
and Lucian — to the books of the Civil law — 
and the biographies and anecdotes of the 
Empire, from Suetonius to Procopiuo. Of the 
feudal times — the heroic age of modern Eu- 
rope — we have fortunately more abundant and 
minute information, both in the Romances of 
chivalry, which embody all the details of 
upper life ; and in the memoirs and chronicles 
of such writers as Commines and Froissart, 
which are filled with so many individual pic- 
tures and redundant particularities, as to leave 
us scarcely any thing more to learn or to wish 
for, as to the manners and character, the tem- 
per and habits, and even the daily life and 
conversation of the predominating classes of 
society, who then stood for every thing in 
those countries : And, even with regard to 
their serfs and vassals, we are not without 
most distinct and intelligible lights — both in 
scattered passages of the works we have al- 
ready referred to, in various ancient ballads 
and legends relating to their condition, and in 
such invaluable records as the humorous and 
more familiar tales of our immortal Chaucer. 
For the character and ordinary life of our 
more immediate ancestry, we may be said to 
owe our chief knowledge of it to Shakespeare, 
and the comic dramatists by whom he was 
succeeded — reinforced and supported by the 
infinite quantity of obscure and insignificant 
matter which the industry of his commenta- 
tors has brought back to light for his elucida- 
tion — and which the matchless charm of his 
popularity has again rendered both interesting 
and familiar. The manners and habits of still 
later times are known to us, not by any means 
by our public histories, but by the writers of 
farces and comedies, polite essays, libels, and 
satires — by collections of private letters, like 
those of Gray, Swift. Arbuthnot, and Lord 
Orford — by private memoirs or journals, such 
as those of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, Swift's 
Journal to Stella, and Doddington's Diary — 
and, in still later times, by the best of our gay 
and satirical novels — by caricature prints— by 
the better newspapers and magazines, — and 
by various minute accounts (in the manner of 
Boswell's Life of Johnson) of the private life 
and conversation of distinguished individuals. 
The work before us relates to a period of 
which we have already very considerable 
memorials. But it is, notwithstanding, of 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



183 



*erj great interest and curiosity. A good 
deal of what it contains derives, no doubt, its 
chief interest from having happened one hun- 
dred and eighty years ago: But there is little 
of it that does not, for that very reason, throw 
valuable lights on our intermediate history. 
It consists, as the title shows, of a very minute 
and copious Diary, continued from the year 
1659 to 1669 — and a correspondence, much 
less perfect and continuous, do\Vn nearly to 
the death of the author in 1703. Fortunately 
for the public part of the story, the author 
was. from the very beginning, in immediate 
contact with persons in high office and about 
court — and, still more fortunately for the pri- 
vate part, seems to have been possessed of 
the most extraordinary activity, and the most 
indiscriminating, insatiable, and miscellane- 
ous curiosity, that ever prompted the re- 
searches, or supplied the pen, of a daily 
chronicler. Although excessively busy and 
diligent in his attendance at his office, he 
finds time to go to every play, to every exe- 
cution, to every procession, fire, concert, riot, 
trial, review, city feast, public dissection, or 
picture gallery that he can hear of. Nay, 
there seems scarcely to have been a school 
examination, a wedding, christening, charity 
6ermon, bull-baiting, philosophical meeting. 
or private merry-making in his neighbour- 
hood, at which he was not sure to make his 
appearance, and mindful to record all the 
particulars. He is the first to hear all the 
court scandal, and all the public news — to 
observe the changes of fashions, and the 
downfal of parties — to pick up family gossip, 
and to retail philosophical intelligence — to 
criticise every new house or carriage that is 
built — every new book or new beauty that 
appears — every measure the King adopts, 
and every mistress he discards. 

For the rest of his character, he appears to 
have been an easy tempered, compassionate, 
and kind man ; combining an extraordinary 
diligence and regularity in his official busi- 
ness and domestic economy^ with a singular 
love of gossip, amusement, and all kinds of 
miscellaneous information — a devoted attach- 
ment, and almost ludicrous admiration of his 
wife, with a wonderful devotion to the King's 
mistresses, and the fair sex in general, and 
rather a suspicious familiarity with various 
pretty actresses and singers: and, above all, 
a practical sagacity and cunning in the man- 
agement of affairs, with so much occasional 
credulity, puerility, and folly, as would often 
tempt us to set him down for a driveller. 
Though born with good blood in his veins, 
and a kinsman, indeed, of his great patron, 
the first Earl of Sandwich, he had nothing to 
boast of in his immediate progenitors, being 
born the son of a tailor in Loudon, and enter- 
>ng on life in a state of the utmost poverty. It 
tvas probably from this ignoble vocation of his 
father, that he derived that hereditary taste 
for dress which makes such a conspicuous 
figure in his Diary. The critical and affec- 
tionate notices of doublets, cloaks, beavers, 
Eeriwigs, and sword-belts, actually outnum- 
ering, we think, all the entries on any other 
24 



subject whatever, ajid plainly engrossing, even 
in the most agitating circumstances, no small 
share of the author's attention. Pernaps it is 
to the same blot in his scutcheon, tnat we 
should trace a certain want of manliness in 
his whole character and deportment. Certain 
it is at least, that there is room for such an 
imputation. He appears before us, from first 
to last, with the true temper, habits, and man- 
ners of an Underling — obsequious to his supe- 
riors — civil and smooth to all men — lavish in 
attentions to persons of influence whom he 
dislikes — and afraid and ashamed of being 
seen with his best friends and benefactors, 
when they are supposed to be out of favour 
— most solicitous to keep out of quarrels of 
all sorts — and ensuring" his own safety, not 
only By too humble and pacific a bearing in 
scenes of contention, but by such stretches of 
simulation and dissimulation as we cannot 
easily reconcile to our notion of a brave and 
honourable man. 

To such an extent, indeed, is this carried, 
that, though living in times of great actual, 
and greater apprehended changes, it is with 
difficulty that we can guess, even from this 
most copious and unreserved record of his in- 
most thoughts, what were really his political 
opinions, or whether he ever had any. We 
learn, indeed, from one passage, that in his 
early youth he had been an ardent Round- 
head, and had in that capacity attended with 
exultation the execution of the King — observ- 
ing to one of his companions at the time, that 
if he had been to make a sermon on the occa- 
sion, he would have chosen for his text the 
words, " The memory of the wicked shall 
rot." This, to be sure, was when he was 
only in his eighteenth year — but he seems 
afterwards to have accepted of a small office 
in the Republican Court of Exchequer, of 
which he is in possession for some time after 
the commencement of his Diary. That work 
begins in January 1659, while Monk was on 
his march from Scotland • and yet, not only 
does he continue to frequent the society of 
Harrington, Hazlerigge, and other staunch 
republicans, but never once expresses any 
wish of his own, either for the restoration of 
the Royalty, or the continuance of the Pro- 
tectorate, till after he is actually at sea with 
Lord Sandwich, with the ships that brought 
Charles back from Breda ! After the Restora- 
tion is consolidated, indeed, and he has got a 
good office in the Admiralty, he has recorded, 
amply enough, his anxiety for the permanency 
of the ancient dynasty — though he cannot 
help, every now and then, reprobating the 
profligacy, wastefulness, and neglect of the 
new government, and contrasting them disad- 
vantageously with the economy, energy," and 
popularity, of most of the measures of the 
Usurper. While we give him credit, there- 
fore, for great candour and impartiality in the 
private judgments which he has here record- 
ed, we can scarcely pay him the compliment 
of saying that he has any political principles 
whatever — or any, at least, for which he 
would ever have dreamed of hazarding hi3 
own worldly prosperity. 
<l2 



186 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



Another indication of the same low and 
ignoble turn of mind is to be found, we think, 
in his penurious anxiety about his money — 
the intense satisfaction with which he watches 
its increase, and the sordid and vulgar cares 
to which he condescends, to check its ex- 
penditure. Even after he is in possession of 
a great income, he goes and sits by the tailor 
till he sees him sew all the buttons on his 
doublet — and spends four or five hours, of a 
very busy day, in watching the coach-maker 
laying on the coats of varnish on the body of 
his coach ! When he gives a dinner, he knows 
exactly what every dish has cost him — and 
tells a long story of his paddling half the 
night with his fingers in the dirt, digging up 
some money he had buried in a garden, and 
conveying it with his own hands, w r ith^nany 
fears and contrivances, safely back to his 
house. With all this, however, he is charit- 
able to the poor, kind to his servants and de- 
pendents, and very indulgent to all the mem- 
bers of his family — though we find him chron- 
icling his own munificence in helping to fit 
out his wife's brother, w T hen he goes abroad 
to push his fortune, by presenting him with 
u ten shillings — and a coat that I had by me 
— a close-bodied, light-coloured, cloth coat — 
with a gold edging on each seam — that was 
the lace of my wife's best petticoat, when I 
married her!" 

As we conceive, a good deal, not only of 
the interest, but of the authority and just 
construction of the information contained in 
the work, depends on the reader having a 
correct knowledge of the individual by whom 
it is furnished, we think we cannot do better 
than begin our extracts w T ith a few citations 
illustrative of the author's own character, 
habits, and condition, as we have already at- 
tempted to sketch them. The very first entry 
exhibits some of his peculiarities. He w T as 
then only twenty-seven years of age — and 
had been received, though not w r ith much 
honour, into the house of his kinsman Sir Ed- 
ward Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich. 
This is his condition in the beginning of 1659. 

"Jan. 1st (Lord's day). This morning, (we 
living lately in the garret,) I rose, put on my suit 
with great skins, having not lately worn any other 
clothes but them. Went to Mr Gunning's chapel 
at Exeter House, &c Dined at home in the garret, 
where my wife dressed the remains of a turkey, 
and in the doingr of it she burned her hand. I staid 
at home the whole afernoon, looking over my ac- 
counts ; then went wiih my wife to my father's, &c. 
— 2d. From the Hall I called at home, and so went 
to Mr. Crewe's (my wife she was to go to her 
father's), and Mr Moore and land another gentle- 
man went out and drank a cup of ale together in the 
new market, and there I eat some bread and cheese 
for my dinner." «, 

His passion for dress breaks out in every 
page almost ; but we shall insert only one or 
two of the early entries, to give the reader a 
notion of the style of it. 

" 10th. This day I put on my new silk suit, the 
Irst that ever I wore in my life. — 12th. Home, and 
Called my wife, and t<>ok her to Clodins' to a great 
wedding of Nan Hartlib to Mynheer Roder, which 
was kept at Goring House with very great state, 
COfet and noble company. But among all the 



beauties there, my wife was thought the greatest.— 
13th. Up early, the first day that I put on my black 
camlett coat with silver buttons. To Mr. Spong, 
whom I found in his night-gown, &c. — 14th. To 
the Privy Seale, and thence to my Lord's, where 
Mr. Pirn the tailor and I agreed upon making me a 
velvet coat. — 25<h. This night W. Hewer brought 
me home from Mr. Pirn's my velvet coat and cap, 
the first that ever I had. This the first day that 
ever I saw my wife wear black patches since we 
were married.- — My wife seemed very pretty to-day, 
it being the first time I had given her leave to weare 
a black patch. — 22d. This morning, hearing that the 
Queene grows worse again, I sent to stop the mak- 
ing of my velvet cloak, till I see whether she lives 
or dies. — 30th. To my great sorrow find myself 
43Z. worse than I was the last month, which waa 
then 760Z., and now it is but 717Z. But it hath 
chiefly arisen from my layings out in clothes for 
myself and wife ; viz. for her about 122. and for 
myself 55Z., or thereabouts ; having made myself a 
velvet cloak, two new cloth skirts, black, plain 
both ; a new shag gown, trimmed with gold but- 
tons and twist, with a new hat, and silk tops for my 
legs, and many other things, being resolved hence- 
forward to go like myself. And also two perriwiggs, 
one whereof costs me 31. and the other 40s. I have 
worn neither yet, but will begin next week, God 
willing. — 29th. Lord's day. This morning I put 
on my best black cloth suit, trimmed with scarleit 
ribbon, very neat, with my cloak lined with velvett, 
and a new beaver, which altogether is very noble, 
with my black silk knit canons 1 bought a month 
ago. — 30th. Up, and put on a new summer black 
bombazin suit ; and being come now to an agree- 
ment with my barber to keep my pt-rriwig in good 
order at 20s. a year, I am like to go very spruce, 
more than I used to do. — 31st. This day I got a 
little rent in my new fine camlett cloak with the 
latch of SirG. Carteret's door; but it is darned up 
at my tailor's, that it will be no great blemish to it; 
but it troubled me." 

This, we suppose, is enough — though there 
are more than five hundred such notices at the 
service of any curious reader. It ma} r be sup- 
posed what a treat a Coronation would be to 
such a fancier of fine clothes ; and accordingly, 
we have a most rapturous description of it, in 
all its glory. The King and the Duke of York 
in their morning dresses were, it seems, "but 
very plain men;" but. when attired in their 
" most rich embroidered suits and cloaks, they 
looked most noble." Indeed, after some time, 
he assures us, that " the show was so glorious 
with gold and silver, that we are not able to 
look at it any longer, our eyes being so much 
overcome !" 

As a specimen of the credulity and twaddle 
which constitutes another of the staples of 
this collection, the reader may take the fol- 
lowing. 

"19th. Waked with a very high wind, and said 
to my wife, ' I pray God I hear not of the death of 
any great person, — this wind is so high !' fearing 
that the Queene might be dead. So up ; and going 
by coach with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes to 
St. James', they tell me that Sir W. Compton, who 
it is true had been a little sickly for a week or fort- 
night, but was very well upon Friday night last, at 
the Tangier Committee with us, was dead, — died 
yesterday : at which I was most exceedingly sur- 
prised, — he being, and so all the world saying that 
he was, one of the worthy est men and best officers of 
Slate nov> in England ! 

"23d. To Westminster Abbey, and there did 
see all the tombs very finely ; having one with us 
alone (there being no other company this day to se#> 
the tombs, it being Shrove-Tuesday): and here we 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



18? 



did see, by particular favour, the body of Queen 
Kaihcrinc of Valois ; — and I had the upper part of 
her body in my hands, — and I did kiss tier mouth ! 
— reflecting upon if that I did kiss a queene, and 
that this was my birth day, — ihirty-six years old ! 
— that I did kiss a queene ! But here this man, who 
seems to understand well, tells me that the saying 
is not true that she was never buried, — for she was 
buried. — Only when Henry the Seventh built his 
chapel, she was taken up and laid in this wooden 
coffin; bat I did there see that in it the body was 
buried in a leaden one, which remains under the 
body to this day, &c. &c. — 29th. We sat under the 
boxes, and saw the fine ladies; among others, my 
Lady Kerneguy, who is most devilishly painted. 
And so home — ii being mighty pleasure to go alone 
with my poor wife in a coach of our own to a play ! 
and makes us appear mighty great, I think, in the 
world; at least, greater than ever I could, or my 
friends for me, have once expected; or, I think, 
than ever any of my family ever yet lived in my 
memory — but my cosen Pepys in Salisbury Court." 

Or the following memorandums of his 
travels. 

" A mighty cold and windy, but clear day ; and 
had the pleasure of seeing the Medway running 
winding up and down mightily, — and a very fine 
country : and I went a little out of the way to have 
visited Sir John Bankes, but he at London ; but here 
I had a sight of his seat and house, the outside, which 
is an old abbey just like Hinchingbroke, and as 
good at least, and mightily finely placed by the 
river; and he keeps the grounds about it, and 
walks and the house, very handsome : I was might- 
ily pleased with the sight of it. Thence to Mayd- 
Btone, which I had a mighty mind to see, having 
never been there; and walked all up and down the 
town, — and up to the top of the steeple — and had a 
noble view, and then down again : and in the town 
did see an old man beating of flax ! and did step 
into the barn and give him money, and saw thai 
piece of husbandry, which I never saw ; and it. is 
very pretty! In the street also I did buy and send 
to our iune. the Bell, a dish of fresh fish. And so 
having walked all round the town, and found ii very 
pretty as most towns T ever saw, though not very 
big, and people of good fashion in it, we to ourinne 
and had a good dinner ; and a barber came to me 
and there trimmed me, that I might be clean against 
night to so to Mr*. Allen, &c. 

" So all over the plain by the sight of the steeple 
(the plain hiijh and low) to Salisbury by night ; but 
before I came to ihe town, I saw a great fortifica- 
tion, and there light, and to it and in it! and find it 
prodigious ! so as to fright me to be in it all alone, 
at that time of night — it being dark. I understand 
since it to be that" that is called Old Sarum. Come 
to the George Inne, where lay in a silk bed ; and 
very sood diet, &,c. &c. — 22d. So the three women 
behind W Hewer, Murford, and our guide, and I 
single to Stonehenge, over the plain, and some great 
hills, even to fright us! Come thither, and find 
them as prodigious as any tales I ever heard of 
them, and worth going this journey to see. God 
knows what their use was: they are hard to tell, 
but yet may be told. — 12th. Friday. Up, finding 
our beds good, but lousy; which made us merry ! 
— 9th. Up, and got ready, and eat our breakfast ; 
and then took coach : and the poor, as they did 
yesterday, did stand at the coach to have something 
given them, as they do to all great persons; and I 
did give them something! and the town music did 
also come and play; but, Lord! what sad music 
they made ! So through the town, and observed at 
our College of Magdalene Ihe posts new -painted! 
and understand that the Vice-Chancellor is there 
this year." 

Though a great playgoer, we cannot say 
much for his taste in plays, or indeed in litera- 
1 ure in general. Of the Midsummer's Dream, 



he says, "it is the most insipid, ridiculous 
play I ever saw in my life." And he is al- 
most equally dissatisfied with the Merry Wives 
of Windsor, and Henry the IV. To make 
amends, however, for these misjudgments, he 
is often much moved by the concord of sweet 
sounds; and has, in the following passage, 
described the effects they produced on him, 
in a way that must be admitted to be original 
The Virgin Martyr (of Massinger), he says, 
was u mighty pleasant ! Not that the play is 
worth much, but it is finely acted by Beck 
Marshall. But that which did please me be- 
yond any thing in the whole world, was the 
wind-musique when the angel comes down : 
which is so sweet that it ravished me, ana 
indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul, so 
that it made me really sick I — just as I have 
formerly been when in love with my wife! 7 ' 

Though "mighty merry" upon all occa- 
sions, and, like gentle dulness, ever loving a 
joke. w r e are afraid he had not much relish for 
wit. His perplexity at the success of Hudibras 
is exceedingly ludicrous. This is his own 
account of his first attempt on him — ■ 

"Hither come Mr. Battersby; and we falling 
into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, 
called Hudebras, I would needs go find it out, and 
met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s. 6d. But 
when I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of 
the Presbyter Knight going to the warrs, that I am 
ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr. 
Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d!" 

The second is not much more successful. 

"To Paul's Church Yard, and there looked 
upon the second part of Hudibras — which I buy not, 
but borrow to read, — to see if it be as good as the 
first, which the world cried so mightily up; though 
it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried 
twice or three limes reading, to bring myself to 
think it willy" 

The following is a ludicrous instance of his 
parsimony and household meanness. 

"29th. (King's birth-day.) Rose early, and put 
six spoons and a porringer of silver in my pocket, to 
give away to-day. Back to dinner at Sir William 
Batten's; and then, after a walk in the fine gar- 
dens, we went to Mrs. Browne's, where Sir W. 
Pen and I were godfathers, and Mrs. Jordan and 
Shipman godmothers to her boy. And there, be- 
fore and after the christening, we were with th* 
woman above in her chamber; but whether we car 
tied ourselves well or ill, I know not ; but I wa* 
directed by younty Mrs. Batten. One passage, of 
a lady that eate wafers with her dog, did a lit tie dis- 
please me. I did give the midwife 10s., and the nurse 
5s., and the maid of the house 2s. But, for as 
much as I expected to give the name to the childe, 
but did not (it being called John), 1 for chore then to 
give my plate." 

On another occasion, when he had, accord- 
ing to the fashion of the time, sent a piece of 
plate, on a holiday, fo his official superior, he 
records with great joy, 

" After dinner Will, comes to tell me that he ha<2 
presented my piece of plate to Mr. Coventry, who 
takes it very kindly, and sends me a very kind let- 
ter, and the plate back again, — of which my heart it 
very glad.'" 

Throughout the whole work, indeed, he is 
mainly occupied with reckoning up and se- 
curing his gains — turnir^ them into good 



188 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



gold — and bagging and hiding them in holes 
and corners. His prosperity, indeed, is mar- 
vellous; and shows us how good a thing it 
was to be in office, even in the year 1660. 
When he goes with Lord Sandwich to bring 
over the King, he is overjoyed with his Ma- 
jesty's bounty of a month's pay to all the 
ships' officers — and exultingly counts up his 
share, and •• finding himself to be worth very 
nearly 100L, blesses Almighty God for it — not 
having been worth 251. clear when he left his 
home." And yet, having got the office of 
Clerk of the Acts in the Admiralty, and a few 
others, he thrives w T ith such prodigious ra- 
pidity, that before the end of 1666, this is his 
own account of his condition. 

"To my accounts,- wherein at last I find them 
clear and right ; but to my great discontent do find 
that my gettings this year have been 5737. less than 
my last: it being this year in all but 29861; where- 
as, the last, I got 35607. ! And then again my 
spendings this year have exceeded my spendings 
the last, by 644Z. : my whole spendings last year 
being but 5091. ; whereas this year it appears I have 
epent 1154?., — which is a sum not fit to be said that 
ever I should spend in one year, before I am mas- 
ter of a be'tier estate than Tarn. Yet, blessed be 
God ! and I pray God make me thankful for it, I 
do find myself worth in money, all good, above 
62007. ; which is above 1800Z. more than I was the 
last year." 

We have hinted, however, at a worse mean- 
ness than the care of money, and sordid house- 
hold economy. When his friends and patrons 
seem falling into disgrace, this is the way he 
takes to countenance them. 

"I found my Lord Sandwich there, poor man ! 
I see with a melancholy face, and suffers his beard 
to grow on his upper lip more than usual. I took 
him a little aside to know when I should wait on 
him, and where : he told me, that it would be best 
to meet at his lodgings, without bti/ig seen to walk 
together. Which I liked very well ; and. Lord ! 
to see in what difficulty I stand, that I dare not walk 
with Sir W. Coventry, for fear my Lord or Sir G. 
Carteret should see me; nor with either of them, 
for fear Sir VV. Coventry should ! &.c. 

"To Sir VV. Coventry's — after much discourse 
with him, I walked out with him into James' 
Park ; where, being afraid to be seen with him (he 
having not yet leave to kiss the King's hand, hut 
notice taken, as I hear, of all that go to him), I did 
take the pretence of my attending the Tangier Com- 
mittee to take my leave of him." 

It is but a small matter, after this, to find, 
that when the office is besieged by poor sail- 
ors' wives, clamouring for their arrears of pay, 
he and Mrs. Pepys are dreadfully " afraid to 
send a venison pasty, that we are to have for 
supper to-night, to the cook to be baked — for 
fear of their offering violence to it." 

Notwithstanding his great admiration of his 
wife and her beauty, and his unremitting at- 
tention to business and money, he has a great 
deal of innocent (?) dalliance with various 
pretty actresses at the playhouses, and passes 
a large part of his time in very profligate so- 
ciety. Here is a touch of his ordinary life, 
which meets us by accident as we turn over 
the leaves. 

"To the King's house; and there going in met 
with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing- 
rooms ; and to the women's shift, — where Nell (that 



is, Nell Gwyn) — was dressing herself, and was \il 
unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought- 
And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and 
she gave us fruit : and here I read the questions to 
Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part 
of 'Flora's Figary's,' which was acted to-day. 
But, Lord! to see how they were both painted, 
would make a man mad, and did make me loath 
them ! and what base company of men comes 
among them, and how lewdly they talk ! And 
how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a 
shew they make on the stage by candle-light is very 
observable. But to see how Nell cursed, — for 
having so few people in the pit, was strange." 

Now, whether it was strange or not, it was 
certainly very wrong in Nell to curse so un- 
mercifully, even at a thin house. But we 
must say, that it was neither so wrong nor so 
strange, as for this grave man of office, to 
curse deliberately to himself in this his pri- 
vate Diary. And yet but a few pages after, 
we find this emphatic entry, — " in fear oi 
nothing but this damned business of the prizes. 
I . fear my lord will receive a cursed deal of 
trouble by it." 

The following affords a still stronger picture 
of the profligacy of the times. 

" To Fox Hall, and there fell into the company 
of Harry Killigrew, a rogue newly come back out 
of France, but stilt in disgrace at our Court, and 
young Newport and others ; as very rogues as any 
in the town, who were ready to take hold of every 
woman that come by them. And so to supper in 
an arbour: but, Lord! their mad talk did make my 
heart ake ! And here I first understood by their talk 
the meaning of the company that lately were called 
Bailers ; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of 
some young blades, where he was among them, 
and my Lady Bennet.and her ladies; and there 
dancing naked! and all the roguish things in the 
world. But, Lord ! what loose company was this 
that I was in to-night! though full of wit; and 
worth a man's being in for once, — tn know the na- 
ture of it, and their manner of talk and lives." 

These however, we have no doubt, were 
all very blameless and accidental associations 
on his part. But there is one little liaison of 
which we discover some indications in the 
journal, as to which we do not feel so well 
assured, unreserved as his confessions un- 
doubtedly are, that he has intrusted the whole 
truth even to his short-hand cipher. We al- 
lude to a certain Mrs. Mercer, his wife's maid 
and occasional companion, of whom he makes 
frequent and very particular mention. The 
following entry, it will be allowed, is a little 
suspicious, as well as exceedingly character- 
istic. 

" Thence home — and to sing with my wife and 
Mercer in the garden ; and coming in, I find my 
wife plainly dissatisfied with me, that I can spend 
so much time with Mercer, teaching her to sing, 
and could never take the pains with her. Which I 
acknowledge ; but it is because the girl do take 
music mighty readily, and she do not, — and music 
is the thing of the world that I love most, and al 
the pleasure almost that lean now take. So to bed, 
in some little discontent, — but no words from me/" 

We trace the effect of this jpalousy very 
curiously, in a little incident chronicled with 
great simplicity a few days after, where he 
mentions that being out at supper, the party 
returned u in two coaches, — Mr. Batelier and 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



.89 



nis sister Mary, and my wife and I, in one, — 
and Mercer alone in the olher." 

We are sorry to observe, however, that he 
seems very soon to have tired of this caution 
and forbearance ; as the following, rather out- 
rageous merry-making, which takes place on 
the fourth day after, riiay testify. 

" After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the 
Beare'-garden ; where I have not been, I think, of 
many years, and saw some good sport of the bull's 
tossing of the dogs: one into the very boxes. But 
it is a very rude and" nasty pleasure. We had a 
great many hectors in the same box with us, (and 
one, very fine, went into the pit, and played his dog 
for a wager, which was a strange sport for a gen- 
tleman,) where they drank wine, and drank Mer- 
cer s health first; which 1 pledged toith my hat off! 
We supped at home, and very merry. And then 
about nine o'clock to Mrs. Mercer's gate, where 
the fire and boys expected us, and her son had pro- 
vided abundance of serpents and rockets : and there 
mighty merry, (my Lady Pen and Pegg going 
thither with us, and Nan Wright,) till about twelve 
at night, flinging our fireworks, and burning one 
another and the people over the way. And at last 
our businesses being most spent, we into Mrs. Mer- 
cer's, and there mighty merry, smutting one a?iother 
with candle-grease and soot, till most of us were 
like devils! And that being done, then we broke 
up, and to my house ; and there I made them drink, 
and up stairs we went, and then fell into dancing, 
(W. Batelier dancing well,) and dressing him and I 
and one Mr. Bannister (who with my wife come 
over also with us) like women ; and Mercer put on 
a suit of Tom , s, like a boy, and mighty mirth we 
had — and Mercer danced ajigg! and Nan Wright, 
and my wife, and Pegg Pen put on perriwigs. 
Thus, we spent till three or four in the morning — 
mighty merry !"— Vol. i. p. 438, 439. 

After all this, we confess, we are not very 
much surprised, though no doubt a little 
shocked, to find the matter come to the fol- 
lowing natural and domestic, though not very 
dignified catastrophe. 

"This day, Mercer being not at home, but, 
against her mistress' order, gone to her mother's, 
and my wife, going thither to speak with W. Hewer, 
beat Her there ! ! — and was angry ; and her mother 
saying that she was not a prentice girl, to ask leave 
every time she goes abroad, my wife with good 
reason was angry, and when she come home bid 
her be gone again. And so she went away ! which 
troubled me, — but yet less than it would, because 
of the condition we are in, in fear of coming in a 
little time to be less able to keep one in her quality." 

Matters, however, we are happy to say, 
seem to have been wonderfully soon made up 
again — for we find her attending Mrs. P., as 
usual, in about six weeks after ; and there are 
various subsequent, though very brief and 
discreet notices of her, to the end of the Diary. 

It is scarcely fair, Ave confess, thus to drag 
to light the frailties of this worthy defunct 
secretary : But we really cannot well help it 
— he has laid the temptation so directly in 
our way. If a man will leave such things on 
record, people will read and laugh at them, 
although he should long before be laid snug 
in his grave. After what we have just ex- 
tracted, the reader will not be surprised at 
the following ingenious confession. 

" The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the 
more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper 
age of my life to do it ; and out of my observation, 
that most men that do thrive in the world do for- 



get to take pleasure during the time that they are 
getting their estaie, but reserve that till they have 
got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it." 

One of the most characteristic, and at the 
same time most creditable pieces of naivete 
that we meet with in the book, is in the ac- 
count he gives of the infinite success of a 
speech which he delivered at the bar of the 
House of Commons, in 1667. in explanation 
and defence of certain alleged mismanage- 
ments in the navy, then under discussion in 
that assembly. The honourable House pro- 
bably knew but little about the business ; and 
nobody, we can well believe, knew so much 
about it as our author, — and this, we have no 
doubt, was the great merit of his discourse, 
and the secret of his success : — For though 
we are disposed to give him every credit for 
industry, clearness, and practical judgment, 
we think it is no less plain from his manner 
of writing, than from the fact of his subse- 
quent obscurity in parliament, that he could 
never have had any pretensions to the char- 
acter of an orator. Be that as it may, how- 
ever, this speech seems to have made a great 
impression at the time ; and certainly gave 
singular satisfaction to its worthy maker. It 
would be unjust to withhold from our readers 
his own account of this bright passage in his 
existence. In the morning, when he came 
down to Westminster, he had some natural 
qualms. 

" And to comfort myself did go to the Dog and 
drink half a pint of mulled sack, — and in the hall 
did drink a dram of brandy at Mrs. Hewlett's ! and 
with the warmth of this did^find myself in better 
order as to courage, truly." 

He spoke three hours and a half u as com- 
fortably as if I had been at my own table,' 7 
and ended soon after three in the afternoon ; 
but it was not thought fit to put the vote that 
day, "many members having gone out to 
dinner, and come in again half drunk." Next 
morning his glory opens on him. 

" 6th. Up betimes, and with Sir D. Gauden to 
Sir W. Coventry's chamber; where the first word 
he said to me was, ' Good-morrow, Mr. Pepys, 
that must be Speaker of the Parliament House :' 
and did protest I had got honour for ever in Parlia- 
ment. He said that his brother, that sat by him, 
admires me; and another gentleman said that I 
could not get less than 1000Z. a year, if I would put 
on a gown and plead at the Chancery -bar. But, 
what pleases me most, he tells me that the Solici- 
tor-generall did protest that he thought I spoke the 
best of any man i?i England. My Lord Barkeley 
did cry me up for what they had heard of it ; and 
others, Parliament-men there about the King, did 
say that they never heard such a speech in their lives, 
delivered in that manner. From thence I went to 
Westminster Hall ; where I met with Mr. G. Mon- 
tagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me 
that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but 
now he would kiss my lips: protesting that / was 
another Cicero! and said all the world said the same 
of me. Mr. Godolphin ; Mr. Sands, who swore he 
would go twenty miles at any time to hear the like 
again, and that he never saw so many sit four hours 
together to hear any man in his life as there did to 
hear me. Mr. Chichly, Sir John Duncomb, and 
every body do say that the k'mgdomwill ring of my 
abilities, and that I have done myself right for my 
whole life ; and so Captain Coke and others of my 
friends say that no man had ever such an oppor- 



90 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



tunity of making his abilities known. And that I 
may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower 
did tell me that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, 
and that in his hearing said so to the Duke of Ai- 
bermarle, and afterwards to Sir W. Coventry, that 
he had sat twenty-six years in Parliament and never 
heard suck a speech there before ! for which the Lord 
God make me thankful ! and that I may make use 
of it, not to pride and vainglory, but that, now I 
have this esteem, I may do nothing that may 
lessen it !" 

There is a great deal more of this — but we 
have given rather too much space already to 
Mr. Pepys' individual concerns: and must 
turn now to something of more public interest. 
Before taking leave of private life., however, 
we may notice one or two things, that we 
collect incidentally, as to the manners and 
habits of the times. The playhouses, of which 
there seem to have been at least three, opened 
apparently soon after noon — though the en- 
tertainments often lasted till late in the night 
— but we cannot make out whether they were 
ever exhibited by daylight. The pit, in some 
of them at least, must have been uncovered ; 
for our author speaks repeatedly of being an- 
noyed in that place by rain and hail. For 
several years after the Restoration, women's 
parts were done by boys, — though there seem 
always to have been female singers. The 
hour of dinner was almost always twelve ; and 
men seem generally to have sat at table with 
their hats on. The wines mostly in use ap- 
pear to have been the Spanish white wines 
— both sweet and dry — some clarets — but no 
port. It seems still to have been a custom to 
go down to drink in the cellar. The Houses 
of Parliament met, like the courts of law, at 
nine, and generally adjourned at noon. The 
style of dress seems to have been very vari- 
able, and very costly — periwigs appear not to 
have been introduced, even at court, till 1663 
— and the still greater abomination of hair 
powder not to have been yet dreamed of. 
Much of the outskirts of the town, and the 
greater part of Westminster, were not paved 
— and the police seems to have been very 
deficient, as the author frequently speaks of 
the danger of returning from Whitehall and 
that neighbourhood to the city early in the 
evening — no lamps in the streets." Some 
curious notices of prices might be collected 
out of these volumes — but we have noted but 
a few. Coaches seem to have been common, 
and very cheap — our author gets a very hand- 
some one for 322. On the other hand, he pays 
4l. 10s. for a beaver, and as much for a wig. 
Pictures too seem to have brought large prices, 
considering the value of money and the small 
proportion of the people who could then have 
any knowledge of the art. He pays 25Z. for 
a portrait of his wife, and 30L for a miniature, 
besides eight guineas for the setting — and 
mentions a flower-piece for which the painter 
refused 701. We may take leave of him and 
his housekeeping, by inserting his account of 
two grand dinners he seems to have given — 
both which he appears to have regarded as 
mat ters of very weighty concernment. As to 
the first he says — 

'My head being full of to-morrow's dinner, 



went to my Lord Crewe's, there to invite Sir 
Thomas, &c. Thence home : and there find one 
laying of my napkins against to-morrow in figures 
of all sorts ; which is mighty pretty ; and it seems 
it is his trade, and he gets much money by it. 14th. 
Up very betimes, and with Jane to Levett's, there 
to conclude upon our dinner ; and thence to the 
pewterer's to buy a pewter sesterne, which 1 have 
ever hitherto been without. Anon comes my com- 
pany, viz. my Lord Hincliingbroke and his lady, 
Sir Philip Carteret and his lady, Godolphin and my 
cosen Roger, and Creed : and mighty merry ; and 
by and by to dinner, which was very good and 
plentiful (and I should have said, and Mr. George 
Montagu, who came at a very little warning, which 
was exceeding kind of him). And there, among 
other things, my lord had Sir Samuel Morland s 
late invention for casting up of sums of £ s. d.; 
which is very pretty, but not very useful. Most 
of our discourse was of my Lord Sandwich and his 
family, as being all of us of the family. And with 
extraordinary pleasure all the afternoon, thus to- 
gether, eating and looking over my closet." 

The next seems to have been still more 
solemn and successful. 

"23d. To the office till noon, when word 
brought me that my Lord Sandwich was come ; so 
1 presently rose, and there I found my Lords Sand- 
wich, Peterborough, and Sir Charles Harbord ; and 
presently after them comes my Lord Hincliing- 
broke, Mr. Sidney, and Sir William Godolphin. 
And after greeting them and some time spent in 
talk, dinner was brought up, one dish after another, 
but a dish at a time ; but all so good ! But, above 
all things, the variety of wines and excellent of their 
kind I had for them, and all in so good order, that 
they were mightily pleased, and myself full of con- 
tent at it : and indeed it was, of a dinner of about 
six or eight dishes, as noble as any man need to 
have, I think ; at least, all was done in the noblest 
manner that ever 1 had any, and I have rarely seen 
in my life better any where else, even at the Court. 
After dinner my lords to cards, and the rest of us 
sitting about them and talking, and looking on my 
books and pictures, and my wife's drawings, which 
they commended mightily: and mighty merry all 
day long, with exceeding great content, and so till 
seven at night ; and so took their leaves, it being 
dark and foul weather. Thus was this entertain- 
ment over — the best of its kind and the fullest of 
honour and content to me that ever I had in my 
life ; and I shall not easily have so good again." 

On turning to the political or historical 
parts of this record, we are rather disap- 
pointed in rinding so little that is curious or 
interesting in that earliest portion of it which 
carries us through the whole work of the 
Restoration. Though there are almost daily 
entries from the 1st of January 1659, and 
though the author was constantly in commu- 
nication with persons in public situations — 
was personally introduced to the King at the 
Hague, and came home in the same ship 
with him, it is wonderful how few particulars 
of any moment he has been enabled to put 
down j and how little the tone of his journal 
exhibits of that interest and anxiety which 
we are apt to imagine must have been uni- 
versal during the dependence of so moment- 
ous a revolution. Even this barrenness, how- 
ever, is not without instruction — and illustrates 
by a new example, how insensible the con- 
temporaries of great transactions often are of 
their importance, and how much more pos- 
terity sees of their character than those who 
were parties to them. We have already ob- 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



191 



served that the author's own political predi- 
lections are scarcely distinguishable till he 
is embarked in the fleet to bring home the 
King — and the greater part of those with 
whom he converses seem to have been nearly 
as undecided. Monk is spoken of through- 
out with considerable contempt and aversion; 
and among many instances of his duplicity, 
it is recorded that upon the 21st day of Feb- 
ruary 1660. he came to Whitehall, "and there 
made a speech to them, recommending to 
them a Commonwealth, and against Charles 
Stuart." The feeling of the city is repre- 
sented, no doubt, as extremely hostile to the 
Parliament (here uniformly called the Rump); 
but their aspirations are not said to be directed 
to royalty, but merely to a free Parliament 
and the dissolution of the existing junto. So 
late as the month of March our author ob- 
serves, a great is the talk of a single person. 
Charles, George, or Richard again. For the 
last of which my Lord St. John is said to 
speak very high. Great also is the dispute 
in the House, in whose name the writs shall 
issue for the new Parliament." It is a com- 
fort however to find, in a season of such uni- 
versal dereliction of principle, that signal 
perfidy, even to the cause of the republic, 
is visited with general scorn. A person of 
the name of Morland, who had been em- 
ployed under the Protector in the Secretary 
of State's office, had been in the habit of 
betraying his trust, and communicating pri- 
vately with the exiled monarch — and. upon 
now resorting to him, had been graced with 
the honour of knighthood. Even our cold- 
hearted chronicler speaks thus of this deserter. 

" Mr. Morland, now Sir Samuel, was here on 
board ; but I do not find that my lord or any body 
did give him any respect — he being looked upon 
by him and all men as a knave. Among others 
he betrayed Sir Rich. Willis that married Dr. F. 
Jones' daughter, who had paid him 1000Z. at one 
time by the Protector's and Secretary Thurloe's 
order, for intelligence that he sent concerning the 
King." 

And there is afterwards a similar expres- 
sion of honest indignation against " that per- 
fidious rogue Sir G. Downing," who, though 
he had served in the Parliamentary army 
under Okey, yet now volunteered to go after 
him and Corbet, with the King's warrant, to 
Holland, and succeeded in bringing them 
back as prisoners, to their death — and had 
the impudence, when there, to make a speech 
to " the Lords States of Holland, telling them 
to their faces that he observed that he was 
not received with the respect and observance 
now, that he was when he came from the 
traitor and rebell Cromwell ! by whom, I am 
sure, he hath got all he hath in the world, — 
and they know it too." 

When our author is presented to the King, 
he very simply puts down, that " he seems 
to be a very sober man!" This, however, 
probably referred only to his dress and equip- 
ment ; which, from the following extract, 
seems to have been homely enough, even for 
a republic. 

" This afternoon Mr. Edward Pickering told me 
in what a sad, poor condition for clothes and money 



the kinor was, and all his attendants, when he came 
io him first from my lord ; their clothes not being 
worth forty shillings — 'the best of ihem. And how 
overjoyed the King was when Sir J. Greenville 
brought him some money ; so joyful, that he called 
the Princess Royal and Duke of York to look 
upon it, as it lay in the portmanteau belore it was 
taken out." 

On the voyage home the names of the 
ships are changed — and to be sure the Rich- 
ard, the Naseby, and the Dunbar, were not 
very fit to bear the royal flag — nor even the 
Speaker or the Lambert. There is a long ac- 
count of the landing, and a still longer, of 
Lord Sandwich's investment with the Order 
of the Garter — but we do not find any thing 
of moment recorded, till we come to the 
condemnation and execution of the regicides 
— a pitiful and disgusting departure from the 
broad principle of amnesty, upon the basis 
of which alone any peaceful restoration could 
be contemplated, after so long and so une- 
quivocally national a, suspension of royalty. 
It is disgusting to find, that Monk sate on the 
bench, while his companions in arms, Harri- 
son, Hacker, and Axtell, were arraigned for 
the treasons in which he and they had been 
associated. Our author records the whole 
transactions with the most perfect indiffer- 
ence, and with scarcely a remark — for ex- 
ample, 

" 13th. I went out to Charing Cross, to see 
Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quar- 
tered ; which was done there ; he looking as cheer- 
ful ! as any man could do in that condition. — 18th. 
This morning, it being expected that Colonel 
Hacker and Axtell should die, I went to Newgate, 
but found they were reprieved till to-morrow. — 
19th. This morning my dining-room was finished 
with greene serge hanging and gill leather, which 
is very handsome. This morning Hacker and 
Axtell were hanged and quartered, as the rest 
are." 

He is, to be sure, a little troubled, as he 
expresses it, at the disinterring and gibbet- 
ting of Cromwell's dead and festering body — 
thinking it unfit that u a man of so great 
courage as he was, should have that dis- 
honour — though otherwise he might deserve 
it — enough!" He does not fail, however, to 
attend the rest of the executions, and to des- 
cribe them as spectacles of ordinary occur- 
rence — thus, 

" 19th. This morning, before we sat, I went to 
Aldgate ; and at the cftner shop, a draper's, I 
stood, and did see Barkestead, Okey, and Corbet, 
drawne towards the gallows at Tiburne ; and there 
they were hanged and quartered. They all looked 
very cheerful ! but I hear they all die defending 
what they did to the King to be just ; which is 
very strange !" 

" 14th. About eleven o'clock, having a room got 
ready for us, we all went out to the Tower Hill ; 
and there, over against the scaffold, made on pur- 
pose this day, saw Sir Henry Vane brought. A 
very great press of people. He made a lonff 
speech, many times interrupted by the sheriffe and 
others there ; and they would have taken his paper 
out of his hand, but he would not let it go. But 
they caused all the books of those that writ after 
him to be given to the sheriffe ; and the trumpets 
were brought under the scaffold that he might 
not be heard. Then he prayed, and so fitted him 
self, and received the blow ; but the scaffold was 
so crowded that we could not see it done. He 



192 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



had a blister, or issue, upon his neck, which he 
desired them not to hurt ! He changed not his 
colour or speech to the last, but died justifying 
himself and the cause he had stood for ; and 
spoke very confidently of his being presently at 
the right hand of Christ; and hi all things ap- 
peared the most resolved man that ever died in 
that manner." 

In spite of those rigorous measures, the 
author very soon gets disgusted with " the 
lewdness, beggary, and wastefulness/' of the 
new government — and after sagaciously re- 
marking, that '•' I doubt our new Lords of the 
Council do not mind things as the late powers 
did — but their pleasure or profit more," he 
proceeds to make the following striking re- 
marks on the ruinous policy, adopted on this, 
and many other restorations, of excluding the 
only men really acquainted with business, on 
the score of their former opposition to the 
party in pow r er. 

" From that we discoursed of the evil of put- 
ting out men of experience in business, and of the- 
condition of the King's plfrty at present, who, as 
the Papists, though otherwise fine persons, yet 
being by law kept for these four-score years out of 
employment, they are now wholly uncapable of 
business ; and so the Cavaliers, for twenty years, 
who for the most part have either given themselves 
over to look after country and family business, and 
those the best of them, and the rest to debau- 
chery, &c. ; and that was it that hath made him 
high against the late bill brought into the House 
for making all men incapable of employment that 
had'served against the King. People, says he, in 
the sea-service, it is impossible to do any thing 
without them, there being not more than three 
men of the whole King's side that are fit to com- 
mand almost ; and there were Captn. Allen, Smith, 
and Beech ; and it may be Holmes, and Utber ; and 
Batts might do something." 

Ill his account of another conversation with 
the same shrewd observer, he gives the fol- 
lowing striking picture of the different temper 
and moral character of the old Republican 
soldiers, as contrasted with those of the Roy- 
alists — of the former he reports — 

" Let the King think what he will, it is them that 
must help him in the day of warr. For generally 
they are the most substantial! sort of people, and 
the soberest ; and did desire me to observe it to my 
Lord Sandwich, among other things, that of all the 
old army now you cannot see a man begging about 
the streets; but what? you shall have this captain 
turned a shoemaker; this lieutenant a baker ; this a 
brewer; that a haberdasher ; this common soldier 
a porter ; and every man in his apron and frock, &c. 
as if they never had donewny thing else : Whereas 
the other go with their belts and swords, swearing 
and cursing, and stealing; running into people's 
houses, by force oftentimes, to carry &way some- 
thing ; and this is the difference between the temper 
of one and the other; and concludes (and I think 
with some reason), that the spirits of the old Par- 
liament soldiers are so quiet and contented with 
God's providence, that the King is safer from any 
evil meant him by them, one thousand limes more 
than from his own discontented Cavaliers. And 
then to the publick management of business; it is 
done, as he observes, so loosely and so carelessly, 
that the kingdom can never be happy with it, every 
man looking after himself, and his own lust and 
luxury." 

The following is also very remarkable. 

" It is strange how every body now-a-days do 
reflect upon Oliver, and commend him ; what brave 
things he did, and made all the neighbour princes 



fear him ; while here a prince, come in with all the 
love and prayers and good liking of his people, who 
have given greater signs of loyalty and willingness 
to serve him with their estates than ever was done 
by any people, hath lost all so soon, that it is a 
miracle that a man could devise to lose so much in 
so little time." 

The following particulars of the condition 
of the Protector's family are curious, and 
probably authentic. The conversation is in 
the end of 1664. 

" In niy way to Brampton in this day's journey 
I met with Mr. White, Cromwell's chaplain that 
was, and had a great, deal of discourse with him. 
Among others, he tells me that Richard is, and hath 
long been, in France, and is now going into Italy. 
He owns publickly, that he do correspond, and re- 
turn him ail his money. That Richard hath been 
in some straits in the beginning; but relieved by 
his friends. That he goes by another name, but 
do not disguise himself, nor deny himself to any 
man that challenges him. He tells me, for certain, 
that offers had been made to the old man, of marriage 
between the king and his daughter, to have obliged 
him — but he would not. He thinks (with me) that 
it never was in his power to bring in the King with 
the consent of any of his officers about him ; and 
that he scorned to bring him in, as JSJonk did, to 
secure himself and deliver every body else. When 
I told him of what I found writ in a French book 
of one Monsieur Sorbiere, that gives an account of 
his observations here in England ; among other 
things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell 
did, in his lifetime, transpose many of the bodies 
of the kings of England from one grave to another ; 
and that by that means it is not known certainly 
whether the head that is now set upon a post be that 
of Cromwell, or of one of the kings ; Mr. White tells 
me that he believes he never had so poor a low 
thought in him, to trouble himself about it. He says 
the hand of God is much to be seen ; and that all his 
children are in good condition enough as to estate, 
and that their relations that betrayed their family are 
all now either hanged or very miserable." 

The most frequent and prolific topic in the 
whole book, next perhaps to that of dress, is 
the profligacy of the court — or what may fairly 
be denominated court scandal.' It would be 
endless, and not very edifying, to attempt any 
thing like an abstract of the shameful immor- 
alities which this loyal author has recorded 
of the two royal brothers, and the greater part 
of their favourites — at the same time* that 
they occupy so great a part of the work, that 
we cannot well give an account of it without 
some notice of them. The reader will pro- 
bably be satisfied with the following speci- 
mens, taken almost at random. 

*.' In the Privy Garden saw the finest smocks and 
linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine's, laeed 
with rich lace at the bottom, that ever I saw ; and 
did me good to look at them. Sarah told me how the 
King dined at my Lady Castlemaine's, and supped, 
every day and night the last week; and that the 
night that the bonfires were made for joy of the 
Queene's arrivall, the King was there. But there 
was no fire at her door, though at all the rest of the 
doors almost in the street ; which was much ob 
served : and that the King and she did send for a 
pair of scales, and weighed one another; and she, 
being with child, was said to be heaviest." 

" Mr. Pickering tells me the story is very truw 
of a child being dropped at the ball at Court ; and 
that the King had it in his closet a week after, and 
did dissect it ; and making great sport of it, said that 
in his opinion it must have been a month and three 
houres old; and that, whatever others think, he 
hath the greatest loss (it being a boy, as he says). 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS. 



193 



that hath lost a subject by the business." — "He 
told me also how loose the Court is, nobody look- 
ing after business, but every man his lust and 
gain ; and how the King is now become so besotted 
upon Mrs. Stewart, that he gets into corners, and 
will be with her half an hour together kissing her 
to the observation of all the world ; and she now 
stays by herself and expects it as my Lady Castle- 
maine did use to do ; to whom the King, he says, 
is still kind," &c. 

" Coming to St. James, T hear that the Queene 
did sleep five hours pretty well to-night. The King 
they all say, is most fondly disconsolate for her, 
and weeps by her, which makes her weep ; which 
one this day told me he reckons a good sign, for 
that it carries away some rheum from the head! 
She tells us that the Queene's sickness is the spotted 
fever ; that she was as full of the spots as a leopard : 
which is very strange that it should be no more 
known ; but perhaps it is not so. And that the 
King do seem to take it much to heart, for that he 
hath wept before her; but for all that, he hath not 
missed one night, since she was sick, of supping 
with my Lady Castlemaine ! which I believe is 
true, for she says that her husband hath dressed the 
suppers every night ; and I confess I saw him my- 
self coming through the street dressing up a great 
supper to-night, which Sarah says is also for the 
King and her; which is a very strange thing." 

" Pierce do tell me, among other news, the late 
frolick and debauchery of Sir Charles Sedley and 
Buckhurst running up and down all the night, al- 
most naked, through the streets ; and at last fight- 
ing, and being beat by the watch and clapped up 
all night ; and how the King takes their parts ; and 
my Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the con- 
stable by the heels to answer it next sessions; 
which is a horrid shame. - Also how the King and 
these gentlemen did make the fiddlers of Thetford, 
this last progress, to sing them all the obscene 
songs they could think of! That the King was 
drunk at Saxam with Sedley, Buckhurst, &c. the 
night that my Lord Arlington came thither, and 
would not give him audience, or could not: which is 
true, for it was the night that I was there, and saw 
the King go up to his chamber, and was told that 
the King had been drinking." — " He tells me that 
the King and my Lady Castlemaine are quite broke 
off, and she is gone away, and is with child, and 
swears the King shall own it ; and she will have it 
christened in ihe chapel at White Hall so, and 
owned for the King's a3 other kings have done ; or 
she will bring it into White Hall gallery, and dash 
the brai7is of it out before the King's face! He tells 
me that the King and court were never in the world 
so bad as they are now, for gaming, swearing, 
women, aid drinking, and the most abominable 
vices that ever were in the world ; so that all must 
come to nought." 

" They came to Sir G. Carteret's house at Cran- 
bourne, and there were entertained, and all made 
drunk; and, being all drunk, Armerer did come to 
the King, and swore to him by God, ' Sir,' says 
he, 'you are not so kind to the Duke of York of 
late as you used to be.' — ' Not I !' says the King. 
1 Why so?' — 'Why,' says he, 'if you are, let us 
drink his health.' — ' Why let us,' says the King. 
Then he fell on his knees and drank it ; and having 
done, the King began to drink it. ' Nay, sir,' says 
Armerer, ' by God you must do it on your knees !' 
So he did, and then all the company: and having 
done it, all fell a crying for joy, being all maudlin 
and kissing one another! the King the Duke of 
York, and the Duke of York the King! and in 
such a maudlin pickle as never people were : and 
so passed the day !" 

It affords us no pleasure, however, to expose 
these degrading traits — even in departed roy- 
alty; but it is of more consequence to mark 
the political vices to which they so naturally 
led. The following entry, on the King's ad- 
25 



journing the Parliament in 1667, gives such a 
picture of the* court policy, as makes one 
wonder how the Revolution could have been 
so long deferred. 

" Thus they are dismissed again, to their general 
great distaste, I believe the greatest that ever Par- 
liament was, to see themselves so fooled, and the 
nation in certain condition of ruin, while the King, 
they see, is only governed by his lust, and women, 
and rogues about him. They do all give up the 
kingdom for lost, that I speak to; and do hear what 
the King says, how he and the Duke of York do 

DO WHAT THEY CAN TO GET UP AN ARMY, THAT THEY 
MAY NEED NO MORE PARLIAMENTS: and HOW my 

Lady Castlemaine hath, before the late breach be- 
tween her and the King, said to the King, that he 
must rule by an army, or all would be lost ! I am 
told that many petitions were provided for the Par- 
liament, complaining of the wrongs they have re- 
ceived from the court and courtiers, in city and 
country, if the Parliament had but sat: and I do 
perceive they all do resolve to have a good account 
of the money spent, before ever they give a farthing 
more ; and the whole kingdom is every where sen- 
sible of their being abused," &c. 

The following confirmation of these specu- 
lations is still more characteristic, both of the 
parties and their chronicler. 

" And so she (Lady Castlemaine) is come to-day, 
when one would think his mind should be full of 
some other cares, having but this morning broken 
up such a Parliament with so much discontent and 
so many wants upon him, and but yesterday heard 
such a sermon against adultery ! But it seems she 
hath told the King, that whoever did get it, he 
should own it. And the bottom of the quarrel is 
this : — She is fallen in love with young Jermin, who 
hath of late been with her oftener than the King, 
and is now going to marry my Lady Falmouth ; 
the King is mad at her entertaining Jermin, and 
she is mad at Jermin's going to marry from her : so 
they are all mad ! — and thus the kingdom is gov- 
erned ! But he tells me for certain that nothing 
is more sure than that the King, and Duke of York, 
and the Chancellor, are desirous and labouring all 
they can to get an army, whatever the King says to 
the Parliament ; and he believes that they are at 
last resolved to stand and fall all three together." 

A little after we find traces of another pro- 
ject of the same truly legitimate school. 

"The great discourse now is, that the Parlia- 
ment shall be dissolved and another called, which 
shall give the King the dean and chapter lands; 
and that will put liim out of debt. And it is said 
that Buckingham do knowingly meet daily with 
Wildman and other Commonwealth-men ; and that 
when he is with them he makes the King believe 
that he is with his wenches." 

The next notice of this is in the form of a 
confidential conversation with a person of 
great intelligence. 

"And he told me, upon my several inquiries to that 
purpose, that he did believe it was not yet resolved 
whether the Parliament should ever meet more or no, 
the three great rulers of things now standing thus: 
— The Duke of Buckingham is absolutely against 
their meeting, as moved thereto by his people that 
he advises with, the people of the late times, who 
do never expect to have any thing done by this 
Parliament for their religion, and who do propose 
that, by the sale of the church lands, they shall be 
able to put the King out of debt, &c. He tells me 
that he is really persuaded that the design of the 
Duke of Buckingham is to bring the state into 
such a condition as, if the King do die without 
issue, it shall, upon his death, break into pieces 
again; and so put by the Duke of York, — whom 

B 



394 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



ihey have disobliged, they know, to that degree as 
to despair of his pardon. He tell* me that there is 
no way to rule the king but by brisknesse, — which 
the Duke of Buckingham hath above all men ; and 
that the Duke of York having it not, his best way 
is what he practises, — that is to say, a good temper, 
which will support him till the Duke of Bucking- 
ham and Lord Arlington fall out, which cannot be 
long first ; the former knowing that the latter did, 
in the time of the Chancellor, endeavour with the 
Chancellor to hang him at that time, when he was 
proclaimed against.'' 

And again — 

"The talk which these people about our King 
have, is to tell him how neither privilege of parlia- 
ment nor city is any thing ; hut that his will is all, 
and ought to he so: and their discourse, it seems, 
when they are alone, is so base and sordid, that it 
makes the eares of the very gentlemen of the back 
stairs (I think he called them) to tingle to hear it 
spoke in the King's hearing ; and that must be very 
bad indeed." 

The following is not so material as to doc- 
trine — though we think it very curious. 

"After the bills passed, the King, sitting on his 
throne, with his speech writ in a paper which he 
held in his lap, and scarce looked off of it all the 
time he made his speech to them, giving them 
thanks for their subsidys, of which, had he not 
need, he would not have asked or received them ; 
and that need, not from any extravagancys of his, 
he was sure, in any thing ! — but the disorders of 
the times. His speech was very plain ; nothing at 
all of spirit in it, nor spoke with any ; but rather 
on the contrary imperfectly, repeating many time 
his words, though he read all : which I am sorry to 
see, it having not been hard for him to have got all 
the speech without booke." — And upon another 
occasion, " I crowded in and heard the King's 
speech to them ; but lie speaks the worst that ever 1 
heard a man in my life: worse than if he read it 
all, and he had it in writing in his hand." 

It is observed soon after — viz. in 1664 — as 
a singular thing, that there should be but two 
seamen in Parliament — and not above twenty 
or thirty merchants: And yet from various 
intimations we gather that the deportment of 
this aristocratical assembly was by no means 
very decorous. We have already had the 
incidental notice of many members coming 
in from dinner half drunk, on the day of the 
author's great oration — and some of them 
appear now and then to have gone a little 
farther, — early as the hours of business then 
were. 

" He did tell me, and so did Sir W. Batten, how 
Sir Allen Brodericke and Sir Allen Apsley did 
come drunk the other day into the House ; and did 
both speak for half an hour, together, and could not 
be either laughed, or pulled, or bid to sit down and 
hold their peace, — to the great contempt of King's 
servants and cause ; which I am grieved at with 
all my heart." 

The mingled extravagance and penury of 
this disorderly court is strikingly illustrated 
by two entries, not far from each other, in the 
year 1667 — in one of which is recorded the 
royal wardrobeman's pathetic lamentation 
over the King's necessities — representing that 
his Majesty has "actually no handkerchiefs, 
and but three bands to his neck" — and that 
he does not know where to take up a yard of 
linen for his service ! — and the other setting 
forth, that his said Majesty had lost 25,000L 



in one night at play with Lady Castle'naine — • 
and staked 1000/. and 1500L on a cast. It 
is a far worse trait, however, in his char- 
acter, that he was by no means scrupulous as 
to the pretexts upon which he obtained money 
from his people — these memoirs containing 
repeated notices of accounts deliberately 
falsified for this purpose — and not a few in 
particular, in which the expenses of the navy 
are exaggerated — we are afraid, not without 
our author's co-operation — to cover the mis- 
application of the money voted for that most 
popular branch of the service, to very different 
purposes. In another royal imposture, our 
author now appears to have been also impli- 
cated, though in a manner far less derogatory 
to his personal honour, — we mean in pro- 
curing for the Duke of York, the credit which 
he has obtained with almost all our historians, 
for his great skill in maritime affairs; and the 
extraordinary labour which he bestowed in 
improving the condition of the navy. On this 
subject we need do little more than transcribe 
the decisive statement of the noble Editor, to 
whose care we are indebted for the publica- 
tion before usj and who, in the summary of 
Mr. Pepys' life which he has prefixed to it, 
observes — 

" Mr. Stanier Clarke, in particular, actually 
dwells upon the essential and lasting benefit which 
that monarch conferred on his country, by build- 
ing up and regenerating the naval -power; and as- 
serts as a proof of the King's great ability, that 
the regulations still enforced under the orders of the 
admiralty are nearly the same as those originally 
drawn up by him. It becomes due therefore to Mr. 
Pepys to explain, that for these improvements, the 
value of which no person can doubt, we are indebt- 
ed to him, and not to his royal master. To estab- 
lish this fact, it is only necessary to refer to the 
MSS. connected with the subject in the Bodleian 
and Pepysian libraries, by which the extent of Mr. 
Pepys' official labours can alone be appreciated ; 
and we even find in the Diary, as early as 1668, 
that a long letter of regulation, produced before the 
commissioners of the navy by the Duke of York, 
as his own composition, was entirely written by our 
clerk of the acts." — (I. xxx.) 

We do not know whether the citations we 
have now made from these curious and most 
miscellaneous volumes, will enable our readers 
to form a just estimate of their value. But 
we fear that, at all events, we cannot now in- 
dulge them in any considerable addition to 
their number. There is a long account of 
the great fire, and the great sickness in 1666, 
and a still longer one of the insulting advance 
of the Dutch fleet to Chatham in 1667, aa 
well as of our absurd settlement at Tangiers, 
and of various naval actions during the period 
to which the Diary extends. But, though all 
these contain much curious matter, we are 
not tempted to make any extracts : Both be- 
cause the accounts, being given in the broken 
and minute way which belongs to the form 
of a Diary, do not afford many striking or 
summary passages, and because what is new 
in them, is not for the most part of any great 
importance. The public besides has been 
lately pretty much satiated with details on 
most of those subjects, in the contemporary 
work of Evelyn, — of wnich we shall only say, 



MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEI IfS. 



,95 



that though its author was indisputably more 
of a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of taste 
than our actuary, it is far inferior both in in- 
terest, curiosity, and substantial instruction, 
to that which we are now considering. The 
two authors, however, we are happy to find, 
were great friends ; and no name is mentioned 
in the latter part of the Diary with more uni- 
form respect and affection than that of Evelyn 
— though it is very edifying to see how the 
shrewd, practical sagacity of the man of busi- 
ness, revenges itself on the assumed supe- 
riority of the philosopher and man of letters. 
In this respect we think there is a fine keep- 
ing of character in the sincerity of the fol- 
lowing passage — 

" By water to Deptford, and there made a visit 
to Mr. Evelyn, who, among other things, showed 
me most excellent painting in little ; in distemper, 
Indian incke, water colours: graveing ; and above 
all. the whole mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, 
which is very pretty, and good things done with it. 
He read to me very much also of his discourse, he 
haih been many years and now is about, about 
Gardenage ; which is a most noble and pleasant 
piece. He read me part of a play or two of his 
own making — very good, but not as he conceits 
them, I think, to be. He showed me his Hortus 
Hyemalis ; leaves laid up in a book of several plants 
kept dry, which preserve colour, however, and 
look very finely, better than an herball. In fine a 
most excellent person he is, — and must be allowed 
a little for a little conceited?iess; but he may well 
be so, being a man so much above others. He read 
me, though, with too much gusto, some little poems 
of his own that were not transccndant ; yet one or 
two very pretty epigrams; among others, of a lady 
looking in at a grate, and being pecked at by an 
eagle that was there." 

And a little after he chuckles not a little 
over his learned friend's failure, in a specula- 
tion about making bricks — concluding very 
sagely, "so that I see the most ingenious 
men may sometimes be mistaken !" 

We meet with the names of many distin- 
guished men in these pages, and some char- 
acteristic anecdotes, — but few bold characters. 
He has a remarkable interview with Claren- 
don — in which the cautious and artful de- 
meanour of that veteran politician is finely 
displayed, though on a very trivial occasion. 
The Navy Board had marked some trees for 
cutting in Clarendon Park without his leave — 
at which he had expressed great indignation ; 
and our author went, in a prodigious fright, to 
pacify him. He found him busy hearing 
causes in his chambers, and was obliged to wait. 

" After all done, he himself called, ' Come, Mr. 
Pepys, you and I will take a turn in the garden.' 
So he was led down stairs, having the goute, and. 
there walked with me, I think above an hour, talk- 
ing most friendly, but cunningly ! — He told me he 
would not direct me in any thing, that it might not 
be said that the Lord Chancellor did labour to abuse 
the King; or (as I offered) direct the suspending the 
report of the purveyors: but I see what he means, 
and will make it my work to do him service in it. 
But Lord! to see how we poor wretches dare not 
do the King good service, for fear of the greatness 
of these men!" 

There is no literary intelligence of any value 
1o be gained from this work. Play collectors 
will probably find the names of many lost 
pieces — but of our classical authors there are 



no notices worth naming — a bare intimation 
of the deaths of Waller, Cowley, and Daven- 
ant, and a few words of Dryden— Milton, we 
think, not once mentioned. There is more 
of the natural philosophers of Gresham Col- 
lege, but not much that is valuable — some 
curious calculations and speculations about 
money and coinages — and this odd but au- 
thentic notice of Sir W. Petty's intended will. 

"Sir William Petty did tell me that in good 
earnest he hath in his will left some parts of hi* 
estate to him that could invent such and such 
things. As among others, that could discover truly 
the way of milk coming into the breasts of a wo- 
man ! and he that could invent proper characters to 
express to another the mixture of relishes and 
tastes. And says, that to him that invents gold, he 
gives nothing for the philosopher's stone ; for (says 
he) they that find out that, will be able to pay them- 
selves. But, says he, by this means it is better 
than to go to a lecture ; for here my executors, that 
must part with this, will be sure to be well con- 
vinced of the invention before they do part with 
their money." 

The Appendix, which seems very judicious- 
ly selected, contains some valuable fragments 
of historical information : but we have not now 
left ourselves room for any account of them • 
and are tempted to give all we can yet spare 
to a few extracts from a very curious corres- 
pondence between Mr. Pepys and Lord Reay 
and Lord Tarbut in 1699, on the subject of 
the Second Sight among our Highlanders. 
Lord Reay seems to have been a firm believer 
in this gift or faculty — but Lord Tarbut had 
been a decided sceptic, and was only con- 
verted by the proofs of its reality, which oc- 
curred to himself while in the Highlands, in 
the year 1652 and afterwards. Some of the 
stories he tells are not a little remarkable. 
For example, he says, that one night when 
one of his Celtic attendants was entering a 
house where they had proposed to sleep, he 
suddenly started back with a scream, and fell 
down in an agony. 

" I asked what the matter was, for he seemed to 
me to be very much frighted: he told me very seri- 
ously that I should not lodge in that house, because 
shortly a dead coffin would b.e carried out of it, for 
many were carrying it when he was heard cry ! I 
neglecting his words and staying there, he said to 
others of the servants he was very sorry for it, and 
that what he saw would surely come to pass: and 
though no sick person was then there, yet the land- 
lord, a healthy Highlander, died of an apoplectic jit 
before I left the house." 

Another occurred in 1653, when, in a very 
rugged part of the country, he fell in with a 
man who was staring into the air with marks 
of great agitation. Upon asking what it was 
that disturbed him, he answered, - 

"I see a troop of Englishmen leading their horses 
down that hill — and some of them are already in the 
plain, eating the barley which is growing in the 
field near to the hill.' This was on the 4th of May 
(for I noted the day), and it was four or five days 
before any barley was sown in the field he spoke of. 
Alexander Monro asked him how he knew they 
were Englishmen : he answered, because they were 
leading horses, and had on hats and boots, which 
he knew no Scotchmen would have on there We 
took little notice of the whole story as other than a 
foolish vision, but wished that an English party were 
there, we being then at war with them, and ih« 



106 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



place almost inaccessible for horsemen. But the 
beginning of August thereafter, the Earl of Middle- 
ton, then lieutenant for the King in the Highlands, 
having occasion to march a party of his towards the 
South Islands, sent his foot through a place called 
Inverlacwell, and the forepart, which was first down 
the hill, did fall to eating the barley which was on 
the little plain under it." 

Another of his lordship's experiences was 
as follows. In January 1682, he was sitting 
with two friends in a house in Ross-shire, 
when a man from the islands 

" Desired me to rise from that chair, for it was 
an unlucky one. I asked ' Why V He answered, 
'Because there was a dead man in the chair next 
to it.' — ' Well,' said I, 'if it be but in the next, I 
may safely sit here: but what is the likeness of the 
man ?' He said he was a tall man with a long grey 
coat, booted, and one of his legs hanging over the 
chair, and his head hanging down to the other side, 
and his arm backward, as it were broken. There 
were then some English troops quartered near the 
place, and there being at that time a great frost 
after a thaw, the country was wholly covered over 
with ice. Four or five Englishmen riding by this 
house, not two hours after the vision, where we 
were sitting by the fire, we heard a great noise, 
which proved to be these troopers, with the help of 
other servants, carrying in one of their number who 
had got a very mischievous fall and had his arm 
broke ; and falling frequently into swooning fits, 
they brought him to the hall, and set him in the 
very chair and in the very posture which the seer 
had proposed: but the man did not die, though he 
revived with great difficulty." 

These instances are chiefly remarkable as 
being given upon the personal knowledge of 
an individual of great judgment, acuteness, 
and firmness of character. The following is 
from a still higher quarter ; since the reporter 
was not even a Scotchman, and indeed no less 
a person than Lord Clarendon. In a letter to 
Mr. Pepys in 1701, he informs him, that, in 
1661, upon a Scottish gentleman being in his 
presence introduced to Lady Cornbury, he 
was observed to gaze upon her with a singu- 
lar expression of melancholy; and upon one 
of the company asking the reason, he replied, 
"I see her in blood!" She was at that time 
in perfect health, and remained so for near a 
month, when she fell ill of small-pox : And 

'* Upon the ninth day after the small-pox ap- 
peared, in the morning, she bled at the nose, which 
quickly stopt ; but in the afternoon the blood burst 
out again with great violence at her nose and 
mouth, and about eleven of the clock that night 
ehe dyed, almost weltering in her blood /" 

There is a great number of similar stories, 
reported on the most imposing testimony — 
though, in some instances, the seer, we must 
say, is somewhat put to it to support his 
credit, and make out the accomplishment of 
his vision. One chieftain, for instance, had 
long been seen by the gifted, with an arrow 
sticking in his thigh ; from which they all in- 
ferred, that he was either to die or to suffer 
greatly, from a wound in that place. To their 
surprise, however, he died of some other in- 
fliction, and the seers were getting out of repu- 
tation; when luckily a fray arose at the fune- 
ral, and an arrow was shot fairly through the 
thigh of the dead man, in the very spot where 
the vision had shown it ! On another occa- 
sion, Lord Reay's grandfather was told that 



he had been seen with a dagger run into his 
breast — and though nothing ever happened to 
him, one of his servants, to whom he had 
given the doublet which he wore at the time 
of this intimation, was stabbed through it, in 
the very place where the dagger had been 
seen. Lord Reay adds the following addi- 
tional instance, of this glancing, as it were, of 
the prophecy on the outer garment. 

"John Macky, of Dilril, having put on a new 
suit of clothes, was tcld by a seer that he did see 
the gallows upon his coat, which he never noticed ; 
but some time after gave his coat to his servant, 
William Forbess, to whose honesty there could be 
nothing said at that time ; but he was shortly after 
hanged for theft, with the same coat about him: my 
informer being an eye-witness of his execution, and 
one who had heard what the seer said before. 

His lordship also mentions, that these 
visions were seen by blind people, as well as 
those who had sight, — and adds, that there 
was a blind woman in his time who had the 
faculty in great perfection ; and foretold many 
things tha*t afterwards happened, as hundreds 
of living witnesses could attest. We have no 
time now to speculate on these singular le- 
gends — but, as curious mementos of the lubri- 
city of human testimony, we think it right 
they should be once more brought into notice. 

And now we have done with Mr. Pepys. 
There is trash enough no doubt in his journal, 
— trifling facts, and silly observations in 
abundance. But we can scarcely say that 
we wish it a page shorter ; and are of opin- 
ion, that there is very little of it which does 
not help us to understand the character of his 
times, and his contemporaries, better than 
we should ever have done without it; and 
make us feel more assured that we compre- 
hend the great historical events of the age, 
and the people w T ho bore a part in them. 
Independent of instruction altogether loo, 
there is no denying, that it is very entertain- 
ing thus to be transported into the very heart 
of a time so long gone by ; and to be admitted 
into the domestic intimacy, as well as the 
public councils, of a man of great activity and 
circulation in the reign of Charles II. Read- 
ing this book, in short, seems to us to be quite 
as good as living with Mr. Samuel Pepys in 
his proper person, — and though the court 
scandal may be detailed with more grace and 
vivacity in the Memoires de Grammont, we 
have no doubt but even this part of his multi- 
farious subject is treated with far greater 
fidelity and fairness in the work before us — 
while it gives us more clear and undistorted 
glimpses into the true English life of the 
times — for the court was substantially foreign 
— than all the other memorials of them put 
together, that have come down to our own. 

The book is rather too dear and magnifi- 
cent. But the editor's task we think excel- 
lently performed. The ample text is not 
incumbered with ostentatious commentaries. 
But very brief and useful notices are supplied 
of almost all the individuals who are men- 
tioned ; and an admirable and very minute 
index is subjoined, which methodises the im- 
mense miscellany — and places the vast chaos 
at our disposal. 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



197 



(Jula, 1808.) 



A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second ; with an Introductory Chapter. 
By the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. To which is added an Appendix. 4to 
pp. 340. Miller, London : 1808. 



If it be true that high expectation is almost 
always followed by disappointment, it is 
scarcely possible that the readers of Mr. Fox's 
history should not be disappointed. So great 
a statesman certainly has not appeared as an 
author since the time of Lord Clarendon; 
and, independent of the great space which he 
fills in the recent history of this country, and 
the admitted splendour of his general talents, 
— his known zeal for liberty, the fame of his 
eloquence, and his habitual study of every 
thing relating to the constitution, concurred to 
direct an extraordinary degree of attention to 
the work upon which he was known to be 
engaged, and to fix a standard of unattainable 
excellence for the trial of his first acknowl- 
edged production. The very circumstance of 
his not having published any considerable 
work during his life, and of his having died 
before bringing this to a conclusion, served to 
increase the general curiosity; and to accu- 
mulate upon this single fragment the interest 
of his whole literary existence. 

No human production, we suppose, could 
bear to be tried by such a test ; and thosenvho 
sit down to the perusal of the work before us, 
under the influence of such impressions, are 
very likely to rise disappointed. With those, 
however, who are at all on their guard against 
the delusive effect of these natural emotions, 
the result, we venture to predict, will be dif- 
ferent: and for ourselves, we are happy to 
say, that we have not been disappointed at 
all ; but, on the contrary, very greatly moved 
and delighted with the greater part of this 
singular volume. 

We do not think it has any great value as a 
history; nor is it very admirable as a piece 
of composition. It comprehends too short a 
period, and includes too few events, to add 
much to our knowledge of facts ; and abounds 
too little with splendid passages to lay much 
hold on the imagination. The reflections 
which it contains, too, are generally more re- 
markable for their truth and simplicity, than 
for any great fineness or apparent profundity 
jf thinking : and many opportunities are ne- 
glected, or rather purposely declined, of en- 
tering into large and general speculations. 
Notwithstanding all this, the work, we think, 
is invaluable ; not only as a memorial of the 
high principles and gentle dispositions of its 
illustrious author, but as a record of those 
sentiments of true English constitutional in- 
dependence, which seem to have been nearly 
forgotten in the bitterness and hazards of our 
more recent contentions. It is delightful as 
the picture of a character; and most instruct- 
ive and opportune as a remembrancer of pub- 
lic duties : And we must be permitted to say 
a word or two upon each of these subjects. 



To those who know Mr. Fox only by trie 
great outlines of his public history, — who 
know merely that he passed from the dissi- 
pations of too gay a youth into the tumults 
and cabals of a political life, — and that his 
days were spent in contending about public 
measures, and in guiding or averting the tem- 
pests of faction, — the spirit of indulgent and 
tender feeling which pervades this book must 
appear very unaccountable. Those who live 
much in the w^orld, even in a private station, 
commonly have their hearts a little hardened, 
and their moral sensibility a little impaired. 
But statesmen and practical politicians are, 
w r ith justice, suspected of a still greater forget- 
fulness of mild impressions and honourable 
scruples. Coming necessarily into contact 
with great vices and great sufferings, they 
must gradually lose some of their horror for 
the first, and much of their compassion for 
the last. Constantly engaged in contention, 
they cease pretty generally to regard any hu- 
man beings as objects of sympathy or disin- 
terested attachment ; and, mixing much with 
the most corrupt part of mankind, naturally 
come to regard the species itself with indif- 
ference, if not with contempt. All the softer 
feelings are apt to be worn off in the rough 
conflicts of factious hostility ; and all the finer 
moralities to be effaced, by the constant con- 
templation of expediency, and the necessities 
of occasional compliance. 

Such is the common conception which we 
form of men w T ho have lived the life of Mr. 
Fox; and such, in spite of the testimony of 
partial friends, is the impression which most 
private persons would have retained of him, 
if this volume had not come to convey a truer 
and a more engaging picture to the world at 
large, and to posterity. 

By far the most remarkable thing, then, in 
this book, is the tone of indulgence and un- 
feigned philanthropy which prevails in every 
part of it; — a most amiable sensibility to all 
the kind and domestic affections, and a sort 
of softheartedness towards the sufferings of 
individuals, which seems hitherto to have 
been thought incompatible with the stern dig- 
nity of history. It cannot but strike us with 
something still more pleasing than surprise, 
to meet with traits of almost feminine tender- 
ness in the sentiments of this veteran slates- 
man ; and a general character of charity 
towards all men, not only remote from the 
rancour of vulgar hostility, but purified in a 
great degree from the asperities of party con- 
tention. He expresses indeed, throughout, a 
high-minded contempt for what is base, find 
a thorough detestation for what is cruel : But 
yet is constantly led, by a sort of generouo 
prejudice in favour of human nature, to admit 

« 2 



198 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



all possible palliations for the conduct of the 
individual delinquent, and never attempts to 
shut him out from the benefit of those natural 
sympathies of which the bad as well as the 
good are occasionally the objects, from their 
fortune or situation. He has given a new 
character, we think, to history, by this soft 
and condescending concern for the feelings 
of individuals ; and not only left a splendid 
record of the gentleness and afFectionate sim- 
plicity of his own dispositions, but set an ex- 
ample by which we hope that men of genius 
may be taught hereafter to render their in- 
structions more engaging and impressive. 
Nothing, we are persuaded, can be more 
gratifying to his friends, than the impression 
of his character which this work will carry 
down to posterity ; nor is it a matter of indif- 
ference to the country, that its most illustrious 
statesman should be yet more distinguished 
for the amiableness of his private affections. 

This softness of feeling is the first remark- 
able thing in the work before us. The second 
is perhaps of more general importance. It is, 
that it contains the only appeal to the old 
principles of English constitutional freedom, 
and the only expression of those firm and 
temperate sentiments of independence, which 
are the peculiar produce, and natural protec- 
tion of our mixed government, which we recol- 
lect to have met with for very many years. 
The tone of the work, in this respect, recalls 
us to feelings which seem of late to have 
slumbered in the country which they used to 
inspire. In our indolent reliance upon the 
imperishable virtue of our constitution, and 
in our busy pursuit of wealth, we appeared to 
be forgetting our higher vocation of free citi- 
zens ; and, in our dread of revolution or foreign 
invasion, to have lost sight of those intestine 
dangers to which our liberties are always 
more immediately exposed. The history of 
the Revolution of 1688, and of the times im- 
mediately preceding, was eminently calculated 
to revive those feelings, and restore those 
impressions, which so many causes had in 
our days conspired to obliterate ; and, in the 
hands of Mr. Fox, could scarcely have failed 
to produce a very powerful effect. On this 
account, it must be matter of the deepest re- 
gret that he was not permitted to finish, or 
indeed to do more than begin, that inspiring 
narrative. Even in the little which he has 
done, however, we discover the spirit of the 
master : Even in the broken prelude which 
he has here sounded, the true notes are struck 
with such force and distinctness, and are in 
themselves so much in unison with the natu- 
ral chords of every British heart, that we think 
no slight vibration will be excited throughout 
the country; and would willingly lend our 
assistance to propagate it into every part of 
the empire. In order to explain more fully 
the reasons for which we set so high a value 
upon the work before us on this particular ac- 
count, we must be allowed to enlarge a little 
upon the evil which we think it calculated to 
correct. 

We do not think the present generation 
of our countrymen substantially degenerated 



from their ancestors in the days of the Revolu 
tion. In the same circumstances, we are per- 
suaded, they would have acted with the same 
spirit; — nay, in consequence of the more 
general diffusion of education and intelli- 
gence, we believe they would have been still 
more zealous and more unanimous in the 
cause of liberty. But we have of late been 
exposed to the operation of various causes, 
which have tended to lull our vigilance, and 
relax our exertions ; and which threaten, un- 
less powerfully counteracted, to bring on, 
gradually, such a general indifference and 
forgetfulness of the interests of freedom, as to 
prepare the people for any tolerably' mild 
form of servitude which their future rulers 
may be tempted to impose upon them. 

The first, and the principal of these causes, 
however paradoxical it may seem, is the ac- 
tual excellence of our laws, and the supposed 
inviolability of the constitution. The second 
is, the great increase of luxury, and the tre- 
mendous patronage of the government. The 
last is, the impression made and maintained 
by the events of the French Revolution. We 
shall say but a word upon each of these pro- 
lific themes of speculation. 

Because our ancestors stipulated wisely for 
the public at the Revolution, it seemed to 
have become a common opinion, that nothing 
was left to their posterity but to pursue their 
private interest. The machine of Govern- 
ment was then completed and set agoing — 
and it will go on without their interference. 
Nobody talks now of the divine right, or the 
dispensing power of kings, or ventures to pro- 
pose to govern without Parliaments, or to 
levy taxes without their authority; — there- 
fore, our liberties are secure ; — and it is only 
factious or ambitious people that affect any 
jealousy of the executive. Things go on very 
smoothly as they are ; and it can never be 
the interest of any party in power, to attempt 
any thing very oppressive or injurious to the 
public. By such reasonings, men excuse their 
abandonment of all concern for the commu- 
nity, and find, in the very excellence of the 
constitution, an apology for exposing it to cor- 
ruption. It is obvious, however, that liberty, 
like love, is as hard to keep as to win; and 
that the exertions by which it was originally 
gained will be worse than fruitless, if they be 
not followed up by the assiduities by which 
alone it can be preserved. Wherever there 
is power, we may be sure that there is, or 
will be, a disposition to increase it; and if 
there be not a constant spirit of jealousy and 
of resistance on the part of the people, every 
monarchy will gradually harden into a des- 
potism. It will not, indeed, wantonly provoke 
or alarm, by seeking again to occupy those 
very positions from which it had once been 
dislodged: but it will extend itself in other 
quarters, and march on silently, under the 
colours of a venal popularity. 

This indolent reliance on the sufficiency of 
the constitution for its own preservation, af- 
fords great facilities, no doubt, to those who 
may be tempted to project its destruction; 
but the efficient means are to be found chiefly 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



199 



in the prevailing- manners of the people, and 
the monstrous patronage of the government. 
Tt can admit of no doubt, We suppose, that 
trade, which has made us rich, has made us 
still more luxurious; and that the increased 
necessity of expense, has in general outgone 
the means of supplying it. Almost every in- 
dividual now finds it more difficult to live on 
a level with his equals, than he did when all 
were poorer; almost every man, therefore, is 
needy j and he who is both needy and luxu- 
rious, holds his independence on a very pre- 
carious tenure. Government, on the other 
hand, has the disposal of nearly twenty mil- 
lions per annum , and the power of nominating 
to two or three hundred thousand posts or 
places of emolument ; — the whole population 
of the country amounting (1808) to less than 
five millions of grown men. The consequence 
is, that, beyond the rank of mere labourers, 
there is scarcely one man out of three who 
does not hold or hope for some appointment 
or promotion from government, and is not 
consequently disposed to go all honest lengths 
in recommending himself to its favour. This, 
it must be admitted, is a situation which 
justifies some alarm for the liberties of the 
people ; and, when taken together with that 
general indifference to the public which has 
been already noticed, accounts sufficiently for 
that habit of presuming in favour of all exer- 
tions of authority, and against all popular 
discontent or interference, which is so re- 
markably the characteristic of the present 
generation. From this passive desertion of 
the people, it is but one step to abet and de- 
fend the actual oppressions of their rulers; 
and men, otherwise conscientious, we are 
afraid, too often impose upon themselves by 
no better reasonings than the following — 
u This measure, to be sure, is bad, and some- 
what tyrannical; — but men are not angels; — 
all human government is imperfect; and, on 
the whole, ours is much too good to be quar- 
relled with. Besides, what good purpose 
could be answered by my individual opposi- 
tion ? I might ruin my own fortune, indeed, 
and blast the prospects of my children : but it 
would be too romantic to imagine, that the 
fear of my displeasure would produce an im- 
maculate administration — so I will hold my 
tongue, and shift for myself as well as possi- 
ble." When the majority of those who have 
influence in the country reason in this manner, 
it surely cannot be unnecessary to remind us, 
now and then, of the great things that were 
done when the people roused themselves 
against their oppressors. 

In aid of these actual temptations of inter- 
est and indolence, come certain speculative 
doctrines, as to the real value of liberty, and 
the illusions by which men are carried away 
who fancy themselves acting on the principle 
of patriotism. Private happiness, it is dis- 
covered, has but little dependence on the 
nature of the government. The oppressions 
of monarchs and demagogues are nearly equal 
in degree, though a little different in form ; 
and the only thing certain is, that in living 
from the one we shall fall into the other, and , 



suffer tremendously in the period of transition. 
If ambition and great activity therefore be not 
necessary to our happiness, we shall do wisely 
to occupy ourselves with the many innocent 
and pleasant pursuits that are allowed under 
all governments; instead of spreading tumult 
and discontent, by endeavouring to lealize 
some political conceit of Our own imagination. 
Mr. Hume, we are afraid, is chiefly responsi- 
ble for the prevalence of this Kpieurean and 
ignoble strain of sentiment in this country, — 
an author from whose dispositions and under- 
standing, a very different doctrine might have 
been anticipated.* But, under whatever au- 
thority it is maintained, we have no scruple 
in saying, that it seems to us as obviously 
false as it is pernicious. We need not appeal 
to Turkey or to Russia to prove, that neither 
liberal nor even gainful pursuits can be car- 
ried on with advantage, where there is no 
political freedom: For, even laying out of 
view the utter impossibility of securing the 
persons and properties of individuals in any 
other way, it is certain that the consciousness 
of independence is a great enjoyment m itself, 
and that, without it, all the powers of the 
mind, and all the capacities of happiness, are 
gradually blunted and destroyed. It is like 
the privation of air and exercise, or the emas- 
culation of the body; — which, though they 
may appear at first to conduce to tranquillity 
and indolent enjoyment, never fail to enfeeble 
the whole frame, and to produce a state of 
oppressive languor and debility, in compari- 
son with which even wounds and fatigue 
would be delicious. 

To counteract all these enervating and de- 
pressing causes, we had, no doubt, the increas- 
ing opulence of the lower and middling orders 
of the people, naturally leading them to aspire 
to greater independence, and improving their 
education and general intelligence. And thus, 
public opinion, which is in all countries the 
great operating check upon authority, had 
become more extensive and more enlightened; 
and might perhaps have been found a suffi- 



* Few things seem more unaccountable, and in- 
deed absurd, than that Hume should have taken 
part with high-church and high-monarchy men. 
The persecutions which he suffered in his youth 
from the Presbyterians, may perhaps have influ- 
enced his ecclesiastical partialities. But that he 
should have sided with the Tudors and the Stuarts 
against the people, seems quiie inconsistent with 
all the great traits of his character. His unrivalled 
sagacity must have looked with contempt on the 
preposterous arguments by which the jus divinum 
was maintained. His natural becevolence must 
have suggested the cruelty of subjecting the enjoy, 
meats of thousands to the caprice of one unfeeling 
individual ; and his own practical independence in 
private life, might have taught him the value of 
those feelings which he has so mischievously de- 
rided. Mr. Fox seems to have been struck with 
the same surprise at this strange trait in the charac- 
ter of our philosopher. In a letter to Mr. Laing, 
he says, " He was an excellent man, and of great 
powers of mind; but his partiality to kings and 
princes is intolerable : nay, it is, in my opinion, 
quite ridiculous ; and is more like the foolish ad- 
miration which women and children sometimes 
have for kings, than the opinion right or wrong, 
of a philosopher." 



200 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



cient corrective of all our other corruptions, 
had things gone on around us in their usual 
and accustomed channels. Unfortunately, 
however, the French Revolution came, to as- 
tonish and appal the world ; and, originating 
with the people, not only subverted thrones 
and establishments, but made such havoc on 
the lives and properties and principles of in- 
dividuals, as very naturally to excite the horror 
and alarm of all whose condition was not al- 
ready intolerable. This aflarm, in so far as it 
related to this country, was always excessive, 
and in a great degree unreasonable : But it 
was impossible perhaps altogether to escape 
it ; and the consequences have been incalcu- 
lably injurious to the interests of practical 
liberty. During the raging of that war which 
Jacobinism in its most disgusting form carried 
on against rank and royalty, it was natural for 
those who apprehended the possibility of a 
similar conflict at home, to fortify those orders 
with all that reason and even prejudice could 
supply for their security, and to lay aside for 
the time those jealousies and hereditary 
grudges, upon which, in better days, it was 
their duty to engage in contention. While a 
raging fever of liberty was epidemic in the 
neighbourhood, the ordinary diet of the people 
appeared too inflammatory for their constitu- 
tion ; and it was thought advisable to abstain 
from articles, which, at all other times, were 
allowed to be necessary for their health and 
vigour. Thus, a sort of tacit convention was 
entered into, — to say nothing, for a while, of 
the follies and vices of princes, the tyranny 
of courts, or the rights of the people. The 
Revolution of 1688, it was agreed, could not 
be mentioned with praise, without giving 
some indirect encouragement to the Revolu- 
tion of 1789; and it was thought as well to 
say nothing in favour of Hampden, or Russell, 
or Sydney, for fear it might give spirits to 
Robespierre, Danton, or Marat. To this strict 
regimen the greater part of the nation sub- 
mitted of their own accord ; and it was forced 
upon the remainder by a pretty vigorous sys- 
tem of proceeding. Now, we do not greatly 
blame either the alarm, or the precautions 
which it dictated ; but we do very seriously 
lament, that the use of those precautions 
should have degenerated into a sort of na- 
tional habit ; and should be continued and 
approved of so very long after the danger 
which occasioned them has ceased. 

It is now at least ten years since Jacobinism 
was prostrated at Paris; and it is still longer 
since it ceased to be regarded with any thing 
but horror in this country. Yet the favourers 
of power would still take advantage of its 
name to shield authority from question ; and 
to throw obloquy on the rights and services 
of the people. The power of habit has come 
unfortunately to their aid ; and it is still un- 
fashionable, and, we are afraid, not very 
popular, to talk of the tyranny of the Stuarts, 
and the triumph of the Revolution, in the 
tone which was universal and established 
within these last twenty years. For our parts, 
however, we see no sort of reason for this 
change ; and we hail, with pleasure, this work 



of Mr. Fox's, as likely to put an end to a 
system of timidity so apt to graduate into 
servility; and to familiarize his countrymen 
once more to speak and to think of Charles, 
of James, and of Strafford, — and of William, 
and Russell, and Sydney, — as it becomes 
Englishmen to speak and to think of such 
characters. To talk with affected tenderness 
of oppressors, may suit the policy of those 
who wish to bespeak the clemency of an 
Imperial Conqueror; but must appear pecu- 
liarly base and inconsistent in all who profess 
an anxiety to rouse the people to great exer- 
tions in the cause of their independence. 

The volume itself, which has given occasion 
to these reflections, and from which we have 
withheld our readers too long, consists of a 
preface or general introduction from the pen 
of Lord Holland ; an introductory chapter, 
comprising a review of the leading events, 
from the year 1640 to the death of Charles 
II. ; two chapters of the history of the reign 
of James, which include no more than seven 
months of the year 1685, and narrate very 
little but the unfortunate expeditions of Ar- 
gyle and of Monmouth ; and a pretty long 
Appendix, consisting chiefly of the corre- 
spondence between Barillon, the French con- 
fidential minister at the court of England, and 
his master Louis XIV. 

Lord Holland's part of the volume is written 
with great judgment, perspicuity, and pro- 
priety ; and though it contains less anecdote 
and minute information with regard to his 
illustrious kinsman than every reader must 
wish to possess, it not only gives a very satis- 
factory account of the progress of the work 
to which it is prefixed, but affords us some 
glimpses of the character and opinions of its 
author, wdiich are peculiarly interesting, both 
from the authenticity of the source from which 
they are derived, and from the unostentatious 
simplicity with w r hich they are communicated. 
Ldrd Holland has not been able to ascertain 
at what period Mr. Fox first formed the de- 
sign of writing a history ; but, from the year 
1797, when he ceased to give a regular attend- 
ance in parliament, he was almost- entirely 
occupied with literary schemes and avoca- 
tions. The following little sketch of the tem- 
per and employments of him w T ho was pitied 
by many as a disappointed politician, is ex- 
tremely amiable; and, w r e are now convinced 
by the fragment before us, correctly true. 

" During his retirement, that love of literature, 
and fondness for poetry, which neither pleasure nor 
business had ever extinguished, revived with an 
ardour, such as few, in the eagerness of youth o? 
in pursuit of fame or advantage, are capable of 
feeling. For some time, however, his studies were 
not directed to any particular object. Such was the 
happy disposition of his mind, that his own reflec- 
tions, whether supplied by conversation, desultory 
reading, or the common occurrences of a life in the 
country, were always sufficient to call forth the 
vigour and exertion of his faculties. Intercourse 
with the world had so little deadened in him the 
sense of the simplest enjoyments, that even in the 
hours of apparent leisure and inactivity, he retaineu 
that keen relish of existence, which, alter the first 
impressions of life, is so rarely excited but by great 
interests and strong passions. Hence it was tkstf 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



20J 



in the interval between his active attendance in par- 
liament, and the undertaking of his History, he 
never felt the tedium of a vacant day. A verse in 
Cowper, which he frequently repeated, 

'How various his employments whom the world 
Calls idle !' 

was an accurate description of the life he was then 
leading ; and I am persuaded, that if he had con- 
sulted his own gratifications only, it would have 
continued to be so. The circumstances which led 
him once more to take an active part in public dis- 
cussions, are foreign to the purposes of this preface. 
It is sufficient to remark, that they could not be 
foreseen, and that his notion of engaging in some 
literary undertaking was adopted during his retire- 
ment, and with the prospect of long and uninter- 
rupted leisure before him." — p. iii. iv. 

He seems to have fixed finally on the his- 
tory of the Revolution, about the year 1799; 
but even after the work was begun, he not 
only dedicated large portions of his time to 
the study of Greek literature, and poetry in 
general, but meditated and announced to his 
correspondents a great variety of publications, 
upon a very wide range of subjects. Among 
these were, an edition of Dryden — a Defence 
of Racine and of the French Stage — an Essay 
on the Beauties of Euripides — a Disquisition 
upon Hume's History — and an Essay or Dia- 
logue on Poetry, History, and Oratory. In 
1802, the greater part of the work, as it now 
stands, was finished ; but the author wished 
to consult the papers in the Scotch College, 
and the Depot des Affaires etrangeres at Paris, 
and took the opportunity of the peace to pay 
a visit to that capital accordingly. After his 
return, he made some additions to his chap- 
ters; but being soon after recalled to the 
duties of public life, he never afterwards 
found leisure to go on with the work to which 
he had dedicated himself with so much zeal 
and assiduity. What he did write was finished, 
however, for the most part, with very great 
care. He wrote very slow: and was extremely 
fastidious in the choice of his expressions; 
holding pedantry and affectation, however, in 
far greater horror than carelessness or rough- 
ness. He commonly wrote detached sentences 
on slips of paper, and afterwards dictated them 
off to Mrs. Fox, who copied them into the 
book from which the present volume has been 
printed without the alteration of a single syl- 
lable. 

The only other part of Lord Holland's state- 
ment, to which we think it necessary to call" 
the attention of the reader, is that in which 
he thinks it necessary to explain the peculiar 
notions which Mr. Fox entertained on the 
subject of historical composition, and the very 
rigid laws to which he had subjected himself 
in the execution of his important task. 

" It is therefore necessary to observe, that he had 
formed his plan so exclusively on the model of an- 
cient writers, that he not only felt some repugnance 
to the modern practice of notes, but he thought that 
all which an historian wished to say. should be in- 
troduced as pnrt of a continued narration, and never 
assume the appearance of a digression, much less 
of a dissertation annexed to it. From the period, 
therefore, that he closed his Introductory Chapter, 
he defined his duty as an author, to consist in re- 
counting the facts as they arose ; or in his simple 
and forcible language, in telling the story of those 
26 



times. A conversation which passed on the sub- 
ject of the literature of the age of James the Se- 
cond, proves his rigid adherence to these ideas; 
and perhaps the substance of it may serve to illus- 
trate and explain them. In speaking of the writers 
of that period, he lamented that he had not devised 
a method of interweaving any account of them or 
their works, much less any criticism on their style, 
into his history. On my suggesting the example 
of Hume and Voltaire, who had discussed such 
topics at some length, either at the end of each 
reign, or in a separaj^ chapter, he observed, with 
much commendation of their execution of it, that 
such a contrivance might be a good mode of writing 
critical essays, but that it was, in his opinion, in- 
compatible with the nature of his undertaking, 
which, if it ceased to be a narrative, ceased to be a 
history." — p. xxxvi. xxxvii. 

Now, we must be permitted to say, tnat 
this is a view of the nature of history, which, 
in so far as it is intelligible, appears to be 
very narrow and erroneous; and which seems, 
like all such partial views, to have been so 
little adhered to by the author himself, as 
only to exclude many excellences, without at- 
taining the praise even of consistency in error. 
The object of history, we conceive, is to give 
us a clear narrative of the transactions of past 
ages, with a view of the character and condi- 
tion of those who were concerned in them, 
and such reasonings and reflections as may 
be necessary to explain their connection, or 
natural on reviewing their results. That some 
account of the authors of a literary age should 
have a place in such a composition, seems to 
follow upon two considerations : first, because 
it is unquestionably one object of history to 
give us a distinct view of the state and condition 
of the age and people with whose affairs it is 
occupied; and nothing can serve so well to 
illustrate their true state and condition as a 
correct estimate and description of the great 
authors they produced : and, secondly, be- 
cause the fact that such and such authors did 
flourish in such a period, and were ingenious 
and elegant, or rude and ignorant, are facts 
which are interesting in themselves, and may 
be made the object of narrative just as pro- 
perly as that such and such princes or minis- 
ters did flourish at the same time, and were 
ambitious or slothful, tyrannical or friends to 
liberty. Political events are not the only 
events which are recorded even in ancient 
history ; and, now when it is generally ad- 
mitted, that even political events cannot be 
fully understood or accounted for without 
taking into view the preceding and concomi- 
tant changes in manners, literature, com- 
merce, &c. it cannot fail to appear surprising, 
that an author of such a compass of mind as 
belonged to Mr. Fox, should have thought of 
confining himself to the mere chronicling of 
wars or factions, and held himself excluded, 
by the laws of historical composition, from 
touching upon topics so much more interest- 
ing. 

The truth is, however, that Mr. Fox has by 
no means adhered to this plan of merely 
11 telling the story of the times" of which he 
treats. On the contrary, he is more full of 
argument, and what is properly called reflec- 
tion, than most modern historians with whom 



202 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



we are acquainted. His argument, to be sure, 
is chiefly directed to ascertain the truth of 
reputed facts, or the motives of ambiguous 
actions ; and his reflections, however just and 
natural, may commonly be considered as re- 
dundant, with a view to mere information. 
Of another kind of reasoning, indeed, he is 
more sparing ; though of a kind far more valu- 
able, and, in our apprehension, far more es- 
sential to the true perfection of history. We 
allude now to those general views of the 
causes which influence the character and dis- 
position of the people at large ; and which, as 
they vary from age to age, bring a greater or 
a smaller part of the nation into contact with 
its government, and ultimately produce the 
success or failure of every scheme of tyranny 
or freedom. The more this subject is medi- 
tated, the more certain, we are persuaded, it 
will appear, that all permanent and important 
occurrences in the internal history of a coun- 
try, are the result of those changes in the 
general character of its population ; and that 
kings and ministers are necessarily guided in 
their projects by a feeling of the tendencies 
of this varying character, and fail or succeed, 
exactly as they had judged correctly or erro- 
neously of its condition. To trace the causes 
and the modes of its variation, is therefore to 
describe the true sources of events ; and, 
merely to narrate the occurrences to which it 
gave rise, is to recite a history of actions with- 
out intelligible motives, and of effects without 
assignable causes. It is true, no doubt, that 
political events operate in their turn on that 
national character by which they are previ- 
ously moulded and controuled : But they are 
very far, indeed, from being the chief agents 
in its formation ; and the history of those very 
events is necessarily imperfect, as well as 
uninstructive, if the consideration of those 
other agents is omitted. They consist of 
every thing which affects the character of 
individuals : — manners, education, prevailing 
occupations, religion, taste, — and. above all, 
the distribution "of wealth, and the state of 
prejudice and opinions. 

It is the more to be regretted, that such a 
mind as Mr. Fox's should have been bound 
up from such a subject by the shackles of an 
idle theory; because the period of which he 
treats affords the finest of all opportunities for 
prosecuting such an inquiry, and does .not, in- 
deed, admit of an intelligible or satisfactory 
history upon any other conditions. There are 
three great events, falling within that period, 
of which, it appears to us, that u the story" 
has not yet been intelligibly told, for want of 
some such analysis of the national feelings. 
One is, the universal joy and sincere confi- 
dence with which Charles II. was received 
back, without one stipulation for the liberties 
of the people, or one precaution against the 
abuses of power. This was done by the very 
people who had waged war against a more 
amiable Sovereign, and quarrelled with the 
Protector for depriving them of their freedom. 
It is saying nothing, to say that Monk did this 
by means of the army. It was not done 
either by Monk or the army, but by the na- 



tion ; and even if it were not oo, the question 
would still be, — by what change in the dis- 
positions of the army and the nation Movik 
was able to make them do it. The second 
event, which must always appear unaccount- 
able upon the mere narrative of the circum- 
stances, is the base and abject submission of 
the people to the avowed tyranny of the re- 
stored Charles, when he was pleased at last 
to give up the use of Parliaments, and to tax 
and govern on his own single authority. This 
happened when most of those must have still 
been alive who had seen the nation rise up in 
arms against his father ; and within five years 
of the time when it rose up still more unani- 
mously against his successor, and not only 
changed the succession of the crown, but very 
strictly defined and limited its prerogatives. 
The third, is the Revolution itself; an event 
which was brought about by the very indi- 
viduals who had submitted so quietly to the 
domination of Charles, and who, when assem- 
bled in the House of Commons under James 
himself, had, of their own accord, sent one of 
their members to the Tower for having ob- 
served, upon a harsh and tyrannical expres- 
sion of the King's, that "he hoped they were 
all Englishmen, and not to be frighted with a 
few hard words." It is not to give us the 
history of these events, merely to set down 
the time and circumstances of the occurrence. 
They evidently require some explanation, in 
order to be comprehended ; and the narrative 
will be altogether unsatisfactory, as well as 
totally barren of instruction, unless it give 
some account of those changes in the general 
temper and opinion of the nation, by which 
such contradictory actions became possible. 
Mr. Fox's conception of the limits of legiti- 
mate history, restrained him, we are afraid, 
from entering into such considerations; and 
they will best estimate the amount of his 
error, who are most aware of the importance 
of the information of which it has deprived 
us. Nothing, in our apprehension, can be 
beyond the province of legitimate history, 
which tends to give us clear conceptions of 
the times and characters with which that his- 
tory is conversant; nor can the story of any 
time be complete or valuable, unless it look 
before and after, — to the causes and conse- 
quences of the events which it details, and 
•mark out the period with which it is occupied, 
as part of a greater series, as well as an object 
of separate consideration. 

In proceeding to the consideration of Mr. 
Fox's own part of this volume, it may be 
as well to complete that general estimate of 
its excellence and defects which we have 
been led incidentally to express in a good 
degree already. We shall then be able to 
pursue our analysis of the successive chap- 
ters with less distraction. 

The sentiments, we think, are almost aL 
just, and candid, and manly; but the narra- 
tive is too minute and diffusive, and does 
not in general flow with much spirit or fa- 
cility. Inconsiderable incidents are detailed 
at far too great length ; and an extreme and 
painful anxiety is shown to ascertain the 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



203 



exact truth of doubtful or contested passages, 
and the probable motives of insignificant and 
ambiguous actions. The labour which is 
thus visibl) r bestowed on the work, often ap- 
pears, therefore, disproportioned to the im- 
portance of the result. The history becomes, 
in a certain degree, languid and heavy j and 
something like a feeling of disappointment 
and impatience is generated, from the tardi- 
ness and excessive caution with which the 
story is carried forward. In those constant 
attempts, too. to verify the particulars which 
are narrated, a certain tone of debate is fre- 
quently assumed, which savours more of the 
orator thnn the historian ; and though there 
is nothing florid ur rhetorical in the general 
cast of the diction, yet those argumentative 
passages are evidently more akin to public 
speaking than to written composition. Fre- 
quent interrogations — short alternative propo- 
sitions — and an occasional mixture of familiar 
images and illustrations, — all denote a certain 
habit of personal altercation, and of keen and 
animated contention. Instead, therefore, of 
a work emulating the full and flowing nar- 
rative of Livy or Herodotus, we find in Mr. 
Fox's book rather a series of critical remarks 
on the narratives of preceding writers, min- 
gled up with occasional details somewhat 
more copious and careful than the magnitude 
of the subjects seemed to require. The his- 
tory, in short, is planned upon too broad a 
scale, and the narrative too frequently inter- 
rupted by small controversies and petty inde- 
cisions. We are aware that these objections 
may be owing in a good degree to the small- 
ness of the fragment upon which we are un- 
fortunately obliged to hazard them ; and that 
the proportions which appear gigantic in this 
little relic, might have been no more than 
majestic in the finished work ; but even after 
making allowance for this consideration, we 
cannot help thinking that the details are too 
minute, and the verifications too elaborate. 

The introductory chapter is full of admi- 
rable reasonings and just reflections. It be- 
gins with noticing, that there are certain 
periods in the history of every people, which 
are obviously big with important consequen- 
ces, and exercise a visible and decisive in- 
fluence on the times that come after. The 
reign of Henry VII. is one of these, with re- 
lation to England ; — another is that comprised 
between 1588 and 1640; — and the most re- 
markable of all, is that which extends from 
the last of these dates, to the death of Charles 
II. — the era of constitutional principles and 
practical tyranny — of the best laws, and the 
most corrupt administration. It is to the re- 
view of this period, that the introductory 
chapter is dedicated. 

Mr. Fox approves of the first proceedings 
of the Commons ; but censures without re- 
serve the unjustifiable form of the proceed- 
ings against Lord Strafford, whom he qualifies 
with the name of a great delinquent. With 
Tegard to the causes of the civil war, the most 
difficult question to determine is, whether the 
Parliament made sufficient efforts to avoid 
bringing affairs to such a decision. That they 



had justice on their side, he says, cannot be 
reasonably doubted, — .but seems to think that 
something more might have been done, to 
bring matters to an accommodation. With 
regard to the execution of the King, he makes 
the following striking observations, in that 
tone of fearless integrity and natural mild- 
ness, which w r e have already noticed as 
characteristic of this performance. 

"The execution ft the King, though a far less 
violent measure than that of Lord Strafford, is an 
event of so singular a nature, that we cannot 
wonder that it should have exciled more sensation 
than any other in the annals of England. This ex- 
emplary act of substantial justice, as it has been 
called by some, of enormous wickedness by others, 
must be considered in two points of view. First, 
was it not in itself just and necessary ! Secondly, 
was the example of it likely to be salutary or per- 
nicious? In regard to the first of these questions, 
Mr. Hume, not perhaps intentionally, makes the 
best justification of it, by saying, that while Charles 
lived, the projected Republic could never be secure. 
But to justify taking away the life of an individual, 
upon the principle of self-defence, the danger must 
be, not problematical and remote, but evident and 
immediate. The danger in this instance was not 
of such a nature ; and the imprisonment, or even 
banishment of Charles, might have given to the 
republic such a degree of security as any govern- 
ment ought to be content with. It must be con- 
fessed, however, on the other side, that if the re- 
publican government had suffered the King to 
escape, it would have been an act of justice and 
generosity wholly unexampled ; and to have 
granted him even his life, would have been one 
among the more rare efforts of virtue. The short 
interval between the deposal and death of princes 
is become proverbial ; and though there may be 
some few examples on the other side, as far as 
life is concerned, I doubt whether a single in- 
stance can be found, where liberty has been 
granted to a deposed monarch. Among the 
modes of destroying persons in such a situation, 
there can be little doubt but that adopted by 
Cromwell and his adherents is the least dis- 
honourable. Edward the Second, Richard the 
Second, Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fifth, had 
none of them long survived their deposal ; but 
this was the first instance, in our history at least, 
where, of such an act, it could be truly said, that 
it was not done in a corner. 

" As to the second question, whether the advan- 
tage to be derived from the example was such as 
to justify an act of such violence, it appears to me 
to be a complete solution of if to observe, that wiih 
respect to England (and I know not upon what 
ground we are to set examples for other nations, 
or, in other words, to take the criminal justice of 
the world into our hands), it was wholly needless, 
and therefore unjustifiable, to set one for kings, at 
a time when it was intended the office of king 
should be abolished, and consequently that no per- 
son should be in the situation to make it the rule 
of his conduct. Besides, the miseries attendant 
upon a deposed monarch, seem to be sufficient to 
deter any prince, who thinks of consequences, from 
running the risk of being placed in such a situa- 
tion ; or if death be the only evil that can deter 
him, the fate of former tyrants deposed by their 
subjects, would by no means encourage him to 
hope he could avoid even that catastrophe. As 
far as we can judge from the event, the example 
was certainly not very effectual ; since both the 
sons of Charles, though having their father's fate 
before their eyes, yet feared not to violate the lib- 
erties of the people even more than he had at 
tempted to do. 

"After all, however, notwithstanding what the 
more reasonable part of mankind may think upon 



204 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



this question, it is much to be doubted whether 
this singular proceeding Ijas not, as much as any 
other circumstance, served to raise the character 
of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in 
general. He who has read, and still more he who 
has heard in conversation, discussions upon this 
subject, by foreigners, must have perceived, that, 
even in the minds of those who condemn the act, 
the impression made by it has been far more that 
of respect and admiration, than that of disgust and 
horror. The truth is, that the guilt of the action, 
that is to say, the taking away the life of the 
King, is what most men in the place of Cromwell 
and his associates would have incurred. What 
there is of splendour and of magnanimity in it, I 
mean the publicity and solemnity of the act, is 
what few would be capable of displaying. It is a 
degrading fact to human nature, that even the 
sending away of the Duke of Gloucester was an 
instance of generosity almost unexampled in the 
history of transactions of this nature." — pp. 13 — 17. 

Under the Protector, of whom he speaks 
with singular candour, the government was 
absolute — and, on his death, fell wholly into 
the hands of the army. He speaks with con- 
tempt and severe censure of Monk for the 
precipitate and unconditional submission into 
which he hurried the country at the Restora- 
tion ; and makes the following candid reflec- 
tion on the subsequent punishment of the 
regicides. 

" With respect to the execution of those who 
were accused of having been more immediately con- 
cerned in the King's death, that of Scrope, who 
had come in upon the proclamation, and of the 
military officers who had attended the trial, was a 
violation of every principle of law and justice. But 
the fate of the others, though highly dishonourable 
to Monk, whose whole power had arisen from his 
zeal in their service, and the favour and confidence 
with which they had rewarded him, and not per- 
haps very creditable to the nation, of which many 
had applauded, more had supported, and almost all 
had acquiesced in the act, is not certainly to be im- 
puted as a crime to the King, or to those of his ad- 
visers who were of the Cavalier party. The pas- 
sion of revenge, though properly condemned both 
by philosophy and religion, yet when it is excited 
by injurious treatment of persons justly dear to us, 
is among the most excusable of human frailties ; and 
if Charles, in his general conduct, had shown 
stronger feelings of gratitude for services performed 
to his father, his character, in the eyes of many, 
would be rather raised than lowered by this example 
of severity against the regicides." — pp. 22, 23. 

The mean and unprincipled submission of 
Charles to Louis XIV., and the profligate pre- 
tences upon which he was perpetually solicit- 
ing an increase of his disgraceful stipend, are 
mentioned with becoming reprobation. The 
delusion of the Popish plot is noticed at some 
length ; and some admirable remarks are in- 
troduced with reference to the debates on the 
expediency of passing a bill for excluding the 
Duke of York from the Crown, or of imposing 
certain restrictions on him in the event of his 
succession. The following observations are 
distinguished for their soundness, as well as 
their acuteness ; and are applicable, in prin- 
ciple, to every period of our history in which 
it can be necessary to recur to the true prin- 
ciples of the constitution. 

" It is not easy to conceive upon what principles 
even the Tories could justify their support of the 
restrictions. Many among them, no doubt, saw 
the provisions in the same light in which the Whigs 



represented them, as an expedient, admirably in- 
deed adapted to the real object of upholding the 
present king's power, by the defeat of the exclu- 
sion, but never likely to take effect for their pre- 
tended purpose of controuling that of his successor ; 
and supported them for that very reason. But such 
a principle of conduct was too fraudulent to be 
avowed; nor ought it perhaps, in candour, to be 
imputed to the majority of the party. To those 
who acted with good faith, and meant that the re- 
strictions should really take place, and be effectual, 
surely it ought to have occurred (and to those who 
most prized the prerogatives of the crown, it ought 
most forcibly to have occurred), that, in consenting 
to curtail the powers of the crown, rather than to 
alter the succession, they were adopting the greater, 
in order to avoid the lesser evii. The question of, 
what are to be the powers of the crown ? is surely 
of superior importance to that of, who shall wear it? 
Those, at least, who consider the royal prerogative 
as vested in the king, not for his own sake, but for 
that of his subjects, must consider the one of thesa 
questions as much above the other in dignity, as 
the rights of the public are more valuable than those 
of an individual. In this view, the prerogatives of 
the crown are in substance and effect the rights of 
the people : and these rights of the people were not to 
he sacrificed to the purpose of preserving the succes~ 
sion to the most favoured prince, much less to one 
who, on account of his religious persuasion, was 
justly feared and suspected. In truth, the ques» 
tion between the exclusion and restrictions seems 
peculiarly calculated to ascertain the different views 
in which the different parties in this country have 
seen, and perhaps ever will see, the prerogatives 
of the crown. The Whigs, who consider them as 
a trust for the people, a doctrine which the Tories 
themselves, when pushed in argument, will some- 
times admit, naturally think it their duty rather to 
change the manager of the trust, than to impair the 
subject of it ; while others, who consider them as 
the right or property of the king, will as naturally 
act as they would do in the case of any other prop- 
erty, and consent to the loss or annihilation of any 
part of it, for the purpose of preserving the remain- 
der to him, whom they style the rightful owner. 
If the people be the sovereign, and the king the 
delegate, it is better to change the bailiff than to 
injure the farm ; but if the king be the proprietor, 
it is better the farm should be impaired, nay, part 
of it destroyed, than that the whole should pass 
over to an usurper. The royal prerogative ought, 
according to the Whigs (not in the case of a Popish 
successor only, but in all cases), to be reduced to 
such powers as are in their exercise beneficial to 
the people ; and of the benefit of these they will not 
rashly suffer the people to be deprived, whether 
the executive power be in the hands of an heredi- 
tary, or of an elected king ; of a regent, or of any 
other denomination of magistrate ; while, on the 
other hand, they who consider prerogative with 
reference only to royalty, will, with equal readi- 
ness, consent either to the extension or the sus- 
pension of its exercise, as the occasional interests 
of the prince may seem to require." — pp. 37 — 39. 

Of the reality of any design to assassinate 
the King, by those engaged in what was called 
the Rye-House Plot, Mr. Fox appears to en- 
tertain considerable doubt, partly on account 
of the impiobability of many of the circum- 
stances, and partly on account of the uniform 
and resolute denial of Rumbold, the chief ol 
that party, in circumstances when he had no 
conceivable inducement to disguise the truth. 
Of the condemnation of Russell and Sydney, 
he speaks with the indignation which must 
be felt by all friends to liberty at the recol- 
lection of that disgraceful proceeding. The 
following passage is one of the most eloquent 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



205 



and one of the most characteristic in the whole 
volume. 

" Upon evidence such as has been stated, was 
♦his great and excelient man (Sydney) condemned 
to die. Pardon was not to be expected. Mr. 
Hume says, that such an interference on the part 
of the King, though it might have been an act of 
heroic generosity, could not be regarded as an in- 
dispensable duty. He might have said, with more 
propriety, that it was idle to expect that the govern- 
ment, after having incurred so much guilt in order 
to obtain the sentence, should, by remitting it, re- 
linquish the object just when it is within its grasp. 
The same hisionan considers the jury as highly 
blameable : and so do I ; But what was their guilt, 
in comparison of that of the court who tried, and 
of the government who prosecuted, in this infamous 
cause ? Yet the jury, being the only party that 
can with any colour be stated as acting independ- 
ently of the government, is the only one mentioned 
by him as blameable. The prosecutor is wholly 
omitted in his censure, and so is the court ; this 
last, not from any tenderness for the judge (who, 
to do this author justice, is no favourite with him), 
but lest the odious connection between that branch 
of the judicature and the government should strike 
the reader too forcibly : For Jefferies, in this in- 
stance, ought to be regarded as the mere tool and 
instrument (a fit one, no doubt) of the prince who 
had appointed him for the purpose of this and simi- 
lar services. Lastly, the King is gravely intro- 
duced on the question of pardon, as if he had had 
no prior concern in the cause, and were now to 
decide upon the propriety of extending mercy to a 
criminal condemned by a court of judicature ! 
Nor are we once reminded what that judicature 
was, — by whom appointed, by whom influenced, 
by whom called upon to receive that detestable 
evidence, the very recollection of which, even at 
this distance of time, fires every honest heart with 
indignation. As well might we palliate the mur- 
ders of Tiberius ; who seldom put to death his vic- 
tims without a previous decree of his senate. The 
moral of all this seems to be, that whenever a 
prince can, by intimidation, corruption, illegal evi- 
dence, or other such means, obtain a verdict against 
a subject whom he dislikes, he may cause him to 
be executed without any breach of indispensable 
duty ; nay, that it is an act of heroic generosity, if he 
spares him. I never reflect on Mr. Hume's state- 
ment of this matter but with the deepest regret. 
Widely as I differ from him upon many other occa- 
sions, this appears to me to be the most reprehen- 
sible passage of his whole work. A spirit of adu- 
lation towards deceased princes, though in a good 
measure free from the imputation of interested 
meanness, which is justly attached to flattery, when 
applied to living monarchs ; yet, as it is less intel- 
ligible with respect to its motives than the other, so 
is it in its consequences still more pernicious to the 
general interests of mankind. Fear of censure 
from contemporaries will seldom have much effect 
upon men in situations of unlimited authority. 
They will too often flatter themselves, that the 
same power which enables them to commit the 
crime, will secure them from reproach. The dread 
of posthumous infamy, therefore, being the only 
restraint, their consciences excepted, upon the pas- 
sions of such persons, it is lamentable that this last 
defence (feeble enough at best), should in any de- 
gree be impaired ; and impaired it must be, if not 
totally destroyed, when tyrants can hope to find in 
a man like Hume, no less eminent for the integrity 
and benevolence of his heart, than for the depth 
and soundness of his understanding, an apologist 
for even their foulest murders." — pp. 48 — 50. 

The uncontrouled tyranny of Charles' ad- 
ministration in his latter days, is depicted with 
much force and fidelity; and the clamour 
raised by his other ministers against the Mar- 



quis of Halifax, for having given an opinion 
in council that the North American colonies 
should be made participant in the benefits of 
the English constitution, gives occasion to the 
following natural reflection. 

" There is something curious in discovering, 
that, even at this early period, a question relative 
to North American liberty, and even to North 
American taxation, was considered as the test of 
principles friendly or adverse, to arbitary power at 
home. But the truth is, that among the several 
controversies which have arisen, there is no other 
wherein the natural rights of man on the one hand, 
and the authority of artificial institution on the other, 
as applied respectively, by the Whigs and Tories, 
to the English constitution, are so fairly put in issue, 
nor by which the line of separation between the 
two parties is so strongly and distinctly marked." 
—p. 60. 

The introductory chapter is closed by the 
following profound and important remarks, 
which may indeed serve as a key to the whole 
transactions of the ensuing reign. 

" Whoever reviews the interesting period which 
we have been discussing, upon the principle recom- 
mended in the outset of this chapter, will find, that, 
from the consideration of the past, to prognosticate 
the future, would, at the moment of Charles' de- 
mise, be no easy task. Between two persons, one 
of whom should expect that the country would re- 
main sunk in slavery, the other, that the cause of 
freedom would revive and triumph, it would be 
difficult to decide, whose reasons were better sup- 
ported, whose speculations the more probable. I 
should guess that he who desponded, had looked 
more at the state of the public ; while he who was 
sanguine, had fixed his eyes more attentively upon 
the person who was about to mount the throne. 
Upon reviewing the two great parties of the nation, 
one observation occurs very forcibly, and that is, 
that the great strength of the Whigs consisted in 
their being able to brand their adversaries as favour- 
ers of Popery ; that of the Tories (as far as their 
strength depended upon opinion, and not merely 
upon the power of the crown), in their finding col- 
our to represent the Whigs as republicans. From 
this observation we may draw a further inference, 
that, in proportion to the rashness of the crown, in 
avowing and pressing forward the cause of Popery, 
and to the moderation and steadiness of the Whigs, 
in adhering to the form of monarchy, would be the 
chance of the people of England, for changing an 
ignominious despotism for glory, liberty, and hap- 
piness." — pp. 66, 67. 

James was known to have had so large a 
share in the councils of his brother, that no 
one expected any material change of system 
from his accession. The Church, indeed, it 
was feared, might be less safe under a pro- 
fessed Catholic ; and the severity of his tem- 
per might inspire some dread of an aggravated 
oppression. It seems to be Mr. Fox's great 
object, in this first chapter, to prove that the 
object of his early policy was, not to establish 
the Catholic religion, but to make himself 
absolute and independent of his Parliament. 

The fact itself, he conceives, is completely 
established by the manner in which his se- 
cret negotiations with Fiance were carried 
on ; in the whole of which, he was zealously 
served by ministers, no one of whom had the 
slightest leaning towards Popery, or could 
ever be brought to countenance the measures 
which he afterwards pursued in its favour. 
It is made still more evident by the complexion 



206 



HISTORV AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



of his proceedings in Scotland; where the 
test, which he enforced at the point of the 
bayonet, was a Protestant test, — so much so, 
indeed, that he himself could not take it, — and 
the objects of his persecution, dissenters from 
the Protestant church of England. We con- 
sider this point therefore — and it is one of no 
small importance in the history of this period 
— as now sufficiently established. 

It does not seem necessary to follow the 
author into the detail of that sordid and de- 
grading connexion which James was so anxi- 
ous to establish, by becoming, like his 
brother, the pensioner of the French mon- 
arch. The bitter and dignified eontempt with 
which it is treated by Mr. Fox, may be 
guessed at from the following account of the 
first remittance. 

" Within a very few days from that in which the 
latter of them had passed, he (the French ambassa- 
dor) was empowered to accompany the delivery of 
a letter from his master, with the agreeable news 
of having received from him bills of exchange to the 
amount of five hundred thousand livres, to be used 
in whatever manner might be convenient to the 
King of England's service. The account which 
Barillon gives of the manner in which this sum was 
received, is altogether ridiculous : the King" ' s eyes 
were full of tears ! and three of his ministers, Ro- 
chester, Sunderland, and Godolphin, came seve- 
rally to the French ambassador, to express the 
sense their master had of the obligation, in terms 
the most lavish. Indeed, demonstrations of grati- 
tude from the King directly, as well as through his 
ministers, for this supply, were such as, if they had 
been used by some unfortunate individual, who, 
with his whole family, had been saved, by the 
timely succour of some kind and powerful protector, 
from a gaol and all its horrors, would be deemed 
rather too strong than too weak. Barillon himself 
seems surprised when he relates them ; but imputes 
them to what was probably their real cause, to the 
apprehensions ihat had been entertained (very un- 
reasonable ones !), that the King of France might 
no longer choose to interfere in the affairs of Eng- 
land, and, consequently, that his support could not 
be relied on for the grand object of assimilating this 
government to his own." — pp. 83, 84. 

After this, Lord Churchill is sent to Paris 
on the part of the tributary King. 

"How little could Barillon guess, that he was 
negotiating with one who was destined to be at the 
head of an administraiion which, in a few years, 
would send the same Lord Churchill, not to Paris 
to implore Lewis for succours towards enslaving 
England, or to thank him for pensions to her mon- 
arch, but to combine all Europe against him in the 
cause of liberty ! to route his armies, to take his 
towns, to humble his pride, and to shake to the 
foundation that fabric of power which it had been 
the business of a long life to raise, at the expense 
of every seniimfint of tenderness to his subjects, 
and of justice and good faith to foreign nations ! It 
is with difficulty the reader can persuade himself 
that the Godolphin and Churchill here mentioned, 
are the same persons who were afterwards, one in 
the cabinet, one in the field, the great conductors 
of the war of the Succession. How little do they 
appear in the one instance ! how great in the other ! 
And the investigation of the cause to which this ex- 
cessive difference is principally owing, will produce 
a most useful lesson. Is the difference to be at- 
tributed to any superiority of genius in the prince 
whom theyserved in the latter period of their lives ? 
Queen Anne's capacity appears to have been in- 
ferior even to her father's. Did they enjoy, in a 
greater degree, her favour and confidence ? The 



very reverse is the fact. But, in one case, they 
were the tools of a king plotting against his people ; 
in the other, the ministers of a free government 
acting upon enlarged principles, and With energies 
which no state that is not in some degree republican 
can supply. How forcibly must the contemplation 
of these men in such opposite situations teach persons 
engaged in political life, thai a free and popular gov- 
ernment is desirable, not only for the public good, 
but for their own greatness and consideration, for 
every object of generous ambition." — pp. 88, 89. 

As James, in the outset of his reign, pro- 
fessed a resolution to adhere to the system of 
government established by his brother, and 
made this declaration in the first place, to his 
Scottish Parliament, Mr. Fox thinks it neces- 
sary to take a slight retrospective view of the 
proceedings of Charles towards that unhappy 
country; and details, from unquestionable au- 
thorities, such a scene of intolerant oppression 
and atrocious cruelty, as to justify him in 
saying, that the state of that kingdom was 
"a state of more absolute slavery than at 
that time subsisted in any part of Christ- 
endom." 

In both Parliaments, the King's revenue 
was granted for life, in terms of his demand, 
without discussion or hesitation; and Mr. 
Hume is censured with severity, and appa- 
rently with justice, for having presented his 
readers with a summary of the arguments 
which he would have them believe were 
actually used in the House of Commons on 
both sides of this question. " This misrepre- 
sentation," Mr. Fox observes, " is of no small 
importance, inasmuch as, by intimating that 
such a question could be debated at all, and 
much more, that it was debated with the en- 
lightened views and bold topics of argument 
with which his genius has supplied him, he 
gives us a very false notion of the character 
of the Parliament, and of the times which he 
is describing. It is not improbable, that if 
the arguments had been used, which this his- 
torian supposes, the utterer of them would 
have been expelled, or sent to the Tower; and 
it is certain that he would not have been 
heard with any degree of attention, or even 
patience." — p. 142. 

The last chapter is more occupied with nar- 
rative, and less with argument and reflection, 
than that which precedes it. It contains the 
story of the unfortunate and desperate expe- 
ditions of Argyle and Monmouth, and of the 
condemnation and death of their unhappy 
leaders. Mr. Fox, though convinced that the 
misgovernment was such as fully to justify 
resistance by arms, seems to admit that both 
those enterprises were rash and injudicious. 
With his usual candour and openness, he ob- 
serves, that "the prudential reasons against 
resistance at that time were exceedingly 
strong ; and that there is no point, indeed, in 
human concerns, wherein the dictates of 
virtue and of worldly prudence are so identi- 
fied, as in this great question of resistance by 
force to established governments." 

The expeditions of Monmouth and Argyle 
had been concerted together, and were in- 
tended to take effect at the same moment. 
Monmouth, however, who was reluctantly 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



20" 



forced upon the enterprise, was not so soon 
ready j and Argyle landed in the Highlands 
with a very small force before the Duke had 
sailed from Holland. The details of his ir- 
resolute councils and ineffectual marches, are 
given at far too great length. Though they 
give occasion to one profound and important 
remark, which we do not recollect eve* to 
have met with before ; but, of the justice of 
which, most of those who have acted with 
parties must have had melancholy and fatal 
experience. It is introduced when speaking 
of the disunion that prevailed among Argyle' s 
little band of followers. 

"Add to all this," he says, "that where spirit 
was not wanting, it was accompanied with a degree 
and species of perversity wholly inexplicable, and 
which can hardly gain belief from any one whose 
experience has not made him acquainted with the 
extreme difficulty of persuading men, who pride 
themselves upon an extravagant love of liberty, 
ra'her to compromise upon some points with those 
who have, in the main, the same views with them- 
selves, than to give power (a power which will in- 
fallibly be used for their own destruction) to an 
adversary, of principles diametrically opposite ; in 
other words, rather to concede something to a 
friend, than every thing to an enemy." — pp. 187,188. 

The account of Argyle's deportment from 
the time of his capture to that of his exe- 
cution, is among the most striking passages in 
the book ; and the mildness and magnanimity 
of his resignation, is described with kindred 
feelings by his generous historian. The merits 
of this nobleman are perhaps somewhat ex- 
aggerated ; for he certainly wanted conduct 
and decision for the part he had undertaken; 
and more admiration is expressed at the equa- 
nimity with which he went to death, than the 
recent frequency of this species of heroism 
can allow us to sympathize with: But the 
story is finely and feelingly told j and the im- 
pression which it leaves on the mind of the 
reader is equally favourable to the author and 
to the hero of it.- We can only make room 
for the concluding scene of the tragedy. 

"Before he left the casile he had his dinner at 
the usual hour, at which he discoursed not only 
calmly, but even cheerfully, with Mr. Charteris and 
others. After dinner he retired, as was his custom, 
to his bed-chamber, where, it is recorded, that he 
slept quietly tor about a quarter of an hour. While 
he was in bed, one of the members of the council 
came and intimated to the attendants a desire to 
speak with him : upon being told that the earl was 
asleep, and had left orders not to be disturbed, the 
manager disbelieved the account, which he consid- 
ered as a device to avoid further questionings. To 
satisfy him. the door of the bed-chamber was half 
opened, and he then beheld, enjoying a sweet and 
tranquil slumber, the man who, by the doom of 
him and hi9 fellows, was to die within the space of 
two short hours ! Struck with the sight, he hurried 
out of the room, quitted the castle with the utmost 
precipitation, and hid himself in the lodgings of an 
acquaintance who lived near, where he flung him- 
self upon the first bed that presented itself, and had 
every appearance of a man suffering the most ex- 
cruciating torture. His friend, who had been ap- 
prized by the servant of the state he was in. and 
who naturally concluded that he was ill, offered 
him some wine. He refused, saying, ' No, no, that 
will not help me : I have been in at Argyle, and 
saw him sleeping as pleasantly as ever man did, 
within au hour of eternity ! But as for me — — ' 



The name of the person to whom this anecdote re- 
lates is not mentioned ; and the truth of it may 
therefore be fairly considered as liable to that degree 
of doubt with which men of judgment receive 
every species of traditional history. Woodrow, 
however, whose veracity is above suspicion, says 
he had it from the most unquestionable authority. 
It is not in itself unlikely ; and who is there thai 
would not wish it true ? What a satisfactory spec- 
tacle to a philosophical mind, to see the oppressor, 
in the zenith of his power, envying his victim! 
What an acknowledgment of the superiority of vir- 
tue ! What an affecting and forcible testimony to 
the value of that peace of mind, which innocence 
alone can confer ! We know not who this man was ; 
but when we reflect, that the guilt which agonized 
him was probably incurred for the sake of some 
vain title, or at least of some increase of wealth, 
which he did not want, and possibly knew not how 
to enjoy, our disgust is turned into something like 
compassion for that very foolish class of me/i, whom 
the world calls wise in their generation.". 

pp. 207—209. 
" On the scaffold he embraced his friends, gave 
some tokens of remembrance to his son-in-Taw, 
Lord Maitland, for his daughter and grandchildren ; 
stript himself of part of his apparel, of which he 
likewise made presents ; and laid his head upon the 
block. Having uttered a short prayer, he gave the 
signal to the executioner; which was instantly 
obeyed, and his head severed from his body. Such 
were the last hours, and such the final close, of this 
great man's life. May the like happy serenity in 
such dreadful circumstances, and a death equally 
glorious, be the lot of all, whom tyranny, of what- 
ever denomination or description, shall in any age, 
or in any country, call to expiate their virtues on 
the scaffold !"— p. 211. 

Rumbold, who had accompanied Argyle in 
this expedition, speedily shared his fate. 
Though a man of intrepid courage, and fully 
aware of the fate that awaited him, he persist- 
ed to his last hour in professing his innocence 
of any design to assassinate King Charles at 
the Ryehouse. Mr. Fox gives great import- 
ance to this circumstance ; and seems disposed 
to conclude, on the faith of it. that the Rye- 
house plot itself was altogether a fabrication 
of the court party, to transfer to their adver- 
saries the odium which had been thrown upon 
them with as little justice, by the prosecutions 
for the Popish plot. It does not appear to us, 
however, that this conclusion is made out in a 
manner altogether satisfactory. 

The expedition of Monmouth is detailed 
with as redundant a fulness as that of Argyle; 
and the character of its leader still more over- 
rated. Though Mr. Fox has a laudable jeal- 
ousy of kings, indeed, we are afraid he has 
rather a partiality for nobles. Monmouth ap- 
pears to have been an idle, handsome, pre- 
sumptuous, incapable youth, with none of the 
virtues of a patriot, and none of the talents 
of an usurper; and we really cannot discover 
upon what grounds Mr. Fox would exalt him 
into a hero. He was in arms, indeed, against 
a tyrant ; and that tyrant, though nearly con- 
nected with him by the ties of blood, sen- 
tenced him with unrelenting cruelty to death. 
He was plunged at once from the heights of 
fortune, of youthful, pleasure, and of ambition, 
to the most miserable^ondition of existence, 
— to die disgracefulljlafter having stooped to 
ask his life by abject submission ! Mr. Fox 
dwells a great deal too long, we think, both 



208 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



upon his wavering and unskilful movements 
before his defeat, and on some ambiguous 
words in the letter which he afterwards wrote 
to King James ; but the natural tenderness of 
his disposition enables him to interest us in 
the description of his after sufferings. The 
following extract, we think, is quite charac- 
teristic of the author. 

"In the mean while, the Queen Dowager, who 
seems to have behaved with a uniformity of kind- 
ness towards her husband's son that does her great 
nonour, urgently pressed the King to admit his 
nephew to an audience, importuned therefore by 
entreaties, and instigated by the curiosity which 
.Monmouth's mysterious expressions, and Sheldon's 
story had excited, he consented, though with a 
fixed determination to show no mercy. James was 
not of the number of those, in whom the want of 
an extensive understanding is compensated by a 
delicacy of sentiment, or by those right feelings 
which are often found to be better guides for the 
conduct, than the most accurate reasoning. His 
nature did not revolt, his blood did not run cold, at 
the thoughts of beholding the son of a brother whom 
he had loved, embracing his knees, petitioning, and 
petitioning in vain, for life ! — of interchanging words 
and looks with a nephew on whom he was inex- 
orably determined, within forty-eight hours, to in- 
flict an ignominious death. 

" In Macpherson's extract from King James' 
Memoirs, it is confessed that the King ought not to 
have seen, if he was not disposed to pardon the 
culprit; but whether the observation is made by the 
exiled prince himself, or by him who gives the ex- 
tract, is in this, as in many other passages of those 
Memoirs, difficult to determine. Surely, if the King 
had made this reflection before Monmouth's exe- 
cution, it must have occurred to that monarch, that 
if he had inadvertently done that which he ought 
not to have done without an intention to pardon, 
the only remedy was to correct that part of his 
conduct which was still in his power ; and since he 
could not recall the interview, to grant the pardon." 

pp. 258, 259. 

Being sentenced to die in two days, he made 
a humble application to the King for some 
little respite; but met with a positive and 
stern refusal. The most remarkable thing in 
the history of his last hours, is the persecution 
which he suffered from the bishops who had 
been sent to comfort him. Those reverend 
persons, it appears, spent the greater part of 
the time in urging him to profess the orthodox 
doctrines of passive obedience and non-resist- 
ance ; without which, they said, he could not 
be an upright member of the church, nor at- 
tain to a proper state of repentance ! It must 
never be forgotten, indeed, as Mr. Fox has 
remarked, if we would understand the history 
of this period, "that the orthodox members 
of the church regarded monarchy, not as a 
human, but as a divine institution ; and pas- 
sive obedience and non-resistance, not as po- 
litical measures, but as articles of religion." 

The following account of the dying scene 
of this misguided and unhappy youth, is very 
striking and pathetic ; though a certain tone 
of sarcasm towards the reverend assistants 
does not, to our feelings, harmonize entirely 
with the'more tender traits of the picture. 

" At ten o'clock on the 15th, Monmouth pro- 
ceeded, in a carriage of* the Lieutenant of the 
Tower, to Tower Hill, the place destined for his 
execution. Two bishops were in the carriage with 



him ; and one of them took that opportunity of in 
forming him, that their controversial altercations 
were not yet at an end ; and that upon the scaffold, 
he would again be pressed for more explicit and 
satisfactory declarations of repentance. When ar- 
rived at the bar, which had been put up for the pur- 
pose of keeping out the multitude, Monmouth 
descended from the carriage, and mounted tho 
scaffold with a firm step, attended by his spiritual 
assistants. The sheriffs and executioners were al- 
ready there. The concourse of spectators was in- 
numerable, and, if we are to credit traditional 
accounts, never was the general compassion more 
affectingly expressed. The tears, sighs, and groans, 
which the first sight of this heart-rending spectacle 
produced, were soon succeeded by an universal and 
awful silence; a respectful attention, and affection- 
ate anxiety, to hear every syllable that should pass 
the lips of the sufferer. The Duke began by saying 
he should speak little ; he came to die ; and he 
should die a Protestant of the Church of England. 
Here he was interrupted by the assistants, and 
told, that if he was of the Church of England, he 
must acknowledge the doctrine of Non-resistance 
to be true. In vain did he reply, that, if he ac- 
knowledged the doctrine of the church in general, 
it included all : they insisted he should own that 
doctrine particularly with respect to his case, and 
urged much more concerning their favourite point ; 
upon which, however, they obtained nothing but a 
repetition, in substance, of former answers. 

pp. 265, 266. 

After making a public profession of his at- 
tachment to his beloved Lady Harriet Went- 
worth, and his persuasion that their connection 
was innocent in the sight of God, he made 
reference to a paper he had signed in the 
morning, confessing the illegitimacy of his 
birth, and declaring that the title of King had 
been forced on him by his followers, much 
against his own inclination. 

" The bishop, however, said, that there was 
nothing in that paper about resistance ; nor, though 
Monmouth, quite worn out with their importuni- 
ties, said to one of them in a most affecting manner, 
1 1 am to die ! — pray my lord ! — I refer to my 
paper,' would these men think it consistent with 
their duty to desist. There were only a few words 
they desired on one point. The substance of these 
applications on one hand, and answers on the other, 
was repeated, over and over again, in a manner 
that could not be believed, if the facts were not at- 
tested by the signature of the persons principally 
concerned. If the Duke, in declaring his sorrow 
for what had passed, used the word invasion, ' give 
it the true name,' said they, ' and call it rebellion.' 
1 What name you please,' replied the mild-tempered 
Monmouth ! He was sure he was going to everlast- 
ing happiness, and considered the serenity of his 
mind, in his present circumstances, as a certain 
earnest of the favour of his Creator. His repent- 
ance, he said, must be true, for he had no fear of 
dying ; he should die like a lamb ! ' Much may come 
from natural courage,' was the unfeeling and stupid 
reply of one of the assistants. Monmouth, with 
that modesty inseparable from true bravery, denied 
that he was in general less fearful than other men, 
maintaining that his present courage was owing to 
his consciousness that God had forgiven him his 
past transgressions, of all which generally he re- 
pented, with all his soul. 

"At la9t the reverend assistants consented to 
join with him in prayer; but no sooner were they 
risen from their kneeling posture, than they re- 
turned to their charge. Not satisfied with what 
had passed, they exhorted him to a true andthorough 
repentance. Would he not pray for the King ? and 
send a dutiful message to his majesty, to recom- 
mend the duchess and his children? 'As you 



FOX'S REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND. 



pleast .' was the reply, ' I pray for him and for all 
men.' He now spoke lo the executioner, desiring 
that he might have no cap over his eyes, and began 
undressing. One would have thought that in this 
last sad ceremony, the poor prisoner might have 
been unmolested, and that the divines would have 
been satisfied, that prayer was the only part of their 
function lor which their duty now called upon them. 
They judged differently ; and one of thein had the 
fortitude to request the Duke, even in this stage of 
the business, that he would address himself to the 
soldiers then present, to tell them he stood a sad 
example of rebellion, and entreat the people to 
be loyal and obedient to the King. ' I have said I 
will make no speeches,' repeated Monmouth, in a 
tone more peremptory than he had before been 
provoked to ; 'I will make no speeches ! I come 
to die.' 'My lord, ten words will be enough,' 
said the persevering divine; to which the Duke 
made no answer, but turning to the executioner, 
expressed a hope that he would do his work better 
now than in the case of Lord Russell. He then 
felt the axe, which he apprehended was not sharp 
enough, but being assured that it was of proper 
sharpness and weight, he laid down his head. In 
the mean time, many fervent ejaculations were 
used by the reverend assistants, who, it must be 
observed, even in these moments of horror, showed 
themselves not unmindful of the points upon which 
they had been disputing ; praying God to accept his 
imperfect and general repentance. 

" The executioner now struck the blow ; but so 
feebly or unskillfully, that Monmouth, being but 
slightly wounded, lifted up his head, and looked 
him in the face as if to upbraid him ; but said noth- 
ing. The two following strokes were as ineffectual 
as the first, and the headsman, in a fit of horror, 
declared he could not finish his work. The sheriffs 
threatened him ; he was forced again to make a 
further trial ; and in two more strokes separated 
the head from the body."— pp. 267—269. 

With the character of Monmouth, the 
second chapter of the history closes ; and 
nothing seems to have been written for the 
third, but a few detached observations, oc- 
cupying but two pages. The Appendix is 
rather longer than was necessary. The 
greater part of the diplomacy which it con- 
tains, had been previously published by 
Macpherson and Dalrymple; and the other 
articles are of little importance. 

We have now only to add a few words as 
to the style and taste of composition which 
belongs to this work. We cannot say that 
we vehemently admire it. It is a diffuse, 
and somewhat heavy style, — clear and man- 
ly, indeed, for the most part, but sometimes 
deficient in force, and almost always in vi- 
vacity. In its general structure, it resembles 
the style of the age of which it treats, more 
than the balanced periods of the succeeding 
century — though the diction is scrupulously 
purified from the long and Latin words which 
defaced the compositions of Milton and Har- 
rington. In his antipathy to every thing that 
might be supposed to look like pedantry or 
affected loftiness, it appears to us, indeed, 
that the illustrious author has sometimes 
fallen into an opposite error, and admitted a 



variety of words and phrases rather more 
homely and familiar than should find place 
in a grave composition. Thus, it is said in 
p. 12, that " the King made no point of adher* 
irjg to his concessions." In p. 20, we heaj 
of men, " swearing away the lives'' of theii 
accomplices; and are afterwards told of "the 
style of thinking" of the country — of ll lhe cry- 
ing injustice " of certain proceedings — and of 
persons who were "fond of ill-lrealing and 
insulting" other persons. These, we think, 
are phrases too colloquial for regular history, 
and which the author has probably been in- 
duced to admit into this composition, from his 
long familiarity with spoken, rather than with 
written language. What is merely lively and 
natural in a speech, however, will often ap- 
pear low and vapid in writing. The following 
is a still more striking illustration. In speak- 
ing of the Oxford Decree, which declared the 
doctrine of an original contract, the lawfulness 
of changing the succession, &c. to be impious 
as well as seditious, and leading to atheism as 
well as rebellion, Mr. Fox is pleased to ob- 
serve — "If Much Ado about Nothing had 
been published in those days, the town-clerk's 
declaration, that receiving a thousand ducats 
for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully, was 
11 fiat burglary," might be supposed to be a 
satire upon this decree; yet Shakespeare, 
well as he knew human nature, not only as 
to its general course, but in all its eccentric 
deviations, could never dream that, in the 
person of Dogberry, Verges, and their follow- 
ers, he was representing the vice-chancellors 
and doctors of our learned University." It 
would require all the credit of a well-estab- 
lished speaker, to have passed this compari- 
son, with any success, upon the House of 
Commons; but even the high name of Mr. 
Fox, we believe, will be insufficient to con- 
ceal its impropriety in a serious passage of 
a history, written in imitation of Livy and 
Thucydides. 

Occupied, indeed, as we conceive all the 
readers of Mr. Fox ought to be with the sen- 
timents and the facts which he lays before 
them, we should scarcely have thought of 
noticing thoss verbal blemishes at all, had 
we not read eo much in the preface, of the 
fastidious diligence with which the diction 
of this work was purified, and its style elabo- 
rated by the author. To this praise we can- 
not say we think it entitled ; but. to praise of 
a far higher description, its claim, we think, 
is indisputable. Independent of its singular 
value as a memorial of the virtues and talents 
of the great statesman whose name it bears, 
we have no hesitation in saying, that it is 
written more truly in the spirit of constitu- 
tional freedom, and of temperate and practical 
patriotism, than any history of which the 
public is yet in possession. 



27 



s 2 



210 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



(■april, 1805.) 

Memoires <Pun Temoin de la Revolution ; ou Journal ties fails qui se sent passe sous ses ycux y tt 

gd ont prepare el fixe la Constitution Frangaise. Ouvrage Posthume de Jean Sylvain 
ailly, Premier President de FAssemblee Nationale Constituant, Premier Maire de Paris, 
et Membre des Trois Academies. 8vo. 3 tomes. Paris: 1804.* 



Among the many evils which the French 
Revolution has inflicted on mankind, the most 
deplorable, perhaps, both in point of extent 
and of probable duration, consists in the in- 
jury which it has done to the cause of rational 
freedom, and the discredit in which it has in- 
volved the principles of political philosophy. 
The warnings which may be derived from 
the misfortunes of that country, and the les- 
sons which may still be read in the tragical 
consequences of her temerity, are memorable, 
no doubt, and important : But they are such 
as are presented to us by the history of every 
period of the world ; and the emotions by 
which they have been impressed, are in this 
case too violent to let their import and appli- 
cation be properly distinguished. From the 
miscarriage of a scheme of frantic innovation, 
we have conceived an unreasonable and un- 
discriminating dread of all alteration or re- 
form. The bad success of an attempt to make 
government perfect, has reconciled us to im- 
perfections that might easily.be removed ; and 
the miserable consequences of treating every 
thing as prejudice and injustice, which could 
not be reconciled to a system of fantastic 
equality, has given strength to prejudices, 
and sanction to abuses, which were gradually 
wearing away before the progress of reason 
and philosophy. The French Revolution, in 
short, has thrown us back half a century in 
the course of political improvement ; and 
driven many among us to cling once more, 
with superstitious terror, to those idols from 
which we had been nearly reclaimed by the 
lessons of a milder philosophy. When we 
look round on the wreck and ruin which the 
whirlwind has scattered over the prospect 
before us, we tremble at the rising gale, and 
shrink even from the wholesome air that stirs 
the fig-leaf on our porch. Terrified and dis- 
gusted with the brawls and midnight murders 
which proceed from intoxication, we are al- 
most inclined to deny ourselves the pleasures 
of a generous hospitality ) and scarcely venture 
\o diffuse the comforts of light or of warmth 
en our dwellings, when Ave turn our eyes on 
the devastation which the flames have com- 
tritted around us. 

The same circumstances which have thus 
led us to confound what is salutary with 
what is pernicious in our establishments, 
have also perverted our judgments as to the 

* I have been tempted to let this be reprinted 
(though sensible enough of vices in the style) to 
show at how early a period those views of the 
character of the French Revolution, and its first 
effects on other countries, were adopted — which 
have not since received much modification. 



characters of those who were connected with 
those memorable occurrences. The tide of 
popular favour, which ran at one time with a 
dangerous and headlong violence to the sido 
of innovation and political experiment, has 
now set, perhaps too strongly, in an opposite 
direction; and the same misguiding passions 
that placed factious and selfish men on a 
level with patriots and heroes, has now 
ranked the blameless and the enlightened in 
the herd of murderers and madmen. 

There are two classes of men. in particular, 
to whom it appears to us that the Revolution 
has thus done injustice ; and who have been 
made to share in some measure the infamy 
of its most detestable agents, in consequence 
of venial errors, and in spite of extraordinary 
merits. There are none indeed who made a 
figure in its more advanced stages, that may 
not be left, without any great breach of charity, 
to the vengeance of public opinion : and both 
the descriptions of persons to whom we have 
alluded only existed, accordingly, at the period 
of its commencement. These were the phi- 
losophers or speculative men who inculcated 
a love of liberty and a desire of reform by 
their writings and conversation ; and the vir- 
tuous and moderate, who attempted to act 
upon these principles at the outset of the 
Revolution, and countenanced or suggested 
those measures by which the ancient frame 
of the government was eventually dissolved. 
To confound either of these classes of men 
with the monsters by whom they were suc- 
ceeded, it would be necessary to forget that 
they were in reality their most strenuous op- 
ponents — and their earliest victims ! If they 
were instrumental in conjuring up the tem- 
pest, we ma)' at least presume that their co- 
operation was granted in ignorance, since 
they were the first to fall before it ; and can 
scarcely be supposed to have either foreseen 
or intended those consequences in which 
their own ruin was so inevitably involved. 
That they are chargeable with imprudence 
and with presumption, may be affirmed, per- 
haps, without fear of contradiction j though, 
with regard to many of them, it would be no 
easy task, perhaps, to point out by what con- 
duct they could have avoided such an impu- 
tation ; and this charge, it is manifest, ought 
at any rate to be kept carefully separate from 
that of guilt or atrocity. Benevolent inten 
tions, though alloyed by vanity, and mis- 
guided by ignorance, can never become the 
objects of the highest moral reprobation ; and 
enthusiasm itself, though it does the work of 
the demons, ought still to be distinguished from 
treachery or malice. The knightly adven- 



BAILLY'S MEMOIRS. 



211 



tarer, v ho broke the chains of the galley- 
slaves, purely that they might enjoy their de- 
liverance from bondage, Avill always be re- 
garded with other feelings than the robber 
who freed them to recruit the ranks of his 
banditti. 

We have examined in a former article the 
extent of the participation which can be fairly 
imputed to the philosophers, in the crimes and 
miseries of the Revolution, and endeavoured 
to ascertain in how far they may be said. to 
have made themselves responsible for its 
consequences, or to have deserved censure for 
their exertions: And, acquitting the greater 
part of any mischievous intention, we fSund 
reason, upon that occasion, to conclude, that 
there was nothing in the conduct of the ma- 
jority which should expose them to blame, or 
deprive them of the credit which they would 
have certainly enjojed, but for consequences 
which they could not foresee. For lhose who, 
with intentions equally blameless, attempted 
to carry into execution the projects which had 
been suggested by the others, and actually 
engaged in measures which could not fail to 
terminate in important changes, it will not be 
easy, we are afraid, to make so satisfactory 
an apology. What is written may be cor- 
rected ; but what is done cannot be recalled : 
a rash and injudicious publication naturally 
calls forth an host of answers; and where the 
subject of discussion is such as excites a very 
powerful interest, the cause of truth is not 
always least effectually served by her oppo- 
nents. But the errors of cabinets and of legis- 
latures have other consequences and other 
confutations. They are answered by insur- 
rections, and confuted by conspiracies. A 
Earadox which might have been maintained 
y an author, without any other loss than that 
of a little leisure, and ink and paper, can 
only be supported by a minister at the ex- 
pense of the lives and the liberties of a na- 
tion. It is evident, therefore, that the pre- 
cipitation of a legislator can never admit of 
the same excuse w r ith that of a speculative 
inquirer; that the same confidence in his 
opinions, which justifies the former in main- 
taining them to the world, will never justify 
the other in suspending the happiness of his 
country on the issue of their truth ; and that 
he, in particular, subjects himself to a tre- 
mendous responsibility, who voluntarily takes 
upon himself the new-modelling of an ancient 
constitution. 

We are very much inclined to do justice 
to the virtuous and enlightened men Mho 
abounded in the Constituent Assembly of 
France. We believe that the motives of 
many of them were pure, and their patriot- 
ism unaffected : their talents are still more 
indisputable : But we cannot acquit them of 
blameable presumption and inexcusable im- 
prudence. There are three points, it appears 
to us, in particular, in which they were bound 
to have foreseen the consequences of their 
proceedings." 

In the first place, the spirit of exasperation, 
defiance; and intimidation, with which from 
the beginning they carried on their opposi- 



tion to the schemes of the "{ourt, the clergy 
and the nobility, appears to us to have been 
as impolitic with a view to their ultimate 
success, as it was suspicious perhaps as to 
their immedicte motives. The parade which 
they made of their popularity ; the support 
which they submitted to receive from the 
menaces and acclamations of the mob ; the 
joy which they testified at the desertion of 
the royal armies ; and the anomalous mili- 
tary force, of which they patronized the for- 
mation in the city of Paris, were so many 
preparations for actual hostility, and led al- 
most inevitably to that appeal to force, by 
which all prospect of establishing an equita- 
ble government was finally cut off. San- 
guine as the patriots of that assembly un- 
doubtedly were, they might still have re- 
membered the most obvious and important 
lesson in the whole volume of history, That 
the nation which has recourse to arms for 
the settlement of its internal affairs, neces- 
sarily falls under the iron yoke of a military 
government in the end; and that nothing 
but the most evident necessity can justify 
the lovers of freedom in forcing it from the 
hands of their governors. In France, there 
certainly was no such necessity. The whole 
weight and strength of the nation was bent 
upon political improvement and reform. — 
There was no possibility of their being ulti- 
mately resisted; and the only danger that 
was to be apprehended was. that their pro- 
gress would be too rapid. After the States- 
General were once fairly granted, indeed, it 
appears to us that the victory of the friends 
to liberty was certain. They could not have 
gone too slow afterwards; they could not 
have been satisfied with too little. The 
great object, then, should have been to ex- 
clude the agency of force, and to leave «no 
pretext for an appeal to violence. Nothing 
could have stood against the force of reason, 
which ought to have given way; and from 
a monarch of the character of Louis XIV. 
there was no reason to apprehend any at- 
tempt to regain, by violence, what he had 
yielded from principles of philanthropy and 
conviction. The Third Estate would have 
grown into power, instead of usurping it ; 
and would have gradually compressed the 
other orders into their proper dimensions, 
instead of displacing them by a violence 
that could never be forgiven. Even if the 
Orders had deliberated separately, (as it ap- 
pears to us they ought clearly to have done,) 
the commons were sure of an ultimate pre- 
ponderance, and the government of a per- 
manent and incalculable amelioration. Con- 
vened in a legislative assembly, and engross- 
ing almost entirely the respect and affections 
of the nation, they would have enjoyed the 
unlimited liberty of political discussion, and 
gradually impressed on the government the 
character of their peculiar principles. By 
the restoration of the legislative function to 
the commons of the kingdom, the system 
was rendered complete, and required rnly to 
be put into action in order to assume all those 
improvements which necessarily resul'ed from 



212 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



the increased wealth and intelligence of its 
representatives. 

Of this fair chance of amelioration, the 
nation was disappointed, chiefly, we are in- 
clined to think, by the needless asperity and 
injudicious menaces of the popular party. 
They relied openly upon the strength of their 
adherents among the populace. If they did 
not actually encourage them to threats and to 
acts of violence, they availed themselves at 
least of those which were committed, to in- 
timidate and depress their opponents ; for it 
is indisputably certain, that the unconditional 
compliance of the court with all the demands 
of the Constituent Assembly, was the result 
either of actual force, or the dread of its im- 
mediate application. This was the inaus- 
picious commencement of the sins and the 
sufferings of the Revolution. Their progress 
and termination were natural and necessary. 
The multitude, once allowed to overawe the 
old government with threats, soon subjected 
the new government to the same degradation ; 
and, once permitted to act in arms, came 
speedily to dictate to those who were assem- 
bled to deliberate. As soon as an appeal was 
made to force, the decision came to be with 
those by whom force could at all times be 
commanded. Reason and philosophy were 
discarded ; and mere terror and brute vio- 
lence, in the various forms of proscriptions, 
insurrections, massacres, and military execu- 
tions, harassed and distracted the misguided 
nation, till, by a natural consummation, they 
fell under the despotic sceptre of a military 
usurper. These consequences, we conceive, 
were obvious, and might have been easily for- 
seen. Nearly half a century had elapsed 
since they were pointed outjn those memo- 
rable words of the most profound and philo- 
sophical of historians. " By recent, as* well 
as by ancient example, it was become evi- 
dent, that illegal violence, with whatever 
pretences it may be covered, and whatever 
object it may pursue, must inevitably end at 
last in the arbitrary and despotic government 
of a single person."* 

The second inexcusable blunder, of which 
the Constituent Assembly was guilty, was 
one equally obvious, and has been more fre- 
quently noticed. It was the extreme rest- 
lessness and precipitation with which they 
proceeded to accomplish, in a few weeks, the 
legislative labours of a century. Their con- 
stitution was struck out at a heat ; and their 
measures of reform proposed and adopted like 
toasts at an election dinner. Within less 
than six months from the period of their first 
convocation, they declared the illegality of all 
the subsisting taxes ; they abolished the old 
constitution of the States-General ; they set- 
tled the limits of the Royal prerogative, their 
own inviolability, and the responsibility of 
ministers. Before they put any one of their 
projects to the test of experiment, they had 
adopted such an enormous multitude, as en- 
tirely to innovate the condition of the country, 



* Hume's History, chapter Ix. at the end. The 
whole passage is deserving of the most profound 
meditation. 



and to expose even those which were aah.tary 
to misapprehension and miscarriage. From 
a scheme of reformation so impetuous, ana 
an impatience so puerile, nothing permanent 
or judicious could be reasonably expected. 
In legislating for their country, they seem to 
have forgotten that they were operating on a 
living and sentient substance, and not on an 
inert and passive mass, which they might 
model and compound according to their pleas- 
ure or their fancy. Human society, however, 
is not like a piece of mechanism which may 
be safely taken to pieces, and put together by 
the hands of an ordinary artist. It is the 
worft of Nature, and not of man ; and has 
received, from the hands of its Author, an 
organization that cannot be destroyed with- 
out danger to its existence, and certain prop- 
erties and powers that cannot be altered or 
suspended by those who may have been en- 
trusted with its management. By studying 
those properties, and directing those powers, 
it maybe modified and altered to a very con- 
siderable extent. But they must be allowed 
to develope themselves by their internal en- 
ergy, and to familiarize themselves with their 
new channel of exertion. A child cannot be 
stretched out by engines to the stature of a 
man ) or a man compelled, in a morning, to 
excel in all the exercises of an athlete. Those 
into whose hands the destinies of a great 
nation are committed, should bestow on its. 
reformation at least as much patient observ- 
ance and as much tender precaution as are 
displayed by a skilful gardener in his treat- 
ment of a sickly plant. He props up the 
branches that are weak or overloaded, and 
gradually prunes and reduces those that are 
too luxuriant : he cuts away what is absolutely 
rotten and distempered : he stirs the earth 
about the root, and sprinkles it with water, 
and waits for the coming spring ! He trains 
the young branches to the right hand or to the 
left ) and leads it, by a gradual and sponta* 
neous progress, to expand or exalt itself, sea- 
son after season, in the direction which he 
had previously determined : and thus, in the 
course of a few summers, he brings it, with- 
out injury or compulsion, into that form and 
proportion which could not with safety have 
been imposed upon it in a shorter time. The 
reformers of France applied no such gentle 
solicitations, and would not wait for the effects 
of any such preparatory measures, or volun- 
tary developments. They forcibly broke its 
lofty boughs asunder, and endeavoured to 
straighten its crooked joints by violence : they 
tortured it into symmetry in vain, and shed 
its life-blood on the earth, in the middle of its 
scattered branches. 

The third great danger, against which we 
think it was the duty of the intelligent and 
virtuous part of the Deputies to have provided, 
was that which arose from the sudden trans- 
ference of power to the hands of men who 
had previously no natural or individual influ- 
ence in the community. This was an evil 
indeed, which arose necessarily, in some de- 
gree, from the defects of the old government, 
and from the novelty of the situation in which 



BAILLY'S MEMOIRS. 



213 



the country was placed by the convocation 
of the States-General J bui it was materially 
aggravated by the presumption and improvi- 
dence of those enthusiastic legislators, and 
tended powerfully to produce those disasters 
by which they were ultimately overwhelmed. 

No representative legislature, it appears to 
U3, can ever be respectable or secure, unless 
it contain within itself a great proportion of 
those who form the natural aristocracy of the 
country, and are able, as individuals, to influ- 
ence the conduct and opinions of the greater 
part of its inhabitants. Unless the power and 
weight and authority of the assembly, in 
short, be really made up of the power and 
weight and authority of the individuals who 
compose it, the factitious dignity they may 
derive from their situation can never be of 
long endurance; and the dangerous power 
with which they may be invested, will be- 
come the subject of scrambling and conten- 
tion among the factions of the metropolis, and 
be employed for any purpose but the general 
good of the community. 

In England, the House of Commons is made 
up of the individuals who, by birth, by for- 
tune, or by talents, possess singly the greatest 
influence over the rest of the people. The 
most certain and the most permanent influ- 
ence, is that of rank and of riches ; and these 
are the qualifications, accordingly, which re- 
turn the greatest number of members. Men 
submit to be governed by the united will of 
those, to whose will, as individuals, the greater 
part of them have been previously accustomed 
to submit themselves; and an act of parlia- 
ment is reverenced and obeyed, not because 
the people are impressed with a constitutional 
veneration for an institution called a parlia- 
ment, but because it has been passed by the 
authority of those who are recognised as their 
natural superiors, and by whose influence, as 
individuals, the same measures might have 
been enforced over the greater part of the 
kingdom. Scarcely any new power is ac- 
quired, therefore, by the combination of those 
persons into a legislature : They carry each 
their share of influence and authority into the 
senate along with them ; and it is by adding 
the items of it together, that the influence 
and authority of the senate itself is made up. 
From such a senate, therefore, it is obvious 
that their power can never be wrested, and 
that it would not even attach to those who 
might succeed in supplanting them in the 
Legislature, by violence or intrigue ; or by any 
other means than those by which they them- 
selves had originally secured their nomination. 
In such a state of representation, in short, the 
influence of the representatives is not borrow- 
ed from their office, but the influence of the 
office is supported by that which is personal 
to its members; and parliament is chiefly 
regarded as the great depository of all the 
authority which formerly existed, in a scat- 
tered state, among its members. This author- 
ity, therefore, belonging to the men, and not 
to their places, can neither be lost by them, 
if they are forced from their places, nor found 
by those who may supplant them. The Long 



Parliament, after it was purged by the Inde- 
pendents, and the assemblies that met undej 
that name, during the Protectorate of Crom- 
well, held the place, and enjoyed all the form 
of power that had belonged to their predeces- 
sors: But as they no longer contained those 
individuals who were able to sway and influ- 
ence the opinion of the body of the people, 
they were without respect or authority, and 
speedily came to be the objects of public deri- 
sion and contempt. 

As the power and authority of a legislature 
thus constituted, is perfectly secure and in- 
alienable, on the one hand, so, on the other, the 
moderation of its proceedings is guaranteed 
by a consciousness of the basis upon which 
this authority is founded. Every individual 
being aware of the extent to which his own 
influence is likely to reach among his constit- 
uents and dependants, is anxious that the 
mandates of the bod}- shall never pass beyond 
that limit, within which obedience may be 
easily secured. He will not hazard the loss 
of his own power, therefore, by any attempt 
to enlarge that of the legislature ; and fee-l- 
ing, at every step, the weight and resistance 
of the people, the whole assembly proceeds 
with a due regard to their opinions and pre- 
judices, and can never do any thing very in- 
jurious or very distasteful to the majority. — 
From the very nature of the authority with 
which they are invested, they are in fact con- 
substantiated with the people for whom they 
are to legislate. They do not sit loose upon 
them, like riders on inferior animals; nor 
speculate nor project experiments upon their 
welfare, like operators upon a foreign sub- 
stance. They are the natural organs, in fact, 
of a great living body ; and are not only 
warned, by their own feelings, of any injury 
which they may be tempted to inflict on it, 
but would become incapable of performing 
their functions, if they were to proceed far in 
debilitating the general system. 

Such, it appears to us, though delivered 
perhaps in too abstract and elementary a form, 
is the just conception of a free representative 
legislature. Neither the English House of 
Commons, indeed, nor any assembly of any 
other nation, ever realized it in all its perfec- 
tion : But it is in their approximation to such 
a standard, we conceive, that their excellence 
and utility will be found to consist ; and where 
the conditions upon which we have insisted 
are absolutely wanting, the sudden institution 
of a representative legislature will only be a 
step to the most frightful disorders. Where 
it has grown up in a country in which per- 
sonal liberty and property are tolerably secure, 
it naturally assumes that form which is most 
favourable to its beneficial influence, and has 
a tendency to perpetual improvement, and to 
the constant amelioration of the condition of 
the whole society. The difference between 
a free government and a tyrannical one. Con- 
sists entirely in the different proportions of 
the people that are influenced by their opin- 
ions; or subjugated by intimidation or force. 
In a large society, opinions can only be re- 
united by means of representations; and the 



2t4 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



natural representative is the individual whose 
example and authority can influence the opin- 
ions of the greater part of those in whose 
behalf he is delegated. This is the natural 
aristocracy of a civilized nation ; and its legis- 
lature is then upon the best possible footing, 
when it is in the hands of those who answer 
to that description. The whole people are 
then governed by the laws, exactly as each 
clan or district of them would have been by 
the patriarchal authority of an elective and 
unarmed chieftain ' and the lawgivers are not 
only secure of their places while they can 
maintain their individual influence over the 
people, but are withheld from any rash or 
injurious measure by the consciousness and 
feeling of their dependence on this voluntary 
deference and submission. 

If this be at all a just representation of the 
conditions upon which the respectability and 
security of a representative legislature must 
always depend, it will not be difficult to ex- 
plain how the experiment miscarried so com- 
pletely, in the case of the French Constituent 
Assembly. That assembly, which the enthu- 
siasm of the public, and the misconduct of 
the privileged orders, soon enabled to engross 
the whole power of the country, consisted 
almost entirely of persons without name or 
individual influence ; who owed the whole of 
their consequence to the situation to which 
they had been elevated, and were not able, 
as individuals, to have influenced the opinions 
of one-fiftieth part of their countrymen. — 
There w r as in France, indeed, at this time, no 
legitimate, wholesome, or real aristocracy. — 
The noblesse, who were persecuted for bear- 
ing that name, were quite disconnected from 
the people. Their habits of perpetual resi- 
dence in the capital, and their total independ- 
ence of the good opinion of their vassals, 
had deprived them of any real influence over 
the minds of the lower orders : and the or- 
ganization of society had not yet enabled the 
rich manufacturers or proprietors to assume 
such an influence. The persons sent as de- 
puties to the States-General, therefore, were 
those chiefly who, by intrigue and boldness, 
and by professions of uncommon zeal for what 
were then the great objects of popular pursuit, 
had been enabled to carry the votes of the 
electors. A notion of talent, and an opinion 
that they would be loud and vehement in 
supporting those requests upon which the 
people had already come to a decision, were 
their passports into that assembly. They 
were sent there to express the particular 
demands of the people, and not to give a 
general pledge of their acquiescence in what 
might there be enacted. They were not the 
hereditary patrons of the people, but their 
hired advocates for a particular pleading. — 
They had no general trust or authority over 
them, but were chosen as their special mes- 
sengers, out of a multitude whose influence 
taA pretensions were equally powerful. 

When these men found themselves, as it 
were by accident, in possession of the whole 
power of the state, and invested with the 
absolute government of the greatest nation 



that has existed in modern times, it is not to 
be wondered at if they forgot the slender ties 
by which they were bound to their constitu- 
ents. The powers to which they had suc- 
ceeded were so infinitely beyond any thing 
that they had enjoyed in their individual 
capacity, that it is not surprising if they never 
thought of exerting them with the same con- 
sideration and caution. Instead of the great 
bases of rank and property, which cannot be 
transferred by the clamours of the factious, 
or the caprice of the inconstant, and which 
serve to ballast and steady the vessel of the 
state in all its wanderings and perils, the 
assembly possessed only the basis of talent 
or reputation ; qualities which depend upon 
opinion and opportunity, and which may be 
attributed in the same proportion to an incon- 
venient multitude at once. The whole legis- 
lature may be considered, therefore, as com- 
posed of adventurers, who had already attained 
a situation incalculably above their original 
pretensions, and were now tempted to push 
their fortune by every means that held cut 
the promise of immediate success. They 
had nothing, comparatively speaking, to lose, 
but their places in that assembly, or the influ- 
ence which they possessed within its walls ; 
and as the authority of the assembly itself 
depended altogether upon the popularity of 
its measures, and not upon the intrinsic au- 
thority of its members, so it was only to be 
maintained by a succession of brilliant and 
imposing resolutions, and by satisfying or out- 
doing the extravagant wishes and expectations 
of the most extra vagant and sanguine populace 
that ever existed. For a man to get a lead in 
such an assembly, it was by no means neces- 
sary that he should have previously possessed 
any influence or authority in the community,* 
that he should be connected with powerful 
families, or supported by great and extensive 
associations. If he could dazzle and overawe 
in debate ; if he could obtain the acclamations 
of the mob of Versailles, and make himself 
famrliar to the eyes and the ears of the as- 
sembly and its galleries, he was in a fair train 
for having a great share in the direction of an 
assembly exercising absolute sovereignty over 
thirty millions of men. The prize was too 
tempting not to attract a multitude of com- 
petitors; and the assembly for many months 
was governed by those who outvied their 
associates in the impracticable extravagance 
of their patriotism, and sacrificed most pro- 
fusely the real interests of the people at the 
shrine of a precarious popularity. 

In this way, the assembly, from the inherent 
vices of its constitution, ceased to *>e respect- 
able or useful. The same causes speedily 
put an end to its security, and converted it 
into an instrument of destruction. 

Mere popularity was at first the instrument 
by which this unsteady legislature was gov- 
erned : But when it became apparent, that 
whoever could obtain the direction or com- 
mand of it, must possess the whole authority 
of the state, parties became less scrupulous 
about the means they employed for that pur- 
pose, and soon found out that violence and 



BAILLY'S MEMOIRS. 



215 



terror were infinitely more effectual and ex- 
peditious than persuasion and eloquence. The 
people at large, who had no attachment to 
any families or individuals among their dele- 
gates, and who contented themselves with 
idolizing the assembly in general, so long as 
it passed decrees to their liking, were passive 
and indifferent spectators of the transference 
of power which was effected by the pikes of 
the Parisian multitude ; and looked with equal 
affection upon every successive junto which 
assumed the management of its deliberations. 
Having no natural representatives, they felt 
themselves equally connected with all who. 
exercised the legislative function; and, being- 
destitute of a real aristocracy, were without 
the means of giving effectual support even to 
those who might appear to deserve it. En- 
couraged by this situation of affairs, the most 
daring, unprinc ; pleil. and profligate, proceeded 
to seize upon the defenceless legislature, and, 
driving all their antagonists before them by 
violence or intimidation, entered without op- 
position upon the supreme functions of gov- 
ernment. They soon found, however, that 
the arms by wliich they had been victorious, 
were capable of being turned against them- 
selves; and those who were envious of then- 
success, or ambitious of their distinction, easily 
found means to excite discontent among the 
multitude, now inured to insurrection, and to 
employ them in pulling down those very in- 
dividuals whom they had so recently exalted. 
The disposal of the legislature thus became a 
prize to be fought for in the clubs and con- 
spiracies and insurrections of a corrupted 
metropolis : and the institution of a national 
representative had no other effect, than that 
of laying the government open to lawless 
force and flagitious audacity. 

It is in this manner, it appears to us, that 
from the want of a natural and efficient aris- 
tocracy to exercise the functions of represent- 
ative legislators, the National Assembly of 
France was betrayed into extravagance, and 
fell a prey to faction; that the institution 
itself became a source of public misery and 
disorder, and converted a civilized monarchy, 
first into a sanguinary democracy, and then 
into a military despotism. 

It would be the excess of injustice, we 
have already said, to impute those disastrous 
consequences to the moderate and virtuous 
individuals who sat in the Constituent As- 
sembly : But if it be admitted that they might 
'lave been easily foreseen, it will not be easy 
to exculpate them from the charge of very 
blameable imprudence. It would be difficult, 
indeed, to point out any course of conduct by 
which those dangers might have been entirely 
avoided : But they would undoubtedly have 
been less formidable, if the enlightened mem- 
bers of the Third Estate had endeavoured to 
form a party with the more liberal and popu- 
lar among the nobility: if they had associated 
to themselves a greater number of those to 
whose persons a certain degree of influence 



was attached, from their fortune, their age, or 
their official station ; if, in short, instead of 
grasping presumptuously at the exclusive di- 
rection of the national councils, and arrogating 
every thing on the credit of their zealous 
patriotism and inexperienced abilities, they 
had sought to strengthen themselves by an 
alliance with what was respectable in the 
existing establishments, and attached them- 
selves at first as disciples to those whom they 
might fairly expect speedily to outgrow and 
eclipse. 

Upon a review of the whole matter, it 
seems impossible to acquit those of the revo- 
lutionary patriots, whose intentions are ad- 
mitted to be pure, of great precipitation, pre- 
sumption, and imprudence. Apologies may 
be found for them, perhaps, in the inexpe- 
rience which was incident to their situation; 
in their constant apprehension of being sepa- 
rated before their task was accomplished; in 
the exasperation which was excited by the 
insidious proceedings of the cabinet; and in 
the intoxication which naturally resulted from 
the magnitude of their early triumph, and the 
noise and resounding of their popularity. But 
the errors into which they fell were inex- 
cusable, we think, in politicians of the eight- 
eenth century ; and while we pity their suf- 
ferings, and admire their genius, we cannot 
feel much respect for their wisdom, or any 
surprise at their miscarriage. 

The preceding train of reflection was irre- 
sistibly suggested to us by the title and the con- 
tents of the volumes now before us. Among 
the virtuous members of the first Assembly, 
there was no one who stood higher than BaiJly. 
As a scholar and a man of science, he had 
long stood in the very first rank of celebrity : 
His private morals were not only irreproach- 
able, but exemplary ; and his character and 
dispositions had always been remarkable for 
gentleness, moderation, and philanthropy. 
Drawn unconsciously, if we may believe his 
own account, into public life, rather than im- 
pelled into it by any movement of ambition, 
he participated in the enthusiasm, and in the 
imprudence, from which no one seemed at 
that time to be exempted ; and in spite of an 
early retreat, speedily suffered that fate by 
which all the well meaning were then des- 
tined to expiate their errors. His popularity 
was at one time equal to that of any of the 
idols of the day ; and if it Mas gained by 
some decree of blameable indulgence and 
unjustifiable zeal, it was forfeited at last (and 
along with his life) by a resolute opposition 
to disorder, and a meritorious perseverance 
in the discharge of his duty. 

The sequel of this article, containing a full 
abstract of tne learned author's recollections 
of the first six months only of his mayoralty, 
is now omitted; both as too minute to retain 
any interest at this day, and as superseded 
by" the more comprehensive details which 
will be found in the succeeding article. 



316 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



(September, 1616.) 



Considerations swr les Principaux Evenemens de la Revolution Frangoise. Ouvrage Postkumt 
de Madame la Baronne de Stael. Publie par M. le Due de Broglie et M. le Baron A. 
de Stael. En trois tomes. 8vo. pp. 1285. Londres: 1818. 



No book can possibly possess a higher 
interest than this which is now before us. 
It is the last, dying bequest of the most bril- 
liant writer that has appeared in our days; — 
and it treats of a period of history which we 
already know to be the most important that 
has occurred for centuries ; and which those 
who look back on it, after other centuries 
have elapsed, will probably consider as still 
more important. 

We cannot stop now to say all that we think 
of Madame de Stael : — and yet we must say, 
that we think her the most powerful writer 
that her country has produced since the time 
of Voltaire and Rousseau — and the greatest 
writer, of a woman, that any time or any 
country has produced. Her taste, perhaps, 
is not quite pure; and her style is too irregu- 
lar and ambitious. These faults may even 
go deeper. Her passion for effect, and the 
tone of exaggeration which it naturally pro- 
duces, have probably interfered occasionally 
with the soundness of her judgment, and 
given a suspicious colouring to some of her 
representations of fact. At all events, they 
have rendered her impatient of the humbler 
task of completing her explanatory details, 
or stating in their order all the premises of 
her reasonings. She gives her history in 
abstracts, and her theories in aphorisms: — 
and the greater part of her works, instead of 
presenting that systematic unity from which 
the highest degrees of strength and beauty 
and clearness must ever be derived, may be 
fairly described as a collection of striking 
fragments — in which a great deal of repe- 
tition does by no means diminish the effect 
of a good deal of inconsistency. In those 
same works, however, whether we consider 
ihem as fragments or as systems, we do not 
hesitate to say that there are more original 
and profound observations. — more new images 
— greater sagacity combined with higher im- 
agination — and more of the true philosophy 
of the passions, the politics, and the literature 
of her contemporaries— than in any other 
author we can now remember. She has great 
•eloquence on all subjects j and a singular 
-pathos in representing those bitterest agonies 
of the spirit, in which wretchedness is aggra- 
vated by remorse, or by regrets that partake 
of it* character. Though it is difficult to re- 
sist her when she is in earnest, we cannot say 
that we agree in all her opinions, or approve 
of all her sentiments. She overrates the im- 
portance of literature, either in determining 
the character or affecting the happiness of 
mankind.; and she theorises too confidently 
on its past and its future history. On subjects 



like this, we have not yet facts enough for so 
much philosophy; and must be contented, 
we fear, for a long time to come, to call many 
things accidental, which it would be more 
satisfactory to refer to determinate causes. 
hi. her estimate of the happiness, and her 
notions of the wisdom of private life, we 
think her both unfortunate and erroneous. 
She makes passions and high sensibilities a 
great deal too indispensable ; and varnishes 
over all her pictures too uniformly with the 
glare of an extravagant or affected enthu- 
siasm. She represents men, in short, as a 
great deal more unhappy, more depraved, 
and more energetic, than they are — and 
seems to respect them the more for it. In 
her politics she is far more unexceptionable. 
She is everywhere the warm friend and ani- 
mated advocate of liberty — and of liberal, 
practical, and philanthropic principles. On 
those subjects we cannot blame her enthu- 
siasm, which has nothing in it vindictive or 
provoking ; and are far more inclined to envy 
than to reprove that sanguine and buoyant 
temper of mind which, after all she has seen 
and suffered, still leads her to overrate, in our 
apprehension, both the merit of past attempts 
at political amelioration, and the chances of 
their success hereafter. It is in that futurity, 
we fear, and in the hopes that make it pre- 
sent, that the lovers of mankind must yet, 
for a while, console themselves for the disap- 
pointments which still seem to beset them. 
If Madame de Stael, however, predicts with 
too much confidence, it must be admitted 
that her labours have a powerful tendency to 
realize her predictions. Her writings are all 
full of the most animating views of the im- 
provement of our social condition, and the 
means by which it may be effected — the most 
striking refutations of prevailing errors on 
these great subjects — and the most persuasive 
expostulations with those who may think their 
interest or their honour concerned in main- 
taining them. Even they who are the least 
inclined to agree with her, must admit that 
there is much to be learned from her writings; 
and we can give them no higher praise than 
to say, that their tendency is not only to pro- 
mote the interests of philanthropy and inde- 
pendence, but to soften, rather than exasperate, 
the prejudices to which they are opposed. 

Of the work before us, we do not know 
very well what to say. It contains a multi- 
tude of admirable remarks— and a still greater 
number of curious details ; for Madame d<? 
Stael was not only a contemporary, but an eye- 
witness of much that she describes, and had 
the very best access to learn what did not fali 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



217 



under her immediate observation. Few per- 
sons certainly could be better qualified to ap- 
preciate the relative importance of the sub- 
jects that fell under her review; and no one, 
we really think, so little likely to colour and 
distort them, from any personal or party feel- 
ings. With all those rare qualifications, how- 
ever, and inestimable advantages for perform- 
ing the task of an historian, we cannot say 
that she has made a good history. It is too 
much broken into fragments. The narrative 
is too much interrupted by reflections: and 
the reflections too much subdivided, to suit 
the subdivisions of the narrative. There are 
too many events omitted, or but cursorily 
noticed, to give the work the interest of a full 
and flowing history ; and a great deal too 
many detailed and analyzed, to let it pass for 
an essay on the philosophy, or greater results 
of these memorable transactions. We are 
the most struck with this, last fault — which 
perhaps is inseparable from the condition of 
a contemporary writer ; — for, though the ob- 
servation may sound at first like a paradox, 
we are rather inclined to think that the best 
historical compositions — not only the most 
pleasing to read, but the most just and in- 
structive in themselves — must be written at 
a very considerable distance from the times 
to which they relate. When we read an elo- 
quent and judicious account of great events 
transacted in other ages, our first sentiment 
is that of regret at not being able to learn 
more of them. We wish anxiously for a fuller 
detail of particulars — we envy those who had 
the good fortune to live in the time of such 
interesting occurrences, and blame them for 
having left us so brief and imperfect a me- 
morial of them. But the truth is, if we may 
judge from our own experience, that the 
greater part of those who were present to 
those mighty operations, were but very im- 
perfectly aware of their importance, and con- 
jectured but little of the influence they were 
to exert on future generations. Their atten- 
tion was successively engaged by each sepa- 
rate act of the great drama that was passing 
before them; but did not extend to the con- 
nected effect of the whole, in which alone 
posterity was to find the grandeur and inter- 
est of the scene. The connection indeed of 
those different acts is very often not then 
discernible. The series often stretches on. 
beyond the reach of the generation which 
witnessed its beginning, and makes it impos- 
sible for them to integrate what had not yet 
attained its completion; while, from similar 
causes, many of the terms that at first ap- 
peared most important are unavoidably dis- 
carded, to bring the problem within a manage- 
able compass. Time, in short, performs the 
same services to events, which distance does 
to visible objects. It obscures and gradually 
annihilates the small, but renders those that 
are very gre.it much more distinct and con- 
ceivable. If we would know the true form 
and bearings of an Alpine ridge, we must not 
grovel among the irregularities of its surface, 
but observe, from the distance of leagues, the 
direction of its ranges and peaks, and the 

28 



giant outline which it traces on the sky. A 
traveller who wanders through a rugged and 
picturesque district, though struck with the 
beauty of every new valley, or the grandeur 
of every cliff that he passes, has no notion at 
all of the general configuration of the country, 
or even of the relative situation of the objects 
he has been admiring ; and will understand 
all those things, and his own route among 
them, a thousand times better, from a small 
map on a scale of half an inch to a mile, 
which represents neither thickets or hamlets, 
than from the most painful efforts to combine 
the indications of the strongest memory. The 
case is the same with those who live through 
periods of great historical interest. They are 
too near the scene — too much interested in 
each successive event — and too much agi- 
tated with their rapid succession, to form any 
just estimate of the character or result of the 
whole. They are like private soldiers in the 
middle of a great battle, or rather of a busy 
and complicated campaign — hardly knowing 
whether they have lost or won, and having 
but the most obscure and imperfect concep- 
tion of the general movements in which their 
own fate has been involved. The foreigner 
who reads of them in the Gazette, or the 
peasant who sees them from the top of a dis- 
tant hill or a steeple, has in fact a far better 
idea of them. 

Of the thousand or fifteen hundred names 
that have been connected in contemporary 
fame with the great events of the last twenty- 
five years, how many will go down to pos- 
terity] In all probability not more than 
twenty : And who shall yet venture to say 
which twenty it will be ? But it is the same 
with the events as with the actors. How 
often, during that period, have we mourned 
or exulted, with exaggerated emotions, over 
occurrences that we already discover to have 
been of no permanent importance ! — how cer- 
tain is it, that the far greater proportion of 
those to which we still attach an interest, will 
be viewed with the same indifference by the 
very next generation ! — and how probable, 
that the whole train and tissue of the history 
will appear, to a remoter posterity, under a 
totally different character and colour from any 
that the most penetrating observer of the pre- 
sent day has thought of ascribing to it ! Was 
there any contemporary, do we think, of JMa- 
homet, of Gregory VII., of Faust, or Colum- 
bus, who formed the same estimate of their 
achievements that we do at this day 1 Were 
the great and wise men who brought about 
the Reformation, as much aware of its im- 
portance as the whole world is at present? or 
does any one imagine, that, even in the later 
and more domestic events of the establish- 
ment of the English Commonwealth in 1648, 
or the English Revolution in 1688, the large 
and energetic spirits by whom those great 
events were conducted were fully sensible of 
their true character and bearings, or at all 
foresaw the mighty consequences of which 
they have since been prolific ? 

But though it may thus require the J ipso 
of ages to develope the true character of a 
T 



218 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



gieat transaction, and though its history may 
therefore be written with most advantage 
very long after its occurrence, it does not fol- 
low that such a history will not be deficient 
in many qualities which it would be desira- 
ble for it to possess. All we say is, that they 
are qualities which will generally be found 
incompatible with those larger and sounder 
views, which can hardly be matured while 
the subjects of them are recent. That this is 
an imperfection in our histories and histori- 
ans, is sufficiently obvious ; but it is an im- 
perfection to which we must patiently resign 
ourselves, if it appear to be an unavoidable 
consequence of the limitation of our faculties. 
We cannot both enjoy the sublime effect of a 
vast and various landscape, and at the same 
time discern the form of every leaf in the for- 
est, or the movements of every living crea- 
ture that breathes within its expanse. Beings 
of a higher order may be capable of this; — 
and it would be very desirable to be so : 
But, constituted as we are, it is impossible : 
and. in our delineation of such a scene, all 
that is minute and detached, however inter- 
esting or important to those who are at hand, 
must therefore be omitted — while the general 
effect is entrusted to masses in which nothing 
but the great outlines of great objects are pre- 
served, and the details left to be inferred from 
the character of their results, or the larger 
features of their usual accompaniments. 

It is needless to apply this to the case of 
history; in which, when it records events of 
permanent interest, it is equally impossible to 
retain those particular details which engrossed 
the attention of contemporaries — both because 
the memory of them is necessarily lost in the 
course of that period which must elapse be- 
fore the just value of the whole can be 
known — and because, even if it were other- 
wise, no human memory could retain, or 
human judgment discriminate, the infinite 
number of particulars which must have been 
presented in such an interval. We shall only 
observe, further, that though that which is 
preserved is generally the most material and 
truly important part of the story, it not un- 
frequently happens, that too little is pre- 
served to afford materials for a satisfactory 
narrative, or to justify any general conclu- 
sion; and that, in such cases, the historian 
often yields to the temptation of connecting 
the scanty materials that have reached him 
by a sort of general and theoretical reasoning, 
which naturally takes its colour from the pre- 
vailing views and opinions of the individual 
writer, or of the age to which he belongs. If 
an author of consummate judgment, and with 
a thorough knowledge of the unchangeable 
principles of human nature, undertake this 
task, it is wonderful indeed to see how much 
he may make of a subject that appears so un- 
promising — and it is almost certain that the 
view he will give to his readers, of such an 
obscure period, will, at all events, be at least 
as instructive and interesting as if he had had 
its entire annals before him. In other hands, 
however, the result is very different ; and, in- 
stead of a masterly picture of rude or remote 



ages, true at least to the general features of 
such periods, we have nothing but a tran- 
script of the author's own most recent fanta- 
sies and follies, ill disguised under the 
masquerade character of a few traditional 
names. — It is only necessary to call to mina 
such books as Zouche's Life of Sir Philip 
Sydney, or Godwin's Life of Chaucer, to feel 
this much more strongly than we can now 
express it. These, no doubt, are extreme 
cases ; — but we suspect that our impressions 
of almost all remote characters and events, 
and the general notions we have of the times 
or societies which produced them, are much 
more dependent on the peculiar temper and 
habits of the popular writers in whom the 
memory of them is chiefly preserved, than it 
is very pleasant to think of. If we ever take 
the trouble of looking for ourselves into the 
documents and materials out" of which those 
histories are made, we feel at once how much 
room there is for a very different representa- 
tion of all those things from that which is 
current in the world : And accordingly we 
occasionally have very opposite representa- 
tions. Compare Bossuet's Universal History 
with Voltaire's — Rollin with Mitfcrd — Hume 
or Clarendon with Ralph or Mrs. M'Aulay; 
and it will be difficult to believe that these 
different writers are speaking of the samfc 
persons and things. 

The work before us, we have already said, 
is singularly free from faults of this descrip- 
tion. It is written, we do think, in the true 
spirit and temper of historical impartiality. 
But it has faults of a different character; ancL 
with many of the merits, combines some ot 
the appropriate defects, bolh of a contempo- 
rary and philosophical history. Its details are 
too few and too succinct for the former — they 
are too numerous and too rashly selected for 
the latter ; — while the reasonings and specu- 
lations in which perhaps its chief value con- 
sists, seem already to be too often thrown 
away upon matters that cannot long be had 
in remembrance. We must take care not to 
get entangled loo far among the anecdotes — 
but the general reasoning cannot detain us 
very long. 

It is the scope of the book to show that 
France must have a free government — a 
limited monarchy — in express words, a con- 
stitution like that of England. This, Madame 
de Stael says, was all that the body of the 
nation aimed at in 1789 — and this she says 
the great majority of the nation are resolved 
to have still — undeterred by the fatal miscar- 
riage of the last experiment, and undisgusted 
by the revival of ancient pretensions which 
has signalised its close. Still, though she 
maintains this to be the prevailing sentiment 
of the French people, she thinks it not alio^ 
gether unnecessary to combat this discour 
agement and this disgust; — and the great 
object of all that is argumentative in her 
book, is to show that there is nothing in the 
character or condition, or late or earl) - history 
of her countrymen, to render this regulated 
freedom unattainable by them, or to dis- 
qualify tlem fiom the enjoyment of a repre 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



219 



tentative government, or the functions of free 
citizens. 

For this purpose she takes a rapid and mas- 
terly view of the progress of the different 
European kingdoms, from their primitive con- 
dition of feudal aristocracies, to their present 
state of monarchies limited by law, or miti- 
gated by the force of public opinion ; and en- 
deavours to show, that the course has been 
the same in all; and that its unavoidable ter- 
mination is in a balanced constitution like that 
of England. The first change was the reduc- 
tion of the Nobles, — chiefly by the aid which 
the Commons, then first pretending to wealth 
or intelligence, afforded to the Crown — and, 
on this basis, some small states, in Italy and 
Germany especially, erected a permanent 
system of freedom. But the necessities of 
war, and the substitution of hired forces for 
the feudal militia, led much more generally 
to the establishment of an arbitrary or des- 
potical authority; which was accomplished in 
France, Spain, and England, under Louis XL, 
Philip II., and Henry VIII. Then came the 
age of commerce, luxury, and taxes, — which 
necessarily ripened into the age of general 
intelligence, individual wealth, and a sense 
both of right and of power in the people ; — 
and those led irresistibly to a limitation on 
the powers of the Crown, by a representative 
assembly. 

England having less occasion for a land 
army — and having been the first in the career 
of commercial prosperity, led the Way in tins 
great amelioration. But the same general 
principles have been operating in all the Con- 
tinental kingdoms, and must ultimately pro- 
duce the same effects. The peculiar advan- 
tages which she enjoyed did not prevent 
England from being enslaved by the tyranny 
of IJenry VIIL, and Mary ; — and she also ex- 
perienced the hazards, and paid the penalties 
which are perhaps inseparable from the as- 
sertion of popular rights. — She also overthrew 
the monarchy, and sacrificed the monarch in 
her first attempt to set limits to his power. 
The English Commonwealth of 1648, origi- 
nated in as wild speculations as the French 
of 1792 — and ended, like it, in the establish- 
ment of a military tyranny, and a restoration 
which seemed to confound all the asserters 
of liberty in the general guilt of rebellion : — 
Yet all the world is now agreed that this was 
but the first explosion of a flame that could 
neither be extinguished nor permanently re- 
pressed; and that what took place in 1688, 
was but the sequel and necessary consumma- 
tion of what had been begun forty years be- 
fore — and which might and would have been 
accomplished without even the slightest shock 
and disturbance that was then experienced, 
if the Court had profited as much as the 
leaders of the people by the lessons of that first 
experience. Such too, Madame de Stael as- 
sures us, is the unalterable destiny of France ; 
— and it is the great purpose of her book to 
show, that but for circumstances which cannot 
recur — mistakes that cannot be repeated, and 
accidents which never happened twice, even 
the last attempt would have led to that blessed 



consummation — and that every thing is now 
in the fairest train to secure it, without any 
great effort or hazard of disturbance. 

That these views are supported with infinite 
talent, spirit, and eloquence, no one who has 
read the book will probably dispute; and we 
should be sorry indeed to think that they were 
not substantially just. Yet we are not, we 
confess, quite so sanguine as the distinguished 
writer before us; and though we do not doubt 
either that her principles are true, or that her 
predictions will be ultimately accomplished, Ave 
fear that the period of their triumph is not yet 
at hand; and that it is far more doubtful than 
she will allow it to be, whether that triumph 
will be easy, peaceful, and secure. The ex- 
ample of England is her great, indeed her only 
authority ; feut we are afraid that she has run 
the parallel with more boldness than circum- 
spection, and overlooked a variety of particulars 
in our case, to which she could not easily find 
any thing equivalent in that of her country. It 
might be invidious to dwell much on the oppo- 
site character and temper of the two nations ; 
though it is no answer to say, that this character 
is the work of the government, But can Ma- 
dame de Stael have forgotten, that England had 
a parliament and a representative legislature 
for five hundred years before 1648 ; and that it 
was by that organ, and the widely spread and 
deeply founded machinery of the elections on 
which it rested, that the struggle was made, and 
the victory won, which ultimately secured to as 
the blessings of political freedom'? The least 
reflection upon the nature of government, and 
the true foundations of all liberty, will show 
what an immense advantage this was in the 
contest ; and with what formidable obstacles 
those must have to struggle, who are obliged 
to engage in a similar conflict without it. 

All political power, even the most despotic, 
rests at last, as was profoundly observed by 
Hume, upon Opinion. A government is Just, 
or otherwise, according as it promotes, more 
or less, the true interests of the people who 
live under it. But it is Stable and secure, ex- 
actly as it is directed by the opinion of those 
who really possess, and know that they pos- 
sess, the power of enforcing it, and upon whose 
opinion, therefore, it constantly depends; — 
that is, in a military despotism, on the opinion 
of the soldiery ;— ^in all rude and ignorant 
communities, on the opinion of those who 
monopolise the intelligence, the wealth, or the 
discipline which constitute power — the priest- 
hood — the landed proprietors — the armed and 
inured to war; — and, in civil sed societies, on 
the opinion of that larger proportion of the 
people who can bring their joint talents, 
wealth, and strength, to act in concert v» hen 
occasion requires. A government may indeed 
subsist for a time, although opposed to the 
opinion of those classes of persons; but its 
existence must always be precarious, and it 
probably will not subsist long. The natural 
and appropriate Constitution, therefore, is, in 
every case, that which enables ihose who ac 
lually administer the government, to ascertain 
and conform themselves in time to the opinion 
of those who have the power to ovejtum it; 



220 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



and no government whatever can possibly be 
secure where there are no arrangements for 
this purpose. Thus it is plainly for want of a 
proper Despotic Constitution — for want of a 
regular and safe way of getting at the opinions 
of their armies, that the Sultans and other 
Asiatic sovereigns are so frequently beheaded 
by their janissaries or insurgent soldiery : and, 
in like manner, it was for want of a proper 
Feudal Constitution, that, in the decline of that 
system, the King was so often dethroned by 
his rebellious barons, or excommunicated by 
an usurping priesthood. In more advanced 
times, there is the same necessity of conform- 
ing to the prevailing opinion of those more 
extended and diversified descriptions of per- 
sons in whom the power of enforcing and re- 
sisting has come to reside ; and .the natural 
and only safe constitution for such societies, 
must therefore embrace a representative as- 
sembly. A government may no doubt go on, 
in opposition to the opinion of th : s virtual aris- 
tocracy, for a long time after it has come into 
existence. For it is not enough that there is 
wealth, and intelligence, and individual influ- 
ence enough in a community to overbear all 
pretensions opposed to them. It is necessary 
that the possessors of this virtual power should 
be aware of their own numbers, and of the 
conformity of their sentiments or views: and 
it is very late in the progress of society before 
the means of communication are so multiplied 
and improved, as to render this practicable in 
any tolerable degree. Trade and the press, 
however, have now greatly facilitated those 
communications: and in all the central coun- 
tries of Europe, they probably exist in a de- 
gree quite sufficient to give one of the parties, 
at least, very decided impressions both as to 
its interests and its powers. 

In such a situation of things, we cannot 
hesitate to say that a representative govern- 
ment is the natural, and will be the ultimate 
remedy ; but if we find, that even where such 
an institution existed from antiquity, it was 
possible so fatally to miscalculate and mis- 
judge the opinions of the nation, as proved to 
be the case in the reign of our King Charles, 
is it not manifest that there must be tenfold 
risk of such miscalculation in a country where 
no such constitution has been previously 
known, and where, from a thousand causes, 
the true state of the public mind is so apt to be 
oppositely misconceived by the opposite par- 
ties, as it is up to the present hour in France 1 

The great and caidinaluse of a representa- 
tive body in the legislature is to afford a di- 
rect, safe, and legitimate channel, by which 
the public opinion may be brought to act on 
the government : But, to enable it to perform 
this function with success, it is by no means 
enough, that a certain number of deputies are 
sent into the legislature by a certain number 
of electors. Without a good deal of previous 
training, the public opinion itself can neither 
be formed, collected, nor expressed in any au- 
thentic or effectual manner; and the first 
establishment of the representative system 
must be expected to occasion very nearly as 
much disturbance as it may ultimately pre- 



vent. In countries where tnere never have 
been any political elections, and few local 
magistracies, or occasions of provincial and 
parochial assemblages for public purposes, the 
real state of opinion must be substantially 
unknown even to the most observant resident 
in each particular district ; — and its general 
bearing all over the country can never possi- 
bly be learned by the most diligent inquiries, 
or even guessed at with any reasonable de- 
gree of probability. The first deputies, there- 
fore, are necessarily returned, without any 
firm or assured knowledge of the sentiments 
of their constituents — and they again can 
have nothing but the most vague notions of 
the temper in which these sentiments are to 
be enforced — while the whole deputies come 
together without any notion of the disposi- 
tions, or talents, or designs of each other, and 
are left to scramble for distinction and influ- 
ence, according to the measure of their indi- 
vidual zeal, knowledge, or assurance. In 
England, there were no such novelties to be 
hazarded, either in 1640 or in 1688. The 
people of this country have had an elective 
parliament from the earliest period of' their 
history — and, long before either of the periods 
in question, had been trained in every hamlet 
to the exercises of various political franchises, 
and taught to consider themselves as connect- 
ed, by known and honourable ties, with all 
the persons of influence and consideration in 
their neighbourhood, and. through them, by 
an easy gradation with the political leaders 
of the State ; — while, in Parliament itself, the 
place and pretensions of every man were 
pretty accurately known, and the strength of 
each party reasonably well ascertained by 
long and repeated experiments, made under 
all variety of circumstances. The organiza- 
tion and machinery, in short, for collecting 
the public opinion, and bringing it into con- 
tact with the administration, was perfect, and 
in daily operation among us, from very an- 
cient times. The various conduits and chan- 
nels by which it was to be conveyed from its 
first faint springs in the villages and burghs, 
and conducted in gradually increasing streams 
to the central wheels of the government, were 
all deep worn in the soil, and familiarly 
known, with all their levels and connections, 
to every one at ho could be affected by their 
condition. In France, when the new sluices 
were opened, not only were the waters uni- 
versally foul and turbid, but the quantity and 
the currents were all irregular and unknown ; 
and some stagnated or trickled feebly along, 
while others rushed and roared with the vio~ 
lence and the mischief of a torrent. But it is 
time to leave these perplexing generalities, 
and come a little closer to the work before us. 
It was the Cardinal de Richelieu, according 
to Madame de Stael, who completed the de- 
gradation of the French nobility, begun by 
Louis XI. ; — and the arrogance and Spanish 
gravity of Louis XIV., assumed, as she says, 
"pour eloigner de lui la familiarite des juge- 
raens," fixed them in the capacity of tour 
tiers; and put an end to that gay and easy 
tone of communication, which, in the days of 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



221 



Henri IV., had made the task of a courtier 
both less wearisome and less degrading. She 
has no partiality, indeed, for the memory of 
that buckram hero — and is very indignant at 
his being regarded as the patron of literature. 
11 il persecuta Port-Royal, dont Pascal etoit le 
chef; il fit mourir de chagrin Racine ; il exila 
Fenelon ; il s'opposa constamment aux hon- 
neurs qu'on vouloit rendre a La Fontaine, et 
ne professa de Padmiration que pour Boileau. 
La litterature, en l'exaltant avec exces. a bien 
plus fait pour lui qu'il n'a fait pour elle." — 
(Vol. i. p. 36.) In his own person, indeed, he 
outlived his popularity, if not his fame. The 
brilliancy of his early successes was lost in 
his later reverses. The debts he had con- 
tracted lay like a load on the nation ; and the 
rigour and gloominess of his devotion was one 
cause of the alacrity with which the nation 
plunged into all the excesses and profligacy of 
the regency and the suceeding reign. 

That reign — the weakness of Louis XV. — 
the avowed and disgusting influence of his 
mistresses and all their relations, and the na- 
tional disasters which they occasioned — to- 
gether with the general spread of intelligence 
among the body of the people, and the bold 
and vigorous spirit displayed in the writings 
of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, cre- 
ated a general feeling of discontent and con- 
tempt for the government, and prepared the 
way for those more jntrepid reformers who 
were so soon destined to succeed. 

Louis XVI., says Madame de Stael, would 
have been the mildest and most equitable of 
despots, and the most constitutional of consti- 
tutional kings — had he been born to adminis- 
ter either an established despotism, or a 
constitutional monarchy. But he was not 
fitted to fill the throne during the difficult and 
trying crisis of a transition from the one state 
to the other. He was sincerely anxious for 
the happiness and even the rights of his peo- 
ple ; but he had a hankering after the absolute 
power which seemed to be his lawful inherit- 
ance ; and was too easily persuaded by those 
about him to cling to it too long, for his own 
safety, or that of the country. The Queen, 
with the same amiable dispositions, had still 
more of those natural prejudices. M. de Mau- 
repas, a minister of the old school, was com- 
pelled, by the growing disorders of the 
finances, to call to his aid the talents of Tur- 
got and Necker about the year 1780. We 
hear enough, of course, in this book, of the 
latter : But though we can pardon the filial 
piety which has led the author to discuss, at 
so great length, the merit of his plans of 
finance and government, and to dwell on the 
prophetic spirit in which he foresaw and fore- 
told all the consequences that have flowed 
from rejecting them, we have too much re- 
gard for our readers to oppress them, at this 
time of day, with an analysis of the Compte 
Rendu, or the scheme for provincial assem- 
blies. As an historical personage, he must 
have his due share of notice ; and no fame 
can be purer than that to which he is entitled. 
His daughter, we think, has truly described 
the scope of his endeavours, in his first minis- 



try, to have been, " to persuade the King to 
do of himself that justice to the people, to 
obtain which they afterwards insisted for rep- 
resentatives." Such a counsellor, of course, 
had no chance in 1780; and, the year after, 
M. Necker was accordingly dismissed. The 
great objection to him was, that he proposed 
innovations — "et de toutes les innovations, 
celle que les courtisans et les financiers de- 
testent le plus, c'est FEconomie.''' Before 
going out, however, he did a great deal of 
good ; and found means, while M. de Mau- 
repas had a bad fit of gout, to get M. de Sar- 
tine removed from the ministry of marine — a 
personage so extremely diligent in the studies 
belonging to his department, that when M. 
Necker went to see him soon after his appoint- 
ment, he found him in a chamber all hung 
round with maps; and boasting with much 
complacency, that "he could already put his 
hand upon the largest of them, and point, with 
his eyes shut, to the four quarters of the 
world !" 

Calonne succeeded — a frivolous, presump- 
tuous person, — and a financier, in so far as we 
can judge, after the fashion of our poet-lau- 
reate : For he too, it seems, was used to call 
prodigality " a large economy ;" and to assure 
the King, that the more lavish he and his 
court were in their expenses, so much the 
better would it fare with the country. The 
consequence was, that the disorder soon be- 
came irremediable; and this sprightly minis- 
ter was forced at last to adopt Turgot's pro- 
posal of subjecting the privileged orders to 
their share of the burdens — and finally to ad 
vise the convocation of the Notables, in 1787. 

The Notables, however, being all privileged 
persons, refused to give up any of their im 
munities — and they and M. de Calonne were 
dismissed accordingly. Then came the waver- 
ing and undecided administration of M. de 
Brienne, which ended with the resolution to 
assemble the States-General ; — and this was 
the Revolution ! 

Hitherto, says Madame de Stael, the nation 
at large, and especially the lower orders, had 
taken no share in those discussions. The 
resistance to the Court — the complaints — the 
call for reformation, originated and was con- 
fined to the privileged orders — to the Parlia- 
ments — the Nobles and the Clergy. No rev- 
olution indeed can succeed in a civilised 
country, which does not begin at least with 
the higher orders. It was in the parliament 
of Paris, in which the peers of France had 
seats, and which had always been most tena- 
cious of the privileges of its members, that 
the suggestion was first made which set fire 
to the four quarters of the kingdom. In that 
kingdom, indeed, it could hardly fail, as it 
was made in the form of a pun or bon mot. 
They were clamouring against the minister 
for not exhibiting his account of the public 
expenses, when the Abbe Sabatier said — 
u Vous demandez, messieurs, les Stats de rccette 
et de depense — et ce sont les Etats-Generaux 
qu'il nous faut !" — This was eagerly repeated 
in every order of society ; addresses to that 
effect were poured in, in daily heaps; and at 
T 2 



222 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



last M. <le Brierme was obliged to promise, in 
the King's name, that the States-General 
should assemble at the end of five years. 
This delay only inflamed the general impa- 
tience : and the clergy having solemnly de- 
claimed against it, the King was at last obliged 
to announce that they should meet early in 
the following year. M. Necker at the same 
time was recalled to the ministry. 

The States-General were demanded by the 
privileged orders : and, if they really expect- 
ed to find them as they were in 1614, which 
was their last meeting, (though it is not very 
conceivable that they should have overlooked 
the lifference of the times.) we can under- 
stand that they might have urged this demand 
without any design of being very liberal to 
the other orders of the community. This is 
the edifying abstract which Madame de Stael 
has given of the proceedings of that venerable 
assembly. 

" Le Clerge demanda qu'il lui fat permis de lever 
des dimes sur toute espece de fruits et de grains, et 
qu'on defendit de lui faire payer des droits a l'en- 
tree des villes, ou de lui imposer sa part des contri- 
butions pour les chemins ; il reclama de nouvelles 
en l raves a la liberie de la presse. La Noblesse de- 
manda que les principaux emplois fussent tous 
donnes exelusivement aux gentilshommes, qu'on 
interdit aux roturiers les arquebuses, les pistolets.et 
l'usage des chiens, a. moins qu'ils n'eussent les 
jarrets coupes. Elle demanda de plus que les ro- 
turiers pay assent de nouveaux droits seigneurinux 
aux gentilshommes possesseurs de fiefs; que Ton 
supprimat toutes les pensions accordees aux mem- 
bres du tiers etat; mais que les gentilshommes 
fussent exempts de la contrainte par corps, et de 
tout subside sur les denrees de leurs terres; qu'ils 
pussent prendre du sel dans les greniers du roi au 
meme prix que les marchands ; enfin que le tiers 
etat fut oblige de porter un habit different de celui 
des gentilshommes." — Vol. i. p. 1G2. 

The States-General, however, were decreed ; 
— and, that the whole blame of innovation 
might still lie upon the higher orders, M. de 
Brienne, in the name of the King, invited all 
and sundry to make public their notions upon 
the mariner in which that great body should 
be arranged . By the old form, the Nobles, the 
Clergy, and the Commons, each deliberated 
apart — and each had but one voice in the enact- 
ment of laws; — so that the privileged orders 
were always two to one against the other — 
and the course of legislation had always been 
to extend the privileges of the one, and in- 
crease the burdens of the other. Accordingly, 
the tiers etat had long been defined, u la gent 
corveable et taillable, a merci et a misericorde ;" 
— and Madame de Stael, in one of those pas- 
sages that already begin to be valuable to the 
forgetful world, bears this striking testimony 
as to the effect on their actual condition. 

" Les jeunes gens et les etrangers qui n'ont pas 
connu la France avant la revolution, et qui voient 
aujourd'hui le peuple enrichi par la division des 
proprietes et la suppression des dimes et du regime 
feodal, ne peuvent avoir l'idee de la situation de ce 
pays, lorsque la nation portoit le poids de tous les 
privileges. Les partisans de l'esclavage, dans les 
colonies, ont sou vent dit qu'un paysan de France 
etoit plus malheureux qu'un negre. C'etoit un 
argument pour soulager les blancs, mais non pour 
a'endurcir contre les noirs. La misere accroit 



l'ignorance, l'ignorance accroit la misere ; et, 
quand on se demande pourquoi le peuple fran$ois a 
ete si cruel dans !a revolution, on ne peut en trouver 
la cause que dans l'absence de bonheur, qui conduit 
a l'absence de moralite." — Vol. i. p. 79. 

But what made the injustice of this strange 
system of laying the heaviest pecuniary bur- 
dens on the poorest a thousand times more 
oppressive, and ten thousand times more pro- 
voking, was, that the invidious right of ex- 
emption came at last to be claimed, not by 
the true ancient noblesse of France, which, 
Madame de Stael says, did not extend to two 
hundred families, but by hund reds of thousands 
of persons of all descriptions, who had bought 
patents of nobility for the very purpose of ob- 
taining this exemption. There was nothing 
in the structure of French society that was 
more revolting, or called mote loudly for re- 
formation, than the multitude and the pre- 
tensions of this anomalous race. They were 
most jealously distinguished from the tiue 
original Noblesse; which guarded its purity 
indeed with such extreme rigour, that no per- 
son was allowed to enter any of the royal 
carriages whose patent of nobility was not 
certified by the Court heralds to bear date 
prior to the year 1400 ; and yet they not only 
assumed the name and title of nobles, but 
were admitted, as against the people, into a 
full participation of all their most offensive 
privileges. It is with justice, therefore, that 
Madame de Stael reckons as one great cause 
of the Revolution, — 

" Cette foule de gentilshommes du second ordre, 
anoblis de la vei'le, soit par les lettres de noblesse 
que les rois donnoient comme faisant suite a l'af- 
franchissement des Gaulois, soit par les charges 
venales de secretaire du roi, etc., qui associoient de 
nouveaux individus aux droits et aux privileges des 
anciens genii!shommes.„ La nation se seroit soumise 
volontiers a. la preeminence des families hisioriqucs; 
et je n'exagere pas en affirmant qu'il n ? y en a pas 
plus de deux cents en France. Mais les cent mil'e 
nobles et les cent mille pretres qui vouloient av«rw 
des privileges, a 1'egal de ceux de MM. de Moni- 
morenci, de Grammont, de Ciillon, etc., revol- 
toient generalement ; cardesnegocians, des homines 
de lettres, des proprietaircs, des capitalizes, ne 
pouvoient comprendre la superiorite qu'on vouloit 
accorder a cette noblesse acquise a prix de reve- 
rences ou d'argent, et a laquelle vingt-cinq ans de 
date suffisoient pour siegre dans la chambre des 
nobles, et pour jouir des privileges dont les plus 
honorables membres du tiers etat se voyoient pi ives. 

"La chambre des pairs en Angleierre est une 
magistrature patricienne, fondee sans doute sur les 
anciens souvenirs de la chevaleiie, mais tout-a-fait 
associee a des institutions d'une nature tres-diffe- 
rente. Un merite distingu6 dans le commerce, et 
surtout dans la jurisprudence, en ouvre journelle- 
ment l'entree; et les droits representatifs que les 
pairs exercent dans 1'etat, attestent a la nation que 
e'est pour le bien public que leurs rangs sont insti- 
tues. Mais quel avantage les Frangois pouvoient- 
ils trouver dans ces vicomtes de la Garonne, ou 
dans ces marquis de la Loire, qui ne payoient pas 
seulement leur part des impots de l'etat, et que le 
roi lui-meme ne recevoit pas a sa cour; puisqu'il 
falloit faire des preuves de plus de quatre siecles 
pour y etre admis, et qu'ils etoient a peine anoblis 
depuis cinquante ans ? La vanite des gens de cette 
classe ne pouvoit s'exercer que sur leurs inferieurs, 
et ces inferieurs, e'etoient vingt-quatre millions 
d'hommes."— Vol. i. p. 166—168. 

Strange as it may appear, there was no law 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



223 



or usage fixing the number of the deputies who 
might be returned; and though, by the usage 
ol 1614, and some former assemblies, the 
three orders were allowed each but one vdtce 
in the legislature, there were earlier examples^ 
of the whole meeting and voting as individu- 
als in the same assembly. M. de Brienne, as 
we have seen, took the sapient course of call- 
ing all the pamphleteers of the kingdom into 
council upon this emergency. It was fixed 
at last, though not without difficulty, that the 
deputies of the people should be equal in 
number to those of the other two classes to- 
gether; and it is a trait worth mentioning, 
that the only committee of Nobles who voted 
for this concession, was that over which the 
present King of France (in 1818) presided, 
If it meant any thing, however, this conces- 
sion implied that the whole body was to de- 
liberate in common, and to vote individually; 
and yet, incredible as it now appears, the fact 
is that the King and his ministers allowed the 
deputies to be elected, and actually to assem- 
ble without having settled that great question, 
or even made any approach to its settlement ! 
Of all the particular blunders that ensured or 
accelerated what was probably inevitable, 
this has always appeared to us to be one of 
the most inconceivable. The point, how- 
ever, though not taken up by any authority, 
was plentifully discussed among the talkers 
of Paris; and Madame de Stael assures us, 
that the side of the tiers etat was at that time 
the most fashionable in good company, as 
w r ell as the most popular with the bulk of the 
nation. "Tous ceux et toutes celles qui, dans 
la haute corapagnie de France, influoient sur 
Popinion, parloient vivement en faveur de la 
cause de la nation. La mode etoit dans ce 
sens. C'etoit le resultat de tout le dix-huit- 
ieme siecle ; et les vieux prejuges. qui com- 
battoient encore pour les anciennes institu- 
tions, avoient beaucoup moins de force alors, 
qu'ils n'en ont eu a aucune epoque pendant 
les vingt-cinq annees suivantes. Enfin l'a- 
scendant de Pesprit public etoit tel, qu'il 
entraina le parlement lui-meme." — (Vol. i. 
pp. 172, 173.) The clamour that was made 
against them was not at that time by the ad- 
vocates of the royal prerogative, but by in- 
terested individuals of the privileged classes. 
On the contrary, Madame de Stael asserts 
positively, that the popular party was then 
disposed, as of old, to unite with the sovereign 
against the pretensions of those bodies, and 
that the sovereign was understood to partici- 
pate in their sentiments. The statement cer- 
tainly seems to derive no slight confirmation 
from the memorable words which were ut- 
tered at the time, in a public address by the 
reigning King of France, then the first of the 
Princes of the blood. — "Une grande revolution 
etoit pret, dit Monsieur (aujourd'hui Louis 
XVIII.) a la municipalite de Paris, en 1789; 
le roi, par ses intentions, ses vertus, et son 
rang supreme, devoit en etre le chefl" We 
perfectly agree with Madame de Stael — "que 
toute la sagesse de la circonstance etoit dans 
ces paroles." 

Nothing, says Madame de Stael, can be 



imagined more striking than the first sight of 
the twelve hundred deputies of France, a? 
they passed in solemn procession to heai 
mass at Notre Dame, the day before the 
meeting of the States-General. * 

" La Noblesse se trouvant dechue de sa splcn- 
deur, par 1' esprit de eounisan, pur I'alliage dej 
anoblis, et par une longue paix ; le Clerge ne pos- 
sedant plus l'ascendanl des lumieres qu'il avoit eu 
dans les temps barbares ; l' importance des deputes 
du Tiers etat en etoit augmentee. Leurs habits et 
leurs manteaux noirs, leurs regards assures, leur 
uombre imposant, attiroicnt Fatten l ion sur cuxt 
Des hommes de letires, des negocians, un grand 
nombre d'avocats composoient ce troisieme ordre- 
Quelques nobles s'etoient fait nommer deputes du 
tiers, el parmi ces nobles on remarquoit surtout le 
Comte de Mirabeau: 1' opinion qu'on avoit de son 
esprit etoit singulieremeut augmentee par la peur 
que faisoit son immoralite; et oependant c'est ceite 
immoralite meme qui a diminue l'lnfluence que ses 
etonnantes i'acultes devoient lui valoir. II etoit 
difficile de ne pas le regarder long-temps, quand on 
1'avoit une fois aperc,u : Son immense chevelure 
le distinguoit entre tous : on eut dit que sa force en 
dependoit comme celle de Samson ; son visago 
empruntoit de l'expression de sa laideur meme; et 
toute sa personnc donnoit l'idee d'une puissance 
irreguliere, mais enfin d'une puissance telle qu'on 
se la representeroit dans un tribun de peuple. 

"Aucun nom propre, excepte le sicn, n'ctoit 
encore celebre dans les six cents deputes du tiers ; 
mais il y avoit beaucoup d'homines honorables, et 
beaucoup d'homines a craindre." — Vol. i. pp. 185, 
186. 

The first day of their meeting, the deputies 
of course insisted that the whole three orders 
should sit and vote together; and the majority 
of the nobles and clergy of course resisted : — 
And this went on for nearly two months, in 
the face of the mob of Paris and the people 
of France — before the King and his Council 
could make up their own minds on the mat- 
ter! The inner cabinet, in which the Queen 
and the Princes had the chief sway, had now- 
taken the alarm, and was for resisting the 
pretensions of the Third Estate; while M, 
Necker, and the ostensible ministers, were for 
compromising with them, while their power 
was not yet proved by experience, nor their 
pretensions raised by victory. The Ultras re 
lied on the arm} 7 , and were for dismissing the; 
Legislature as soon as they had granted a few 
taxes. M. Necker plainly told the King, that 
he did not think that the army could be relied 
on; and that he ought to make up his mind 
to reign hereafter under a constitution like 
that of England. There were fierce disputes, 
and endless consultations; and at length, 
within three weeks after the States weie 
opened, and before the Commons had gained 
any decided advantage, M. Necker obtained 
the full assent both of the King and Queen to 
a declaration, in which it was to be announced 
to the States, that they should sit and vote as 
one body in all questions of taxation, and in 
two chambers only in all other questions. 
This arrangement, Madame de Stael assures 
us, would have satisfied the Commons at the 
time, and invested the throne with the great 
strength of popularity. But, after a full and 
deliberate consent had been given by both 
their Majesties, the party about the Queen 



2? 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



found means to put off from day to day the 
publication of ihe important instrument; and 
a whole month was unpardonably wasted in 
idle discussions; during which, nearly one 
half of the%iobles and clergy had joined the 
deputies of the Commons, and taken the name: 
of the National Assembly. Their popularity 
and confidence had been dangerously in- 
creased, in the mean time, by their orators 
and pamphleteers; and the Court had become 
the object of suspicion and discontent, both by 
the rumour of the approach of its armies to 
the capital, and by what Madame de Stael 
calls the accidental exclusion of the deputies 
from their ordinary place of meeting — which 
gave occasion to the celebrated and theatrical 
oath of the Tennis-court. After all, Madame 
de Stael says, much might have been regained 
or saved, by issuing M. Necker's declaration. 
But the very night before it was to be deliv- 
ered, the council was adjourned, in conse- 
quence of a billet from the Queen : — two new 
councillors and two princes of the blood were 
called to take part in the deliberations ; and 
it was suddenly determined, that the King 
should announce it as his pleasure, that the 
Three Estates should meet and vote in their 
three separate chambers, as they had done 
in 1614! 

M. Necker, full of fear and sorrow, refused 
to go to the meeting at which the King was 
to make this important communication. It 
was made, however — and received with mur- 
murs of deep displeasure ; and, when the 
Chancellor ordered the deputies to withdraw 
to their separate chamber, they answered, 
that they were the National Assembly, and 
would stay where they were ! The whole 
visible pojjulation seconded this resolution, 
with indications of a terrible and irresistible 
violence : Perseverance, it was immediately 
seen, would have led to the most dreadful 
consequences; and the same night the Queen 
entreated M. Necker to take the management 
of the State upon himself, and solemnly en- 
gaged to follow no councils but his. The 
minister complied; — and immediately the 
obnoxious order was recalled, and a royal 
mandate was issued to the Nobles and the 
Clergy, to join the deliberations of the Tiers 
etat. 

If these reconciling measures had been sin- 
cerely followed out, the country and the mon- 
archy might yet perhaps have been saved. 
But the party of the Ultras — " qui parloit avec 
beaucoup de dedain de l'autorite du roi d'An- 
gleterre, et vouloit faire considerer comme un 
attentat, la pensee de reduire un roi de France 
an miserable sort du monarque Britannique" 
— this misguided party — had still too much 
weight in the royal councils ; and, while they 
took advantage of the calm produced by M. 
Necker's measures and popularity, did not 
cease secretly to hasten the march of M. de 
Broglie with his German regiments upon Paris 
— with the design, scarcely dissembled, of 
employing them to overawe, and, if neces- 
sary, to disperse the assembly. Considering 
from whom her information is derived, we 
can scarcely refuse our implicit belief to the 



following important statement, which hat 
never yet been made on equal authority. 

0' M. Necker n'ignoroit pas le veritable objet 
pour lequel on faisoit avancer les troupes, Lien 
qu'on vou vit le^ lui cacher. L'intention de la cour 
etoit de re ,nir a Compiegne tous les merr.bres des 
irois ordres qui n'avoient point favoiise le systems 
des innovations, ei la de leur faire consentir a la hate 
les inipots et les emprunts dont elle avoit besoin, 
afin de les renvoyer ensuite ! Comme un tel projet 
ne pouvoit etre seconde par M. Necker, on se prrv 
posoit de le renvoyer des que la force mi lit aire seroit 
rassemblee. Cinquante avis par jour l'informoient 
de sa situation, et il ne lui etoit pas possible d'en dou- 
ter ; mais il savoit aussi que, dans les circonstances 
ou I'on se trouvoit alors, il ne pouvoit quitter sa 
place sans confirmer les bruits qui se repardoient 
sur les mesures violentes que I'on preparoit a. la 
cour. Le roi s'etant resolu a ces mesures, M. 
Necker ne voulvit pas y prendre part, mais il ne 
vouloit pas non plus donner le signal de s'y opposer ; 
et il restoit la comme uue sentinelie qu'on laissoit 
encore a son poste, pour tromper les attaquans sur 
la manoeuvre." — Vol. i. pp. 231 — 233. 

He continued, accordingly, to go every day 
to the palace, where he was received with 
cold civility ; and at last, when the troops 
were all assembled, he received an order in 
the middle of the night, commanding him in- 
stantly to quit France, and to let no one know 
of his departure. This was on the night of the 
11th of July; — and as soon as his dismissal 
was known, all Paris rose in insurrection — an 
army of 100,000 men was arrayed in a night 
— and, on the 14th, the Bastile was demol- 
ished, and the King brought as a prisoner to 
the Hotel de Ville, to express his approbation 
of all that had been done ! M. Necker, who 
had got as far as Brussels, was instantly re- 
called. Upwards of two millions of men took 
up arms throughout the country — and it was 
manifest that a great revolution Mas already 
consummated ! 

There is next a series of lively and mas- 
terly sketches of the different parties in the 
Constituent Assembly, and their various lead- 
ers. Of these, the most remarkable, by far, 
was Mirabeau ; who appeared in opposition 
to Necker, like the evil spirit of the Revo- 
lution contending W'ith its better angel. 
Madame de Stael says of him, that he was 
"Tribun par calcul, et Aristocrat par gout." 
There never, perhaps, was an instance of so 
much talent being accompanied and neutral- 
ized by so much profligacy. Of all the 
daring spirits that appeared on that troubled 
scene, no one, during his life, ever dared to 
encounter him ; and yet, such was his want 
of principle, that no one party, and no one 
individual, trusted him with their secrets. 
His fearlessness, promptitude, and energy, 
overbore all competition; and his ambition 
seemed to be, to show how the making or the 
marring of all things depended upon his good 
pleasure. Madame de Stael confirms what 
has often been said of his occasional diffi- 
culty in extempore speaking, and of his ha- 
bitually employing his friends to write his 
speeches and letters; but, after his death, 
she says none of them could ever produce 
for themselves any thing equal to what they 
used to catch from his inspiration. In de- 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



225 



bate, he was artful when worsted, and mer- 
ciloss when successful. What he said of 
Abbe Maury, was true of all his opponents — 
'■ Quand il a raison, nous disputons ; quaiul il 
a tort, jc Vecrase! 71 

Opposed to this, and finely contrasted with 
it, is the character of M. de la Fayette — the 
purest, the most temperate, and therefore the 
most inflexible friend of rational liberty in 
France. Considering the times in which he 
lias lived, and tlie treatment he has met 
with, it is a proud thing for a nation to be 
able to name one of its public characters, to 
whom this hisrh testimony ean be borne, 
without risk of contradiction. "Dermis le 
depart de M. de la Fayette pour PAmerique, 
il y a quarante ans, on ne pent eiter ni une 
action, ni une parole de lui qui n'ait etc dans 
la meme ligno, sans qu'aueun interet per- 
nanel se sort jamais mele a sa conduito." 
The Abbe Sieves seems to us a little like our 
Bentham. At all events, this little sketch of 
him is worth preserving. 

"II avoit niene jusqu'a quarante ans une vie 
solitaire, reflcehissant sur les questions potitiques, 
et porianl une rrande force d" abstraction dans cette 
e'fiule ; mais il etoit peu fait pour eommuniqneravcc 
lea entrea bommea, taut il aVritoil aisement de leurs 
travers, et taut il lea blessoil par Fes sieriB, Tonte- 
tois. comme il avail mi esprit superieurct des faeons 
de s'oxnrimer laconiques et tranchantes, e'etoit la 
mode dans I'assemblee de lui montrer on respect 
presqae Bopersthteux. Mirabeau ne demandoit pas 
rnieux que d'aceorder an silence de I'Abbe Sieves 
le pas sur sa propre eloquence; car ce peine de 
rivalite n'est pas redoutable. Oncroyoil a Sieves. 
a cct homme mysterieuw des secrets snr les con- 
stitutions, donf on esperoit toujours des etlVts eton- 
nans quand il les reveleroit. Quelquea jeunes 
gens, et memo dee espies d'une grande force, pro- 
feeeoienl la plus haste admiration pour lui; et Ton 
e'accordoit a le loner aux depons de tout autre, 
parce qu'il ne Be faisoit jamais juger en entier, dans 
income circonatance. Ce qn'on savoit avec certi- 
tude, e'est qu'il detesloit lea distinctions nobiliaires ; 
et cependanl il avoii conserve de son etat de pretre 
un attacheinent an clerge', qui se manifests le plus 
olairement du tnonde lore de la suppression des 
dimes. lis varfent etre 1 lores, el ne save/it pea 
iustes ! disoit-il a cette occasion; et toutes les 
failles de I'assemblee e'oient renfermces dans ces 
paroles."— Vol. i. pp.305. 906. 

The most remarkable party, perhaps, in the 
Assembly was that of the Aristocrats, con- 
*istin<2; chiefly of the Nobles and Clergy, and 
about thirty of the Commons. In the situa- 
tion in which they were placed, one would 
hare expected a pood deal of anxiety, bit- 
terness, or enthusiasm, from them. But, 
in Fiance, things affect people differently. 
Nothing can be more characteristic than the 
following powerful sketch. u Ce parti, qui 
avoit protoste centre toutes les resolutions ile 
I'assemblee, n'y sssistoit que par prudence. 
Tout ce qu'on y faisoit lui paroissoit insolent, 
mais trrs-pcu serieu.v .' taut il trouvoit ridicule 
cette deeouverte du dix-huitieme sieele. tine 
nation ! — tandis qu'on n'avoit eu jusi]iralors 
que des nobles, des pieties, et du peuple !" — 
(Vol. i. p. 298.) They had their counterpart, 
however, on the opposite side. The specu- 
lative, refining, and philanthropic reformers, 
uere precisely a match for them. There is 
29 



infinite talent, truth, and pathos, in the fol- 
lpwing hasty observations. 

"lis gagndreni de I'aseendanl dans raaaembles* 
en se moquani des modexea, comme ai la modera- 
tion (toil de la foibleaae, ct qu'eux aeusi fuaeenl des 

earacteres forts. On les voyoit. dans les salles et 
sur les bancs des deputes, lourner en ridicule qm- 
conque s'avisoit de leur reptvscuter qu'avant BUS 
les homines avoient existe en soeieie ; que les 
eerivains avoieni pense. et que I* Angle terra emit 
en possession de quelque liberie. On em dit qu'on 
leur repeioit les contes de leur nounice, tant ils 
ecoutuient avec impatience, tant ils prononooient 
avec dedain de certames phrases bien exagsreea et 
bien decisives, sur l'impossibilite d'admettre un 
senat hereditaire, un senat menie a vie, un veto ab- 
solu, une condition de proprieie, enlin tout ce qui, 
disoient-ils, attentoit a la souverainete du peuple! 
Ils [wrtoicnt la fat u it e des cours dans la cause demo- 
craliifue; et plusieurs deputes du tiers eloient, tout 
a la Ibis, eblouis par leurs belles manures de fef>- 
tilshoinnies, et captives par leurs doctrines demo- 
crat iques. 

" Ces chefs elesrans du parti populaire vouloient 
cntrer dans le ministere. lis soubaitoient de con- 
duire les affaires jusqu'au point on |*onaaroil besoin 
d'eux; niais. dans cette rapide dcscenie, le char ne 
s'arreta point a leurs relais ; lis n'etoient point con- 
spirateurs, mais ilaae eonfioiem tropen leur aottvoir 
sur rassemblee, et se flattoieni de rebver de tronc 
des qu'ils 1'auroient fait arriver jusqu'a leur portee. 
Mais, quand ils voulurent de bonne foi reparer le 
mal deja fait, il n'etoit plus temps. On ne sauroit 
compter COmbien de desastres auroient jni etre 
^pargnes a la France, si ce parti de jeunes gens se 
fut reuni avec les moderes : car, avatit les cvene- 
mens du 6 Octobre, lorsque le roi n'avoit point etc 
enlcve de \crsailles, et que Tannce Francoise, 
repandue dans les provinces, consenroit encore 
quelque respect pour le tronc. les circonstances 
Otoienl telles qu'on pouvoit etablir Une monarebie 
raisonnable en France." — Vol. i. pp. 809 — 305. 

It is a curious proof of the vivaeiousness of 
vulgar prejudices, that Madame de Stael 
should have thought it necessary, in 1816, to 
refute, in a separate chapter, the popular 

opinion that the disorders in France in 1790 
ami 1791 were fomented by the hired agents 
of England. 

There is a long and very interesting ac- 
count of the outrages and horrors of the 5th 
o( October 1789, and of the tumultuous con- 
veyance of the captive monarch from Ver- 
sailles to Paris, by a murderous and infuriated 
mob. Madame de Stael was herself a spec- 
tatress of the whole scene in the interior of 
the palace ; and though there is not much that 
is new in her account, we cannot resist mak- 
ing one little extract. After the mob had 
filled the courts of the palace, — 

" La reine parut nlors dans le salon ; ses eheveux 
etoient en desordre. sa figure etoii pale, mais dlgne, 

et tout, dans sa person ne, rrappoil ['imagination: le 

peuple demanda qu'elle parut sur le baleon ; et, 
comme tome la cour. app.lce la cour de marbre, 
etoit remplie d'bommes qui tcnoient en main des 
amies a feu, on put apercevoir dans la phyaionomia 
tie la reine ce qu'elle redoutoit. Neanmoins rile 
s'avanci, sans ht'sitrr. avec ses deux enfaus qui htt 
servoient de sauveiiarde. 

" La multitude parut attendrie. en voyant la reine 
comme mere, et les fureurs politiques s'apaiserent 
a cet aspect ; ceux qui, la nuit mdme, avoient. peut- 
j^'ire voulu l'a»sassiner, portcrent son nom jusqu'au* 
nues. 

•' La reine, en sortant du baleon, s'npprocha de 
ma mere, et lui dit, avec des sanglots etoutfes : Il» 
vont nous forcer, le roi et mot, a nous rendrea Pan. 



226 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



— avec les tetes de nos gardes du corps portees de- 
vant nous au bout de leurs piques! Sa prediction 
fail lit s'accomplir. Ainsi la reine et le roi furent 
amenes dans leur capitale ! Nous revinmes a Paris 
par une autre route, qui nous eloignoit de cet affreux 
spectacle : c'etoit a t ravers le bois de Boulogne que 
nous passames, et le temps etoit d'une rare beaute; 
I'air agitoit a peine les arbres, et le soleil avoit assez 
d'eclat pour ne laisser rien de sombre dan3 la cam- 
pagne: aucun objet exterieur ne repondoit a notre 
tristesse. Combien de fois ce contraste, entre la 
beauie de la nature et les souffrances imposees par 
les hommes, ne se renouvelle-t-il pas dans le cours 
de la vie ! 

" Quel spectacle en effet que cet ancien palais des 
Tuileries, abandonne depuis plus d'un siecle, par ses 
augustes notes ! La vetuste des objets exterieurs 
agissoit sur l'imagination, et la faisoit errer dans les 
temps passes. Comme on etoit loin de prevoir l'ar- 
rivee de la famille royale, tres-peu d'appartemens 
eloient habitables, et la reine avoit eie obligee de 
faire dresser des 1 its de camp pour ses enf'ans, dans 
la chambre meme ou elle recevoit ; elle nous en fit 
des excuses, en ajoutant : Vous savez que je ne 
m 1 ailendois pas a venir id. Sa physionomie etoit 
belle et irritee ; on ne peut Poublier quand on l'a 
vue.— Vol. i. pp. 347—349. 

It has always struck us as a singular defect 
m all the writers who have spoken of those 
scenes of decisive violence in the early history 
of the French Revolution; such as the 14th of 
July and this of the 6th of October, that they 
do not so much as attempt to explain by what 
instigation they were brought about — or by 
w^hom the plan of operations was formed, and 
the means for carrying it into execution pro- 
vided. That there was concert and prepara- 
tion in the business, is sufficiently apparent 
from the magnitude and suddenness of the 
assemblage, and the skill and systematic per- 
severance with which they set about accom- 
plishing their purposes. Yet w r e know as little, 
at this hour, of the plotters and authors of the 
mischief, as w r e do of the Porteous mob. 
Madame de Stael contents herself with saying, 
that these dreadful scenes signalized " Pave- 
nement des Jacobins;" but seems to excul- 
pate all the known leaders of that party from 
any actual concern in the transaction; — and 
yet it was that transaction that subverted the 
monarchy ! 

Then came the abolition of titles of no- 
bility — the institution of a constitutional cler- 
gy — and the federation of 14lh July 1790. 
In spite of the storms and showers of blood 
which we have already noticed, the political 
horizon, it seems, still looked bright in the 
eyes of France. The following picture is 
lively — and is among the traits which history 
does not usually preserve — and which, w r hat 
she does preserve, certainly would not enable 
future ages to conjecture. 

" Les etrangers ne sauroient concevoir le charme 
et I'eclat tant vante de la societe de Paris, s'ils 
n'ont vu la France que depuis vingt ans : Mais on 
peut dire avec verite, que jamais cette societe n'a 
ete aussi brillante et aussi serieuse tout ensemble, 
que pendant les trois ou quatre premieres annees de 
la revolution, a compter de 1788 jusqu'a la fin de 
1791. Comme les affaires politiques etoient encore 
entre les mains de la premiere classe, toute la vigueur 
de la liberte et toute la grace de la politesse ancienne 
se reunissoient dans les memes personnes. Les 
hommes du tiers etat, distifigues par leurs lumieres 
et leurs talens, se joignoient a ccs geniilshommes 



plus fiers de leur propre merite que des privilege* 
de leur corps; et les plus hautes questions que 
l'ordre social ait jamais fait naitre etcieni traiices 
par les esprits les plus capables de les entendre et 
de les discuter. 

" Ce qui nuit aux agremens de la societe en An- 
gleterre, ce sont les occupations et les interetsd'un 
etat depuis long-temps representatif. Ce qui ren- 
doit au contraire la societe fran§oise un pen super- 
ficielle, e'etoient les loisirs de la monarchic. Mais 
tout a coup la force de la liberte vint se meler a 
l'elegance de l'arisiocratie ; dans aucun pays ni 
dans aucun temps, l'art de parler sous toutes ses 
formes n'a ete aussi remarquable que dans les pre- 
mieres annees de la revolution. 

"L'assemblee constituante, comme je 1'ai deja 
dit, ne suspendit pas un seul jour la liberte de la 
presse. Ainsi ceux qui souffVoient de se trouver 
constamment en minorite dans l'assemblee, avoient 
au moins la satisfaction de se moquer de tout le 
parti contraire. Leurs journaux faisoient de spiri*- 
uels calembours sur les circonstances les plus im- 
portantes; c'etoit l'histoire du monde changee en 
commerage ! Tel est partout le caractere de faris- 
tocratie des cours. C'est la derniere fois, helas ! 
que l'esprit franchise se soit montre dans tout son 
eclat; c'est la derniere fois, et a queiques egards 
aussi la premiere, que la societe de Paris ait pu 
donner l'idee de cette communication des esprits 
superieurs entre eux, la plus noble jouissance dont 
la nature humaine soit capable. Ceux qui ont vecu 
dans ce temps ne sauroient s'empecher d'avouer 
qu'on n'a jamais vu ni tant de vie ni tant d'esprit 
nulle part ; Ton peut juger, par la foule d'hommes 
de talens que les circonstances developperent alors, 
ce que seroient les Francois s'ils eloient appeles a 
se meler des affaires publiques dans la rout tracee 
par une constitution sage et sincere." — Vol. i. pp. 
383—386. 

Very soon after the federation, the King en- 
tered into secret communications with Mira- 
beau, and expected by his means, and those 
of M. Bouille and his army, to emancipate 
himself from the bondage in which he was 
held. The plan was, to retire to Compiegne; 
and there, by the help of the army, to purge 
the Assembly, and restore the royal authority. 
Madame de Stael says, that Mirabeau insisted 
for a constitution like that of England ; but, 
as an armed force was avowedly the organ by 
which he was to act, one may be permitted 
to doubt, whether he could seriously expect 
this to be granted. In the mean time, the 
polic3^ of the King was to appear to agree to 
every thing; and, as this appeared to M. 
Necker, who was not in the secret, to be .an 
unjustifiable abandonment of himself and the 
country, he tendered his resignation, and was 
allowed to retire — and then followed the death 
of Mirabeau, and shortly after the flight and 
apprehension of the King — the revision of 
the constitution — and the dissolution of the 
Constituent Assembly, with a self-denying or- 
dinance, declaring that none of its members 
should be capable of being elected into the 
next legislature. 

There is an admirable chapter on the emi- 
gration of 1791 — that emigration, in the spirit 
of party and of bon ton, which at once exasper- 
ated and strengthened the party who ought to 
have been opposed, and irretrievably injured a 
cause which was worse than deserted, when 
foreigners were called in to support it. Ma- 
dame de Stael is decidedly of opinion, that 
the Nobles should have staid, and resisted 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



227 



<vhat was wrong — or submitted to it. u Mais 
\ls ont trouve plus simple d'invoquer la gen- 
darmerie Europeenne, alin de mettre Paris a 
raison." The fate of their country, which 
ought to have been their only concern, was 
always a secondary object, in their eyes, to 
the triumph of their own opinions — " ils Pont 
vonlu comme un jaloux sa maitresse — fidelle 
au morte," — and seem rather to have con- 
sidered themselves as allied to all the other 
nobles of Europe, than as a part of the French 
nation. 

The Constituent Assembly made more laws 
in two years than the English parliament had 
done in two hundred. The sncceeding as- 
sembly made as many — with this difference, 
that while the former aimed, for the most 
part, at general reformation, the last were all 
personal and vindictive. The speculative re- 
publicans were for some time the leaders of 
this industrious body ; — and Madame de Stael, 
in describing their tone and temper while in 
power, has given a picture of the political 
tractability of her countrymen, which could 
scarcely have been endured from a stranger. 

" Aucun argument, aucune inquietude n'etoient 
ecoutes par ses chefs. Ils repondoient^ aux obser- 
vations de la sagesse, et de la sagesse desinteressee, 
par un sourire moqueur, symptome de l'aridite qui 
resulte de 1' amour-propre : On s'epuisoit a leur 
rappeler les circonstance3, et a leur en deduire les 
causes ; on passoit tour a. tour de la theorie a l'ex- 
perience, et de l'experience a la theorie, pour leur 
en montrer l'identite ; et, s'ils consentoient a re- 
pondre, ils nioient les faits les plus authentiques, 
et combattoient les observations les plus evidentes, 
en y opposant quelques maximes communes, bien 
qu'exprimees avec eloquence. Ils se regardoient 
entre eux, comme s'ils avoient ete seuls dignes 
de s'entendre, et s'encourageoient par l'idee que 
tout etoit pusillanimite dans la resistance a leur 
maniere de voir. Tels sont les signes de l'esprit 
de parti chez les Francois ! Le dedain pour leurs 
adversaiies en est la base, et le dedain s' oppose 
toujours a. la connoissance de la verite." — ''Mais 
dans les debats politiques," she adds, " oil la masse 
d'une nation prend part, il n'y a que la voix des 
evenemens qui soit entendue ; les argumens n'in- 
epirent que le desir de leur repondre." 

The King, who seemed for a time to have 
resigned himself to his fate, was roused at 
last to refuse his assent to certain brutal de- 
crees against the recusant priests — and his 
palace and his person were immediately in- 
vaded by a ferocious mob — and he was soon 
after compelled with all his family to assist at 
the anniversary of the 14th July, where, ex- 
cept the plaudits of a few children, every 
thing was dark and menacing. The following 
few lines appear to us excessively touching. 

" II falloit le caractere de Louis XVI., ce carac- 
tere de martyr qu'il n'a jamais dementi, pour sup- 
porter ainsi une pareille situation. Sa maniere de 
marcher, sa contenance avoient quelque chose de 
particulier. Dans d'autres occasions, on auroit pu 
lui souhaiierp'.us de grandeur ; mais il suffisoitdans 
ce moment de rester en tout le meme, pour paroitre 
sublime. Je suivis de loin sa tete poudree au mi- 
lieu de ces tetes a cheveux noirs ; son habit, encore 
brode comme jadis, ressortoit a cote du costume 
des gens du peuple qui se pressoient autour de lui. 
Quand il monta les degres de l'autel, on crut voir 
la victime sainte, s'offrant volontairement en sacri- 
fice ! II redescendit ; et, traversant de nouveau 



les rangs en desordre, il revint s'asseoir aupres de 
la reine et de ses enfans. Depuis ce jour, le peuple 
ne l'a plus revu — que sur l'echafaud !" 

Vol. ii. pp. 54, 55. 

Soon after, the allies entered France j the 
King refused to take shelter in the army ol 
M. de la Fayette at Compiegne. His palace 
was stormed, and his guards butchered, on 
the 10th of August. He was committed to 
the Temple, arraigned, and executed ! and 
the reign of terror, with all its unspeakable 
atrocities, ensued. 

We must pass over much of what is most 
interesting in the book before us; for we find, 
that the most rapid sketch we can trace, would 
draw us into great length. Madame de Stael 
thinks that the war was nearly unavoidable 
on the part of England; and, after a brief 
character of our Fox and Pitt, she says, 

" II pouvoit etre avantageux toutefois a l'Angle- 
terre que M. Pitt fut le chef de l'etat dans la crise la 
plus dangereuse ou ce pays se soit trouve; mais il 
ne l'etoit pas moins, qu'un esprit aussi etendu que 
celui de M. Fox souiint les principes malgre les 
circonstances ; et sut preserver les dieux penates 
des amis de la liberte, au milieu de l'incendie. Ce 
n'est point pour conienter les deux partis que je les 
loue ainsi tous les deux, quoiqu'ils aient soutenu 
des opinions tres-opposees. Le «;ontraire en France 
devroit peut-etre avoir lieu; les factions diverses y 
sont presque toujours egalement blamables : Mais 
dans un pays libre, les partisans du ministere et 
les membres de l'opposition peuvent avoir tous rai- 
son a leur maniere ; et ils font souvent chacun du 
bien selon l'epoque. Ce qui importe seulement, 
c'est de ne^ pas prolonger le pouvoir acquis par 
la lutte, apres que le danger est passe." 

Vol. ii. p. 113. 

There is an excellent chapter on the ex- 
cesses of the parties and the people of France 
at this period ; which she refers to the sudden 
exasperation of those principles of natural 
hostility by which the high and the low are 
always in some degree actuated, and which 
are only kept from breaking out by the mu- 
tual concessions which the law, in ordinary 
times, exacts from both parties. The law was 
now T annihilated in that country, and the natu- 
ral antipathies were called into uncontrolled 
activity ; the intolerance of one party having 
no longer any check but the intolerance of 
the other. 

"Les qnerelles des patriciens et des plebeiens, 
la guerre des esclaves, celle des paysans, celle qui 
dure encore entre les nobles et les bourgeois, toutes 
ont eu egalement pour origine la difficulte de main- 
tenir la societe humaine, sans desordre et sans in- 
justice. Les hommes ne pourroient exister aujour- 
d'hui, nisepares, ni reunis, si le respect de la loi ne 
s'etablissoit pas dans les tetes: tous les crimes nai- 
troient de la societe meme qui doit les prevenir. 
Le pouvoir abstrait des gouvernemens representa- 
tifs n'irrite en rien l'orgueil des hommes; et 
c'est par cette institution que doivent s'eteirtdre 
les flambeaux des furies. Ils se sont allumes 
dans un pays ou tout etoit amour-propre ; et 
l'amour-propre irrite, chez le peuple, ne ressemble 
poit a nos nuances fugitives; c'est le besoin de 
donner la mort ! 

" Des massacres, non moins affreux que ceux de 
la terreur, ont ete commis au nom de la religion ; 
la race humaine s'est epuisee pendant plusieurs 
siecles en efforts inutiles pour contraindre tous lea 
hommes a. la meme croyance. Un tel but ne pou- 
voit etre atteint ; et l'idee la plus simple, la tole- 



228 



HTSTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



ranee, telle que Guillaume Penn l'a professee, a 
banni pour toujours, du nord de I'Arnerique, le 
fanatisme dont le midi a ete 1'afTreux theatre. 11 en 
est de meme du fanatisme politique ; la liberte seu!e 
peut le calmer. Apres un certain temps, quelques 
verites ne seront plus contestees ; et I'on parlera 
des vieilles inssitutions comme des aneienssysiemes 
de physique, entierement effaces par l'evidence des 
faits."— Vol. ii. p. 115—118. 

We can afford to say nothing of the Direc- 
tory, or of the successes of the national army; 
but it is impossible to pass quite over the 18th 
Fructidor (4th September) 1797, when the 
majority of the Directory sent General Auge- 
reau with an armed force to disperse the legis- 
lative bodies, and arrest certain of their mem- 
bers. This step Madame de Stael considers 
as the beginning of that system of military 
despotism which was afterwards carried so 
far; and seems seriously to believe, that, if 
it had not been then adopted, the reign of law 
might yet have been restored, and the usurpa- 
tion of Bonaparte prevented. To us it seems 
infinitely more probable, that the Bourbons 
would then have been brought back without 
any conditions — or rather, perhaps, that a 
civil war, and a scene of far more sanguinary 
violence would have ensued. She does not 
dispute that the royalist party was very strong 
in both the councils; but seems to think, that 
an address or declaration by the army would 
have discomfited them more becomingly than 
an actual attack. We confess we are not so 
delicate. Law and order had been sufficiently 
trodden on already, by the Jacobin clubs and 
revolutionary tribunals ; and the battalions of 
General Augereau were just as well entitled 
to domineer as the armed sections and butch- 
ering mobs of Paris. There was no longer, 
in short, any sanctity or principle of civil right 
acknowledged ; and it was time that the force 
and terror which had substantially reigned for 
three years, should appear in their native 
colours. They certainly became somewhat 
less atrocious when thus openly avowed. 

We come at last to Bonaparte — a name that 
will go down to posterity, and of whom it is 
not yet clear, perhaps, how posterity will 
judge. The greatest of conquerors, in an age 
when great conquests appeared no longer 
possible — the most splendid of usurpers, 
where usurpation had not been heard of for 
centuries — who entered in triumph almost all 
the capitals of Continental Europe; and led. 
at last, to his bed, the daughter of her proud- 
est sovereign — who set up kings and put them 
down at his pleasure, and, for sixteen years, 
defied alike the sword of his foreign enemies 
and the daggers of his domestic factions ! 
This is a man on whom future generations 
must yet sit in judgment. But the evidence 
by which they are to judge must be trans- 
mitted to them by his contemporaries. Ma- 
dame de Stael has collected a great deal of 
this evidence; and has reported it, we think, 
on the whole, in a tone of great impartiality : 
thorgh not without some indications of per- 
sonal dislike. Her whole talents seem to be 
roused and concentrated when she begins to 
speak of this extraordinary man ; and much 
and ably as his character has been lately dis- 



cussed, we do think it has never been half so 
well described as in the volumes before us. 
We shall venture on a pretty long extract, be- 
ginning with the account of their first inter- 
view ; for on this, as on most other subjects, 
Madame de Stael has the unspeakable ad- 
vantage of writing from Iter own observation. 
After mentioning the great popularity he had 
acquired by his victories in Italy, and the 
peace by which he had secured them at 
Campo Formio, she says — 

" C'est avec ce sentiment, du moins, que je le vis 
pour la premiere fois a Paris. Je ne trouvai pas de 
paroles pour lui repondre, quand il vim a. moi me 
dire qu'il avoit cherehe mon pere a Coppet, et qu'il 
regrettoit d'avoir passe en Suisse sans le voir. Mais, 
lorsque je fus un.peu remise du trouble de l'admi- 
raiion, un sentiment de crainte tres-prononce lui 
succeda ! Bonaparte alors n'avoit aucune puis- 
sance ; on le croyoit meme assez menace par lea 
soupgons ombrageux du directoire ; ainsi, la crainte 
qu'il inspiroit n'etoit causee que par le singulier 
effet de sa personne sur presque tous ceux qui l'ap- 
prochent ! J'avois vu des hommes ties-dig ties de 
respect ; j'avois vu aussi des hommes feroces : il n'y 
avoit rien dans l'impression que Bonaparte produisit 
sur moi, qui put me rappeler ni lesunsni lesautres. 
J'apergus assez vite, dans les differentes occasions 
quej'eusde lerencontrer pendant son sejour a Paris, 
que son caractere ne pouvoit etre defini par les mots 
dont nous avons coutume de nous servir ; il n'etoit 
ni bon, ni violent, ni doux, ni cruel, a la fagon 
des individus a nous connus. Un tel eire n'ayant 
point de pared, ne pouvoit ni ressentir, ni faire 
eprouver aucune sympathie. C'etoit plus ou moins 
qu'un homme ! Sa tournure, son esprit, son lan- 
gage sont empreints d'une nature etrangere — avan- 
tage de plus pour subjuguer les Frangois, ainsi que 
nous I'avons dit ailleurs. 

" Loin de me rassurer en voyant Bonaparte plus 
souvent, il m'intimidoit toujours davantage ! Je 
sentois confusement qu'aucune emotion de coeur ne 
pouvoit agir sur lui. II regarde une creature hu- 
maine comme un fait ou comme une chose, mats 
non comme un semblable. II ne hait pas plus qu'il 
n'aime. II n'y a que lui pour lui ; tout le reste 
des creatures sont des chiffres. La force de sa vo- 
lonte consiste dans 1'imperturbable calcul de son 
egoisme ; c'est un habile joueur d'echecs, dont le 
genre humain est la partie adverse qu'il se propose 
de faire echec et mat. Ses succes tiennent autant 
aux qualites que lui manquent, qu'aux talens qu r il 
possede. Ni la pitie, ni l'attrait, ni la religion, ni 
I'attachement a. une idee quelconque ne sauroient 
le detourner de sa direction principale. II est pour 
son interet, ce que le juste doit etre pour la vertu : 
si le but etoit bon, sa perseverance seroit belle. 

" Chaque fois que je l'entendois parler, j'etois 
frappee de sa superiorite. Elle n'avoit pourtant 
aucun rapport avec celle des hommes instruits et 
cultives par l'etude ou la societe, tels que l'Angle- 
terre et la France peuvent en ortrir des exemples. 
Mais ses discours indiquoient le tact des circon- 
stances, comme le chasseur a celui de sa proie. 
Quelquefois il racontoit les faits politiques et mili- 
taires de sa vie d'une fagon tres-interessante ; il 
avoit meme, dans les recits qui permettoient de la 
gaiete, un peu de l'imagination italienne. Cepen- 
aant rien ne pouvoit tnompher de mon invincible 
eloignement pour ce que j'apercevois en lui. Je 
sentois dans son ame une epee froide et tranchante 
qui glagoit en blessant ! Je sentois dans son esprit 
une ironie profonde a laquelle rien de grand ni de 
beau, pas meme sa propre gloire, ne pouvoit echap- 
per : Car il meprisoit la nation dont il vouloit les 
suffrages, et nulle etincelle d'enthousiasme ne se 
meloit a son besoin d'etonner l'espece humaine. 

44 Ce futdans l'intervalleentre leretour de Bona- 
parte et son depart pourl'Egypte, e'est-a-dire, vers 
la fin de 1797, que je.le vis plusieurs foie a Paris.; 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



229 



et jamais la difficult^ de respirer que j'eprouvois en 
asa presence ne put se dissiper. J'etois un jour a 
table entre luiet l'abbe Sieyes : singuliere situation, 
« j'avois pu prevoir l'avenir ! J'examinois avec 
attention la figure de Bonaparte ; mais chaque f'ois 
qu'il decouvroit en moi des regards observateurs, 
il avoit Part d'oter a ses yeux toute expression, 
comme s'ils i'ussent devenus de rnarbre. Son visage 
etoit alors immobile ; excepte un sourire vague qu'il 
placoit sur ses levres a lout hasard, pour derouter 
quiconque voudroit observer les signes exterieurs 
de sa pensee. 

M Sa figure, alors maigre et pale, etoit assez 
agreabie ; depuis, il est engraisse, ce qui lui va 
tres-mal : car on a besoin de croire un tel homme 
tourmente par son caractere, pour tolerer un peu 
que ce caractere fasse tellement souffrir les autres. 
Comme sa stature est petite, et cependant sa taille 
fort longue, il etoit beaucoup mieux a cheval qu'a 
pied ; en tout, c'est la guerre, et seulement la guerre 
qui lui sied. Sa maniere d'etre dans la societe est 
genee sans limidite. II a quelque chose de dedaig- 
neux quand il secontient, et de vulgaire, quand il 
se met a 1'aise. Le dedain lui va mieux-^-aussi ne 
6'en fait-il pas faute. 

" Par une vocation nalurelle pour l'etat de prince, 
il adressoit deja des questions insignifiantes a tous 
ceux qu'on lui presenloit. Etes-vous marie? de- 
mandoit-il a Tun des convives. Combien avez- 
yous d'enfans? disoit-il a 1' autre. Depuis quand 
etes-vous arrive? Quand partez-vous ? Et autres 
interrogations de ce genre, qui etablissent la supe- 
riorite de celui qui les fait sur celui qui veut bien se 
laisser questionner ainsi. 

" Je l'ai vu un jour s'approcher d'une Franchise 
tres-connue par sa beaute, son esprit et la vivacite 
de ses opinions ; il se pla<ja tout droit devant elle 
comme le plus roide des generaux allemands, et 
lui dit : ' Madame, je n'aime pas que les fetnmes se 
melent de politique.' — ' Vous avez raison, general,' 
lui repondit-elle : ' mais dans un pays ou on leur 
coupe la tete, il est nalurel qu'elles aient cnvie de 
savoir pourquoi.' Bonaparte alors ne repliqua 
rien. C'est un homme que la resistance veritable 
apaise ; ceux qui ont souflert son despotisnie, doi- 
vent en etre autant accuses que lui-meme." 

Vol. ii. pp. 198—204. 

The following little anecdote is every way 
characteristic. 

" Un soiril parloit avec Barras de son ascendant 
sur les peuples ilaliens, qui avoient voulu le faire 
due. de Milan et roi d'ltalie. ' Mais je ne pense,' 
dit-it, ' a rien de semhlable da?is aucun pays.'' — 
' Vous faites bien de ri y pas songer en France,' 
repondit Barras ; 4 car, si le directoire vous envoyoit 
demai?i au Temple, il ny auroit pas quatre person- 
ties qui *'» opposassent. Bonaparte etoit assis sur 
un canape a cote de Barras : a ces paroles il s'e- 
lanca vers la cheminee, n'ctant pas maitre de son 
irritation ; puis, reprenant cette espece de calme 
apparent dont les hommes les plus passiones parmi 
les habitans du Midi sont capables, il declara qu'il 
vouloit etre charge d'une expedition militaire. Le 
directoire lui proposa la descente en Angleterre ; il 
alia visiter les cotes; et reconnoissant bieniot que 
cette expedition etoit insensee, il revint decide a 
tenter la conquete de l'Egypte." 

Vol. ii. pp. 207, 208. 

We must add a few miscellaneous passages, 
to develope a little farther this extraordinary 
character. Madame de Stael had a long con- 
versation with him on the state of Switzer- 
land, in which he seemed quite insensible to 
any feelings of generosity. 

11 Cette conversation," however, she adds, " me 
fit cependant concevoir I'agrement qu'on peut lui 
trouver quand il prend l'air bonhomme, et parle 
comme d'une chose simple de lui-meme et de ses 
projets. Cet art, le plus redoutable de tous, a 



captive beaucoup de gens. A cette meme epoque, 
je revis encore quelquefois Bonaparte en societe, et 
il me parut toujours profondement occupe des rap- 
ports qu'il vouloit etablir entre lui et les autres 
hommes, les tenant a distance ou les rapprochant 
de lui, suivant qu'il croyoit se les attacher plus 
surement. Quand il se trouvoit avec les directeurs 
surtout, il craignoit d'avoir l'air d'un general sous 
les ordres de son gouvernement, et il essayoit tour 
a tour dans ses manieres, avec cette sorte de supe- 
rieurs, la dignite ou la familiarite ; mais il manquoit 
le ton vrai de l'une et de l'autre. C'est un homme 
qui ne sauroit etre nalurel que dans le commav.de- 
ment."— -Vol. ii. pp. 211, 212. 

The following remark relates rather to the 
French nation than their ruler. We quote it 
for its exquisite tiuth rather than its severity. 

" Sa conversation avec le Mufti dans la pyramide 
de Cheops devoit enchanter les Parisians; parce 
qu'elle reunissoit les deux chosesqui les captivent : 
un certain genre de grandeur, et de la moquerie 
tout ensemble. LesFrangois sont bien aises d'etre 
emus, et de rire de ce qu'ils sont emus ! Le char- 
latanisme leur plait, et ils aident volontiers a se 
tromper eux-memes ; pourvu qu'il ^eur soil permis, 
tout en se conduisant comme des dupes, de mon- 
trer par quelques bon mots que pourtant ils ne le 
sont pas." — Vol. ii. p. 228. 

On his return from Egypt it was understood 
by every body that he was to subvert the ex- 
isting constitution. But he passed live weeks 
at Paris in a quiet and apparently undecided 
way — and, with all this preparatory study, 
acted his part but badly after all. Nothing 
can be more curious than the following pas- 
sage. When he had at last determined to 
put down the Directory, — 

11 Le 19 brumaire, il arriva dan9 le conseil des 
cinq cents, les bras croises, avec un air tres-sombre, 
et suivi de deux grands grenadiers qui protegeoient 
sa petite stature. Les deputes appeles jacobins 
pousserent des hurlemens en le voyant entrer dans 
la salle ; son frere Lucien, bien heureusement pour 
lui, etoit alors president ; il agitoit en vain la son- 
nette pDur retablir l'ordre ; les cris de traitre et 
d'tisurpaleur se faisoient entendre de toutes parts ; 
et l'un des deputes, compatriote de Bonaparte, le 
corse Arena, s'approcba de ce general et le secoua 
fortement par le collet de son habit. On a suppose, 
mais sans fondement, qu'il avoit un poignard pour 
le tuer. Son action cependant effraya Bonaparte ; 
et il dit aux grenadiers qui etoient a cote de lui, en 
laissant tomber sa tete sur Vepaule de l'un d'eux : 
' Tircz-moi d'ici !' Les grenadiers l'enleverent du 
milieu des deputes qui l'entouroient ; ils le port e- 
rent kors de la salle en plein air ; et, des qu^il y fut, 
sa presence d'esprit lui revint. II monta a cheval 
a 1' ins' ant meme ; et, parcourant les rangs de ses 
grenadiers, il les determina bientot a. ce qu'il vou- 
loit d'eux. Dans cette circonstance, comme dans 
beaucoup d'autres, on a remarque que Bonaparte 
pouvoit se troubler quand un autre danger que celui 
de la guerre etoit en face de lui; et quelques 
personnes en ont conclu bien ridicule ment qu'il 
manquoit de courage. Certes on ne peut nier son 
audace ; mais, comme il n'est rien, pas meme 
brave, d'une facon genereuse, il s'ensuit qu'il ne 
s'expose jamais que quand cela peut etre utile. II 
seroit tres-fache d'etre tue, parce que c'est un ro- 
vers, et qu'il veut en tout du succes. 11 en seroit 
aussi rache, parce que la mort deplait a son im- 
agination : M .is il n'hesite pas a. hasarder sa vie, 
lorsque, suivant sa maniere de voir, la partie vaut 
le risque de 1'enjeu, s'il est permis de s'exprimer 
ainsi." — Vol. ii. pp. 240-242. 

Although he failed thus strangely in the 
theatricaf pait of the business, the substantial 



230 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



part was effectually done. He sent in a 
column of grenadiers with fixed bayonets at 
one end of the hall of the great council, and 
made them advance steadily to the other ; 
driving the unhappy senators, in their fine 
classical draperies, before them, and forcing 
them to leap out of the windows, and scam- 
per through the gardens in these strange 
habiliments ! Colonel Pride's purge itself was 
not half so rough in its operation. 

There was now an end, not only of liberty, 
but of republican tyranny ; and the empire of 
the sword in the hand of one man, was sub- 
stantially established. It is melancholy to 
think, but history shows it to be true, that the 
most abject servitude is usually established 
at the close of a long, and even generous 
struggle for freedom; partly, no doubt, be- 
cause despotism offers an image of repose to 
those who are worn out with contention, but 
chiefly because that military force to which 
all parties had in their extremity appealed, 
naturally lends itself to the bad ambition of a 
fortunate commander. This it was which 
made the fortune of Bonaparte. His answer 
to all remonstrances was — " Voulez-vous que 
je vous livre aux Jacobins?" But his true 
answer was, that the army was at his de- 
votion, and that he defied the opinion of the 
nation. 

He began by setting up the Consulate : But 
from the very first, says Madame de Stael, 
assumed the airs and the tone of royalty. 

"II prit les Tuileries pour sa demeure; et ce fut 
un coup de partie que le choix de cette habitation. 
On avoit vu la le roi de France ; les habitudes mon- 
archiques y etoient encore presentes a tous les yeux, 
et il suffisoit, pour ainsi dire, de laisser faire les 
murs pour tout retablir. Vers les derniers jours du 
dernier siecle, je vis entrer le premier consul dans 
ce palais bati par les rois ; et quoique Bonaparte fut 
bien loin encore de la magnificence qu'il a develop- 
pee depuis, Ton voyoit dejil dans tout ce qui l'en- 
touroit un empressement de se faire courtisan a 
Porientale, qui dut lui persuader que gouverner la 
terre etoit chose bien facile. Quand sa voiture fut 
arrivee dans la cour des Tuileries, ses valets ouvri- 
rent la portiere et precipiterent le marchepied avec 
une violence qui sembloit dire que les choses phy- 
siques elles-memes etoient insolentes quand elles 
retardoient un instant la marche de leur maitre ! Lui 
ne regardoit ni ne remercioit personne; comme s'il 
avoit craint. qu'on put le croire sensible aux hom- 
mages meme qu'il exigeoit. En montant l'escalier 
au milieu de la foule qui se pressoit pour le suivre, 
ses yeux ne se portoient ni sur aucun objet, ni sur 
aucune personne en particulier. II y avoit quelque 
chose de vague et d'insouciant dans sa physionomie, 
et ses regards n'exprimoient que ce qu'il lui con- 
vient toujours de montrer, — 1'iridirTerence pour le 
sort, et le dedain pour les hommes." 

Vol. ii. pp. 258, 259. 

He had some reason, indeed, to despise 
men. from the specimens he had mostly about 
him : For his adherents were chiefly desert- 
ers from the royalist or the republican party ; 
- -the first willing to transfer their servility to 
a -aew dynasty, — the latter to take the names 
and emoluments of republican offices from 
the band of a plebeian usurper. For a while 
he thought it prudent to dissemble with each ; 
and, with that utter contempt of truth which 
belonged to his scorn of mankind, held, in the 
same day ; the most edifying discourses of 



citizenship and equality to one set of hearers, 
and of the sacred rights of sovereigns to an- 
other. He extended the same unprincipled 
dissimulation to the subject of religion. To 
the prelates with whom he arranged his cele- 
brated Concordat, he spoke in the most seri- 
ous manner of the truth and the awfulness of 
the Gospel ; and to Cabanis and the philoso- 
phers, he said, the same evening, — " Savez- 
vous ce que c'est la Concordat ? C'est la 
Vaccine de la Religion — dans cinquante ans il 
n'y aura plus en France!' 7 He resolved,, 
however, to profit by it while it lasted ; and 
had the blasphemous audacity to put this, 
among other things, into the national cate- 
chism, approved of by the whole Gallicau 
church: — " Qu. Que doit-on penser de ceux 
qui manqueroient a leur devoir envers l'Em- 
pereur Napoleon ? Reponse. Qu'ils resiste- 
roient a l'ordre etabli de Dieu lui-meme — et 
se rendroient digncs de la damnation etcrnelhV' 1 
With the actual tyranny of the sword began 
the more pitiful persecution of the slavish 
journals — the wanton and merciless infliction 
of exile on women and men of letters — and 
the perpetual, restless, insatiable interference 
m the whole life and conversation of every 
one of the slightest note or importance. The 
following passages are written, perhaps, with 
more bitterness than any other in the book ; 
but they appear to us to be substantially just. 

"Bonaparte, lorsqu'il disposoit d'un million 
d'hommes armes, n'en attachoit pas moins d'im- 
portance a l'art de guider 1' esprit public par lea 
gazettes; il dictoit souvent lui-meme des articles de 
journaux qu'on pouvoit reconnoitre aux saccades 
violemes du style. On voyoit qu'il auroit voulu 
mettre dans ce qu'il ecrivoit, des coups au lieu de 
mots ! II a dans tout son etre un fond de vulgariie 
que le gigantesquede son ambition meme ne sauroit 
toujours cacher. Ce n'est pas qu'il ne sache tres- 
bien, un jour donne, se montrer avec beaucoup de 
convenance ; mais il n'est a son aise que dans le 
mcpris pour les autres, et, des-qu'il peut y rentrer, 
il s'y complait. Toutefois ce n'etoit pas unique- 
ment par gout qu'il se livroit a faire servir, dans ses 
notes du Moniteur, le cynisme de la revolution au 
maintien de sa puissance. II ne permettoit qu'a lui 
d'etre jacobin en France. — Vol. ii. p. 264. 

" Je fus la premiere femme que Bonaparte exila ; 
Mais bientot apres il en bannit un grand nombre, 
d'opinionsopposees. D'ou venoit ce luxe en fait de 
mechancete, si ce n'est d'une sorte de haine contre 
tous les etresindependans ? Et comme les femmes, 
d'une part, ne pouvoient serviren rien ses desseins 
politiques, et que, de I'autre, elles etoient moins ac- 
cessibles que les hommes aux craintes et aux espe- 
rances dont le pouvoir est dispensateur, elles lui 
donnoient de l'humeur comme desrebelles, et il se 
plaisoit a leur dire des choses blessantes et vul- 
gaires. II ha'issoit autant l'esprit de chevalerie qu'il 
recherchoit l'etiquette : c'etoit faire un mauvaig 
choix parmi les anciennes moeurs. II lui restoit 
aussi de ses premieres habitudes pendant la revolu- 
tion, une certaine antipathie jacobine contre la so- 
ciete brillante de Paris; sur laquelie les femmes 
exeryoient beaucoup d'ascendant. II redoutoit en 
elles l'art de la plaisanterie, qui, Ton doit en con- 
vener, appartient particulierement aux Francoises. 
Si Bonaparte avoit voulu s'en tenir au superbe role 
de grand general et de premier magistrat de la re- 
publique, il auroit plane de toute la hauteur du 
genie au-dessus des petits traits aceres de l'esprit 
de salon. Mais quand il avoit le dessein de se faire 
un roi parvenu, un bourgeois gentilhomme sur le 
trone, il s'exposoit precisement a la moquerie du 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



23 1 



bon ton, et il ne pouvoit la cornprimer, comme il 
'a fait, que par l'espionage et la terreur." 

Vol. ii. pp. 306, 307. 

The thin mask of the Consulate was soon 
thrown off — and the Emperor appeared in his 
proper habits. The following remarks, though 
not all applicable to the same period ; appear 
to us to be admirable. 

"Bonaparte avoit lu l'histoire d'une maniere 
confuse. Feu accoutume a 1'etude, il se rendoit 
beaucoup moins compte de ce qu'il avoit appris 
dans Ies livres, que de ce qu'il avoit recueilli par 
I'observation des hommes. 11 n'en etoit pas moins 
reste dans sa lete un certain respect pour Attila et 
pour Charlemagne, pour les lois feodales et pour le 
despotisnie de I' Orient, qu'il appliquoit a tort et a. 
travers, ne se trompant jamais, toutefois, sur ce 
qui servoit instantanement a son pouvoir; mais du 
reste, citant, blamant, louant et raisonnant comme 
le basard le conduisoit. II parloit ainsi des heures 
entieres avec d'autant plus d'avantage, que per- 
sonne ne 1'interrompoit, si ce n'est par les applau- 
dissemens involontaires qui echappent toujours 
dans des occasions semblables. Une chose singu- 
liere, c'est que, dans la conversation, plusieurs 
officiers Bonapartistes ont emprunte de leur chef 
cet hero K que galimatias, qui veritablement ne sig- 
nifle rien qu' a la tete de huit cent mille hommes." 
Vol. ii. pp. 332, 333. 

" 11 fit occuper la plupart des charges de sa mai- 
son par des Nobles de 1'ancien regime ; il aimoit 
les flatteries des courtisans d' autrefois, parce qu'ils 
s'entendoietit mieux a cet art que les hommes nou- 
veaux, meme les plus empresses. Chaque fois 
qu'un gentilhomme de l'ancienne cour rappeloit 
I'etiquette du temps jadis, proposoit une reverence 
de plus, une certaine fagon de frapper a la porte 
de quelque anti-chambre, une maniere plus cere- 
monieuse de presenter une depeche, de plier une 
lettre, de la terminer par telle ou telle formule, il 
etoit accueilli comme s'il avoit fait faire des progres 
au bonheurde I'espece humaine ! Le code de I'eti- 
quette imperiale est le document le plus remarqu- 
ab'e de la bassesse a laquelle on peut reduire 
I'espece humaine." — Vol. ii. pp. 334, 335. 

" Quand il y avoit quatre cents personnes dans 
son salon, un aveugle auroit pu s'y croire seul, tant 
le silence qu'on observoit etoit pro fond ! Les 
marechaux de France, au milieu de3 fatigues de la 
guerre, au moment de la crise d'une bataille, en- 
troient dans la tente de I'empereur pour lui de- 
mander ses ordres, — et il ne leur etoit pas permis 
de s'y asseoir! Sa famille ne souffroit pas moins 
que les etrangers de son despotisme et de sa hau- 
teur. Lucieri a mieux aime vivre prisonnier en 
Angleterre que regner sous les ordres de son frere. 
Louis Bonaparte, dont le caractere est generale- 
rnent estime, se vit constraint par sa probite meme, 
a renoncer a la couronne de Hollande ; et, le croi- 
roiton? quand il causoit avec son frere pendant 
deux heures tete-a-tcte, force par sa mauvaise same 
de s'appuyer peniblement contre la muraille, Na- 
poleon ne lui offroit pas une chaise ! il demeuroit 
iui-meme debout, de crainte que quelqu'un n'eut 
l'idee de se faiuiliariser assez avec lui, pour s' asseoir 
en sa presence. 

" Le peur qu'il causoit dans les demiers temps 
etoit telle, que personne ne lui adressoit le premier 
la parole sur rien. Quelquefois il s'ehtretenoit 
avec la plus grande simplicite au milieu de sa cour, 
et dans son conseil d'etat. II souffroit la contra- 
diction, il y cncourageoit meme, quand il s'agissoit 
de questions administratives ou judiciaires sans re- 
lation avec son pouvoir. II falloit voir alors I'atten- 
drissement de ceux auxquels il avoit rendu pour un 
moment la respiration fibre ; mais, quand le maitre 
reparoissoit, on demandoit en vain aux ministres de 
presenter un rapport a I'empereur contre une me- 
*ure injuste. — II aimoit moins les louanges vraies 



que les flatteries serviles : parce que, dans les unes, 
on n'auroit vu que son merite, tandis que les autrea 
attestoient son autorire. En general, il a prefere 
la puissance a. la gloire ; car faction de la force lui 
plaisoit trop pour qu'il s'occupa de la posterite, 
sur laquelle on ne peut l'exercer." 

Vol. ii. pp. 399—401. 

There are some fine remarks on the base- 
ness of those who solicited employment and 
favours under Bonaparte, and have since join- 
ed the party of the Ultras, and treated the 
whole Revolution as an atrocious rebellion — 
and a very clear and masterly view of the 
policy by which that great commander sub- 
dued the greater part of Continental Europe. 
But we can afford no room now for any further 
account of them. As a general, she says, he 
was prodigal of the lives of his soldiers — 
haughty and domineering to his officers — and 
utterly regardless of the miseries he inflicted 
on the countries which were the scenes of 
his operations. The following anecdote ia 
curious — and to us original. 

" On l'a vu dans la guerre d'Autriche, en 1809, 
quitter 1'ile de Lobau, quand il jugeoit la bataille 
perdue. II traversa le Danube, seul avec M. de 
Czernitchef, l'un des intrepides aides de camp de 
I'empereur de Russie, et le marechal Berthier. 
L'empereur leur dit assez tranquillement qu'apres 
avoir gagne quaranle balailles, il n' etoitpas extra- 
ordinaire d 'en perdre une; et lorsqu'il fut arrive 
de l'autre cote du fleuve, il se concha et dormil 
jusqii'au lendema'in malin ! sans s'informer du sort 
de I'armee franchise, que ses generaux sauverent 
pendant son sommeil." — Vol. ii. p. 358. 

Madame de Stael mentions several other 
instances of this faculty of sleeping in mo- 
ments of great apparent anxiety. The most 
remarkable is, that he fell fast asleep before 
taking the field in 1814, while endeavouring 
to persuade one of his ministers that he had 
no chance of success in the approaching cam- 
paign, but must inevitably be ruined ! 

She has extracted from the Moniteur of 
July 1810, a very singular proof of the au- 
dacity with which he very early proclaimed 
his own selfish and ambitious views. It is 
a public letter addressed by him to his 
nephew, the young Duke of Berg, in which 
he says, in so many words, '-'N'oubliez ja- 
mais, que vos premiers devoirs sont envers 
moi — vos seconds envers la France — ceux 
envers les peuples que je pourrois vous con- 
fier, ne viennent qu'apres." This was at 
least candid — and in his disdain for mankind, 
a sort of audacious candour was sometimes 
alternated with his duplicity. 

u Un principe general, quel qu'il fut, deplaisoit 
a. Bonaparte ; comme une niaiserie, ou comme un 
ennemi. II n'etoit point sanguinaire, mais indiffe- 
rent a la vie des hommes. II ne la consideroit que 
comme un moyen d'arriver a son but, ou comme 
un obstacle a ecarter de sa route. II n'etoit pas 
meme aussi colere qu'il a souvent paru l'etre: il 
vouloit effrayer avec ses paroles, afin de s'epargner 
le fait par- la menace. Tout etoit chez lui moyen 
ou but; 1'involontaire ne se trouvoit nulle part, ni 
dans le bien, ni dans le mal. On pretend qu'il a 
dit : J'ai tant de co?iscrils a depenser par an. Co 
propos est vraisemblable ; car Bonaparte a souvent 
assez meprise ses auditeurs pour se complaire dana 
un genre de sincerite qui n'est que de I'impudence. 
— Jamais il n'a cru aux sentimens exaltes, soit dans 



232 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



les individus, soit dans les nations ; il a pris l'ex- 
pression de ces sentimens pour de l'hypocrisie." — 
Vol. ii. pp. 391, 392. 

Bonaparte, Madame de Stael thinks, had 
no alternative but to give the French nation 
a free constitution; or to occupy them in 
war, and to dazzle them with military glory. 
He had not magnanimity to do the one, and 
he finally overdid the latter. His. first great 
error was the war with Spain; his last, the 
campaign in Russia. All that followed was 
put upon him, and could not be avoided. 
She rather admires his rejection of the terms 
offered at Chatillon ; and is moved with his 
farewell to his legions and their eagles at 
Fontainebleau. She feels like a French- 
woman on the occupation of Paris by foreign 
conquerors; but. gives the Emperor Alexan- 
der full credit, both for the magnanimity of 
his conduct as a conqueror, and the gene- 
rosity of his sentiments on the subject of 
French liberty and independence. She is 
quite satisfied with the declaration made by 
the King at St. Ouen, and even with the 
charter that followed — though she allows 
that many further provisions were necessary 
to consolidate the constitution. All this part 
of the book is writtea with great temperance 
and reconciling wisdom. She laughs at the 
doctrine of legitimacy, as it is now main- 
tained ; but gives excellent reasons for pre- 
ferring an ancient line of princes, and a 
fixed order of succession. Of the Ultras, or 
unconstitutional royalists, as she calls them, 
she speaks with a sort of mixed anger and 
pity; although an unrepressed scorn takes 
the place of both, when she has occasion to 
mention those members of the party who 
were the abject flatterers of Bonaparte du- 
ring the period of his power, and have but 
transferred, to the new occupant of the throne, 
the servility to which they had been trained 
under its late possessor. 

"Mais ceux dont on avoit le plus_de peine a 
contenir l'indignation vertueuse conlre le parti de 
l'usurpateur, c'etoient les nobles ou leurs adherens, 
qui avoient demande des places a ce meme usur- 
pateur pendant sa puissance, et qui s'en etoient 
separes bien nettement le jour de sa chute. L'en- 
thousiasme pour la legitimite de tel chambellan de 
Madame mere, ou de telle dame d'atour de 
Madame sceur, ne connoissoit point de bornes ; et 
certes, nous autres que Bonaparte avoit proscrits 
pendant tout le cours de son regne, nous nous 
examinions pour savoir si nous n'avions pas ete 
ses favoris, quand une certaine delicatesse d'ame 
nous obligeoit a le defendre contre les invectives 
de ceux qu'il avoit combles de bienfaits." — Vol. 
iii. p. 107. 

Our Charles II. was recalled to the throne 
of his ancestors by the voice of his people ; 
and yet that throne was shaken, and, within 
twenty-five years, overturned by the arbitrary 
conduct of the restored sovereigns. Louis 
XVIII. was not recalled by his people, but 
brought in and set up by foreign conquerors. 
It must therefore be still more necessary for 
him to guard against arbitrary measures and 
to take all possible steps to secure the attach- 
ment of that people whose hostility had so 
lately proved fatal. If he like domestic ex- 



amples better, he has that of his own Henri 
IV. before him. That great and popular 
prince at last found it necessary to adopt the 
religious creed of the great majority of his 
people. In the present day, it is at least as 
necessary for a less popular, monarch to study 
and adopt their political one. Some of those 
about him, we have heard, rather recommend 
the example of Ferdinand VII. ! But even the 
Ultras, we think, cannot really forget that 
Ferdinand, instead of having been restored 
by a foreign force, was dethroned by one; 
that there had been no popular insurrection, 
and no struggle for liberty in Spain ; and that, 
besides the army, he had the priesthood on 
his side, which, in that country, is as omnip- 
otent, as in France it is insignificant and 
powerless, for any political purposes. We 
cannot now follow Madame de Stael into the 
profound and instructive criticism she makes 
on the management of affairs during Bona- 
parte's stay at Elba; — though much of it is 
applicable to a later period — and though we 
do not remember to have met anywhere with 
so much truth told in so gentle a manner. 

Madame de Stael confirms what we believe 
all well-informed persons now admit, that for 
months before the return of Bonaparte, the 
attempt was expected, and in some measure 
prepared for — by all but the court, and the 
royalists by whom it was surrounded. When 
the news of his landing was received, they 
were still too foolish to be alarmed ; and, when 
the friends of liberty said to each other, with 
bitter regret, u There is an end of our liberty 
if he should succeed — and of our national in- 
dependence if he should fail," — the worthy 
Ultras went about, saying, it was the luckiest 
thing in the world, for they should now get 
properly rid of him ; and the King would no 
longer be vexed with the fear of a pretender ! 
Madame de Stael treats with derision the idea 
of Bonaparte being sincere in his professions 
of regard to liberty, or his resolution to adhere 
to the constitution proposed to hirn after his 
return. She even maintains, that it was ab- 
surd to propose a free constitution at such a 
crisis. If the nation and the army abandoned 
the Bourbons, nothing remained for the nation 
but to invest the master of that army with the 
dictatorship ; and to rise en masse, till their 
borders were freed from the invaders. That 
they did not do so, only proves that they had 
become indifferent about the country, or that 
they were in their hearts hostile to Bonaparte. 
Nothing, she assures us, but the consciousness 
of this, could have made him submit to con- 
cessions so alien to his whole character and 
habits — and the world, says Madame de Stael, 
so understood him. "Quand il a prononce les 
mots de Loi et Liberie, 1' Europe s'est rassuree : 
Elle a senti que ce n'etoit plus son ancien et 
terrible adversaire." 

She passes a magnificent encomium on the 
military genius and exalted character of our 
Wellington ; but says he could not have con- 
quered as he did, if the French had been led 
by one who could rally round him the affec- 
tions of the people as well as he could direct 
their soldiers. She maintains, that after the 



DE STAEL'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. 



233 



battle, when Bonaparte returned to Paris, he 
had not the least idea of being called upon 
again to abdicate : but expected to obtain from 
the two chambers the means of renewing or 
continuing the contest. When he found that 
this was impossible, he sunk at once into de- 
spair, and resigned himself without a struggle. 
The selfishness which had guided his whole 
career, disclosed itself in naked deformity in 
the last acts of his public life. He abandoned 
his army the moment he found that he could not 
lead it immediately against the enemy — and 
no sooner saw his own fate determined, than 
he gave up all concern for that of the unhappy 
country which his ambition had involved in 
such disasters. He quietly passed by the 
camp of his warriors on his w r ay to the port 
by which he was to make his own escape — 
and, by throwing himself into the hands of 
the English, endeavoured to obtain for him- 
self the benefit of those liberal principles 
which it had been the business of Ins life to 
extirpate and discredit all over the world. 

At this point Madame de Stael terminates 
somewhat abruptly her historical review of 
the events of the Revolution ; and here, our 
readers will be happy to learn, we must stop 
too. There is half a volume more of her work, 
indeed, — and one that cannot be supposed the 
least interesting to us, as it treats chiefly of 
the history, constitution, and society of Eng- 
land. But it is for this very reason that we 
cannot trust ourselves with the examination of 
it. We have every reason certainly to be satis- 
fied with the account she gives of us; nor can 
any thing be more eloquent and animating than 
the view she has presented of the admirable 
mechanism and steady working of our consti- 
tution, and of its ennobling effects on the char- 
acter of all who live under it. We are willing 
to believe all this too to be just ; though we 
are certainly painted en beau. In some parts, 
however, we are more shocked at the notions 
she gives us of the French character, than 
flattered at the contrast exhibited by our own. 
In mentioning the good reception that gentle- 
men in opposition to government sometimes 
meet with in society, among us, and the up- 
right posture they contrive to maintain, she 
says, that nobody here would think of con- 
doling with a man for being out of power, or 
of receiving him with less cordiality. She 
notices also, with a very alarming sort of ad- 
miration, that she understood, when in Eng- 
land, that a gentleman of the law had actually 
refused a situation worth 6000L or 7000L a 
year, merely because he did not approve of 
the ministry by whom it was offered; and 
adds, that in France any man who would re- 



fuse a respectable office, with a salary of 
8000 louis, would certainly be considered a? 
fit for Bedlam : And in another place she ob- 
serves, that it seems to be a fundamental 
maxim in that country, that every man must 
have a place. We confess that we have some 
difficulty in reconciling these incidental inti- 
mations with her leadingposition, that the great 
majority of the French nation is desirous of a 
free constitution, and perfectly fit for and de- 
serving of it. If these be the principles, not 
only upon which they act, but which they and 
their advocates avow, we know no constitution 
under which they can be free ; and have no 
faith in the power of any new institutions to 
counteract that spirit of corruption bj r which, 
even where they have existed the longest, 
their whole virtue is consumed. 

With our manners in society she is not quite 
so well pleased ; — though she is kind enough 
to ascribe our deficiencies to the most honour- 
able causes. In commiserating the compara- 
tive dulness of our social talk, however, has 
not this philosophic observer a little overlooked 
the effects of national tastes and habits — and 
is it not conceivable, at least, that we who are 
used to it may really have as much satisfac- 
tion in our own hum-drum way of seeing each 
other, as our more sprightly neighbours in 
their exquisite assemblies % In all this part 
of the work, too, we think we can perceive 
the traces rather of ingenious theory, than of 
correct observation; aSid suspect that a good 
part of the tableau of English society is rather 
a sort of conjectural sketch, than a copy from 
real life ; or at least that it is a generalization 
from a very few, and not very common ex- 
amples. May we be pardoned too for hinting, 
that a person of Madame de Stael's great 
talents and celebrity, is by no means well 
qualified for discovering the true tone and 
character of English society from her own ob- 
servation ; both because she was not likely to 
see it in those smaller and more familiar as- 
semblages in which it is seen to the most ad- 
vantage, and because her presence must have 
had the unlucky effect of imposing silence on 
the modest, and tempting the vain and ambi- 
tious to unnatural display and ostentation. 

With all its faults, however, the portion of 
her book which we have been obliged to pass 
over in silence, is well worthy of as ample a 
notice as we have bestowed on the other 
parts of it, and would of itself be sufficient to 
justify us in ascribing to its lamented author 
that perfection of masculine understanding, 
and female grace and acuteness, which are 
so rarely to be met with apart, and never, wo 
believe, were before united. 



30 



u2 



234 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



(Jcbruarg, 1816.) 

Memoires de Madame la Marquise de Larocheiaquelein j avec deux Cartes du Theatre de la 
Guerre de La Vendee. 2 tomes, 8vo. pp. 500. Paris: 1815. 



This is a book to be placed by the side of 
Mrs. Hutchinson's delightful Memoirs of her 
heroic husband and his chivalrous Independ- 
ents. Both are pictures, by a female hand, 
of tumultuary and almost private wars, car- 
ried on by conscientious individuals against 
the actual government of their country: — and 
both bring to light, not only innumerable traits 
of the most romantic daring and devoted 
fidelity in particular persons, but a general 
character of domestic virtue and social gen- 
tleness among those who would otherwise 
have figured to our imaginations as adventur- 
ous desperadoes or ferocious bigots. There 
is less talent, perhaps, and less loftiness, 
either of style or of character, in the French 
than the English heroine. Yet she also has 
done and suffered enough to entitle her to 
that appellation ; and, while her narrative 
acquires an additional interest and a truer 
tone of nature, from the occasional recurrence 
of female fears and anxieties, it is conversant 
with still more extraordinary incidents and 
characters, and reveals still more of what had 
been previously malignantly misrepresented, 
or entirely unknown. 

Our readers will understand, from the title- 
page which we have transcribed, that the 
work relates to the unhappy and sanguinary 
wars which were waged against the insur- 
gents in La Vendee during the first and mad- 
dest years of the French Republic : But it is 
proper for us to add, that it is confined almost 
entirely to the transactions of two years; and 
that the detailed narrative ends with the dis- 
solution of the first Vendean army, before the 
proper formation of the Chouan force in Brit- 
tany, or the second insurrection of Poitou; 
though there are some brief and imperfect 
notices of these, and subsequent occurrences. 
The details also extend only to the proceed- 
ings of the Royalist or Insurgent party, to 
which the author belonged ; and do not affect 
to embrace any general history of the war. 

This hard -fated woman was very young, 
aril newly married, when she was thrown, 
by the adverse circumstances of the time, 
into the very heart of those deplorable con- 
tests ; — and, without pretending to any other 
information than she could draw from her 
own experience, and scarcely presuming to 
pass any judgment upon the merits or de- 
merits of the cause, she has made up her 
book of a clear and dramatic description of 
acts in which she was a sharer, or scenes of 
which she was an eyewitness, — and of the 
characters and histories of the many distin- 
guished individuals who partook with her of 
their glories or sufferings. The irregular and 
undisciplined wars which it is her business 
to describe, are naturally far more prolific of 



extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of 
fortune, and* striking displays of individual 
talent, and vice and virtue, than the more so- 
lemn movements of national hostility ; where 
every thing is in a great measure provided 
and foreseen, and where the inflexible sub- 
ordination of rank, and the severe exactions 
of a limited duty, not only take away the in- 
ducement, but the opportunity, for those ex- 
altations of personal feeling and adventure 
which produce the most lively interest, and 
lead to the most animating results. In the 
unconcerted proceedings of an insurgent popu- 
lation, all is experiment, and all is passion. 
The heroic daring of a simple peasant lifts 
him at once to the rank of a leader; and kin- 
dles a general enthusiasm to which all things 
become possible. Generous and gentle feel- 
ings are speedily generated by this raised 
state of mind and of destination ; and the per- 
petual intermixture of domestic cares and 
rustic occupations, with the exploits of troops 
serving without pay, and utterly unprovided 
with magazines, produces a contrast which 
enhances the effects of both parts of the de- 
scription, and gives an air of moral pictur- 
esqueness to the scene, which is both pathetic 
and delightful. It becomes much more attract- 
ive also, in this representation, by the singu- 
lar candour and moderation — not the most 
usual virtue of belligerent females — with 
which Madame de L. has told the story of 
her friends and her enemies — the liberality 
with which she has praised the instances of 
heroism or compassion which occur in the 
conduct of the republicans, and the simplicity 
with which she confesses the jealousies and 
excesses which sometimes disgraced the in- 
surgents. There is not only no loyalist or 
antirevolutionary rant in these volumes, but 
scarcely any of the bitterness or exaggeration 
of a party to civil dissensions; and it is rather 
wonderful that an actor and a sufferer in the 
most cruel and outrageous warfare by which 
modern times have been disgraced, should 
have set an example of temperance and im- 
partiality which its remote spectators have 
found it so difficult to follow. The truth is, 
we believe, that those who have had most 
occasion to see the mutual madness of con- 
tending factions, and to be aware of the traits 
of individual generosity by which the worst 
cause is occasionally redeemed, and of brutal 
outrage by which the best is sometimes de- 
based, are both more indulgent to human 
nature, and more distrustful of its immaculate 
purity, than the fine declaimers who aggra- 
vate all that is bad on the side to which they 
are opposed, and refuse to admit its existence 
in that to which they belong. The general 
of an adverse army has always more tolera- 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELE1N. 



235 



tlon for the severities and even the miscon- 
duct of his opponents, and the herd of ignorant 
speculators at home; — in the same way as the 
leaders of political parties have uniformly far 
less rancour and animosity towards their an- 
tagonists, than the vulgar followers in their 
train. It is no small proof, however, of an 
elevated and generous character, to be able 
to make those allowances; and Madame de 
L. would have had every apology for falling 
into the opposite error, — both on account of 
her sex, the natural prejudices of her rank 
and education, the extraordinary sufferings to 
which she was subjected, and the singularly 
mild and unoffending character of the be- 
loved associates of whom she was so cruelly 
deprived. 

She had some right, in truth, to be delicate 
and royalist, beyond the ordinary standard. 
Her father, the Marquis de Donnison, had an 
employment about the person of the King ; in 
virtue of which, he had apartments in the 
Palace of Versailles ; in which splendid abode 
the writer was born, and continued constantly 
to reside, in the very focus of royal influence 
and glory, till the whole of its unfortunate in- 
habitants were compelled to leave it, by the 
fury of that mob which escorted them to 
Paris in 1789. She had, like most French 
ladies of distinction, been destined from her 
infancy to be the wife of M. de Lescure, a 
near relation of her mother, and the repre- 
sentative of the ancient and noble family of 
Salgues in Poitou. The character of this 
eminent person, both as it is here drawn by 
his widow, and indirectly exhibited in various 
parts of her narrative, is as remote as possible 
from that which we should have been in- 
clined, a priori, to ascribe to a young French 
nobleman of the old regime, just come to 
court, in the first flush of youth, from a gTeat 
military school. He was extremely serious, 
bashful, pious, and self-denying, — with great 
firmness of character and sweetness of tem- 
per. — fearless, and even ardent in war, but 
humble in his pretensions to dictate, and most 
considerate of the wishes and sufferings of his 
followers. To this person she was married in 
the nineteenth year of her age, in October 
1790, — at a time when most of the noblesse 
had already emigrated, and when the rage for 
that unfortunate measure had penetrated even 
to the province of Poitou, where M. de Les- 
cure had previously formed a prudent asso- 
ciation of the whole gentry of the country, to 
whom the peasantry were most zealously at- 
tached. It was the fashion, however, to "emi- 
grate ; and so many of the Poitevin nobility 
were pleased to follow it, that M. de Lescure 
at last thought it concerned his honour, not to 
remain longer behind ; and came to Paris in 
February 1791, to make preparations for his 
journey to Coblentz. Here, however, he was 
requested by the Queen herself not to go 
farther ; and thought it his duty to obey. The 
summer was passed in the greatest anxieties 
and agitations ; and at last came the famous 
Tenth of August. Madame de L. assures us, 
that the attack on the palace was altogether 
unexpected on that occasion, and that M. 



Montmorin, who came to her from the King 
late in the preceding evening, informed her, 
that they were perfectly aware of an intention 
to assault the royal residence on the night of 
the 12th; but that, to a certainty, nothing 
would be attempted till then. At midnight, 
however, there were signs of agitation in the 
neighbourhood ; and before four o : clock in the 
morning, the massacre had begun. M. de 
Lescure rushed out on the first symptom of 
alarm to join the defenders of the palace, but 
could not obtain access within the gates, and 
was obliged to return and disguise himself in 
the garb of a Sansculotte, that he might min- 
gle with some chance of escape in the crowd 
of assailants. M. de Montmorin, whose dis- 
guise was less perfect, escaped as if by a 
miracle. After being insulted by the meb, 
he had taken refuge in the shop of a small 
grocer, by whom he was immediately recog- 
nised, and where he was speedily surrounded 
by crowds of the National Guards, reeking 
from the slaughter of the Swiss. The good 
natured shopkeeper saw his danger, and 
stepping quickly up to him, said with a fa- 
miliar air, -Well, cousin, you scarcely ex- 
pected, on your arrival from the country, to 
witness the downfal of the tyrant — Here, 
drink to the health of those brave asserters 
of our liberties." He submitted to swallow 
the toast, and got off without injury. 

The street in which M. Lescure resided, 
being much frequented by persons of the 
Swiss nation, was evidently a very dangerous 
place of retreat for royalists ; and, soon after 
it was dark, the whole family, disguised in 
the dress of the lower orders, slipped out, 
with the design of taking refuge in the house 
of an old femme-de-chambre, on the other side 
of the river. M. de Donnison and his wife 
went in one party ; and Madame Lescure, 
then in the seventh month of her pregnancy, 
with her husband, in another. Intending to 
cross by the lowest of the bridges, they first 
turned into the Champs-Elysees. More than 
a thousand men had been killed there that 
day ; but the alleys were now silent and 
lonely ; though the roar of the multitude, and 
occasional discharges of cannon and musketry, 
were heard from the front of the Tuilleries, 
where the conflagration of the barracks was 
still visible in the sky. "While they were 
wandering in these horrid shades, a woman 
came flying up to them, followed by a drunken 
patriot, with his musket presented at her 
head. All he had to say was, that she was 
an aristocrat, and that he must finish his day's 
work by killing her. M. Lescure appeased 
him with admirable presence of mind, by 
professing to enter entirely into his sentiments, 
and proposing that they should go back to- 
gether to the attack of the palace — adding 
only, u But you see what state my wife is in 
— she is a poor timid creature — and I must 
first take her to her sister's, and then I shall 
return here to you."' The savage at last 
agTeed to this, though before he went off, he 
presented his piece several times at them, 
swearing that he believed they were aristo- 
crats after all, and that he had a mind to liave 



236 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



a shot at thorn. This rencontre drove them 
from the lonely way ; and they returned to 
the public streets, all b'azing with illumina- 
tions, and crowded with drunken and infuri- 
ated w retches, armed with pikes, and in many 
instances stained with blood. The tumult 
and terror of the scene inspired Madame de 
L. with a kind of sympathetic frenzy; and, 
without knowing what she did, she screamed 
out, Vive les Sansculottes ! a bas les tyrans ! as 
outrageously as any of them. They glided 
unhurt, however, through this horrible assem- 
blage ; and crossing the river by the Pont 
Nei/.f, found the opposite shore dark, silent, 
and deserted, and speedily gained the humble 
refuge in search of which they had ventured. 

The domestic relations between the great 
and their dependants were certainly more 
cordial in old France, than in any other coun- 
try — and a revolution, which aimed profess- 
edly at levelling all distinction of ranks, and 
avenging the crimes of the wealthy, armed 
the hands of but few servants against the lives 
or liberties of their masters. M. de Lescure 
and his family were saved in this extremity 
by the prudent and heroic fidelity of some old 
waiting-women and laundresses — and ulti- 
mately effected their retreat to the country by 
the zealous and devoted services of a former 
tutor in the family, who had taken a very 
conspicuous part on the side of the Revolution. 
This M. Thomasin, who had superintended 
the education of M. Lescure, and retained the 
warmest affection for him and the whole 
family, was an active, bold, and good-humour- 
ed man — a great fencer, and a considerable 
orator at the meetings of his section. He was 
eager, of course, for a revolution that was to 
give every thing to talents and courage : and 
had been made a captain in one of the mu- 
nicipal regiments of Paris. This kind-hearted 
patriot took the proscribed family of M. de 
Lescure under his immediate protection, and 
by a thousand little stratagems and contriv- 
ances, not only procured passports and con- 
veyances to take them out of Paris, but 
actually escorted them himself, in his national 
uniform, till they were safely settled in a roy- 
alist district in the suburbs of Tours. When 
any tumult or obstruction arose on the journey, 
M. Thomasin leaped from the carriage, and 
assuming the tone of zeal and authority that 
belonged to a Parisian officer, he harangued, 
reprimanded, and enchanted the provincial 
patriots, till the whole party went off again in 
the midst of their acclamations. From Tours, 
after a cautious and encouraging exploration 
of the neighbouring country, they at length 
proceeded to M. Lescure's chateau of Clisson. 
in the heart of the district afterwards but too 
well known by the name of La Vendee, of 
which the author has here introduced a very 
clear and interesting description. 

A tract of about one hundred and fifty miles 
square, at the mouth and on the southern 
bank of the Loire, comprehends the scene of 
those deplorable hostilities. The most inland 
part of the district, and that in which the in- 
surrection first broke out, is called Le Bocage; 
and seems to have been almost as singular in 



its physical conformation, as in the state and 
condition of its population. A series of de- 
tached eminences, of no great elevation, rose 
over the whole face of the country, with little 
rills trickling in the hollows and occasional 
cliffs by their sides. The whole space was 
divided into small enclosures, each surround- 
ed w T ith tall wild hedges, and rows of pollard 
trees ; so that, though there were few larg8 
woods, the whole region had a sylvan and 
impenetrable appearance. The ground was 
mostly in pasturage ; and the landscape had, 
for the most part, an aspect of wild verdure, 
except that in the autumn some patches of 
yellow corn appeared here and there athwart 
the green enclosures. Only two great roads 
traversed this sequestered region, running 
nearly parallel, at a distance of more than 
seventy miles from each other. In the inter- 
mediate space, there was nothing but a laby- 
rinth of wild and devious paths, crossing each 
other at the extremity of almost every field 
— often serving, at the same time, as channels 
for the winter torrents, and winding so ca- 
priciously among the innumerable hillocks, 
and beneath the meeting hedgerows, that the 
natives themselves were always in danger of 
losing their way when they went a league or 
two from their own habitations. The coun- 
try, though rather thickly peopled, contained, 
as may be supposed, few large towns; and 
the inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to 
rural occupations, enjoyed a great deal of 
leisure. The noblesse or gentry of the coun- 
try were very generally resident on their 
estates ; where they lived in a style of sim- 
plicity and homeliness which had long disap- 
peared from every other part of the kingdom. 
No grand parks, fine gardens, or ornamented 
villas; but spacious clumsy chateaus, sur- 
rounded with farm offices and cottages for the 
labourers. Their manners and way of life, 
too, partook of the same primitive rusticity. 
There was great cordiality, and even much 
familiarity, in the intercourse of the seigneurs 
with their dependants. They were followed 
by large trains of them in their hunting expe- 
ditions, which occupied a great part of their 
time. Everyman had his fowlingpiece, and 
was a marksman of fame or pretensions. 
They were posted in various quarters, to in- 
tercept or drive back the game ; and were 
thus trained, by anticipation, to that sort of 
discipline and concert in which their whole 
art of war was mfterwards found to consist. 
Nor w T as their intimacy confined to their 
sports. The peasants resorted familiarly to 
their landlords for advice, both legal and 
medical ; and they repaid the visits in their 
daily rambles, and entered with interest into 
all the details of their agricultural opera- 
tions. They came to the weddings of their 
children, drank with their guests, and made 
little presents 1o the young people. On Sun- 
days and holida)s, all the retainers of the 
family assembled at the chateau, and danced 
in the barn or the court-yard, according to the 
season. The ladies of the house joined in tho 
festivity, and that without any airs of conde- 
scension or of mockery ; for, in their own liie, 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN. 



237 



there was little splendour or luxurious refine- 
ment. They travelled on horseback, or in 
heavy carriages drawn by oxen; and had lit- 
tle other amusement than in the care of their 
dependants, and the familiar intercourse of 
neighbours among whom there was no rivalry 
or principle of ostentation. 

From all this there resulted, as Madame de 
L. assures us, a certain innocence and kindli- 
ness of character, joined with great hardihood 
and gaiety, — which reminds us of Henry IV. 
and his Beamois, — and carries with it, per- 
haps, on account of that association, an idea 
of something more chivalrous and romantic — 
more honest and unsophisticated, than any 
thing we now expect to meet with in this 
modern world of artifice and derision. There 
was great purity of morals accordingly, Ma- 
dame de L. informs us. and general cheerful- 
ness and content throughout the whole dis- 
trict ; — crimes were never heard of, and law- 
suits almost unknown. Though not very well 
educated, the population was exceedingly 
devout: — though theirs was a kind of super- 
stitious and traditional devotion, it must be 
owned, rather than an enlightened or rational 
faith. They had the greatest veneration for 
crucifixes and images of their saints, and had 
no idea of any duty more imperious than that 
ef attending on all the offices of religion. 
They were singularly attached also to their 
cures ; who were almost all born and bred in 
the country, spoke their patois, and shared in 
all their pastimes and occupations. When a 
hunting-match was to take place, the clergy- 
man announced it from the pulpit after prayers, 
— and then took his fowlingpiece, and accom- 
panied his congregation to the thicket.*It 
was on behalf of these cures, in fact, that the 
first disturbances were excited. 

The decree of the Convention, displacing 
all priests who did not take the oaths imposed 
by that assembly, occasioned the removal of 
several of those beloved and conscientious 
pastors ; and various tumults were excited by 
attempts to establish their successors by au- 
thority. Some lives were lost in these tu- 
mults ; but their most important effect was 
in diffusing an opinion of the severity of the 
new government, and familiarizing the peo- 
ple with the idea of resisting it by force. 
The order of the Convention for a forced levy 
of three hundred thousand men, and the pre- 
parations to carry it into effect, gave rise to 
the first serious insurrection ; — and while the 
dread of punishment for the acts of violence 
already committed deterred the insurgents 
from submitting, the standard was no sooner 
raised between the republican government on 
the one hand and the discontented peasantry 
on the other, than the mass of that united and 
alarmed population declared itself for their 
associates; and a great tract of country was 
thus arrayed in open rebellion, without con- 
cert, leader, or preparation. We have the 
testimony of Madame de L. therefore, in ad- 
dition to all other good testimony, that this 
great civil war originated almost accidentally, 
and certainly not from any plot or conspiracy 
of the leading royalists in the country. The 



resident gentry, no doubt, for the most part, 
favoured that cause ; and the peasantry felt 
almost universally with their masters ; — but 
neither had the least idea, in the beginning, 
of opposing the political pretensions of the 
new government, nor, even to the last, much 
serious hope of effecting any revolution in the 
general state of the country. The first move- 
ments, indeed, partook far more of bigotry 
than of royalism; and were merely the rash 
and undirected expressions of plebeian resent- 
ment for the loss of their accustomed pastors. 
The more extensive commotions which follow- 
ed on the compulsory levy, were equally with- 
out object or plan, and were confined at first to 
the peasantry. The gentry did not join until 
they had no alternative, but that of taking up 
arms either against their own dependants, or 
along with them; and they went into the 
field, generally, with little other view than 
that of acquitting their own faith and honour, 
and scarcely any expectation beyond that of 
obtaining better terms for the rebels they 
were joining, or of being able to make a stand 
till some new revolution should take place at 
Paris, and bring in rulers less harsh and san- 
guinary. 

It was at the ballot for the levy of St. Flor- 
ent, that the rebellion may be said to have 
begun. The young men first murmured, and 
then threatened the commissioners, who some- 
what rashly directed a fieldpiece to be point- 
ed against them, and afterwards to be fired 
over their heads: — Nobody was hurt by the 
discharge ; and the crowd immediately rush- 
ed forward and seized upon the gun. Some 
of the commissioners were knocked down — 
their papers w r ere seized and -burnt — and the 
rioters went about singing and rejoicing for 
the rest of the evening. An account, proba- 
bly somewhat exaggerated, of this tumult, 
was brought next day to a venerable peasant 
of the name of Cathelineau, a sort of itinerant 
dealer in wool, who was immediately struck 
with the decisive consequences of this open 
attack on the constituted authorities. The 
tidings were brought to him as he was knead- 
ing the weekly allowance of bread for his 
family. He instantly wiped his arms, put on 
his coat, and repaired to the village market- 
place, where he harangued the inhabitants, 
and prevailed on twenty or thirty of the bold- 
est youths to take their arms in their hands 
and follow him. He was universally respect- 
ed for his piety, good sense, and mildness of 
character; and, proceeding with his troop of 
recruits to a neighbouring village, repeated his 
eloquent exhortations, and instantly found 
himself at the head of more than a hundred 
enthusiasts. Without stopping a moment, he 
led this new army to the attack of a military 
post guarded by four score soldiers and a 
piece of cannon. The post was surprised,- - 
the soldiers dispersed or made prisoners,- 
and the gun brought off in triumph. From 
this he advances, the same afternoon, to 
another post of two hundred soldiers and three 
pieces of cannon ; and succeeds, by the same 
surprise and intrepidity. The morning after, 
while preparing for other enterprises, he is 



233 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



Toined by another band of insurgents, who had 
associated to protect one of their friends, for 
whose arrest a military order had been issued. 
The unitea force, now amounting to a thou- 
sand men, tnen directed its attack on Chollet, 
a considerable town, occupied by at least five 
hundred of the republican army; and again 
bears down all resistance by the suddenness 
and impetuosity of its onset. The rioters find 
here a considerable supply of arms, money, 
and ammunition ; — and thus a country is lost 
and won. in which, but two days before, no- 
body thought or spoke of insurrection ! 

If there was something astonishing in the 
sudden breaking out of this rebellion, its first 
apparent suppression was not less extraordi- 
nary. These events took place just before 
Lent ; and, upon the approach of that holy 
season, the religious rebels all dispersed to 
their homes, and betook themselves to their 
prayers and their rustic occupations, just as if 
they had never quitted them. A column of 
the republican army, which advanced from 
Angers to bear down the insurrection, found 
no insurrection to quell. They marched from 
one end of the country to the other, and 
met everywhere with the most satisfactory 
appearances of submission and tranquillity. 
These appearances, however, it will readily 
be understood, w^ere altogether deceitful ; and 
as soon as Easter Sunday was over, the peas- 
ants began again to assemble in arms, — and 
now, for the first time, to apply to the gentry 
to head them. 

All this time Madame Lescure and her 
family remained quietly at Clisson j and, in 
that profound retreat, were ignorant of the 
singular events to which we have alluded, for 
long after they occurred. The first intelli- 
gence they obtained was from the indefatiga- 
ble M. Thomasin, who passed his time partly 
at their chateau, and partly in scampering 
about the country, and haranguing the con- 
stituted authorities — always in his national 
uniform, and with the authority of a Parisian 
patriot. One day this intrepid person came 
home, with a strange story of the neighbouring 
town of Herbiers having been taken either by 
a party of insurgents, or by an English army 
suddenly landed on the coast; and, at seven 
o'clock the next morning, the chateau was in- 
vested by two hundred soldiers, — and a party 
of dragoons rode into the court yard. Their 
business was to demand all the horses, arms, 
and ammunition, and also the person of an old 
cowardly chevalier, some of whose foolish 
letters had been carried to the municipality. 
M. de L. received this deputation with his 
characteristic composure — made the apology 
of the poor chevalier, and a few jokes at his 
expense — gave up some bad horses — and sent 
away the party in great good humour. For a 
few days they were agitated with contradic- 
tory rumours: But at last it appeared that 
the government had determined on vigorous 
measures ; and it was announced, that all the 
gentry would be required to arm themselves 
and their retainers against the insurgents. 
This brought things to a crisis; — a council 
was held in tne chateau, when it was speedily 



determined, that no consideration of prudence 
or of safety could induce men of honour to 
desert their dependants, or the party to m hich, 
in their hearts, they wished well ; — and that, 
when the alternative came, they would rather 
fight with the insurgents than against them. 
Henri de Larochejaquelein — of whom the fair 
writer gives so engaging a picture, and upon 
whose acts of heroism she dwells throughout 
with so visible a delight, that it is quite a dis- 
appointment to find that it is not his name she 
bears when she comes to change her own 
— had been particularly inquhed after and 
threatened; and upon an order being sent 
to his peasantry to attend and ballot for the 
militia, he takes horse in the middle of the 
night, and sets out to place himself at their 
head for resistance. The rest of the party 
remained a few days longer in considerable 
perplexity. — M. Thomasin having become 
suspected, on account of his frequent resort to 
them, had been put in prison; and they were 
almost entirely without intelligence as to what 
was going on ; when one morning, when they 
were at breakfast, a party of horse gallops up 
to the gate, and presents an order for the im- 
mediate arrest of the whole company. M. de 
L. takes this with perfect calmness — a team 
of oxen is yoked to the old coach; and the 
prisoners are jolted along, under escort of the 
National dragoons, to the town of Bressuire, 
By the time they had reached this place, their 
mild and steady deportment had made so 
favourable an impression on their conductors, 
that they were very near taking them back 
to their homes : — and the municipal officers, 

Sfore whom M. de L. was brought, had little 
b to urge for the arrest, but that it did not 
?m advisable to leave him at large, when it 
had been founc^ necessary to secure all the 
other gentry of the district. They were not 
sent, however, to the common prison, but 
lodged in the house of a worthy republican, 
who had formerly supplied the family with 
groceries, and now treated them with the 
greatest kindness and civility. Here they re- 
mained for several days, closely shut up in 
two little rooms; and were not a little startled, 
when they saw from their windows two or 
three thousand of the National guard march 
fiercely out to repulse a party of the insur- 
gents, who were advancing, it was reported, 
under the command of Henri de Larocheja- 
quelein. Next day, however, these valiant 
warriors came flying back in great confusion. 
They had met and been defeated by the in- 
surgents ; and the town was filled with ter- 
rors — and with the cruelties to which terror 
always gives birth. Some hundreds of Mar- 
seillois arrived at this crisis to reinforce the 
republican army; and proposed, as a measure 
of intimidation and security, that they should 
immediately massacre all the prisoners. — The 
native leaders a]l expressed the greatest hor- 
ror at this proposal — but it was nevertheless 
carried into effect ! The author saw hundreds 
of those unfortunate creatures marched out of 
the town, under a guaid of their butchers. 
They were then drawn up in a neighbouring 
field, and w^ere cut down with the sahre— 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN. 



239 



most of them quietly kneeling and exclaim- 
ing, Vive h Roi ! It was natural for Madame 
de L. and her party to think that their turn 
was to come next : and the alarms of their 
compassionate jailor did not help to allay 
their apprehensions. Their fate hung indeed 
upon the slightest accident. One day they 
received a letter from an emigrant, congratu- 
lating them on the progress of the counter- 
revolution, and exhorting them not to remifr 
their efforts in the cause. The very day after, 
their letters were all opened at the munici- 
pality, and sent to them unsealed ! The 
patriots, however, it turned out, were too 
much occupied with apprehensions of their 
own, to attend to any thing else. The Na- 
tional guards of the place were not much 
accustomed to war. and trembled at the re- 
taliation which the excesses of their Mar- 
seilles auxiliaries might so well justify. A 
sort of panic took possession even of their 
best corps ; nor could the general prevail on 
his cavalry to reconnoitre beyond the walls 
of the town. A few horsemen, indeed, once 
ventured half a mile farther; but speedily 
came galloping back in alarm, with a report 
'.hat a great troop of the enemy were at their 
heels. It turned out to be only a single 
country-man at work in his field, with a team 
of six oxen ! 

There was no waiting an assault with* such 
forces; anl, in the beginning of May 1793, 
it was resolved to evacuate the place, and fall 
back on Thouars. The aristocratic captives 
were fortunately forgotten in the hurry of 
this inglorious movement ; and though they 
listened through their closed shutters, with 
no great tranquillity, to the parting clamours 
and imprecations of the Marseillois, they soon 
received assurance of their ^feliverance, in the 
supplications of their keeper, and many others 
of the municipality, to be allowed to retire 
with them to Clisson, and to seek shelter 
there from the vengeance of the advancing 
royalists. M. de Lescure, with his usual 
good nature, granted all these requests ; and 
they soon set off, with a grateful escort, for 
their deserted chateau. 

The dangers he had already incurred by 
his inaction — the successes of his less prudent 
friends, and the apparent weakness and ir- 
resolution of their opponents, now decided M. 
de Lescure to dissemble no longer with those 
who seemed entitled to his protection; and 
he resolved instantly to cast in his lot with 
the insurgents, and support the efforts of his 
adventurous cousin. He accordingly sent 
round without the delay of an instant, to inti- 
mate his purpose to all the parishes where he 
had influence; and busied himself and his 
household in preparing horses and arms, 
while his wife and her women were engaged 
in manufacturing white cockades. In the 
midst of these preparations, Henri de Laroche- 
jaquelein arrived, flushed with victory and 
nope, and announced his seizure of Bressuire, 
and all the story of his brief and busy campaign. 

Upon his first arrival in the revolted district 
of his own domains, he found the peasants 
••ather disheartened for want of a leader — 



some setting off for the army of Anjou, and 
others meditating a return to their own homes. 
His appearance, however, and the heartiness 
of his adherence to their cause, at once re- 
vived the sinking flame of their enthusiasm, 
and spread it through all the adjoining region. 
Before next evening, he found himself at tho 
head of near ten thousand devoted followers 
— without arms or discipline indeed, but with 
hearts in the trim — and ready to follow wher- 
ever he would veifiture to lead. There were 
only about two hundred firelocks in the whole 
array, and these were shabby fowling-pieces, 
without bayonets : The rest were equipped 
with scythes, or blades of knives stuck upon 
poles — with spits, or with good heavy cudgels 
of knotty wood. In presenting himself to this 
romantic arm}', their youthful leader made 
the following truly eloquent and characteristic 
speech — "My good friends, if my father were 
here to lead you, we should all proceed with 
greater confidence. For my part, I know I 
am but a child — but I hope I have courage 
enough not to be quite unworthy of supplying 
his place to you — Follow me when I advance 
against the enemy — kill me when I turn my 
back upon them — and revenge me, if they 
bring me down!" That very day he led 
them into action. A strong post of the repub- 
licans were stationed at Aubiers: — Henri, 
with a dozen or two of his best marksmen, 
glided silently behind the hedge which sur- 
rounded the field in which they were, and 
immediately began to fire — some of the un- 
armed peasants handing forward loaded mus- 
kets to them in quick succession. He himself 
fired near two hundred shots that day; and a 
gamekeeper, who stood beside him, almost as 
many. The soldiers, though at first astonished 
at this assault from an invisible enemy, soon 
collected themselves, and made a movement 
to gain a small height that was near. Henri 
chose this moment to make a general assault; 
and calling out to his men, that they were 
running, burst through the hedge at # their 
head, and threw them instantly into flight and 
irretrievable confusion ; got possession of their 
guns and stores, and pursued them to within 
a few miles of the walls of Bressuire. Such, 
almost universally, was the tactic of those 
formidable insurgents. Their whole art of 
war consisted in creeping round the hedges 
which separated them from their enemies, 
and firing there till they began to waver or 
move — and then rushing forward with shouts 
and impetuosity, but without any regard to 
order; possessing themselves first of the artil- 
lery, and rushing into the. hearf of their op- 
ponents with prodigious fierceness and activity. 
In these assaults they seldom lost so much as 
one man for every five that fell of the regu- 
lars. They were scarcely ever discovered 
soon enough to suffer from the musketry — 
and seldom gave the artillery an opportunity 
of firing more than once. When they saw 
the flash of the pieces, they instantly threw 
themselves flat on the ground till the shot 
flew over, then started up. and rushed on the 
gunners before they could reload. If they 
were finally repulsed, they retreated and dis- 



240 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



V>ersed with the same magical rapidity, dart- 
ing through the hedges, and scattering among 
the defiles in a way that eluded all pursuit, 
and exposed those who attempted it to mur- 
derous ambuscades at every turning. 

As soon as it was known that M. de Les- 
cure had declared for the white cockade, 
forty parishes assumed that badge of hos- 
tility ; and he and his cousin found themselves 
at the head of near- twenty thousand men ! 
The day after, they brought eighty horsemen 
to the chateau. These gallant knights, how- 
ever, were not very gorgeously caparisoned. 
Their steeds were of all sizes and colours — 
many of them with packs instead of saddles, 
and loops of rope for stirrups — pistols and 
sabres of all shapes tied on with cords — 
white or black cockades in their hats — and 
tricoloured ones — with bits of epaulettes taken 
from the vanquished republicans, dangling in 
ridicule at the tails of their horses ! Such as 
they were, however, they filled the chateau 
with tumult and exultation, and frightened 
the hearts out of some unhappy republicans 
who came to look after their wives who had 
taken refuge in that asylum. ' They did them 
no other harm, however, than compelling 
theni to spit on their tricoloured cockades, 
and to call Vive le Roil — which the poor 

Eeople, being £ 'des gens honnetes et paisi- 
les, ? ' very readily performed. 
In the afternoon, Madame de L., with a 
troop of her triumphant attendants, paid a 
visit to her late prison at Bressuire. The 
place was now occupied by near twenty thou- 
sand insurgents — all as remarkable, she as- 
sures us, for their simple piety, and the 
innocence and purity of their morals, as for 
the valour and enthusiasm which had banded 
them together. Even in a town so obnoxious 
as this had become, from the massacre of the 
prisoners, there were no executions, and no 
pillage. Some of the men were expressing a 
great desire for some tobacco ; and upon being- 
asked whether there was none in the place, 
answered, quite simply, that there was plenty, 
but they had no money to buy it ! 

In giving a short view of the whole insur- 
gent force, which she estimates at about 
eighty thousand men, Madame de L. here 
introduces a short account of its principal 
leaders, whose characters are drawn with a 
delicate, though probably too favourable hand. 
M. d'Elbee, M. de Bonchamp, and M. de 
Marigny, were almost the only ones who had 
formerly exercised the profession of arms, and 
were therefore invested with the formafttem- 
mand. StofTlet, a native of Alsace, had form- 
erly served in a Swiss regiment, but had long 
been a gamekeeper in Poitou. Of Calhelineau 
we have spoken already. Henri de Laroche- 
jaquelein, and M. de Lescure, were undoubt- 
edly the most popular and important members 
of the association, and are painted with the 
greatest liveliness and discrimination. The 
former, tall, fair, and graceful — with a shy, 
affectionate, and indolent manner in private 
life, had, in the field, all the gaiety, anima- 
tion, and love of adventure, that he used to 
display in the chase. Utterly indifferent to 



danger, and ignorant of the very name of f'ea?. 
his great faults as a leader were rashness in 
attack, and undue exposure of his person. 
He knew little, and cared less, for the scien- 
tific details of war; and could not always 
maintain the gravity that was required in the 
councils of the leaders. Sometimes after 
bluntly giving his opinion, he would quietly 
lay himself to sleep till the end of the delibe- 
rations; and, when reproached with this 
neglect of his higher duties, would answer, 
"What business had they to make me a Gen- 
eral? — I would much rather have been a 
private light-horseman, and taken the sport 
as it came." With all this light-heartedness, 
however, he w r as full not only of kindness to 
his soldiers, but of compassion for his prison- 
ers. He would sometimes offer, indeed, to 
fight them fairly hand to hand, before accept- 
ing their surrender; but never refused to give 
quarter, nor ever treated them with insult or 
severity. 

M. de Lescure was in many respects of an 
opposite character. His courage, though of 
the most heroic temper, was invariably united 
with perfect coolness and deliberation. He 
had a great theoretical knowledge of war, 
having diligently studied all that was written 
on the subject; and was the only man in the 
party who knew any thing of fortification. 
His temper was unalterably sweet and placid ; 
and his never-failing humanity, in the tre- 
mendous scenes he had to pass through, had 
something in it of an angelical character. 
Though constantly engaged at the head of his 
troops, and often leading them on to the as- 
sault, he never could persuade himself to take 
the life of a fellow-creature with his own 
hand, or to show the smallest severity to his 
captives. One clay a soldier, who he thought 
had surrendered, fired at him, almost at the 
muzzle of his piece. He put aside the mus- 
ket with his sword, and said, with perfect 
composure, " Take that prisoner to the rear/' 
His attendants, enraged at the perfidy of the 
assault, cut him down behind his back. He 
turned round at the noise, and flew into the 
most violent passion in which he had ever 
been seen. This was the only time in his 
life in which he was known to utter an oath. 
There was no spirit of vengeance in short in 
his nature; and he frequently saved more 
lives after a battle, than had been lost in the 
course of it. 

The discipline of the army, thus command- 
ed, has been already spoken of. It was never 
even divided into regiments or companies. — 
When the chiefs had agreed on a plan of 
operations, they announced to their followers; 
— M. Lescure goes to take such a bridge, — 
who will follow him ? M. Marigny keeps the 
passes in such a valley — who will go with 
him ? — and so on. They were never told to 
march to the right or the left, but to that tree 
or to that steeple. They were generally very 
ill supplied with ammunition, and were often 
obliged to attack a post of artillery with cud- 
gels. On one occasion, while rushing on for 
this purpose, they suddenly discovered a huge 
crucifix in a recess of the woods on their flank, 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHE.TAQUELEIN. 



24! 



and immediately every man of them stopped 
short, and knelt quietly down, under the fire 
of the enemy. They then got up, ran right 
forward, and took the cannon. They had 
tolerable medical assistance ; and found ad- 
mirable nurses for the wounded, in the nun- 
neries and other religious establishments that 
existed in all the considerable towns. 

Their first enterprise, after the capture of 
Bressuire, was against Thouars. To get at 
this place, a considerable river was to be cross- 
ed. — M. de Lescure headed a party that was 
to force the passage of abridge ; but when he 
came within the heavy fire of its defenders, 
all his peasants fell back, and left him for 
some minutes alone : — His clothes were torn 
by the bullets, but not a shot took effect on 
his person : — He returned to the charge again 
with Henri de Larochejaquelein : — Their fol- 
lowers, all but two, again left them at the 
moment of charging : But the enemy, scared 
at their audacity, had already taken flight; 
the bridge was carried by those four men ; 
and the town was given up after a short strug- 
gle, though not before Henri had climbed 
alone to the top of the wall by the help of a 
friend's shoulders, and thrown several stones 
at the flying inhabitants within. The repub- 
lican general Quetineau, who had defended 
himself with great valour, obtained honour- 
able terms in this capitulation, and was treated 
with the greatest kindness by the insurgent 
chiefs. He had commanded at Bressuire when 
it was finally abandoned, and told M. Lescure, 
when he was brought before him, that he saw 
the closed window-shutters of his family well 
enough as he marched out ; and that it was 
not out of forg'etfulness that he had left them 
unmolested. M. Lescure expressed his grati- 
tude for his generosity, and pressed him to 
remain with them. — "You do not agree in our 
opinions, I know ; — and I do not ask you to 
take any share in our proceedings. You shall 
be a prisoner at large among us : But if you 
go back to the republicans, they will say you 
gave up the place out of treachery, and you 
will be rewarded by the executioner for the 
gallant defence you have made." — The cap- 
tive answered in terms equally firm and spir- 
ited. — " I must do my duty at all hazards. — 
I should be dishonoured, if I remained vol- 
untarily among enemies ; and I am ready to 
answer for all I have hitherto done." — It will 
surprise some violent royalists among our- 
selves, we believe, to find that this frankness 
and fidelity to his party secured for him the 
friendship and esteem of all the Vendean 
leaders. The peasants, indeed, felt a little 
more like the liberal persons just alluded to. 
They were not a little scandalized to find a 
republican treated with respect and courtesy: 
— and, above all, were in horror when they 
8a w him admitted into the private society of 
their chiefs, and discovered that M. de Bon- 
champ actually trusted himself in the same 
chamber with him at night ! For the first 
two or three nights, indeed, several of them 
kept w r atch at the outside of the door, to de- 
fend him against the assassination they ap- 
prehended ; and once or twice he found in 
31 



the morning, that one morn distrustful than 
the rest had glided into the room, and laid 
himself down across the feet of his com* 
mander. 

From Thouars they proceeded to Fontenay, 
where they had a still more formidable resist- 
ance to encounter. M. de Lescure was ogain 
exposed alone to the fire of six pieces of can- 
non charged with grape ; and had his hat 
pierced, a spur shot off, and a boot torn by 
the discharge; — but he only turned round to 
his men, who were hanging back, and said, 
" You see these fellows can take no aim j — 
come on !" They did come on, and sooi. 
carried all before them. 

The republicans had retaken, in the course 
of these encounters, the first piece of cannon 
which had fallen into the hands of the insur- 
gents, and to which the peasants had fondly 
given the name of Marie Jeanne. After their 
success at Fontenay, a party was formed to 
recover it. One man, in his impatience, got 
so far ahead of his comrades, that he was in 
the heart of the enemy before he was aware. 
Fortunately, he had the horse and accoutre- 
ments of a dragoon he had killed the day 
before, and was taken by the party for one of 
their own company. They welcomed him 
accordingly ; and told him that he was just 
come in time to repulse the brigands, who 
were advancing to retake their Marie Jeanne. 
"Are they?" said he ; — " follow me, and we 
shall soon give a good account of them :" — 
and then, heading the troop, he rode on till 
he came within reach of his own party, when 
he suddenly cut down the two men on each 
side of him, and welcomed his friends to the 
victory. At another time, four young officers, 
in the wantonness of their valour, rode alone 
to a large village in the heart of the country 
occupied by the republicans, ordered all the 
inhabitants to throw down their tricoloured 
cockades, and to prepare quarters for the roy- 
alist army, which was to march in, in the 
evening, one hundred thousand strong. The 
good people began their preparations accord- 
ingly, and hewed down their tree of liberty — 
when the young men laughed in their faces, 
and galloped unmolested away from upwards 
of a thousand enemies ! — The whole book is 
full of such feats and adventures. Their re- 
cent successes had encumbered them with 
near four thousand prisoners, of whom, as 
they had no strong places or regular garrisons, 
they were much at a loss how to dispose. — 
To dismiss such a mob of privates, on their 
parole not to serve any more against them, 
they knew would be of no avail*; and after 
much deliberation, the}- fell upon the ingeni- 
ous expedient of shaving their heads, at the 
same time that their parole was exacted ; so 
that if they again took the field against them 
within any moderate time, they might be 
easily recognised, and dealt with accordingly. 
Madame Lescure's father had the merit of 
this happy invention. 

The day after the capture of Fontenay, the 
greater part of the army thought it was time 
to go home for a while to look after their cat- 
tle, and tell their exploits to their wives and 
V 



242 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



children. In about a week, however, a con- 
siderable number of them came back again, 
and proceeded to attack Saumur. Here M. 
de Lescure received his first wound in the 
arm; and Henri, throwing his hat over the 
entrenchments of the place, called to his men, 
" Let us see now, who will bring it back to 
me!"— and rushed at their head across the 
glacis, A vast multitude of the republicans 
fell in this battle ; and near twelve thousand 
prisoners were made, — who were all shaved 
and let go. The insurgents did not lose four 
hundred in all. In the castle they found 
Quetineau, the gallant but unsuccessful de- 
fender of Thouars, who, according to M. de 
Lescure's prediction, had been arrested and 
ordered for trial in consequence of that dis- 
aster. He was again pressed to remain with 
them as a prisoner on parole ; but continued 
firm in his resolution to do his duty, and leave 
the rest to fortune. He was sent, accordingly, 
to Paris a short time after — where he was 
tried, condemned, and executed ! 

The insurrection had now attained a mag- 
nitude which seemed to make it necessary to 
have some one formally appointed to the chief 
command ; and with a view of at once flat- 
tering and animating the peasants, in whose 
spontaneous zeal it had originated, all voices 
were united in favour of Cathelineau, the 
humble and venerable leader under whom its 
first successes had been obtained. It is very 
remarkable, indeed, that in a party thus asso- 
ciated avowedly in opposition to democratical 
innovations, the distinctions of rank were 
utterly disregarded and forgotten. Not only 
was an humble peasant raised to the dignity 
of commander-in-chief, but Madame de L. 
assures us, that she herself never knew or 
enquired whether one half of the officers 
were of noble or plebeian descent; and men- 
tions one, the son of a village shoemaker, who 
was long at the head of all that was gallant 
and distinguished in the body. We are afraid 
that this is a trait of their royalism, which it 
is no longer thought prudent to bring forward 
in the courts of royalty. 

Those brilliant successes speedily suggested 
enterprises of still greater ambition and ex- 
tent. A communication was now opened 
with M. de Charrette. who had long headed 
the kindred insurrection in Anjou ; and a 
joint attack on the city of Nantes was pro- 
jected and executed by the two armies. That 
of Poitou was now tolerably provided with 
arms and ammunition, and decently clothed, 
though without any attention to uniformity. 
The dress Of the officers was abundantly fierce 
and fantastic. With pantaloons and jackets 
of gray cloth, they wore a variety of great 
red handkerchiefs all about their persons — 
one tied round their head, and two or three 
about their waist, and across their shoulders, 
for holding their pistols and ammunition. 
Henri de Larochejaquelein introduced this 
fashion; and it speedily became universal 
among his companions, giving them not a 
little the air of brigands, or banditti, the name 
early bestowed on them by the republicans, 
and at last generally adopted and recognised 



among themselves. The expedition to Nante* 
was disastrous. The soldiers did not like to 
go so far from home ; and the army, as it ad- 
vanced, melted away by daily, desertions. 
There was also some want of concert in the 
movements of the different corps ; — and, after 
a sanguinary conflict, the attack was abandon- 
ed, and the forces dispersed all over the 
country. The good Cathelineau was mortally 
wounded in this affair, at which neither M. 
de Lescure nor Henri were present ; the latter 
being in garrison at Saumur, and the other 
disabled by his wound. The news of this 
wound came rather suddenly upon his wife, 
who, though she had always before been in 
agonies of fear on horseback, instantly mount 
ed a ragged colt, and galloped off to rejoin 
him. She never afterwards had the least 
alarm about riding. The army having spon- 
taneously disbanded after the check at Nantes, 
it was found impossible to maintain the places 
it had occupied. General Westermann arrived 
from Paris, at the head of a large force ; and, 
after retaking Saumur and Parthenay, began 
the relentless and exterminating system of 
burning and laying waste the districts from 
which he had succeeded in dislodging the in- 
surgents. One of the first examples he made 
was at M. de Lescure's chateau of Clisson. 
It was burnt to the ground, with all its offices, 
stores, and peasants' houses, as well as all the 
pictures and furniture of its master. Having 
Jong foreseen the probability of such a con- 
summation, he had at one time, given orders 
to remove some of the valuable articles it 
contained ; but apprehensive that such a pro- 
ceeding might discourage or disgust his fol- 
lowers, he afterwards abandoned the design, 
and submitted to the loss of all his family 
moveables. The event, Madame de L. as- 
sures us, produced no degree either of irrita- 
tion or discouragement. The chiefs, however, 
now exerted all their influence to collect their 
scattered forces before Chatillon ; and Madame 
de L. accompanied her husband in all the 
rapid and adventurous marches he made for 
that purpose, through this agitated and dis- 
tracted country. In one of these fatiguing 
movements with some broken corps of the 
army, they stopped to repose for the night in 
the chateau of Madame de Concise, who was 
still so much an alien to the Vendean man- 
ners, that they found her putting on rouge, 
and talking of the agitation of her nerves ! 

The attack on Westermann's position at 
Chatillon was completely successful ; but the 
victory was stained by the vindictive massa- 
cres which followed it. The burnings and 
butcheries of the republican forces were 
bloodily. avenged — in spite of the efforts of 
M. de Lescure, who repeatedly exposed his 
own life to save those of the vanquished. In 
the midst of the battle, one of his attendants 
seeing a rifleman about to fire at him, stepped 
bravely before him, and received the shot in 
his eye. The carriage of Westermann was 
taken ; and some young officers, to whom it 
was entrusted, having foolishly broken open 
the strong box, which was believed to be full 
of money, there was a talk of bringing them 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN. 



243 



to trial for the supposed embezzlement. M. 
de L., however, having declared that one of 
them had given hirn his word of honour that 
the box was empty when they opened it, the 
whole council declared themselves satisfied, 
and acquitted the young men by acclamation. 

In the course of the summer of 1793, various 
sanguinary actions were fought with various 
success ; but the most remarkable event was 
the arrival of M.Tin teniae, with despatches 
from the English government, about the mid- 
dle of July. This intrepid messenger had 
come alone through all Brittany arid Anjou, 
carrying his despatches in his pistols as wad- 
ding, and incessantly in danger from the re- 
publican armies and magistrates. The des- 
patches, Madame de L. informs us, showed 
an incredible ignorance on the part of the 
English government of the actual posture of 
affairs. They were answered, however, with 
gratitude and clearness. A debarkation was 
strongly recommended near Sables or Paim- 
bceuf, but by no means at L'Orient, Rochefort, 
or Rochelle ; and it was particularly entreated, 
that the troops should consist, chiefly of emi- 
grant Frenchmen, and that a Prince of the 
House of Bourbon should, if possible, place 
himself at their head. Madame de L., who 
wrote a small and very neat hand, was em- 
ployed to write out these despatches, which 
were placed in the pistols of M. Tinteniac, 
who immediately proceeded on his adven- 
turous mission. He reached England, it seems, 
and was frequently employed thereafter in 
undertakings of the same nature. He headed 
a considerable party of Bretons, in endeavour- 
ing to support the unfortunate descent at 
Quiberon; and, disdaining to submit, even 
after the failure of that ill-concerted expedi- 
tion, fell bravely with arms in his hands. 
After his departure, the insurgents were re- 
pulsed at Lucon, and obtained some advan- 
tages at Chantonnay. But finding the repub- 
lican armies daily increasing in numbers, skill, 
and discipline, they found it necessary to act 
chiefly on the defensive ; and, for this pur- 
pose, divided the country into several districts, 
in each of which they stationed that part of 
the army which had been recruited within it, 
and the general who was most beloved and 
confided in by the inhabitants. In this way, 
M. Lescure came to be stationed in the heart 
of his own estates: and was not a little touched 
to find almost all his peasants, who had bled 
and suffered by his side for so long a time 
without pay, come to make offer of the rents 
that were due for the possessions to which 
they were but just returned. He told them, 
it was not for his rents that he had taken up 
arms; — and that while they were exposed to 
the calamities of war, they were well entitled 
to be freed of that burden. Various lads of 
thirteen, and several hale grandsires of sev- 
enty, came at this period, and insisted upon 
being allowed to share the dangers and glories 
of theii kinsmen. 

From this time, downwards, the picture of 
the war is shaded with deeper horrors ; and 
the operations of the insurgents acquire a 
character of greater desperation. The Con- 



vention issued the barbarous decree, that the 
whole country, which still continued its re- 
sistance, should be desolated; that the whole 
inhabitants should be exterminated, without 
distinction of age or sex; the habitations con- 
sumed with fire, and the trees cut down with 
the axe. Six armies, amounting in all to near 
two hundred thousand men, were charged 
with the execution of these atrocious orders; 
and began, in September 1793, to obej r them 
with a detestable fidelity. A multitude of 
sanguinary conflicts ensued; and the insur- 
gents succeeded in repulsing this desolating 
invasion at almost all the points of attack. 
Among the slain in one of these engagements, 
the republicans found the body of a young 
woman, which Madame de L. informs us gave 
occasion to a number of idle reports ; many 
giving out that it was she herself, or a sister 
of M. de L. (who had no sister), or a new 
Joan of Arc, who had kept up the spirit of 
the peasantry by her enthusiastic predictions. 
The truth was, that it was the body of an in- 
nocent peasant girl, who had always lived a 
remarkably quiet and pious life, till recently 
before this action, when she had been seized 
with an irresistible desire to take a part in 
the conflict. She had discovered herself some 
time before to Madame deL.; and begged 
from her a shift of a peculiar fabric. The 
night before the battle, she also revealed her 
secret to M. de L. ; — asked him to give her a 
pair of shoes — and promised to behave her- 
self in such a manner in the morrow's fight, 
that he should never think of parting with 
her. Accordingly, she kept near his person 
through the whole of the battle, and conduct- 
ed herself with the most heroic bravery. Two 
or three times, in the very heat of the fight, 
she said to him, "No, mon, General, you shall 
not get before me — I shall always be closer 
up to the enemy even than you." Early in 
the dajr, she was hurt pretty seriously in the 
hand, but held it up laughing to her general, 
and said, "It is nothing at all." In the end 
of the battle she w T as surrounded in a charge, 
and fell fighting like a desperado. There 
were about ten other women, who took up 
arms, Madame de L. says, in this cause;-— 
two sisters, under fifteen — and a tall beauty, 
who wore the dress of an officer. The priests 
attended the soldiers in the field, and rallied 
and exhorted them; but took no part in the 
combat, nor ever excited them to any acts of 
inhumanity. There were many boys of the 
most tender age among the combatants, — 
some scarcely more than nine or ten years of 
age. 

M. Piron gained a decided victory over the 
most numerous army of the republic; bu f 
their ranks being recruited by the whole gar- 
rison of Mentz, which had been liberated on 
parole, presented again a most formidable 
front to the insurgents. A great battle was 
fought in the middle of September at Chollet, 
where the government army was completely 
broken, and would have been finally routed, 
but for the skill and firmness of the cele- 
brated Kleber who commanded it, and suc- 
cessfully maintained a position which covered 



244 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



its retreat. In the middle of the battle one 
of the peasants took a flageolet from his 
pocket, and, in derision, began to play ga ira, 
as he advanced against the enemy. A can- 
non-ball struck off his horse's head, and 
brought him to the ground ; but he drew his 
leg from the dead animal, and marched for- 
ward on foot, without discontinuing his music. 
One other picture of detail will give an idea 
of the extraordinary sort of warfare in which 
the country was then engaged. Westermann 
was beat out of Chatillon, and pursued to 
some distance; but finding that the insurgent 
forces were withdrawn, he bethought himself 
of recovering the place by a coup de main. 
He mounted an hundred grenadiers behind 
an hundred picked hussars, and sent them at 
midnight into the city. The peasants, as 
usual, had no outposts, and were scattered 
about the streets, overcome with fatigue and 
brandy. However, they made a stout and 
bloody resistance. One active fellow received 
twelve sabre wounds on the same spot; an- 
other, after killing a hussar, took up his 
wounded brother in his arms, placed him on 
the horse, and sent him out of the city; — 
then returned to the combat ; killed another 
hussar, and mounted himself on the prize. 
The republicans, irritated at the resistance 
they experienced, butchered all that came 
across them in that night of confusion ! All 
order or discipline was lost in the darkness : 
and they hacked and fired at each other, or 
wrestled and fell, man to man, as they chanced 
to meet, and often without being able to dis- 
tinguish friend from foe. — An eminent leader 
of the insurrection was trampled under foot 
by a party of the republicans, who rushed past 
him to massacre the whole family where he 
lodged, who were all zealous republicans. — 
The town was set on fire in fifty places, — and 
was at last evacuated by both parties, in mu- 
tual fear and ignorance of the force to which 
they were opposed. When the day dawned, 
however, it was finally reoccupied by the in- 
surgents. 

After some more successes, the insurgent 
chiefs found their armies sorely reduced, and 
their enemies perpetually increasing in force 
and numbers. M. de la Charette, upon some 
misunderstanding, withdrew his corps; and 
all who looked beyond the present moment, 
could not fail to perceive, that disasters of the 
most fatal nature w T ere almost inevitably ap- 
proaching. A dreadful disaster, at all events, 
now fell on their fair historian. M. de L. in 
rallying a party of his men near Tremblaye, 
was struck with a musket ball on the eye- 
brow, and instantly fell senseless to the ground. 
He was not dead, however ; and was with diffi- 
culty borne through the rout which was the 
immediate consequence of his fall. His wife, 
entirely ignorant of what had happened, was 
forced to move along with the retreating army; 
and in a miserable little village was called, at 
midnight, from her bed of straw, to hear mass 
performed to the soldiers" by whom she was 
surrounded. The f solemn ceremony was in- 
terrupted by the approaching thunder of ar- 
tillery, and the perpetual arrival of fugitive 



and tumultuary parties, with tidings of evil 
omen. Nobody had the courage to tell this 
unfortunate woman the calamity that had be- 
fallen her, though the priest awakened a vague 
alarm by solemn encomiums on the piety of 
M. de L., and the necessity of resignation to 
the will of Heaven. Next night she found 
him at Cherdron, scarcely able to move or to 
articulate, — but suffering more from the idea 
of her having fallen into the hands of the 
enemy, than from his own disasters. 

The last great battle was fought near Choi- 
let, when the insurgents, after a furious and 
sanguinary resistance, were at last borne down 
by the multitude of their opponents, and 
driven down into the low country on the banks 
of the Loire. M. de Bonchamp, who had 
always held out the policy of crossing this 
river, and the advantages to be derived from 
uniting themselves to the royalists of Brittany, 
was mortally wounded in this battle ; but his 
counsels still influenced their proceedings in 
this emergency ; and not only the whole de- 
bris and wreck of the army, but a great pro- 
portion of the men and women and children 
of the country, flying in consternation from 
the burnings and butchery of the government 
forces, flocked down in agony and despair to 
the banks of this great river. On gaining- the 
heights of St. Florent, one of the most mourn- 
ful, and at the same time most magnificent 
spectacles, burst upon the eye. Those heights 
form a vast semicircle ; at the bottom of which 
a broad bare plain extends to the edge of the 
water. Near an hundred thousand unhappy 
souls now blackened over that dreary expanse, 
— old men, infants, and women mingled with 
the half-armed soldiery, caravans, crowded 
baggage waggons and teams of oxen, all full 
of despair, impatience, anxiety, and terror. — 
Behind, were the smokes of their burning 
villages, and the thunder of the hostile artil- 
lery ; — before, the broad stream of the Loire, 
divided by a long low island, also covered 
with the fugitives — twenty frail barks plying 
in the stream — and, on the far banks, the 
disorderly movements of those who had ef- 
fected the passage, and were waiting there to 
be rejoined by their companions. Such, Ma- 
dame de L. assures us, was the tumult and 
terrror of the scene, and so awful the recol- 
lections it inspired, that it can never be effaced 
from the memory of any of those who beheld 
it ; and that many of its awe-struck specta- 
tors have concurred in stating that it brought 
forcibly to their imaginations the unspeakable 
terrors of the great day of Judgment ! Through 
this dismayed and bewildered multitude, the 
disconsolate family of their gallant general 
made their way silently to the shore; — M. de 
L. stretched, almost insensible, on a wretched 
litter, — his wife, three months gone with child, 
walking by his side, — and, behind her, her 
faithful nurse, with her helpless and astonish- 
ed infant in her arms. When they arrived 
on the beach, they with difficulty got a crazy 
boat to carry them to the island ; but the aged 
monk who steered it w r ould not venture to 
cross the larger branch of the stream, — and 
the poor wounded man was obliged to submit 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIJV. 



245 



tc the agony of another removal. At length, 
(hey were landed on the opposite bank : where 
wretchedness and desolation appeared still 
more conspicuous. Thousands of helpless 
Wretches were lying on the grassy shore, or 
reaming about in search of the friends from 
whom they had been divided. There was a 
general complaint of cold and hunger ; and no- 
body in a condition to give any directions, or 
administer any relief. M. de L. suffered excru- 
ciating pain from the piercing air which blew 
upon his feverish frame ; — the poor infant 
screamed for food, and the helpless mother 
was left to minister to both ; — while her at- 
tendant went among the burnt and ruined 
villages, to seek a drop of milk for the baby. 
At length they got again in motion for the 
adjoining village of Varades, — M. de L., borne 
in a sort of chair upon the pikes of his soldiers, 
with his wife and the maid-servant walking 
before him, and supporting his legs, wrapped 
up in their cloaks. With great difficulty they 
procured a little room, in a cottage swarming 
with soldiers, — most of them famishing for 
want of food, and yet still so mindful of the 
rights of their neighbours, that they would 
not take a few potatoes from the garden of 
the cottage, till Madame de L. had obtained 
leave of the proprietor. 

M. de Bonchamp died as they were taking 
him out of the boat; and it became necessary 
to elect another commander. M. de L. roused 
himself to recommend Henri de Larocheja- 
quelein ; and he was immediately appointed. 
When the election was announced to him, M. 
de L. desired to see and congratulate his 
valiant cousin. He was already weeping- 
over him in a dark comer of the room ; and 
now came to express his hopes that he should 
soon be superseded by his recovery. "No,*' 
said M. de L., " that I believe is out of the 
question : But even if I were to recover, 
I should neyer take the place you have 
now obtained, and should be proud to serve 
as your aid-de-camp." — The day after, 
they advanced towards Rennes. M. de L. 
could find no other conveyance than a bag- 
gage-waggon ; at every jolt of which he 
suffered such anguish, as to draw forth the 
most piercing shrieks even from his manly 
bosom. After some time, an old chaise was 
discovered: a piece of artillery was thrown 
away to supply it with horses, and the 
wounded general was laid in it, — his head 
being supported in the lap of Agatha, his 
mother's faithful waiting-woman, and now 
the only attendant of his wife and infant. 
In three painful days they reached Laval ; — 
Madame de L. frequently suffering from 
absolute want, and sometimes getting noth- 
ing to eat the whole da}*, but one or two sour 
apples. M. de L. was nearly insensible du- 
ring the whole journey. He was roused but 
once, when there was a report that a party 
of the enemy were in sight. He then called 
for his musket, and attempted to get out of 
the carriage; — addressed exhortations and re- 
proaches to the troops that were flying around 
him, and would not rest till an officer in whom 
he had confidence came up and restored some 



order to the detachment. — The alarm turned 
out to be a false one. 

At Laval they halted for several days; and 
he was so much recruited by the repose, that 
he was able to get for half an hour on horse- 
back, and seemed to be fairly in the way 



of recov 



when his excessive zeal, and 



anxiety for the good behaviour of the troops, 
tempted him to premature exertions, from the 
consequences of which he never afterwards 
recovered. The troops being all collected 
and refreshed at Laval, it was resolved to 
turn upon their pursuers, and give battle to 
the advancing army of the republic. The 
conflict was sanguinary ; but ended most 
decidedly in favour of the Vendeans. The 
first encounter was in the night. — and was 
characterized with more than the usual con- 
fusion of night attacks. The two armies 
crossed each other in so extraordinary a 
manner, that the artillery of each was sup- 
plied, for a part of the battle, from the cais- 
sons of the enemy; and one of the Vendean 
leaders, after exposing himself to great hazard 
in helping a brother officer, as he took him to 
be, out of a ditch, discovered, by the next flash 
of the cannon, that he was an enemy — and 
immediately cut him down. After daybreak, 
the battle became more orderly, and ended in 
a complete victory. This was the last grand 
crisis of the insurrection. The way to La 
Vendee was once more open ; and the fugi- 
tives had it in their power to return triumphant 
to their fastnesses and their homes, after rous- 
ing Brittany by the example of their valour 
and success. M. de L. and Henri both inclined 
to this course; but other counsels prevailed. 
Some were for marching on to Nantes — others 
for proceeding to Rennes — and some, more 
sanguine than the rest, for pushing directly 
for Paris. Time was irretrievably lost in these 
deliberations ; and the republicans had leisure 
to rally, and bring up their reinforcements, 
before any thing was definitively settled. 

In the meantime, M. de L. became visibly 
worse ; and one morning, when his wife alone 
was in the room, he called her to him. and 
told her that he felt his death Mas at hand ; 
— that his only regret was for leaving her 
in the midst of such a war, with a helpless 
child, and in a state of pregnancy. For him- 
self, he added, he died happy, and with 
humble reliance on the Divine mercy ; — but 
her sorrow he could not bear to think of; — 
and he entreated her pardon for any neglect 
or unkind ness he might ever have shown her. 
He added many other expressions of tender- 
ness and consolation ; and seeing her over- 
whelmed with anguish at the despairing tone 
in which he spoke, concluded by saying, that 
he might perhaps be mistaken in his piog- 
nosis; — and hoped still to live for her. Next 
day they were under the necessity of moving 
forward; and, on the journey, he learned 
accidentally from one of the officers, the 
dreadful details of the Queen's execution, 
which his wife had been at great pains to 
keep from his knowledge. This intelligence 
seemed to bring back his fever — though he 
still spoke of living to avenge her — •• If I do 
v2 



246 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



live/' he said, "it shall now be for vengeance 
anly — no more mercy from me !' ; — That 
evening, Madame de L. 7 entirely overcome 
with anxiety and fatigue, had fallen into a 
deep sleep on a mat before his bed : — And 
goon after, his condition became altogether 
desperate. He was now speechless, and 
nearly insensible; — the sacraments were ad- 
ministered, and various applications made 
without awaking the unhappy sleeper by his 
side. Soon after midnight, however, she 
started up, and instantly became aware of 
the full extent of her misery. To fill up 
its measure, it was announced in the course 
of the morning, that they must immediately 
resume their march with the last division of 
the army. The thing appeared altogether 
impossible; Madame de L. declared she 
would rather die by the hands of the re- 
publicans, than permit her husband to be 
moved in the condition in which he then 
was. When she recollected, however, that 
these barbarous enemies had of late not only 
butchered the wounded that fell into their 
power, but mutilated and insulted their re- 
mains, she submitted to the alternative, and 
prepared for this miserable journey with a 
heart bursting with anguish. The dying man 
was roused only to heavy moanings by the 
pain of lifting him into the carnage, — where 
his faithful Agatha again supported his head, 
and a surgeon watched all the changes in 
his condition. Madame de L. was placed 
on horseback ; and, surrounded by her father 
and mother, and a number of officers, went 
forward, scarcely conscious of any thing that 
was passing — only that sometimes, in the 
bitterness of her heart, when she saw the 
dead bodies of the republican soldiers on 
the road, she made her horse trample upon 
them, as if in vengeance for the slaughter of 
her husband. In the course of little more 
than an hour, she thought she heard some 
little stir in the carriage, and insisted on stop- 
ping to inquire into the cause. The officers, 
however, crowded around her ; and then her 
father came up and said that M. de L. was 
in the same state as before, but that he suf- 
fered dreadfully from the cold, and would 
be very much distressed if the door was again 
to be opened. Obliged to be satisfied with this 
answer, she went on in sullen and gloomy 
silence for some hours longer in a dark and 
rainy day of November. It was night when 
they reached the town of Fougeres; and, 
when lifted from her horse at the gate, she 
was unable either to stand or walk : — she 
was carried into a wretched house, crowded 
with troops of all descriptions, where she 
waited two hours in agony till she heard that 
the carriage with M. de L. was come up. 
She was left alone for a dreadful moment 
with her mother; and then M. de Beauvol- 
liera came in, bathed in tears, — and taking 
both her hands, told her she must now think 
only of saving the child she carried within 
her ! Her husband had expired when she 
Beard the noise in the carriage, soon after 
their setting out — and the surgeon had ac- 
cordingly left it as soon as the order of the 



march had carried her ahead ; but the faith- 
ful Agatha, fearful lest her appearance might 
alarm her mistress in the midst of the jour- 
ney, had remained alone with the dead body 
for all the rest of the day ! Fatigue, grief ; 
and anguish of mind, now threatened Madame 
de L. with consequences which it seems al- 
together miraculous that she should have 
escaped. She was seized witb violent pains, 
and was threatened with a miscarriage in a 
room which served as a common passage to 
the crowded and miserable lodging she had 
procured. It was thought necessary to bleed 
her — and, after some difficulty, a surgeon 
was procured. She can never forget, she 
says, the formidable apparition of this warlike 
phlebotomist. A figure six feet high, with 
ferocious whiskers, a great sabre at his side r 
and four huge pistols in his belt, stalked up 
with a fierce and careless air to her bed-side ; 
and when she said she was timid about the 
operation, answered harshly, a So am not I — 
I have killed three hundred men and upwards 
in the field in my time — one of them only this 
morning — I think then I may venture to 
bleed a woman — Come, come, let us see your 
arm." She was bled accordingly — and, con- 
trary to all expectation, was pretty well again 
in the morning. She insisted for a long time 
in carrying the body of her husband in the 
carriage along with her ; — but her father, 
after indulging her for a few days, contrived 
to fall behind with this precious deposit, and 
informed her when he came up again, that it 
had been found necessary to bury it privately 
in a spot which he would not specify. 

This abstract has grown to such a bulk that 
we find we cannot afford to continue it on the 
same scale. Nor is this very necessary ; for 
though there is more than a third part of the 
book, of which we have given no account — 
and that, to those who have a taste for tales 
of sorrow r , the most interesting portion of it — 
we believe that most readers will think they 
have had enough of La Vendee ; and that all 
will now be in a condition to judge of. the 
degree of interest or amusement which the 
work is likely to afford them. We shall add, 
however, a brief sketch of the rest of its con- 
tents. — After a series of murderous battles, to 
which the mutual refusal of quarter gave an 
exasperation unknown in any other history, 
and which left the field so cumbered with 
dead bodies that Madame de L. assures us 
that it was dreadful to feel the lifting of the 
wheels, and the cracking of the bones, as her 
heavy carriage passed over them, — the wreck 
of the Vendeans succeeded in reaching An- 
gers upon the Loire, and trusted to a furious 
assault upon that place for the means of re- 
passing the river, and regaining their beloved 
country. The garrison, however, proved 
stronger and more resolute than they had 
expected. Their own gay and enthusiastic 
courage had sunk under a long course of 
suffering and disaster; and, after losing a 
great number of men before the walls, they 
were obliged to turn back in confusion, they 
did not well know whither, but farther and 
farther from the land to which all their hopes 



MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN. 



247 



am! wishes were directed. In the tumult of 
this retreat, Madame de L. lost sight of her 
venerable aunt, who had hitherto been the 
mild and patient companion of their wander- 
ings ; and learned afterwards that she had 
fallen into the hands of the enemy, and, at 
the age of eighty, been publicly executed at 
Rennes, for the crime of rebellion ! At Fou- 
geres, at Laval, at Dol, and Savenay, the 
dwindled force of the insurgents had to sus- 
tain new attacks from their indefatigable pur- 
suers, in which the officers and most of the 
soldiery gave still more extraordinary proofs, 
than any we have yet recorded, of undaunted 
valour, and constancy worthy of better for- 
tune. The weather was now, in the latter 
end of November, extremely cold and rainy ; 
the roads almost impassable ; and provisions 
very scarce. Often, after a march of ten 
hours, Madame de L. has been obliged to 
fish for a few cold potatoes in the bottom of 
a dirty cauldron, filled with greasy water, and 
polluted by the hands of half the army. Her 
child sickened from its teething, and insuffi- 
cient nourishment ; and every day she wit- 
nessed the death of some of those gallant 
leaders whom the spring had seen assembled 
in her halls in all the flush of youthful confi- 
dence and glory. After many a weary march, 
and desperate struggle, about ten thousand 
sad survivors got again to the banks of that 
fatal Loire, which now seemed to divide them 
from hope and protection. Henri, who had 
arranged the whole operation with consum- 
mate judgment, found the shores on both sides 
free of the enemy: — But all the boats had 
been removed ; and, after leaving orders to 
construct rafts with all possible despatch, he 
himself, with a few attendants, ventured over 
in a little wherry, which he had brought with 
him on a cart, to make arrangements for 
covering their landing. But they never saw 
the daring Henri again ! The vigilant enemy 
came down upon them at this critical moment 
— intercepted his return — and, stationing seve- 
ral armed vessels in the stream, rendered the 
passage of the army altogether impossible. 
They fell back in despair upon Savenay ; and 
there the brave and indefatigable Marigny 
told Madame de L. that all was now over — 
that it was altogether impossible to resist the 
attack that would be made next day — and 
advised her to seek her safety in flight and 
disguise, without the loss of an instant. She 
6et out accordingly, with her mother, in a 
gloomy day of December, under the conduct 
of a drunken peasant ; and, after being out 
most of the night, at length obtained shelter 
in a dirty farm house, — from which, in the 
course of the day, she had the misery of see- 
ing her unfortunate countrymen scattered over 
the whole open country, chased and butchered 
without mercy by the republicans, who now 
took a final vengeance for all the losses they 
had sustained. She had long been clothed 
in shreds and patches, and needed no disguise 
to conceal her quality. She was sometimes 
hidden in the mill, when the troopers came 
to search for fugitives in her lonely retreat : 
—and oftener sent, in the midst of winter, to 



herd the sheep or cattle of her faithful and 
compassionate host, along with his raw boned 
daughter. 

In this situation they remained till late in 
the following spring; — and it would be end- 
less to enumerate the hairbreadth 'scapes and 
unparalleled sufferings to which they were 
every day exposed — reduced frequently to 
live upon alms, and forced every two or three 
days to shift their quarters, in the middle of 
the night, from one royalist cabin to another. 
Such was the long-continued and vindictive 
rigour of the republican party, that the most 
eager and un relaxing search was made for 
fugitives of all descriptions; and every ad- 
herent of the insurgent faction who fell into 
their hands was barbarously murdered, with- 
out the least regard to age, sex, or individual 
innocence! While skulking about in this 
state of peril and desolation, they had glimpses 
and occasional rencounters with some of their 
former companions, whom similar misfortunes 
had driven upon similar schemes of conceal- 
ment. In particular, they twice saw the 
daring and unsubduable M. de Marigny, who 
had wandered over the whole country from 
Angers to Nantes; and notwithstanding his 
gigantic form and remarkable features, had 
contrived so to disguise himself as to elude 
all detection or pursuit. He could counterfeit 
all ages and dialects, and speak in perfection 
the patois of every village. He now appeared 
before them in the character of an itinerant 
dealer in poultry ; and retired unsuspected by 
all but themselves. In this wretched condi- 
tion, the term of Madame de L.'s confinement 
drew on : and, after a thousand frights and 
disasters, she was delivered of two daughters, 
without any other assistance than that of hei 
mother. One of the infants had its wrist dis- 
located ; and so subdued was the poor mother's 
mind to the level of her fallen fortunes, that 
she had now no other anxiety, than that she 
might recover strength enough to carry it 
herself to the waters of Bareges, which she 
fancied might be of service to it; — but the 
poor baby died within a fortnight after it was 
born. 

Towards the end of 1794, their lot was 
somewhat softened by the compassionate 
kindness of a Madame Dumoutiers, who offer- 
ed them an asylum in her house ; in which, 
though still liable to the searches of the blood- 
hounds of the municipality, they had more 
assistance in eluding them, and less misery 
to endure in the intervals. The whole his- 
tory of their escapes would make the adven- 
tures of Caleb Williams appear a cold and 
barren chronicle; but we have room only to 
mention, that after the death of Robespierre, 
there was a great abatement in the rigour of 
pursuit; and that a general amnesty was 
speedily proclaimed, for all who had been 
concerned in the insurrection. After several 
inward struggles wnth pride and principle, 
Madame de L. was prevailed on to repair to 
Nantes, to avail herself of this amnesty ;— but, 
fiist of all, she rode in to reconnoitre, and con- 
sult with some friends of her hostess; and 
proceeded boldly through the hostile city, in 



248 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



the dress of a peasant, with a sack at her back, 
and a pair of fowls in her hands. She found 
that the tone was now to flatter and conciliate 
the insurgents by all sorts of civilities and 
compliments ; and after some time, she and 
ner mother applied for, and obtained, a full 
pardon for all their offences against the Re- 
publican government. 

This amnesty drew back to light many 
of her former friends, who had been univer- 
sally supposed to be dead; and proved, by 
the prodigious numbers whom it brought from 
their hiding-places in the neighbourhood, how 
generally the lower orders were attached to 
their cause, or how universal the virtues of 
compassion and fidelity to confiding misery 
are in the national character. It also brought 
to the writer's knowledge many shocking- 
particulars of the cruel executions which so 
Jong polluted that devoted city. We may give 
a few of the instances in her own words, as a 
specimen of her manner of writing ; to which, 
in our anxiety to condense the information she 
affords us. we have paid perhaps too little 
attention. 

" Madame de Jourdain fut menee sur la Loire, 
pour e;re noyee avec ses trois filles. Un soldat 
voulut sauver la plus jeune, qui etait fort belle. 
Elle se jeia a. l'eau pour partager le sort de sa mere. 
La malheureuse enfant tomba sur des cadavres. et 
n'enfonc,a point. Elle criait : Poussez-moi, je n'ai 
pas assez d'eau ! et elle peril. 

"Mademoiselle de Cuissard, agee de seize ans, 
qui e|ait plus belle encore, s'attira aussi le meme 
interet d'unofficierqui passa trois heures ases"pieds, 
la suppliant de se laisser sauver. Elle etait avec 
une vielle parente que cet homme ne voulait pas se 
risquer a. derober au supplice. Mademoiselle de 
Cuissard se precipita dans la Loire avec elle. 

" Une mort affreuse fut celle de Mademoiselle de 
la Roche St. Andre. Elle etait grosse : on I'opargna. 
On 1 u i laissa nourrir son enfant ; mais il mourut, 
et on la fit perir le lendemnin ! Au reste, il ne faut 
pas croire que toutes les femmes enceintes fussent 
respectees. Cela etait meme fort rare; plus com- 
munement les soldats massacraient femmes et en- 
fants. II n'y avait que devant les tribunaux, ou Ton 
observait ces exceptions ; et on y laissait aux femmes 
le temps de nourrir leurs enfants, comme etant une 
obligation rtpublicaine. C'est en quoi consistait 
l'humanite de3 gens d'alors. 

*" Ma pauvre Agathe avait couru de bien grands 
dangers. Elle m'avair quitte a. Nort, pour profiler 
de cette amnislie pretendue, dont on avait parte dans 
ce moment. Elle vint a. Names, et fut conduile 
devant le general Lamberty, le plus feroce des amis 
de Carrier. La figure d' Agathe lui plait: 'As-tu 
peur, brigande ?' lui dit-il. ' Non, general,' repondit- 
elle. ' He bien! quand tu auras peur, souviens-toi 
de Lamberty,' ajouta-t-il. Elle fut condnite a 
1'entrepot. C'est la trop fameuse prison ou Ton 
entassoit les victimes destinees a eire novees. 
Chaque nuit on venait en prendre par centaines. 
pour les metrre sur les bateaux. La, on liait les 
malheureux deux a deux, et on les poussait dans 
l'eau, a coups de baionnette. On saisissait indis- 
tinctement tout ce qui se trouvait a l'entrepot ; 
tellement qu'on noya un jour l'etat major d'une 
corvetie Anglaise, qui etait prisonnier de guerre. 
Une, autre fois. Carrier, voulant donner un exemple 
de l'austerite des moeursrepublicaines, fit enfermer 
trois cents filles publiques de la ville, et les mal- 
heureuses creatures furent noyees ! Enfin, Ton 
estime qu'il a peri a l'entrepot quinze mille per- 
sonnel en un mois. II est vrai qu'outre les supplices, 
la misere et la maladie ravageaient les prbonniers, 
•jui etaient presses sur la paille, et qui ne recevaient 



aucun soin. A peine les connaissait-on. Les 
cadavres restaicnt quelquefois plus d'un jour sans 
qu'on vint les emporter. 

11 Agathe ne doutant plus d'une mort prochaine, 
envoya chercher Lamberty. II la conduisit dans un 
petit batiment a. soupape, dans Icquel on avait noye 
les pretres, et que Carrier lui avait donne. II etait 
seul avec elle, et voulut en profiter: elle resista. 
Lamberty la mena§a de la noyer : elle courut pour 
se jeter elle-meme a l'eau. Alors cet homme lui 
dit : Allons ! tu es une brave fille, je te sauyeral. 
II la laissa huit jours seule dans le batiment, ou elle 
entendait les noyades qui se faisaient la nuit ; ensuite 
il la cacha chez un nomme S * * *, qui etait, com- 
me lui, un fidele executeur des ordres de Carrier. 

" Quelque temps apres, la discorde divisa les re- 
publicains de Nantes. On prit le pretexte d'accuser 
Lamberty d'avoir derobe des femmes aux noyades, 
et d'en avoir noye qui ne devaient pas l'etre. Un 
jeune homme, nomme Robin, qui etait tort devoue 
a Lamberty, vint saisir Agathe chez Madame S***, 
la traina dans le bateau, et voulut la poignarder, 
pour faire disparaitre une preuve du crime qu'ori 
reprochait a. son patron. Agathe se jeta a ses pieds ; 
parvint a Fattendiir, et il la cacha chez un de ses 
amis, nomme Lavaux, qui etait honnete homme, et 
qui avait deja recueilli Madame de 1'Epinay: mais 
on sut des le iendemain l'asile d'Agathe, et on vint 
I'arreter. 

" Cependant le parti ennemi de Lamberty con- 
tinuait a. vouloir le detruire. II resulta de cette 
circonstance, qu'on jeta de l'interet sur Agathe. 
On loua S*** et Lavaux de leur humanite, et Ton 
parvint a. faire perir Lamberty ! Peu apres arriva la 
mortde Robespierre. Agathe resta encore quelques 
mois en prison, puis oblint sa liberte." — Vol. ii. pp. 
171—175. 

When the means of hearing of her friends 
were thus suddenly restored, there was little 
to hear but what was mournful. Her father 
had taken refuge in a wood with a small party 
of horsemen, after the rout of Savenay, and 
afterwards collected a little force, with which 
they seized on the town of Ancenis, and had 
nearly forced the passage of the Loire ; but 
they were surrounded, and made prisoners, 
and all shot in the market-place ! The brave 
Henri de Larochejaquelein had gained the 
north bank with about twenty followers, and 
wandered many days over the burnt and 
bloody solitudes of the once happy La Vendee. 
Overcome with fatigue and hunger, they at 
last reached an inhabited farm-house, and fell 
fast asleep in the barn. They were soon 
roused, however, by the news that a party of 
the republicans were approaching the same 
house ) but were so worn out, that they would 
not rise, even to provide against that extreme 
hazard. The party accordingly entered : and 
being almost as much exhausted as the others, 
threw themselves down, without asking any 
questions, at the other end of the barn, and 
slept quietly beside them. Henri afterwards 
found out M. de la Charrette, by whom he 
was coldly, and even rudely received ; but he 
soon raised a little army of his own, and be 
came again formidable in the scenes of his 
first successes : — till one day, riding a little in 
front of his party, he fell in with two repub- 
lican soldiers, upon whom his followers were 
about to fire, when he said, "No, no, they 
shall have quarter:" and pushing up to them, 
called upon them to surrender. Without say- 
ing a word, one of them raised his piece, and 
shot him right through the forehead. He fell 



MEMOIRS OF MARGRAVINE OF BAREITH. 



249 



ut once dead before them, and was buried I 
where he fell. 

" Ainsi pent, a vingt et un ans, Henri de la 
Rochejaqueloin. Encore a present, quand les pay- 
8ans se rappellent l'ardeur et 1' eclat de son courage, 
sa modestie, sa facilite, et ce caractere de guerrier, 
et de bon enfant, ils parlent de lui avec fierte et avec 
amour. II n'est pas un Vendeen dont on ne voie 
le regard a'aniraer, quand il raconte comment il a 
eervi sous M. Henri."— Vol. ii. pp. 187, 188. 

The fate of ihe gallant Marigny was still 
more deplorable. He joined Charrette and 
Stofnet ; but some misunderstanding having 
arisen among them upon a point of discipline, 
they took the rash and violent step of bring- 
ing him to a court-martial, and sentencing him 
to death for disobedience. To the horror of 
all the Vendeans, and the great joy of the re- 
publicans, this unjust and imprudent sentence 
was carried into execution ; and the cause de- 
prived of the ablest of its surviving champions. 

When they had gratified their curiosity with 
these melancholy details, Madame de L. and 
her mother set out for Bourdeaux, and from 
thence to Spain, where they remained for 
nearly two years — but were at last permitted 
to return; — and, upon Bonaparte's accession 
to the sovereignty, were even restored to a 
great part of their possessions. On the earnest 
entreaty of her mother, she was induced at 
last to give her hand to Louis de Larochejaque- 
lein, brother to the gallant Henri — and the in- 
heritor of his principles and character. This 
match took place in 1802, and they lived in 
peaceful retirement till the late movements 
for the restoration of the house of Bourbon. 
The notice of this new alliance terminates the 
original Memoirs ; but there is a supplement, 
containing rather a curious account of the in- 
trigues and communications of the royalist 
party in Bourdeaux and the South, through 
the whole course of the Revolution, — and of 
the proceedings by which they conceive that 
they accelerated the restoration of the King in 
1814. It may not be uninteresting to add, 
that since the book was published, the second 
husband of the unfortunate writer fell in bat- 



tle in the same cause which proved fatal U, 
the first, during the short period of Bonaparte's 
last reign, and but a few days before the de- 
cisive battle of Waterloo. 

We have not left room now for any general 
observations — and there is no need of them. 
The book is, beyond all question, extremely 
curious and interesting — and we really have 
no idea that any reflections of ours could ap- 
pear half so much so as the abstract we have 
now given in their stead. One remark, how- 
ever, we shall venture to make, now that cur 
abstract is done. If all France were like La 
Vendee in 1793, we shouM anticipate nothing 
but happiness from the restoration of the 
Bourbons and of the old government. But the 
very fact that the Vendeans were crushed by 
the rest of the country, proves that this is not 
the case : And indeed it requires but a mo- 
ment's reflection to perceive, that the rest of 
France could not well resemble La Vendee in 
its royalism, unless it had resembled it in 
the other peculiarities upon which that royal- 
ism was founded — unless it had all its no- 
blesse resident on their estates: and living in 
their old feudal relations with a simple and 
agricultural vassalage. The book indeed 
shows two things very plainly, — and both of 
them well worth remembering. In the first 
place, that there may be a great deal of kind- 
ness and good affection among a people of 
insurgents against an established government; 
— and, secondly, that where there is such an 
aversion to a government, as to break out in 
spontaneous insurrection, it is impossible en- 
tirely to subdue that aversion, either by 
severity or forbearance — although the differ- 
ence of the two courses of policy is, that 
severity, even when carried to the savage ex- 
tremity of devastation and indiscriminate 
slaughter, leads only to the adoption of similar 
atrocities in return — while forbearance is at 
least rewarded by the acquiescence of those 
who are conscious of weakness, and gives 
time and opportunity for those mutual conces- 
sions by which alone contending factions or 
principles can ever be permanently reconciled. 



(JToBtmbtr, 1812.) 



Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Barcith, Sxur de Fre* 



deric le Grand. Ecrits de sa Main. 8vo. 2 tomes. Brunswicl 



1812. 



Philosophers have long considered it as 
probable, that the private manners of absolute 
sovereigns are vulgar, their pleasures low, and 
their dispositions selfish; — that the two ex- 
tremes of life, in short, approach pretty closely 
to each other; and that the Masters of man- 
kind, when stripped of the artificial pomp and 
magnificence which invests them in public, 
resemble nothing so nearly as the meanest of 
the multitude. The ground of this opinion 
is, that the very highest and the very lowest 
oi mankind are equally beyond the influence 
oi that wholesome control, to which all the 
32 



intermediate classes are subjected, by their 
mutual dependence, and the need they have 
for the good will and esteem of their fellows. 
Those who are at the very bottom of the scale 
are below the sphere of this influence ; and 
those at the very top are above it. The one 
have no chance of distinction by any effort 
they are capable of making; and the other 
are secure of the highest degree of it, without 
any. Both therefore are indifferent, or very 
nearly so, to the opinion of mankind * the for- 
mer, because the naked subsistence which 
they earn by their labour will not be affected 



250 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEjIOIRS. 



by that opinion ; and the latter, because their 
legal power and preeminence are equally in- 
dependent of it. Those who have nothing to 
lose, in short, are not very far from the condi- 
tion of those who have nothing more to gain; 
and the maxim of reckoning one's-self last, 
which is the basis of all politeness, and leads, 
insensibly, from the mere practice of dissimu- 
lation, to habits of kindness and sentiments of 
generous independence, is equally inapplica- 
ble to the case of those who are obviously and 
in reality the last of their kind, and those who 
are quite indisputably the first. Both there- 
fore are deprived of the checks and of the 
training, which restrain the selfishness, and 
call out the sensibilities of other men : And, 
remote and contrasted as their actual situa- 
tion must be allowed to be, are alike liable 
to exhibit that disregard for the feelings of 
others, and that undisguised preference for 
their own gratification, which it is the boast of 
modern refinement to have subdued, or at least 
efFectually concealed, among the happier or- 
ders of society. In a free country, indeed, the 
monarch, if he share at all in the spirit of 
liberty, may escape this degradation ; because 
he will then feel for how much he is depend- 
ent on the good opinion of his countrymen ; 
and, in general, where there is a great ambi- 
tion for popularity, this pernicious effect of 
high fortune will be in a great degree avoided. 
But the ordinary class of arbitrary rulers, who 
found their whole claim to distinction upon 
the accident of their birth and station, may be 
expected to realize all that we have intimated 
as to the peculiar manners and dispositions of 
the Caste ; to sink, like their brethren of the 
theatre, when their hour of representation is 
over, into gross sensuality, paltry intrigues, 
and dishonourable squabbles; and, in short, 
to be fully more likely to beat their wives and 
cheat their benefactors, than any other set of 
persons — out of the condition of tinkers. 

But though these opinions have long seem- 
ed pretty reasonable to those who presumed 
to reason at all on such subjects, and even 
appeared to be tolerably well confirmed by 
the few indications that could be obtained as 
to the state of the fact, there was but little 
prospect of the world at large getting at the 
exact truth, either by actual observation or by 
credible report. The tone of adulation and 
'outrageous compliment is so firmly establish- 
ed, and as it were positively prescribed, for 
all authorized communications from the inte- 
rior of a palace, that it would be ridiculous 
even to form a guess, as to its actual condi- 
tion, from such materials : And, with regard 
to the casual observers who might furnish 
less suspected information, a great part are 
too vain, and too grateful for the opportunities 
they have enjoyed, to do any thing which 
might prevent their recurrence; while others 
are kept silent by a virtuous shame ; and the 
remainder are discredited, and perhaps not 
always without reason, as the instruments of 
faction or envy. There seemed great reason 
to fear, therefore, that this curious branch of 
Natural History would be left to mere theory 
and conjecture, and never be elucidated by 



the testimony of any competent observe! ; 
when the volumes before us made their ap- 
pearance, to set theory and conjecture at rest, 
and make the private character of such sove- 
reigns a matter of historical record. 

They bear to be Memoirs of a Princess of 
Prussia, written by herself; and are in fact 
memoirs of the private life of most of the 
princes of Germany, written by one of their 
own number — with great freedom indeed — 
but with an evident partiality to the fraterni- 
ty ; and unmasking more of the domestic 
manners and individual habits of persons in 
that lofty station, than any other work with 
which we are acquainted. It is ushered into 
the world without any voucher for its authen- 
ticity, or even any satisfactory account of the 
manner in which the manuscript was obtain- 
ed : But its genuineness, we understand, is 
admitted even by those whose inclinations 
would lead them to deny it. and appears to us 
indeed to be irresistibly established by inter- 
nal evidence.* It is written in the vulgar 
gossiping style of a chambermaid ; but at the 
same time with very considerable cleverness 
and sagacity, as to the conception and delinea- 
tion of character. It is full of events and por- 
traits — and also of egotism, detraction, and 
inconsistency ; but all delivered with an air of 
good faith that leaves us little room to doubt 
of the facts that are reported on the writer's 
own authority, or, in any case, of her own be- 
lief in the justness of her opinions. Indeed, 
half the edification of the book consists in the 
lights it affords as to the character of the 
writer, and consequently as to the effects of 
the circumstances in which she was placed : 
nor is there any thing, in the very curious 
picture it presents, more striking than the part 
she unintentionally contributes, in the pecu- 
liarity of her own taste in the colouring and 
delineation. The heartfelt ennui, and the 
affected contempt of greatness, so strangely 
combined with her tenacity of all its privi- 
leges, and her perpetual intrigues and quarrels 
about precedence — the splendid encomiums 
on her own inflexible integrity, intermixed 
with the complacent narrative of perpetual 
trick and duplicity — her bitter complaints of 
the want of zeal and devotedness in her 
friends, and the desolating display of her own 
utter heartlessness in every page of the his- 
tory — and, — finally, her outrageous abuse of 
almost every one with whom she is connect- 
ed, alternating with professions of the greatest 
regard, and occasional apologies for the most 
atrocious among them, when they happen to 
conduct themselves in conformity to her own 
little views at the moment — are all, we think, 
not only irrefragable proofs of the authen- 
ticity of the singular work before us, but, 

* I have not recently made any enquiries on this 
subject: and it is possible that the authenticity of 
this strange book may have been discredited, since 
the now remote period when I last heard it discuss- 
ed. It is obvious at first sight that it is full of. ex- 
aggerations : But that is too common a characteristic 
of genuine memoirs written in the tranrhant &yl«i 
to which it belongs, to detract much from the credit 
to which the minuteness and confidence of its de 
tails may otherwise be thought to entitle it. 



MEMOIliS OF MARGRAVINE OF BAREITH. 



251 



together with the lowness of its style and dic- 
tion, are features — and pretty prominent ones 
— in tnat portraiture of royal manners and dis- 
positions which we conceive it to be its chief 
office and chief merit to display. In this 
point of view, we conceive the publication to 
be equally curious and instructive; and there 
is a vivacity in the style, and a rapidity in the 
narrative, which renders it at all events very 
entertaining, though little adapted for abstract 
or abridgment. — We must endeavour, how- 
ever, to give our readers some notion of its 
contents. 

What is now before us is but a fragment, 
extending from the birth of the author in 
1707 to the year 1742, and is chiefly occupied 
with the court of Berlin, down till her mar- 
riage with the Prince of Bareith in 1731. She 
sets off with a portrait of her father Frederic 
William, whose peculiarities are already pret- 
ty well known by the dutiful commentaries 
of his son, and Voltaire. His daughter begins 
with him a little more handsomely; and as- 
sures us. that he had " talents of the first or- 
der" — "an excellent heart" — and, in short, 
'•all the qualities which go to the constitution 
of great men." Such is the flattering outline: 
But candour required some shading; and we 
must confess that it is laid on freely, and with 
good effect. His temper, she admits, was un- 
governable, and often hurried him into ex- 
cesses altogether unworthy of his rank and 
situation. Then it must also be allowed that 
he was somewhat hard-hearted; and through- 
out his whole life gave a decided preference 
to the cardinal virtue of Justice over the 
weaker attribute of Mercy. Moreover, "his 
excessive love of money exposed him" (her 
Royal Highness seems to think very unjustly) 
"to the imputation of avarice." And, finally, 
she informs us. without any circumlocution, 
that he was a crazy bigot in religion — suspi- 
cious, jealous, and deceitfnl — and entertained 
a profound contempt for the whole sex to 
which his dutiful biographer belongs. 

This "great and amiable" prince was mar- 
ried, as every body knows, to a princess of 
Hanover, a daughter of our George the First ; 
of whom he was outrageously jealous, and 
whom he treated with a degree of brutality 
that would almost have justified any form of 
revenge. The princess, however, seems to 
have been irreproachably chaste : But had, 
notwithstanding, some of the usual vices of 
slaves; and tormented her tyrant to very good 
purpose by an interminable system of the 
most crooked and provoking intrigues, chiefly 
about the marriages of her family, but occa- 
sionally upon other subjects, carried on by 
the basest tools and instruments, and for a 
long time in confederacy with the daughter 
who has here recorded their history. But 
though she had thus the satisfaction of fre- 
quently enraging her husband, we cannot help 
thinking that she had herself by far the worst 
of the game ; and indeed it is impossible to 
read, without a mixed feeling of pity and con- 
tempt, the catalogue of miserable shifts wh : ch 
i his poor creature was perpetually forced to 
employ to avoid detection, and escape the 



beatings with which it was frequently accom- 
panied ! — feigned sicknesses — midnight con- 
sultations — hidings behind screens and under 
beds — spies at her husband's drunken orgies 
— burning of letters, pocketing of inkstands, 
and all the paltry apparatus of boarding-school 
imposture ; — together with the more revolting 
criminality of lies told in the midst of caresses, 
and lessons of falsehood anxiously inculcated 
on the minds of her children. — It is edifying 
to know, that, with all this low cunning, and 
practice in deceiving, this poor lady was her- 
self the dupe of a preposterous and unworthy 
confidence. She told every thing to a favour- 
ite chambermaid — who told it over again to 
one of the ministers — who told it to the King: 
And though the treachery of her confidante 
was perfectly notorious, and she herself was 
reduced privately to borrow money from the 
King of England in order to bribe her to se- 
crecy, she never could keep from her any one 
thing that it was of importance to conceal. 

The ingenious Princess before us had for 
-many years no other brother than the Great 
Frederic, who afterwards succeeded to the 
throne, but whose extreme ill health in his 
childhood seemed to render her accession a 
matter of considerable probability. Her al- 
liance consequently became an early object 
of ambition to most of the Protestant princes 
of her time; and before she was fully eight 
years old, her father and mother had had fifty 
quarrels about her marriage. About the same 
time, she assures us that a Swed.sh officer, 
who was a great conjurer, informed her, after 
inspecting her hand, " that she would be 
sought in marriage by the Kings of Sweden, 
England, Russia, and Poland, but would not 
be united to any of them :" — a prediction, the 
good Princess declares, that was afterwards 
verified in a very remarkable manner. The 
Swedish proposition indeed follows hard upon 
the prophecy; for the very next year engage- 
ments are taken for that match, which are 
afterwards abandoned on account of the ten- 
der age of the parties. — The Princess here 
regales us with an account of her own vivac- 
ky and angelic memory at this period, and 
with a copious interlude of all the court scan- 
dal during the first days of her existence. 
But as we scarcely imagine that the scandal- 
ous chronicle of Berlin for the year 1712, 
would excite much interest in this country in 
the year 1812, we shall take the liberty to 
pass over the gallantries of Madame de Blas- 
pil and the treasons of M. Clement ; merely 
noticing, that after the execution of the latter, 
the King ordered every letter that came to 
1 his capital to be opened, and never slept with- 
out drawn swords and cocked pistols at his 
side. But while he was thus trembling at 
imaginary dangers, he was, if we can believe 
his infant daughter, upon th Q very brink of 
others sufficiently serious. His chief favour- 
ites were the Prince of Ai:half, whojs briefly 
characterized in these Memoirs as brutal, 
cruel and deceitful, and the minister Grum- 
kow, who is represented, on the same author- 
ity, as a mere concentration of all the vices. 
These worthy persons had set their hearts 



252 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



upon our author's marriage with the nephew 
of the former, and her ultimate elevation to 
the throne by the death of her sickly brother. 
But when that brother begins to improve in 
health, and the old King not only makes his 
will without consulting them, but threatens 
to live to an unreasonable age, they naturally 
become impatient for the accomplishment of 
their wishes, and resolve to cut off both father 
and son, the first time they can catch them 
together at* an exhibition of ropedancing, — 
with which elegant entertainment it seems 
the worthy monarch was in the habit of re- 
creating himself almost every evening. The 
whole of this dreadful plot, Ave are assured, 
was revealed to the King, with all its particu- 
larites. by a lady in the confidence of the con- 
spirators: but they contrive, somehow or other, 
to play their parts so adroitly, that, after a long- 
investigation, they are reinstated in favour, 
and their fair accuser sent to pine, on bread 
and water, in a damp dungeon at Spandau. 

In the year 1717, Peter the Great came 
with his Empress and court to pay a visit at 
Berlin ; — and as the whole scene is described 
with great vivacity in the work before us, and 
serves to illustrate its great theme of the pri- 
vate manners of sovereigns, we shall make 
rather a fuller abstract of it than we can afford 
for most parts of the narrative. The degrees 
of grossness and pretension are infinite — and 
the court of Prussia, where the Sovereign got 
drunk and kicked his counsellors, and beat 
the ladies of his family, thought itself en- 
titled to treat Peter and his train as a set of 
Barbarians! — On his first presentation, the 
Czar took Frederic firmly by the hand, and 
said, he was glad to see him : he then offered 
to kiss the Queen — but she declined the hon- 
our. He next presented his son and daughter, 
and four hundred ladies in waiting — the 
greater part of whom, our Princess assures 
us, were washerwomen and scullions pro- 
moted to that nominal dignity. Almost every 
one of them, however, she adds, had a baby 
richly dressed in her arms — and when any 
one asked whose it was. answered with great 
coolness and complacency, that " the Czar had 
done her the honour to make her the mother 
.of it." — The Czarine was very short, tawny, 
and ungraceful — dressed like a provincial 
German player, in an old fashioned robe, 
covered with dirt and silver, and with some 
dozens of medals and pictures of saints strung 
down the front, which clattered every time 
she moved, like the bells of a pack horse. 
Sl.e spoke little German, and no French; and 
finding that she got on but ill with the Queen 
and her party, she called her fool into a corner 
to come and entertain her in Russian — which 
she did with such effect, that she kept her in 
a continual roar of laughter before all the 
court. The Czar himself is described as tall 
and rather handsome, though with something 
intolerably harsh in his physiognomy. On 
first seeing our royal author he took her up in 
his arms, and rubbed the skin off her face in 
kissing her with his rough beard ; laughing- 
very heartily at the airs with which she re- 
sented this familiarity. He was liable at 



times to convulsive starts and spasms, and 
being seized with one of them when at iable, 
with his knife in his hand, put his hosts into 
no little bodily terror. He told the Queen, 
however, that he would do her no harm, and 
took her hand in token of his good humour ; 
but squeezed it so unmercifully that she was 
forced to cry out — at which he laughed again 
with great violence, and said, '-her bones 
were not so well knit as his Catherine's." 
There was to be a grand ball in the evening; 
but as soon as he had done eating, he got up, 
and trudged home by himself to his lodging* 
in the suburbs. Next day they went to see 
the curiosities of the place. — What pleased 
him most was a piece of antique sculpture, 
most grossly indecent. Nothing, however, 
would serve him but that his wife should kiss 
this figure; and when she hesitated, he told 
her he would cut off her head if she refused. 
He then asked this piece and several other 
things of value from the King, and packed 
them off for Petersburgh, without ceremony. 
In a few days after he took his departure ; 
leaving the palace in which he had been 
lodged in such a state of filth and dilapidation 
as to remind one, says the princess, of the 
desolation of Jerusalem. 

We now come to a long chapter of the au- 
thor's personal sufferings, from a sort of half 
governess, half chambermaid, of the name of 
Letti, who employed herself all day in beat- 
ing and scratching her, for refusing to repeat 
all that the King and the Queen said in her 
hearing, and kept her awake all night by 
snoring like fifty troopers. This accomplished 
person also invented ingenious nicknames, 
which seem to have had much currency, for 
all the leading persons about the court. The 
Queen she always called La grande dnr.ssc, 
and her two favourites respectively La grosse 
vache, and La sotle bete. Sometimes she only 
kicked the Princess' shins — at other times 
she pummelled her on the nose till " she bled 
like a calf;" and occasionally excoriated her 
face by rubbing it with acrid substances. 
Such, however, was the magnanimity of her 
royal pupil, that she never made the least 
complaint of this dreadful usage ; but an old 
lady found it out, and told the Queen, that 
"her daughter was beaten every day like 
plaster," and that she would be brought to 
her one morning with her bones broken, if she 
did not get another attendant. So La Letti is 
dismissed, though with infinite difficulty, and 
after a world of intrigue ; because she had 
been recommended by my Lady Arlington^ 
who had a great deal to say with the court ot 
England, with which it was. at that time, a 
main object to keep well ! But she is got rid 
of at last, and decamps with all the Princess' 
wardrobe, who is left without a rag to cover 
her nakedness. Soon after this, the King is 
taken with a colic one very hot June, and is 
judiciously shut up in a close room with a 
large comfortable fire ; by the side of which 
he commands his daughter to sit, and watch 
like a vestal, till her eyes are ready to start 
from her head ; and she falls into a dysenteiy, 
of which she gives a long history. 



MEMOIRS OF MARGRAVINE OF BAREITH. 



253 



Being now at the ripe age of twelve, her 
mother taKes her into ner confidence, and be- 
gins with telling her, that there are certain 
people who are her enemies, to whom she 
commands her never to show any kindness or 
civility. She then proceeds to name " three 
fourths of all Berlin." But her great object 
is to train her daughter to be a spy on her 
father, and at the same time to keep every 
thing secret from him and his counsellors; 
and to arrange measures for a match between 
her and her nephew the Duke of Gloucester 
— afterwards Prince of Wales, on the acces- 
sion of his father George II. In 1723, George 
I. comes to visit his daughter at Berlin, and is 
characterised, we cannot say very favourably, 
by his grandchild. He was very stupid, she 
says, with great airs of wisdom — had no gen- 
erosity but for his favourites, and the mis- 
tresses by whom he let himself be governed 
— spoke little, and took no pleasure in hearing 
any thing but niaiseries: — since his accession 
to the English throne he had also become in- 
supportably haughty and imperious. When 
the fair author was presented to him, he took 
up a candle, held it close to her face, and ex- 
amined her all over without saying a word : 
at table he preserved the same magnificent 
silence ; judging wisely, the Princess observes, 
that it was better to say nothing than to ex- 
pose himself by talking. Before the end of 
the repast he was taken ill ; and tumbled down 
on the floor, his hat falling off on one side, 
and his wig on the other. It was a full hour 
before he came to himself; and it was whis- 
pered that it was a sort of apoplexy : How- 
ever, he was well enough next day; and 
arranged every thing for the marriage of the 
author with his grandson, and of her brother 
with the Princess Amelia. Obstacles arose, 
however, to the consummation of this double 
alliance ; and although the two Sovereigns had 
another meeting on the subject the year after, 
still the necessity of obtaining the consent of 
parliament occasioned an obstruction ; and in 
the mean time Frederic having thought fit to 
seize several tall Hanoverians, and enrol them 
by force in his regiment of giants, the English 
monarch resented this outrage, and died of 
another attack of apoplexy before matters 
could be restored to a right footing. 

Soon after this catastrophe, Frederic takes 
to drinking with the Imperial ambassador; 
and, when his stomach gets into disorder, 
becomes outrageously pious; orders his valet 
to sing psalms before him, and preaches him- 
self to his family every afternoon. The 
Princess and her brother are ready to suffo- 
cate with laughter at these discourses; but 
the hypochondria gains ground; and at last 
the King talks seriously of resigning his 
crown, and retiring with his family to a small 
house in the country; where his daughter 
should take care of the linen, his son of the 
provisions, and his wife of the kitchen. To 
divert these melancholy thoughts, he is per- 
suaded to pay a visit to the Elector of Saxony, 
Augustus King of Poland ; and there, large 
potations of Hungarian wine speedily dissipate 
all his dreams of devotion. Nothing m modern 



history, we suppose, comes nears the profli- 
gacy of the Court of Dresden at that period. 
Augustus, who never closed a day in sobriety, 
openly kept a large seraglio in his palace, 
and had about three hundred and fifty chil- 
dren by its inhabitants. One of those who 
had all along been recognized as his daugh- 
ter, was at this time his favourite mistress; 
while she, disdaining to be faithful to this in- 
cestuous connection, lavished all her favour 
on a brother, who was her avowed lover, and 
the rival of their common parent ! — Frederic, 
however, was so much pleased with these 
doings, that he entered into a treaty for mar- 
rying his daughter to this virtuous elector, 
who was then fifty years of age ; and the year 
after, Augustus came to Berlin, to follow out 
his suit, where he was received in great state, 
and the daughter-mistress caressed by the 
chaste queen and her daughter. There is a 
good description of a grand court dinner given 
on this occasion ; in which, after a long ac- 
count of the marshalling of princes and prin- 
cesses, the business of the day is summed up 
in the following emphatic words — On but 
force sanies — on parla peu — et on shnnuya 
beaucoup! The two kings, however, had va- 
rious Ute-a-ttte parties that were more jolly ; 
and in which they continued at table from 
one o'clock, which was their hour of dinner, 
till near midnight. In spite of all this cor- 
diality, however, the treaty of marriage was 
broken off: the heir-apparent of Augustus 
having obstinately refused to ratify those arti- 
cles in it which required his concurrence. 

The King now resolved to match his daugh- 
ter with a poor German prince, called the 
Duke of Weissenfield ; at which his wife, who 
had been all this time intriguing busily to 
bring about the union originally projected 
with the Prince of Wales, is in despair, and 
persuades him to let her make one effort more 
to bring her brother of England to a determi- 
nation. And here we have a very curious 
piece of secret history, which, though it touches 
the policy of the Court of England, has hitherto 
been unknown, we believe, in this country. 
A confidential agent arrives from Hanover., 
who informs the Queen, that the Prince of 
Wales has made up his mind to come imme- 
diately to Berlin, and to marry her daughter, 
without waiting for the formal consent of his 
father, or the English Parliament, who, how- 
ever, he has no doubt, will neither of them 
hesitate to ratify the act when it is once 
over. The Queen is transported with this 
news; and is so much intoxicated with joy- 
on the occasion, that she bethinks herself of 
confiding the whole story in the evening to 
the English ambassador — who instantly writes 
home to his Court ; and, his letter being ad- 
dressed to the Secretary of State, produces an 
immediate mandate to the Prince, to set out 
for England without the delay of a moment. 
This mandate arrives just as his Royal High- 
ness is taking post with bridal impatience for 
Berlin : and, as it is addressed to him through 
the public offices, requires his implicit obe- 
dience. The truth of the matter is, the Prin- 
cess assures us, that George II. was himself 
W 



254 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



desirous that the match should be concluded 
without waiting for the uncertain sanction of 
his Parliament, and had suggested this device 
of a seeming ctourderie on the part of his son ; 
but the indiscretion of her mother, in blabbing 
the matter to the ambassador, and his com- 
munication to the ministry, left the monarch 
no choice, but to dissemble his mortification, 
and lend his authority to prevent the execu- 
tion of a project which had originated with 
himself. 

But, whatever may be the true theory of 
this disaster, it seems to be certain, that the 
disappointment put the King of Prussia into 
exceeding bad humour, and, concurring with 
an untimely fit of the gout, made the lives of 
his family still more uncomfortable than he 
took care at all times to render them. The 
account indeed which is here given of the 
domestic habits of this worthy sovereign, 
though humiliating in some degree to human 
nature, has yet something in it so extrava- 
gant, as to be actually ludicrous and farcical. 
He ordered his children to come to his apart- 
ment at nine o'clock every morning, and kept 
them close prisoners there the whole day, 
not letting them once out of his sight, " pour 
qitelque raison que ce fut." His employment 
was to curse and abuse them with every 
coarse term of reproach, — his daughter getting 
no other name than la Canaille Anglaise, and 
his son, le Coquin de Fritz. He had always 
been in the practice of famishing them ; partly 
out of avarice, and partly from the love of 
tormenting ; but now even the soup made of 
bare bones and salt was retrenched. He often 
refused to let them have any thing whatso- 
ever j and spit into the dishes out of which he 
had helped himself, in order to prevent their 
touching them ! At other times he would 
insist upon their eating all sorts of unwhole- 
some and disgusting compositions — " ce qui 
nous obligeait quelquefois de rendre, en sa 
presence, tout ce que nous avions dans le 
corps!" Even this, however, was not the 
worst of it. He very frequently threw the 
plates at their heads ; and scarcely ever let 
nis daughter go out of the room, without aim- 
ing a sly blow at her with the end of his 
crutch. The unhappy Frederic he employed 
himself almost every morning in caning and 
kicking for a long time together; and was 
actually, upon one occasion, in the act of 
strangling him with the cord of a window 
curtain, when he was interrupted by one of 
his domestics. To make amends, however, 
he once hung up himself; when the Queen, 
by a rare act of folly, was induced to cut him 
down. When free from gout, he was still 
more dangerous ; for then he could pursue his 
daughters with considerable agility when they 
ran away from his blows ; and once caught 
the author, after a chase of this kind, when 
lie clutched her by the hair, and pushed her 
into the fireplace, till her clothes began to 
burn. During the heats of summer, he fre- 
quently carried his family to a country-house, 
called Vousterhausen, which was an old ruin- 
ous mansion, surrounded with a putrid ditch : 
^nd there the) dined every day, in a tent 



pitched on a terrace, with scarcely any thing 
to eat. and their feet up to the ancles in mud, 
if the weather happened to be rainy. After 
dinner, which was served exactly at noon, 
the good king set himself down to sleep for 
two hours, in a great chair placed in the full 
glare of the sun. and compelled all his family 
to lie on the ground around him, exposed to 
the same intolerable scorching. 

After some little time, England sends an- 
other ambassador, who renews in due form the 
proposal of the double mairiage, and offers 
such baits to the avarice or the King that mat 
ters appear once more to be finally adjusted, 
and the princess is saluted by her household 
with the title of Princess of Wales. This, 
however, was not her destiny. Grumkow 
intrigues with the Imperial ambassador to 
break off the match — and between them they 
contrive to persuade the King that he is made 
a tool of by the Queen and her brother of 
England : and inflame him to such a rage by 
producing specimens of their secret corre- 
spondence, that when the English ambassador 
appears next day with decisive proofs of 
Grumkow's treachery and insolence, the King 
throws the papers in his face, and actually 
lifts his foot, as if to give him the family salute 
of a kick. The blood of the Englishman 
rouses at this insult : and he puts himself in a 
posture to return the compliment with inter- 
est, when the King makes a. rapid retreat — 
and the ambassador, in spite of the entreaties 
of the Queen and her children, and various 
overtures of apology from the King himself, 
shakes the dust of Berlin from his feet, and 
sets off in high dudgeon for London. The 
King then swears that his daughter shall have 
no husband at all, but that he will make her 
abbess in the monastery of Herford; — and 
her brother Frederic, to her great mortifica- 
tion, tells her it is the best thing she can do, 
and that he sees no other way to restore peace 
in the family. 

We now proceed to the adventures of this 
brother, which, as their outline is already 
generally known, need not be fully narrated 
in this place. Tired of being beaten and 
kicked and reviled all day long, he resolves 
to withdraw from his country, and makes 
some movements to that effect in confederacy 
with an officer of the name of Katt, who was 
to have been the companion of his flight. 
Both, however, are arrested by the King's 
order, who makes several attempts upon the 
life of his son, when he is brought as a prisoner 
before him — and comes home foaming and 
black with passion, crying out to the Queen 
that her accursed son was dead at last ; and 
felling his daughter to the earth with his fist, 
as he tells her to go and bear her brother com- 
pany. He then gets hold of a box of his son's 
papers, which had been surprised at Katt's 
lodgings, and goes out with it in great spirits, 
exclaiming that he was sure he should find 
in it enough to justify him in cutting off the 
heads both of le Coquin de Fritz, and la Car 
naille de Wilhelmine. Wilhelmine, however, 
and her politic mother had been beforehand 
with him — for they had got hold of this same 



MEMOIRS OF MARGRAVINE OF BAREITH. 



255 



box the day preceding, and by false keys and 
icals had taken all the papers out of it, and 
replaced them by harmless and insignificant 
letters, which they had fabricated in the 
course of one day, to the amount of near 
seven hundred. The King, therefore, found 
nothing to justify immediate execution ; but 
kept the Prince a close prisoner at Custrin, 
and shut the Princess up in her own chamber. 
His son and Katt were afterwards tried for 
desertion, before a court-martial composed of 
twelve officers: Two were for sparing the 
life of the Prince, but all the rest were base 
enough to gratify the sanguinary insanity of 
their master by condemning them both to 
death. All Germauy, however, exclaimed 
loudly against this sentence ; and made such 
representations to the King, that he was at 
last constrained to spare his son. But the 
unhappy Kalt was sacrificed. His scaffold 
was erected immediately before the window 
of his unhappy master, who was dressed by 
force in the same funeral garment with his 
friend, and was held up at the window by 
two soldiers, while the executioner struck off 
the head of his companion. There is no 
record of such brutal barbarity in the history 
of Nero or Domitian. 

After this, the family feuds about his daugh- 
ter's marriage revive with double fury. The 
Queen, whose whole heart is set on the Eng- 
lish alliance, continues her petty intrigues to 
effect that object; while the King, rendered 
furious by the haughty language adopted by 
the English ministry on the subject of the in- 
sult offered to their ambassador, determines 
to have her married without a moment's 
delay ; and after threatening the Queen with 
his cane, sends to offer her the hand of the 
Prince of Bareith; which she dutifully ac- 
cepts, in spite of the bitter lamentations and 
outrageous fury of the Queen. That in- 
triguing princess, however, does not cease to 
intrigue, though deserted by her daughter — 
but sends again in greater urgency than ever 
to England ; — and that court, if we are to be- 
lieve the statement before us, at last seriously 
afraid of losing a match every way desir- 
able, sends off despatches, containing an en- 
tire and unqualified acquiescence in all 
Frederic's stipulations as to the marriage — 
which arrive at Berlin the very morning of 
the day on which the Princess was to be -so- 
lemnly betrothed to M. de Bareith, but are 
wickedly kept back by Grumkovv and the 
Imperial Envoy, till after the ceremony had 
been publicly and irrevocably completed. 
Their disclosure then throws all parties into 
rage and despair ; and the intriguers are made 
the ridiculous victims of their own baseness 
and duplicity. The indefatigable Queen, how- 
ever, does not despair even yet ; but sends off 
another courier to England, and sets all her 
emissaries to prepare the King to break off 
the match in the event of the answer k«ing 
favourable; — nay, the very night before the 
marriage, she takes her daughter apart, and 
begs her to live with her husband as a sister 
with her brother, for a few days, till the result 

the embassage is known. But her usual 



destiny pursues her. The fatal evening ar- 
rives; and the Princess, with a train forty-fivu 
feet in length, and the spousal crown placed 
on twenty-four twisted locks of false hair. 
each thicker than her arm, enters the grand 
saloon, and takes the irrevocable vow ! — and 
her mother has just put her to bed, when she 
hears that her courier has arrived, and leaves 
her in rage and anguish. 

The humours of the rest of the family ap- 
pear to no great advantage during the bridal 
festivities. In the first place, the Princess* 
sister, Charlotte, falls in love with the bride- 
groom, and does her possible to seduce him. 
Then old Frederic cheats the bride in her 
settlements, which amount to a gross sum of 
near 500L a year; — and, finally, her brother- 
in-law, the Margrave of Anspach, rallies her 
husband so rudely upon his mother's gallan- 
tries, that the latter gives him a brave defi- 
ance in the face of the whole court ; at which 
the poor Margrave is so dreadfully frightened, 
that he bursts out into screams and tears, and 
runs for refuge into the Queen's apartment, 
where he hides himself behind the arras, from 
which he is taken in a filthy condition, and 
carried to his apartments, "ou il exhala sa 
colere par des vomissemens et un diarrhee 
qui pensa Penvoyer a l'autre monde." — Yet 
the good Princess assures us, that this reptile 
had - a good heart and a good understanding," 
— with no fault but being a little passionate ; 
and then, in the very next page, she records a 
malignant and detected falsehood which he 
had vented against her husband, and which 
rendered him odious in the eyes of the whole 
court. Being dissatisfied with her settle- 
ments, she puts the King in a good humour by 
giving a grand dinner to him and his officers, 
at which they are all "ivres morts;" but 
having mentioned her distresses through the 
Queen, he is so much moved with them, that 
he calls for the settlements, and strikes off 
about one fourth of her allowance. 

All this happened in autumn 1731 ; and in 
January 1732, the Princess being far advanced 
in pregnancy, and the roads almost impassa- 
ble, it was thought advisable for her to set out 
for her husband's court at Bareith. She is 
overturned of course several times, and obliged 
to w r alk half the way : — But we pass over the 
disasters of the journey, to commemorate her 
arrival in this ancient principality. The firsfr 
village she reached was Hoff, which is on the 
frontier— and has also the convenience of 
being within three miles of the centre of the 
territory : and here the grand marshal, and all 
the nobility of the province, are mustered to 
receive her at the bottom of the staircase, or, 
in other words, of the wooden ladder which 
led to her apartments. However, various 
guns were fired off very successfully, and the 
chief nobility were invited to dinner. The 
Princess' description of these personages is 
really very edifying. They had all faces, she 
says, which a child could not look on without 
screaming; — huge masses of hair on their 
heads, filled with a race of vermin as ancienl 
as their pedigrees ; — clothed in old laced suits 
that had descended through many generations 



!56 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



the most part in rags, and no way fitting their 
present wearers; — the greater part of them 
covered with itch; — and their conversation, of 
oxen. Immediately after dinner they began 
with the Princess' health in a huge bumper, 
and proceeded regularly in the same gallant 
maimer through the whole of her genealogy; 
— so that in less than half an hour she found 
herself in the middle of thirty-four monsters, 
so drunk that none of them could articulate, 
li ot rendant les boyaux a tous ces desastreux 
visages." Next day being Sunday, there was 
a sermon in honour of the occasion, in which 
the preacher gave an exact account of all the 
marriages that had happened in the world, 
from the days of Adam down to the last of 
the patriarchs — illustrated with so many cir- 
cumstantial details as to the antecedents and 
consequents in each, that the male part of the 
audience laughed outright, and the female 
pretended to blush throughout the whole dis- 
course. The dinner scene was the same as 
on the day preceding; with the addition of 
the female nobility who came in the evening, 
with their heads enveloped in greasy wigs 
like swallows' nests, and ancient embroidered 
dresses, stuck all over with knots of faded 
ribands. 

The day following, the Margrave, her father- 
in-law, came himself to meet her. This 
worthy prince was nearly as amiable, and not 
quite so wise, as the royal parent she had left. 
He had read but two books in the world, 
Telemaque, and Amelot's Roman history, and 
discoursed out of them so very tediously, that 
the poor Princess fainted from mere ennui at 
the very first interview ; — Then he drank night 
and day — and occasionally took his cane to 
the prince his son, and his other favourites. 
Though living in poverty and absolute dis- 
comfort, he gave himself airs of the utmost 
magnificence — went to dinner with three 
flourishes of cracked trumpets — received his 
court, leaning with one hand on a table, in 
imitation of the Emperor — and conferred his 
little dignities in harangues so pompous, and 
so awkwardly delivered, that his daughter-in- 
law at once laughed and was ashamed of 
him. He was awkward, too, and embarrassed 
in the society of strangers of good breeding — 
but made amends by chattering without end, 
about himself and his two books, to those 
who were bound to bear with him. Under 
the escort of this great potentate the Princess 
made her triumphal entry into the city of Ba- 
reith the next morning: the whole procession 
consisting of one coach, containing the con- 
stituted authorities who had come out to meet 
her, her own carriage drawn by six carrion 
post-horses, that containing her attendants, 
and six or seven wagons loaded with furni- 
ture. The Margrave then conducted her from 
the palace gate in great state to her apart- 
ments, through a long passage, hung with 
cobwebs, and so abominably filthy as to turn 
her stomach in hurrying through it. This 
opened into an antechamber, adorned with 
old tapestry, so torn and faded that the figures 
or. it looked like so many ghosts; and through 
that into a cabinet furnished with green 



damask all in tatters. Her bedchamber was 
also furnished with the same stuff — but in 
such a condition, that the curtains fell in 
pieces whenever they were touched. Half 
of the windows were broken, and there waa 
no fire; though it was midwinter. The din- 
ners were not eatable; and lasted three hours, 
with thirty flourishes of the old trumpets for 
the bumper toasts with which they were en- 
livened : Add to all this, that the poor Prin- 
cess was very much indisposed — that the 
Margrave came and talked to her out of Tele- 
maque and Amelot, five or six hours every day 
— and that she could not muster cash enough 
to buy herself a gown : and it will not appear 
wonderful, that in the very midst of the wed- 
ding revelries, she spent half her time in bed, 
weeping over the vanity of human grandeur. 
By and by, however, she found occupa- 
tion in quarrelling with her sisters-in-law, and 
in making and appeasing disputes between 
her husband and his father. She agrees 
so ill, indeed, with all the family, that her 
proposal of returning to lie-in at Berlin m re- 
ceived with great joy : — but while they are 
deliberating about raising money for this 
journey of two hundred miles, she becomes 
too ill to move. Her sister of Anspach. and 
her husband, come, and quarrel with her 
upon points of etiquette ; the Margrave falls 
in love with one of her attendants ; and in 
the midst of all manner of perplexities she 
is delivered of a daughter. The Margrave, 
who was in the country, not happening to 
hear the cannon which proclaimed this great 
event, conceives that he is treated with great 
disrespect, and gives orders for having his 
son imprisoned in one of his fortresses. He 
relents, however, at the christening; and is 
put in good humour by a visit from another 
son and a brother — the first of whom is des- 
cribed as a kind of dwarf and natural fool, 
who could never take seriously to any em- 
ployment but catching flies ; and the other as 
a furious madman, in whose company no one 
was sure of his life. This amiable family 
party is broken up, by an order on the Prin- 
cess' husband to join his regiment at Berlin, 
and another order from her father for her to 
pay a visit to her sister at Anspach. On her 
way she visits an ancient beauty, with a nose 
like a beetroot, and two maids of honour so 
excessively fat that they could not sit down ; 
and, in stooping to kiss the Princess' hand, 
fell over, and rolled like balls of flesh on the 
carpet. At Anspach, she finds the Margrave 
deep in an intrigue with the housemaid ; and 
consoles her sister under this affliction. She 
then makes a great effort, and raises money 
enough to carry her to Berlin ; where she is 
received with coldness and ridicule by the 
Queen, and neglect and insult by all her 
sisters. Her brother's marriage with the 
Princess of Brunswick was just about to 
take place, and we choose to give in her own 
words her account of the manner in which 
she was talked over in this royal circle. 

" La reine, a table, fit tomber la conversation 
sur la prineesse royale future. ' Votre frere,' me 
dit-elle en le regardant, ' est au desespoir de l'epou- 



MEMOIRS OF MARGRAVINE OF BAREITH. 



257 



ter, et n'a pas tort : c'csf. unevraibele; elle repond 
a tout ce qu'on lui dit par un oui et un non, ac- 
compagne d'un rire niais qui fait mal au cceur.' 
' Oh !' dit ma 6oeur Charlotte, 'voire Majeste ne 
connoit pa9 encore tout son merite. J'ai etc un 
matin a sa toilette ; j'ai cru y suffoquer ; elle exha- 
loit une odeur insupportable ! Je crois qu'elle a 
pour le moins dix ou douze fistules — car cela n'est 
pas naturel. J'ai remarque aussi qu'elle est con- 
trefaite ; son corps de jupe est rembourre d'un 
cote, et elle a une hanche plus haute que I'au- 
tre.' Je fus fort etonnee de ces propos, qui se te- 
noient en presence des domesiiques — et surtout de 
mon frere ! Je m'apercjis qu'ils lui faisoient de 
la peine et qu'il changeoit de couleur. II se 
retira aussitot apres souper. J'en fis autant. II 
vint me voir un moment apres. Je lui demandai 
s'il etoit satisfait du roi ? II me repondit que sa 
situation changeoit a tout moment ; que tantot il 
etoit en faveur et tantot en disgrace ; que son plus 
grand bonheur consistoit dans 1' absence ; qu'il me- 
noit une vie douce et tranquille a. son regiment ; 
que I'etude et la musique y faisoient ses principales 
occupations ; qu'il avoit fait batir une maison et fait 
faire un jardin charmant ou il pouvoit lire et se 
promener. Je le pria de me dire si le portrait que 
la reine et ma sceur m'avoient fait de la Frincesse 
de Brunswick etoit veritable? 'Nous sommes 
seuls,' repartit-il, ' et je n'ai rien de cache pour 
vous. Je vous parlerai avec sincerite. La reine, 
par ses miserables intrigues, est la seule source 
de nos malheurs. A peine avez-vous ete partie 
qu'elle a renoue avec l'Angleterre ; elle a voulu 
vous su^stituer ma sceur Charlotte, et lui faire epou- 
ser le Prince de Galles. Vous jugez bien qu'elle 
a employe tous ses efforts pour faire reussir son plan 
et pour me marier avec la Princesse Amelie.' " 

The poor Prince, however, confesses that 
he cannot say much for the intellect of his 
intended bride ; — and really does not use a 
much nobler language than the rest of the 
family, even when speaking in her presence ; 
for on her first presentation to his sister, find- 
ing that she made no answer to the compli- 
ments that were addressed to her, the enam- 
oured youth encourages her bridal timidity 
by this polite exclamation, "Peste soit de la 
bete! — remercie done ma sceur!" The ac- 
count of the festivities which accompanied 
this marriage really excites our compassion ; 
and is well calculated to disabuse any inex- 
perienced person of the mistake of suppo- 
sing, that there can be either comfort or en- 
joyment in the cumbrous splendours of a 
court. Scanty and crowded dinners at mid- 
day — and formal balls and minuets imme- 
diately after, in June, followed up with dull 
gaming in the evening; — the necessity of 
being up in full dress by three o'clock in the 
morning to see a review — and the pleasure 
of being stifled in a crowded tent without 
seeing any thing, or getting any refreshment 
for seven or eight hours, and then to return 
famishing to a dinner of eighty covers; — 
at other times to travel ten miles at a foot- 
pace in an open carriage during a heavy rain, 
and afterwards to stand shivering on the wet 
grass to see fireworks — to pay twenty visits 
of ceremony every morning, and to present 
and be presented in stately silence to persons 
whom you hate and despise. Such were the 
general delights of the whole court ; — and 
our Princess had the additional gratification 
of being forced from a sick-bed to enjoy 
(hem, and of undergoing the sneers of her 
33 



mother, and the slights of her whole genera- 
tion. Their domestic life, when these galas 
were over, was nearly as fatiguing, and still 
more lugubrious. The good old custom of 
famishing was kept up at table ; and imme- 
diately after dinner the King had his great 
chair placed right before the fire, and snored 
in it for three hours, during all which they 
were obliged to keep silence, for fear of dis- 
turbing him. When he awoke, he set to 
smoking tobacco; — and then sate four hours 
at supper, listening to long stories of his 
ancestors, in the taste of those sermons 
which are prescribed to persons afflicted 
with insomnolency. Then the troops began 
their exercise under the windows before four 
o'clock every morning, — and not only kept 
the whole household awake from that hour 
by their firing, but sometimes sent a ram- 
rod through the glass to assist at the Prin- 
cess' toilette. One afternoon the King was 
seized with a sort of apoplexy in his sleep, 



which, as he always snored extremely louu, 
might have carried him off without much 
observation, had not his daughter observed 
him grow black in the face, and restored him 
by timely applications. She is equally un- 
fortunate about the same time in her father- 
in-law the Margrave, who is mischievous 
enough to recover, after breaking a blood- 
vessel by falling down stairs in a fit of 
drunkenness. At last she gets away with 
great difficulty, and takes her second leave 
of the parental roof, with even less regard 
for its inhabitants than she had felt on first 
quitting its shelter. 

On her return to Bareith, she finds the old 
Margrave quite broken in health, but extrava- 
gantly and honourably in love w 7 ith a lame, 
dwarfish, middle-aged lady, the sister of her 
ancient governess, whom he proposes to 
marry, to the great discomfiture of the Prin- 
cess and his son. They remonstrate with the 
lady, however, on the absurdity of such an 
union ; and she promises to be cruel, and live 
single. In the mean time, one of the Mar- 
grave's daughters is taken with a kind of 
madness of a very indecorous character; 
which indicates itself by frequent impro- 
prieties of speech, and a habit of giving invi- 
tations, of no equivocal sort, to every man 
that comes near her. The worthy Margrave, 
at first undertakes to cure this very trouble- 
some complaint by a brisk course of beating; 
but this not being found to answer, it is 
thought expedient to try the effect of mar- 
riage ; and, that there may he no harm done 
to any body, they look out a certain Duke of 
Weimar, who is as mad as the lady — though 
somewhat in a different way. This prince's 
malady consisted chiefly in great unsteadi- 
ness of purpose, and a trick of outrageous 
and inventive boasting. Both the Princess 
and her husband, however, take great pains 
to bring about this well-assorted match ; and, 
by dint of flattery and intimidation, it is 
actually carried through — though the bride- 
groom sends a piteous mes»ge on the morn- 
ing of his wedding day, begging 4o be let oft", 
and keeps them from twelve till four o'clock 
w2 



*58 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



in the morning before he can be persuaded 
to go to bed. In the mean time, the Princess 
#ives great offence to the populace and the 
preachers of Bareith, by giving a sort of 
masked ball, and riding occasionally on 
horseback. Her husband goes to the wars; 
and returns very much out of humour with 
her brother Frederic, who talks contemptu- 
ously of little courts and little princes. The 
old Margrave falls into a confirmed hectic, 
and writes billets-doux to his little lady, so 
tender as to turn one's stomach ; but at last 
dies in an edifying manner, to the great satis- 
faction of all his friends and acquaintances. 
Old Frederic promises fair, at the same time, 
to follow his example ; for he is seized with 
a confirmed dropsy. His legs swell, and 
burst; and give out so much water, that he 
is obliged for several days to sit with them 
in buckets. By a kind of miracle, however, 
he recovers, and goes a campaigning for 
several years after. 

The Memoirs are rather dull for four or 
five years after the author's accession to the 
throne of Bareith. She makes various jour- 
neys, and suffers from various distempers — 
lias innumerable quarrels with all the neigh- 
bouring potentates about her own precedence 
and that of her attendants; fits up several 
villas, gives balls ; and sometimes quarrels 
with her husband, and sometimes nurses him 
in his illness. In 1740, the King, her father, 
dies in good earnest ; and makes, it must be 
acknowledged, a truly heroic, though some- 
what whimsical, ending. Finding himself 
fast going, he had himself placed, early in the 
morning in his wheel-chair, and goes himself 
to tell the Queen that she must rise and see 
him die. He then takes farewell of his chil- 
dren ; and gives some sensible advice to his 
son. and the ministers and generals whom he 
had assembled. Afterwards he has his best 
horse brought, and presents it with a good 
grace to the oldest of his generals. He next 
ordered all the servants to put on their best 
liveries ; and, when this was done, he looked 
on them with an air of derision, and said, 
" Vanity of \ unities !" He then commanded 
his physician to tell him exactly how long he 
had to live ; and when he was answered, 
"about half an hour," he asked for a looking- 
glass, and said with a smile, that he certainly 
did look ill enough, and saw "qu^il fcrait 
une vilainc grimace en mourant /" When the 
clergymen proposed to come and pray with 
him, he said, "he knew already all they hail 
to say, and that they might go about their 
business." In a short time after he expired, 
in great tranquillity. 

Though the new King came to visit his sister 
soon after his accession, and she went to re- 
turn the compliment at Berlin, she says there 
was no longer any cordiality between them ; 
and that she heard nothing but complaints of 
his avarice, his ill temper, his ingratitude, and 
his arrogance. She gives him great credit 
for talents; but entreats her readers to sus- 
pend their judgment as to the real character 
of this celebrated monarch, till they have 
perused the whole of her Memoirs. What 



seems to have given her the worst opinion of 
him, was his impolite habit of making jokes 
about the small domains and scanty revenues 
of her husband. For the two following years 
she travels all over Germany, abusing ail the 
principautes she meets with. In 1742, she 
goes to see the coronation of the new Emperoi 
at Francfort, and has a long negotiation about 
the ceremony of her introduction to the Em- 
press. After various projets had been offered 
and rejected, she made these three conditions : 
— 1st, That the whole cortege of the Empress 
should receive her at the bottom of the stair- 
case. 2dly, That the Empress herself should 
come to meet her at the outside of the door 
of her bed-chamber. And, 3dly, That she 
should be allowed an arm-chair during the 
interview. Whole days we're spent in the 
discussion of this proposition; and at last the 
two "first articles, were agreed to; but all 
that she could make of the" last was, that she 
should have a very large chair, without arms : 
and the Empress a very small one, with them ! 
— Her account of the interview we add in her 
own words. 

" Je vis cette Princesse le jour suivant. J'avoue 
qu'a sa place j'aurois imagine loutes Ies etiquettes 
et les ceremonies du monde pour m'empecher de 
paroitre. L'lmperatiice est d'une taille au-dessous 
de la petite, et si puissante qu'elle semble une 
boule ; elle est laide au possible, sans air et sans 
grace. Son esprit repond a sa figure ; elle est 
bigotte a l'exces, et passe Ies nuitsel les jours dans 
son oratoire : les vieilleset les laides sont ordinaire- 
ment le partage du bon Dieu ! Elle me re$ut en 
iremblant et d'un air si decontenanee qu'elle ns 
put me dire un mot. Nous nous assimes. Apres 
avoir garde quelque temps le silence, je commengai 
la conversation en frangais. Elle me repondit, dans 
son jargon autrichien, qu'elle n'entendoit pas bien 
cette langue, et qu'elle me prioit de lui pailer en 
allemand. Cet entretien ne tut pas long. Le dia- 
lecfe autrichien et le bas-saxon sont si differens, 
qu'a moins d'y etre accoutume on ne se comprend 
point. C'est aussi ce qui nous arriva. Nous aurions 
prepare a rire a un tiers par les coq-a-1'ane que 
nous faisions, n'entendant que par-ci par-la un mot, 
qui nous faisoit deviner le reste. Cet'e princesse 
etoit si fort esclave de son etiquette qu'elle auroit 
cru faire un crime de lese-grandeur en m'entrete- 
nant dans une langue etrangere ; car elle savoit le 
francais ! L'Empereur devoit se trouver a cette 
visite ; mais il etoit tombe si malade qu'on craignoit 
meme pour ses jours." — pp. 345, 346. 

After this she comes home in a very bad 
humour: and the Memoirs break off abruptly 
with her detection of an intrigue between her 
husband and her favourite attendant, and her 
dissatisfaction with the dull formality of ihe 
court of Stutgard. We hope the sequel will 
soon find its way to the public. 

Some readers may think we have dwelt too 
long on such a tissue of impertinencies; and 
others may think an apology requisite for the 
tone of levity in which we have spoken of so 
many atrocities. The truth is. that we think 
this book of no trifling importance ; and that 
we could not be serious upon the subject of it 
without being both sad and angry. Before 
concluding, however, we shall add one word 
in seriousness — to avoid the misconstructions 
to which we might otherwise be liable. 

We are decidedly of opinion, that Monarchy, 
and Hereditary Monarchy, is by far the bes» 



ITIVING'S COLUMBUS. 



259 



form of government that human wisdom has 
yet devised for the administration of consider- 
able nations; and that it will always continue 
to be the most perfect which human virtue 
will admit of. We are not readily to be sus- 
pected, therefore, of any wish to produce a 
distaste or contempt for th ; s form of govern- 
ment ; and beg leave to say, that though the 
facts we nave now collected are certainly 
si.cn as to give no favourable impression of 
the private manners or personal dispositions 
ol absolute sovereigns, we conceive that good, 
rather than evil, is likely to result from their 
dissemination. This we hold, in the first 
place, on the strength of the general maxim, 
that all truth must be ultimately salutary, and 
all deception pernicious. But we think we 
can see a little how this maxim applies to the 
particular case before us. 

In the first place, then, we think it of ser- 
vice to the cause of royalty, in an age of vio- 
lent passions and rash experiments, to show 
that most of the vices and defects which such 
times are apt to bring to light in particular 
sovereigns, are owing, not so much to any par- 
ticular unworthiness or unfitness in the indi- 
vidual, as to the natural operation of the cir- 
cumstances in which he is placed ; and are 
such, in short, as those circumstances have 
always generated in a certain degree in those 
who have been exposed to them. Such con- 
siderations, it appears to us, when taken along 
with the strong and irresistible arguments for 
monarchical government in general, are well 
calculated to allay that great impatience and 
dangerous resentment with which nations 
in turbulent times are apt to consider the 
faults of their sovereigns; and to unite with 
a steady attachment and entire respect for 
the office, a very great degree of indulgence 
for the personal defects of the individual who 
may happen to fill it. Monarchs, upon this 
view of things, are to be considered as per- 
sons who are placed, for the public good, in 
situations where, not only their comfort, but 
their moral qualities, are liable to be greatly 
impaired; and who are poorly paid in empty 
splendour, and anxious power, for the sacri- 
fice of their affections, and of the many en- 
gaging qualities which might have blossomed 
in a lower region. If we look with indulgence 
upon the roughness of sailors, the pedantry of 
schoolmasters, and the frivolousness of beau- 
ties, we should learn to regard, with some- 
thing of the same feelings, the selfishness and 
the cunning of kings. 



In the second place, we presume to think 
that the general adoption of these opinions as 
to the personal defects that are likely to result 
from the possession of sovereign power, may 
be of use to the sovereigns themselves, from 
whom the knowledge of their prevalence can- 
not be very long concealed. Such knowledge, 
it is evident, will naturally stimulate the bettei 
sort of them to counteract the causes which 
tend to their personal degradation; and enable 
them more generally to surmount their per- 
nicious operation, by such efforts and reflec- 
tions, as have every now and then rescued 
some powerful spirits from their dominion, 
under all the disadvantages of the delusions 
with which they were surrounded. 

Finally, if the general prevalence of these 
sentiments as to the private manners and dis- 
positions of sovereigns should have the effect 
of rendering the bulk of their subjects less 
prone to blind admiration, and what may be 
called personal attachment to them, we do 
not imagine that any great harm will be done. 
The less the public knows or cares about the 
private wishes of their monarch, and the more 
his individual will is actually consubstantiated 
with the deliberate sanctions of his responsible 
counsellors, the more perfectly will the prac- 
tice of government correspond with its ad- 
mitted theory ; the more wisely will affairs be 
administered for the public, and the more 
harmoniously and securely both for the sove- 
reign and the people. An adventurous war- 
rior may indeed derive signal advantages from 
the personal devotedness and enthusiastic at- 
tachment of his followers; but in the civil 
office of monarchy, as it exists in modern 
times, the only safe attachment is to the office, 
and to the measures which it sanctions. The 
personal popularity of princes, in so far as we 
know, has never done any thing but harm: 
and indeed it seems abundantly evident, that 
whatever is done merely for the personal 
gratification of the reigning monarch, that 
would not have been done at any rate on 
grounds of public expediency, must be an 
injury to the community, and a sacrifice of 
duty to an unreturned affection ; and whatever 
is forborne out of regard to his pleasure, which 
the interest of the country would otherwise 
have required, is in like manner an act of base 
and unworthy adulation. We do not speak, 
it will be understood, of trifles or things of little 
moment ; but of such public acts of the gov- 
ernment as involve the honour or the interest 
of the nation. 



(September, 1828.) 

History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. By Washington Irving. 

4 vols. 8vo. London: 1828. 



This, on the whole, is an excellent book ; 
and we venture to anticipate that it will be an 
enduring one. Neither do we hazard this 
prediction lightly, or without a full conscious- 



ness of all that it implies. We are perfectly 
aware that there are but few modern works 
that are likely to verify it ; and that it probably 
could not be extended with safety to so many 



260 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



as one in a hundred even of those which we 
praise. For we mean, not merely that the 
b'Hik will be familiarly known and referred 
to some twenty or thirty years hence, and 
will pass in solid binding into every consider- 
able collection ; but that it will supersede all 
former works on the same subject, and never 
be itself superseded. The first stage of 
triumph, indeed, over past or existing com- 
petitors, may often be predicted securely of 
works of no very extraordinary merit ; which, 
treating of a progressive science, merely em- 
body, with some small additions, a judicious 
digest of all that was formerly known ; and 
are for the time the best works on the subject, 
merely because they are the last. But the 
second stage of literary beatitude, in which 
an author not only eclipses. all existing rivals, 
but obtains an immunity from the effects of 
all future competition, certainly is not to be 
so cheaply won ; and can seldom, indeed, be 
secured to any one, unless the intrinsic merit 
of his production is assisted by the concur- 
rence of some such circumstances as we think 
now hold out the promise of this felicity to 
the biographer of Columbus. 

Though the event to which his work relates 
is one which can never sink into insignificance 
or oblivion, but, on the contrary, will probably 
excite more interest with every succeeding 
generation, till the very end of the world, yet 
its importance has been already long enough 
apparent to have attracted the most eager at- 
tention to every thing connected with its de- 
tails ; and we think we may safely say, that 
all the documents which relate to it have now 
been carefully examined, and all the channels 
explored through which any authentic infor- 
mation was likely to be derived. In addition to 
the very copious, but rambling and somewhat 
garrulous and extravagant accounts, which 
were published soon after the discovery, and 
and have since been methodised and arranged, 
Don F. M. Navarette, a Spanish gentleman 
of great learning, and industry, and secretary 
to the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, 
has lately given to the world a very extensive 
collection of papers, relating to the history 
and voyages of Columbus ; a very considerable 
portion of which appears not to have been 
known to any of those who had formerly 
written on the subject. Mr. Irving's first 
design was merely to publish a translation 
of this collection, with occasional remarks; 
but having, during his residence at Madrid, 
had access, by the kindness of the Duke of 
Veraguas, the descendant of the great Ad- 
miral, to the archives of his family, and to 
various other documents, still remaining in 
manuscript, which had escaped the research 
even of Navarette, he fortunately turned his 
thoughts to the compilation of the more com- 
prehensive and original work now before us — 
in which, by those great helps, he has been 
enabled, not only to supply many defects, 
but to correct many errors, and reconcile 
some apparent contradictions in the earlier 
accounts. 

It was evidently very desirable that such a 
work should at length be completed ; and we 



think it peculiarly fortunate that the means 
of completing it should have fallen into such 
hands as Mr. Irving's. The materials, it was 
obvious, were only to be found in Spain, and 
were not perhaps very likely to De intrusted 
without reserve to a stranger; while there 
was reason to fear that a Spaniard might not 
have courage to speak of the errors and crimes 
of his countrymen in the tone which the truth 
of history might require ; or might not think 
it safe, even yet, to expose the impolicy, or 
canvass the pretensions, of the government. 
By a happy concurrence of circumstances, an 
elegant writer, altogether unconnected either 
with Spain or her rivals and enemies, and 
known all over the civilized world as a man 
of intelligence and principle,, of sound judg- 
ment, and a calm and indulgent temper, re- 
paired to Madrid at a time when the publica- 
tion of Navarette had turned the public atten- 
tion, in an extraordinary degree, to the 
memorable era of Coiumbus; and, by the 
force of his literary and personal character, 
obtained the fullest disclosure of every thing 
that bore upon his history ihat was ever made, 
to native or foreigner, — at the same time that 
he had the means of discussing personally, 
with the best informed individuals of the na- 
tion, all the points on which the written docu- 
ments might seem to leave room for doubt or 
explanation. 

Of these rare advantages Mr. Irving has 
availed himself, we think, with singular judg- 
ment and ability. He has written the history 
of the greatest event in the annals of mankind, 
with the fulness and the feeling it deserved ; 
and has presented us with a flowing and con- 
tinuous narrative of the events he had to 
Tecord, far more luminous and comprehensive 
than any which previously existed, and yet 
much less diffuse and discursive than the 
earlier accounts, from which it is mainly de- 
rived : While, without sacrificing in any 
degree the intense interest of personal adven- 
ture and individual sympathy, he has brought 
the lights of a more cultivated age to bear on 
the obscure places of the story ; and touched 
skilfully on the errors and prejudices of the 
times — at once to enliven his picture by their 
singularity, and to instruct us by their explana- 
tion or apology. Above all, he has composed 
the whole work in a temper that is beyond 
all praise. It breathes throughout a genuine 
spirit of humanity ; and, embellished as it is 
with beautiful descriptions and wonderful 
tales, its principal attraction in our eyes con- 
sists in its soft-hearted sympathy with suffer- 
ing, its fearless reprobation of injustice and 
oppression, and the magnanimous candour o{ 
its judgments, even on the delinquent. 

But though we think all this of Mr. Irving's 
work, we suspect it may not be altogether 
unnecessary to caution our more sensitive and 
sanguine readers against giving way to certain 
feelings of disappointment, which it is not 
impossible they may encounter at the outset 
of their task ; and to which two or three very 
innocent causes are likely enough to expose 
them. In the first place, many great admirers 
of Mr. Irving's former works will probably 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



261 



miss .he brilliant, highly finished, and ryth- 
mical style, which attracted them so much in 
those performances: and may find the less 
artificial and elaborate diction of this history 
comparatively weak and careless. In this 
judgment, however, we can by no means 
agree. Mr. living's former style, though un- 
questionably very elegant and harmonious, 
always struck us as somewhat too laboured 
and exquisite — and, at all events, but ill fitted 
for an extensive work, where the interest 
turned too much on the weight of the matter 
to be safely divided with the mere polish of 
the diction, or the balance of the periods. — 
He has done well, therefore, we think, to dis- 
card it on this occasion, for the more varied, 
careless, and natural style, which distinguishes 
the volumes before us — a style not only without 
sententious pretension, or antithetical pretti- 
ness, but even in some degree loose and un- 
equal — flowing easily on, with something of 
the fulness and clearness of Herodotus or 
Boccaccio — sometimes languid, indeed, and 
often inexact, but furnishing, in its very fresh- 
ness and variety, the very best mirror, perhaps, 
in which the romantic adventures, the sweet 
descriptions, or the soft humanities, with which 
the author had to deal ? could have been dis- 
played. 

Another, and perhaps a more general source 
of disappointment to impatient readers, is 
likely to be found in the extent and minute- 
ness of the prefatory details, w T ith which Mr. 
Irving has crowded the foreground of his pic- 
ture, and detained us, apparently without 
necessity, from its principal features. The 
genealogy and education of Columbus — his 
early love of adventure — his long and vain 
solicitations at the different European courts 
— the intrigues and jealousies by which he 
was baffled — the prejudices against which he 
had to contend, and the lofty spirit and doubt- 
ful logic by which they were opposed, — are 
all given with a fulness for which, however 
instructive it may be, the reader, who knows 
already what it is to end in, will be apt to feel 
any thing but grateful. His mind, from the 
very title-page, is among the billows of the 
Atlantic and the islands of the Caribs ; and 
he does not submit without impatience to be 
informed of all the energy that was to be 
exerted, and all the obstacles to be overcome, 
before he can get there. It is only after w r e 
have perused the whole work that we perceive 
the fitness of these introductory chapters ; and 
then, when the whole grand series of suffer- 
ings and exploits has been unfolded, and the 
greatness of the event, and of the character 
with which it is inseparably blended, have 
been impressed on our minds, we feel how 
necessary it was to tell, and how grateful it is 
to know, all that can now be known of the 
causes by which both were prepared ; and 
instead of murmuring at the length of these 
precious details, feel nothing but regret that 
time should have so grievously abridged them. 

The last disappointment, for which the 
reader should be prepared, will probably fall 
upon those who expect much new information 
as to the first great voyage of discovery ) or 



suppose that the chief interest of the work 
must be exhausted by its completion. That 
portion of the story of Columbus has alwavs, 
from obvious causes, been given with more 
amplitude and fidelity than any other; and 
Mr. Irving, accordingly, has been able to add 
but few additional traits of any considerable 
importance. But it is not there, we think, 
that the great interest or the true character 
of the work is to be found. The mere geo- 
graphical discovery, sublime as it undoubtedly 
is, is far less impressive, to our minds, than 
the moral emotions to which it opens the 
scene. The whole history of the settlement 
of Hispaniola, and the sufferings of its gentle 
people — the daring progress of the great dis- 
coverer, through unheard-of forms of peril, 
and the overwhelming disasters that seem at 
last to weigh him down, constitute the real 
business of the piece, and are what truly bring 
out. not only the character of the man, but 
that of the events with which his memory is 
identified. It is here, too, that both the power 
and the beauty of the author's style chiefly 
display themselves — in his account of the 
innocence and gentleness of the simple races 
that were then first introduced to their elder 
brethren of Europe, and his glowing pictures 
of the lovely land, which ministered to their 
primitive luxury — or in his many sketches of 
the great commander himself, now towering 
in paternal majesty in the midst of his newly- 
found children — now invested with the daik 
gorgeousness of deep and superstitious devo- 
tion, and burning thirst of fame — or, still more 
sublime, in his silent struggles with malevo- 
lence and misfortune, and his steadfast reli- 
ance on the justice of posterity. 

The work before us embodies all these, and 
many other touching representations ; and in 
the vivacity of its colouring, and the novelty 
of its scene, possesses all the interests of a 
novel of invention, with the startling and 
thrilling assurance of its actual truth and 
exactness — a sentiment which enhances and 
every moment presses home to our hearts the 
deep pity and resentment inspired by the suf- 
ferings of the confiding beings it introduces 
to our knowledge — mingled with a feeling of 
something like envy and delighted wonder, at 
the story of their child-like innocence, and 
humble apparatus of enjoyment. No savages 
certainly ever were so engaging and loveable 
as those savages. Affectionate, sociable, and 
without cunning, sullenness, inconstancy, or 
any of the savage vices, but an aversion from 
toil, which their happy climate at once in- 
spired and rendered innoxious, they seem to 
have passed their days in blissful ignorance 
of all that human intellect has contrived for 
human misery • and almost to have enjoyed 
an exemption from the doom that followed 
man's first unhallowed appetite for know-edge 
of good and evil. It is appalling to think with 
what tremendous rapidity the vhole of these 
happy races were swept away ! How soon, 
after the feet of civilized Christians had touch- 
ed their shores, those shores were desolate, 
or filled only with mourning! How sooi<, how 
frightfully soon, the swarming myriads ot ulle 



262 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



and light-hearted creatures, who came troop- 
ing from their fragrant woods to receive them 
with smiles of welcome and gestures of wor- 
ship, and whose songs and shoutings first 
hailed them so sweetly over their fresh and 
sunny bays, were plunged, by the hands of 
those fatal visitants, into all the agonies of 
despair! — how soon released from them by a 
bloody extermination ! It humbles and al- 
most crushes the heart, even at this distance 
of time, to think of such a catastrophe, brought 
about by such instruments. The learned, the 
educated, the refined, the champions of chiv- 
alry, the messengers of the gospel of peace, 
come to the land of the ignorant, the savage, 
the heathen. They find them docile in their 
ignorance, submissive in their rudeness, and 
grateful and affectionate in their darkness : — 
And the result of the mission is mutual cor- 
ruption, misery, desolation ! The experience 
or remorse of four centuries has not yet been 
able to expiate the crime, or to reverse the 
spell. Those once smiling and swarming 
shores are still silent and mournful ; or re- 
sound only to the groans of the slave and the 
lash of the slave-driver — or to the strange 
industry of another race, dragged by a yet 
deeper guilt from a distant land, and now 
calmly establishing themselves on the graves 
of their oppressors. 

We do not propose to give any thing like 
an abstract of a story, the abstract of which 
is already familiar to every one ; while the 
details, like most other details, would lose 
half their interest, and all their character, by 
being disjoined from the narrative on which 
they depend. We shall content ourselves, 
therefore, by running over some of the par- 
ticulars that are less generally known, and 
exhibiting a few specimens of the author's 
manner of writing and thinking. 

Mr. Irving has settled, we think satisfacto- 
rily, that Columbus was born in Genoa, about 
the year 1435. It was fitting that the hemi- 
sphere of republics should have been dis- 
covered by a republican. His proper name 
was Colombo, though he is chiefly known 
among his contemporaries by the Spanish 
synonyme of Colon. He was well educated, 
but passed his youth chiefly at sea, and had 
his full share of the hardships and hazards 
incident to that vocation. From the travels 
of Marco Polo he seems first to have imbibed 
his taste for geographical discovery, and to 
have derived his grand idea of reaching the 
eastern shores of India by sailing straight to 
the west. The spirit of maritime enterprise 
was chiefly fostered in that age by the mag- 
nanimous patronage of Prince Henry of Portu- 
gal, and it was to that court, accordingly, that 
Columbus first offered his services in the year 
1470. We will not withhold from our readers 
the following brief but graphic sketch of his 
character and appearance at that period : 

" He was at tha* time in the full vigour of 
manhood, and of an engaging presence. Minute 
descriptions are given of his person by his son 
Fernando, by Las Casas, and others of his con- 
temporaries. According to these accounts, he was 
tall, well-formed, muscular, and of an elevated and 
dignified demeanour. Hi3 visage was long, and 



neither full nor meagre ; his complexion fair 
freckled, and inclined to ruddy ; his no.se aquiline 
his cheek-bones were rather high ; his eyes ligh 
grey, and apt to enkindle; his whole countenance 
had an air of authority. His hair, in his youthful 
days, was of a light colour; but care and irouble, 
according to Las Casas, soon turned it grey, and at 
thirty years of age it was quite white. He was 
moderate and simple in diet and apparel, eloquent 
in discourse, engaging and affable with strangers, 
and of an amiableness and suavity in domestic life, 
that strongly attached his household to his person. 
His temper was naturally irritable ; but he subdued it 
by the magnanimity of his spirit ; comporting him- 
self with a courteous and gentle gravity, and never in- 
dulging in any intemperance of language. Through- 
out his life he was noted for a strict attention to the 
offices of religion, observing rigorously the fasts 
and ceremonies of the church ; nor did his piety 
consist in mere forms, but partook of that lofty and 
solemn enthusiasm with which his whole character 
was strongly tinctured." 

For eighteen long years did the proud and 
ardent spirit of Columbus urge his heroic suit 
at the courts of most of the European mon- 
archs; and it was not till after encountering 
in every form the discouragements of wither- 
ing poverty, insulting neglect, and taunting 
ridicule, that, in his fifty-sixth year, he at last 
prevailed with Ferdinand and Isabella, to sup- 
ply him with three little ships, to achieve for 
them the dominion of a world ! Mr. Irving 
very strikingly remarks, 

"After the great, difficulties made by various 
courts in furnishing this expedition, it is surprising 
how inconsiderable an armament was required. It 
is evident that Columbus had reduced his requi- 
sitions to the narrowest limits, lest any great ex- 
pense should cause impediment. Three small ves- 
sels were apparently all that he had requested. Two 
of them were light barques, called caravals, not 
superior to river and coasting craft of more modern 
days. Representations of this class of vessels exist 
in old prints and paintings. They are delineated as 
open, and without deck in the centre, but built up 
high at the prow and stern, with forecastles and 
cabins for the accommodation of the crew. Peter 
Martyr, the learned contemporary of Columbus, 
says that only one of the three vessels was decked. 
The smallness of the vessels was considered an 
advantage by Columbus, in a voyage of discovery, 
enabling him to run close to the shores, and to enter 
shallow rivers and harbours. In his third voyage, 
when coasting the gulf of Paria, he complained of 
the size of his ship, being nearly a hundred tons 
burden. But that such long and per. Ions expedi- 
tions into unknown seas, should be undertaken in 
vessels without decks, and that they should live 
through the violent tempests by which they were 
frequently assailed, remain among the singular 
circumstances of these daring voyages." 

It was on Friday, the 3d of August, 1492, 
that the bold adventurer sailed forth, with the 
earliest dawn, from the little port of Palos, 
on his magnificent expedition ; and immedi- 
ately began a regular journal, addressed to 
the sovereigns, from the exordium of which, 
as lately printed by Navarette, we receive a 
strong impression both of the gravity and 
dignity of his character, and of the import- 
ance he attached to his undertaking. We 
subjoin a short specimen. 

" Therefore your highnesses, as Catholic Chris- 
tians and princes, lovers and promoters of the holy 
Christian faith, and enemies of the sect of Ma- 
homet, and of all idolatries and heresies, deter- 
mined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to tha 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



iLid p»rts of India, to see the said princes, and the 
people, nid lands, and discover the nature and 
disposition of them all, and the means to be taken 
lor the conversion of them to our holy faiih ; and 
ordered that I should not go by land to the East, 
by which it is the custom go, but by a voyage to 
the West, by which course, unto the present time, 
we do not know for certain that any one hath 
passed ; and for this purpose bestowed great favours 
upon me, ennobling me, that thenceforward I might 
style myself Don, appointing me high admiral of 
the Ocean Sea, and perpetual viceroy and governor 
of all the islands and continents I should discover 
and gain, and which henceforward may be dis- 
covered and gained, in the Ocean Sea ; and that 
my eldest son should succeed me, and so on, from 
generation to generation, for ever. I departed, 
therefore, from the city of Granada on Saturday 
the 12th of May, of the same year, 1492, to Palos, 
a sea-port, where I armed three ships well calcu- 
lated for such service, and sailed from that port 
well furnished with provisions, and with many 
seamen, on Friday the 3d of August of the same 
year, half an hour before sunrise, and took the 
route for the Canary Islands of your highnesses, to 
steer my course thence, and navigate until I should 
arrive at the Indies, and deliver the embassy of 
your highnesses to those princes, and accomplish 
that which you had commanded. For this purpose, 
I intend to write during this voyage very punctu- 
ally, from day to day, all that I may do, and see, 
and experience, as will hereafter be seen. Also, 
my sovereign princes, besides describing each night 
all that has occurred in the day, and in the day the 
navigation of the night, I propose to make a chart, 
in which I will set down the waters and lands of the 
Ocean Sea, in their proper situations, under their 
bearings; and, further to compose a book, and il- 
lustrate the whole in picture by latitude from the 
equinoctial, and longitude from the West ; and upon 
the whole it will be essential that I should forget 
sleep, and attend closely to the navigation, to accom- 
plish these things, which will be a great labour." 

As a guide by which to sail, Mr. Irving also 
informs us, he had prepared "a map,.or chart, 
improved upon that sent him by Paolo Tos- 
canelli. Neither of these now exist ) but the 
globe, or planisphere, finished by Martin 
Behem in this year of the admiral's first 
voyage, is still extant, and furnishes an idea 
of what the chart of Columbus must have 
been. It exhibits the coasts of Europe and 
Africa, from the south of Ireland to the end 
of Guinea ; and opposite to them, on the other 
side of the Atlantic, the extremity of Asia, 
or, as it was termed, India. Between them is 
placed the island of Cipango, (or Japan,) 
which, according to Marco Polo, lay fifteen 
hundred miles distant from the Asiatic coast. 
In his computations Columbus advanced this 
island about a thousand leagues too much to 
the east ; supposing it to lie in the situation 
of Florida, and at this island he hoped first to 
arrive." 

We pass over the known incidents of this 
celebrated voyage, which are here repeated 
with new interest and additional detail ; but 
we cannot refrain from extracting Mr. Irving's 
account of its fortunate conclusion. The grow- 
ing panic and discontent of his mutinous crew, 
and their resolution to turn back if land was 
not discovered in three days, are well known. 

" And when on the evening of the third day they 
beheld the sun go down upon a shoreless horizon, 
they broke forth into clamorous turbulence. For- 
iunately, however, the manifestations of neighbour- 



ing land were such on the following day as no 
longer to admit a doubt. Besides a quantity of 
fresh weeds, such as grow in rivers, they saw a 
green fish of a kind which keeps about rocks ; then 
a branch of thorn, with berries on it, and recently 
separated from the tree, floated by them ; then they 
picked up a reed, a small board, and, above all, a 
staff artificially carved. All gloom and mutiny now 
gave way to sanguine expectation ; and throughout 
the day each one was eagerly on the watch, in 
hopes of being the first to discover the long-sought- 
for land. 

"In the evening, when, according to invariable 
custom on board of the admiral's ship, the mariners 
had sung the salve regina, or vesper hymn to the 
Virgin, ne made an impressive address to his crew. 
He pointed out the goodness of God in thus con- 
ducting them by such soft and favouring breezes 
across a tranquil ocean, cheering their hopes con- 
tinually with fresh signs, increasing as their fears 
augmented, and thus leading and guiding them to a 
promised land. 

" The breeze had been fresh all day, with more 
sea than usual, and they had made great progress. 
At sunset they had stood again to the west, and 
were ploughing the waves at a rapid rate, the Pinta 
keeping the lead, from her superior sailing. The 
greatest animation prevailed throughout the ships; 
not an eye was closed that night. As the evening 
darkened, Columbus took his station on the top of 
the castle or cabin on the high poop of his vessel. 
However he might carry a cheerful and confident 
countenance during the day, it was to him a time of 
the most painful anxiety; and now when he was 
wrapped from observation by the shades of night, 
he maintained an intense and unremitting watch, 
ranging his eye along the dusky horizon, in search 
of the most vague indications of land. Suddenly, 
about ten o'clock, he thought he beheld a light 
glimmering at a distance ! Fearing that his eager 
hopes might deceive him, he called to Pedro Gu- 
tierrez, gentleman of the king's bed-chamber, and 
inquired whether he saw a light in that direction ; 
the latter replied in the affirmative. Columbus, yet 
doubtful whether it might not be some delusion of 
the fancy, called Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and 
made the same inquiry. By the time the latter had 
ascended the round-house, the light had disap- 
peared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in 
sudden and passing gleams ; as it were a torch in 
the bark of a fisherman, rising and sinking with the 
waves : or in the hand of some person on shore, 
borne up and down as he walked from house to 
house. So transient and uncertain were these 
gleams, that few attached any importance to them; 
Columbus, however, considered them as certain 
signs of land, and moreover, that the land was in- 
habited. 

" They continued their course until two in the 
morning, when a gun from the Pinta gave the joy- 
ful signal of land. It was first discovered by a 
mariner named Rodrigo de Triana ; but the reward 
was afterwards adjudged to the admiral, for having 
previously perceived the light. The land was now 
clearly seen about two leagues distant ; whereupon 
they took in sail and lay-to, waiting impatiently for 
the dawn. 

" The thoughts and feelings of Columbus in this 
little space of time must have been tumultuous and 
intense. At length, in spite of every difficulty and 
danger, he had accomplished his object. The great 
mystery of the ocean was revealed ; his theory, 
which had been the scoff of sages, was triumphant- 
ly established ; he had secured to himself a glory 
which must be as durable as the world itself. 

" It is difficult even for the imagination to con- 
ceive the feelings of such a man at the moment of 
so sublime a discovery. What a bewildering crowd 
of conjectures must have thronged upon his mind, 
as to the land which lay before" him, covered with 
darkness. That it was fruitful was evident, from 
the vegetables which floated from its shores. Ha 
thought, too, that he perceived in the balmy air the 



264 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



fragrance of aromatic groves. The moving light 
which he had beheld, had proved that it was the 
residence of man. But what were its inhabitants ? 
Were i hey like those of the other parts of the globe ; 
or were they some strange and monstrous race, 
such as the imaginaiion in those times was prone .to 
give to all remote and unknown regions? Had he 
come upon some wild island far in the Indian Sea; 
or was this the famed Cipango itself, the object of 
his golden fancies ? A thousand speculations of the 
kind must have swarmed upon him, as, with his 
anxious crews, he waited for the night to pass 
away : wondering whether the morning light would 
reveal a savage wilderness, or dawn upon spicy 
groves, and glittering fane$, and gilded cities, and 
all the splendour of oriental civilization. 

The land to which he was thus triumph- 
antly borne was the island of San Salvador, 
since called Cat Island, by the English : and 
at early dawn he landed with a great com- 
pany, splendidly armed and attired, and bear- 
ing in his hand the royal standard of Castile. 

" As they approached the shores, they were re- 
freshed by the sight of the ample forests, which in 
those climes have extraordinary beauty and vegeta- 
tion. They beheld fruits of tempting hue, but un- 
known kind, growing among the trees which 
overhung the shores. The purity and suavity of 
the atmosphere, the crystal transparency of the seas 
which bathe these islands, give them a wonderful 
beauty, and must have had their effect upon the 
susceptible feelings of Columbus. No sooner did 
he land, than he threw himself upon his knees, 
kissed the earth, and returned thanks to God with 
tears of joy. His example was followed by the 
rest, whose hearts indeed overflowed with the same 
feelings of gratitude." 

" The natives of the island, when, at the dawn 
of day, they had beheld the ships, with their sails 
set, hovering on their coast, had supposed them 
some monsters which had issued from the deep dur- 
ing the night. They had crowded to the beach, 
and watched their movements with awful anxiety. 
Their veering about, apparently without effort; the 
shifting and furling of their sails, resembling huge 
wings, filled them wiih astonishment. When they 
beheld their boats approach the shore, and a num- 
ber of strange beings, clad in glittering steel, or 
raiment of various colours, landing upon the beach, 
they fled in affright to their woods. Finding, how- 
ever, that there was no attempt to pursue nor 
molest them, they gradually recovered from their 
terror, and approached the Spaniards with great 
awe; frequently prostrating themselves on the 
earth, and making signs of adoration. During the 
ceremonies of taking possession, they remained 
gazing in timid admiration at the complexion, the 
beards, the shining armour, and splendid dress of 
the Spaniards. The admiral particularly attracted 
their attention, from his commanding height, his 
air of authority, his dress of scarlet, and the defer- 
ence which was paid him by his companions; all 
which pointed him out to be the commander. When 
ihey had still further recovered from their fears, 
thev approached the Spaniards, touched their beards, 
end examined their hands and faces, admiring their 
whiteness. Columbus, pleased with their sim- 
plicity, their gentleness, and the confidence they 
reposed in beings who must have appeared to them 
so strange and formidable, suffered their scrutiny 
with perfect acquiescence. The wondering savages 
were won by this benignity ; they now supposed 
that the ships had sailed out of the crystal firma- 
ment which bounded their horizon, or that they had 
descended from above on their ample wings, and 
that these marvellous beings were inhabitants of the 
*kies." 

Nothing is more remarkable in the journal 
of the great discoverer, than his extraordinary 



sensibility to the beauty of the scenery, ami 
the charms of the climate, of this new worlu ; 
and on his ai rival at Cuba, these raptures are 7 
if possible, redoubled. 

"As he approached this noble island, he was 
struck with its magnitude, and the grandeur of its 
features ; its high and airy mountains, which re- 
minded him of those of Sicily ; its fertile valleys, and 
long sweeping plains, watered by noble rivers; its 
stately forests ; its hold promontories, and stretch- 
ing headlands, which melted away into the remotest 
distance. He anchored in a beautiful river, free 
from rocks or shoals, of transparent water, its banks 
overhung with trees. Here, landing, and taking 
possession of the island, he gave it the name of 
Juana, in honour of Prince Juan, and to the river 
the name of San Salvador. 

" Returning to his boat, he proceeded for some 
distance up the river, more and more enchanted 
with the beauty of the country. The forests which 
covered each bank were of high and wide-spreading 
trees; some bearing fruits, others flowers, while in 
some both fruits and flowers were mingled, be- 
speaking a perpetual round of fertility : among them 
were many palms, but differing from those of Spain 
and Africa ; with the sreat leaves of these the na- 
tives thatched their cabins. 

" The continual eulogies made by Columbus on 
the beauty of the scenery were warranted by the 
kind of scenery he was beholding. There is a 
wonderful splendour, variety, and luxuriance in the 
vegetation of those quick and ardent climates. The 
verdure of the groves, and the colours of the flowers 
and blossoms, derive a vividness to the eye from the 
transparent purity of the air, and the deep serenity 
of the azure heavens. The forests, too, are full of 
life, swarming with birds of brilliant plumage. 
Painted varieties of parrots, and wood-peckers, 
create a glitter amidst the verdure of the grove ; and 
humming-birds rove from flower to flower, resem- 
bling, as has well been said, animated particles of a 
rainbow. The scarlet flamingos, too, seen some- 
times through an opening of a forest in a distant 
savannah, have the appearance of soldiers drawn up 
in battalion, with an advanced scout on the alert, to 
give notice of approaching danger. Nor is the least 
beautiful part of animated nature the various tribes 
of insects that people every plant, displaying bril- 
liant coats of mail, which sparkle to the eye like 
precious gems. 

" From his continual remarks on the beauty of 
the scenery, and from the pleasure which he evi- 
dently derived from rural sounds and objects, he 
appears to have been extremely open to those deli- 
cious influences, exercised over some spirits by the 
graces and wonders of nature. He gives utterance 
to these feelings with characteristic enthusiasm, and 
at the same time with theartlessness and simplicity 
of diction of a child. When speaking of some lovely 
scene among the groves, or along the flowery shore, 
of this favoured island, he says, ' one could live 
there for ever.' — Cuba broke upon him like an ely- 
sium. ' It is the most beautiful island,' he says, 
1 that eyes ever beheld, full of excellent ports and 
profound rivers.' The climate was more temperate 
here than in the other islands, the nights being 
neither hot nor cold, while the birds and grasshop- 
pers sang all night long. Indeed there is a beauty 
in a tropical night, in the depth of the dark-blue 
sky, the lambient purity of the stars, and the re- 
splendent clearness of the moon, that spreads over 
the rich landscape and the balmy groves a charm 
more touching than the splendour of the day. 

" In the sweet smell of the woods, and the odour 
of the flowers, which loaded every breeze, Colum- 
bus fancied he perceived the fragrance of oriental 
spices ; and along the shores he found shells of the 
kind of oyster which produces pearls. From the 
grass growing to the very edge of the water, he in- 
ferred the peacefulness of the ocean which bathes 
these islands, never lashing the shore with angry 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



265 



Kurges. Ever since his arrival among these An- 
tilles, he had experienced nothing but soft and 
gentle weather, and he concluded that a perpetual 
serenity reiarned over these happy seas. He was 
little suspicious of the occasional bursts of fury to 
which they are liable." 

Hispaniola was still more enchanting. 

11 In the transparent atmosphere of the tropics, 
objects are descried at a great distance, and the 
purity of the air and serenity of the deep blue sky 
gave a magical effect to the scenery. Under these 
advantages, the beautiful island of Hayti revealed 
itself to the eye as they approached. Its mountains 
were higher and more rocky than those of the other 
islands; but the rocks reared themselves from 
among rich forests. The mountains swept down 
into luxuriant plains and green savannahs ; while 
the appearance of cultivated fields, with the numer- 
ous fires at night, and the columns of smoke which 
rose in various parts by day, all showed it to be 
populous. It rose before them in all the splendour 
of tropical vegetation, one of the most beautiful 
islands in the world, and doomed to be one of the 
most unfortunate." 

The first interview with the friendly cacique 
Guacanagari. as well as his generous atten- 
tions on the wreck of one of their vessels, are 
described with great beauty. But we can 
only find room for the concluding part of it. 

" The extreme kindness of the cacique, the gen- 
tleness of his people, the quantities of gold which 
were daily brought to be exchanged for the veriest 
trifles, and the information continually received of 
sources of wealth in the bosom of this beautiful 
island, all contributed to console the admiral for the 
misfortune he had suffered. 

" The shipwrecked crew also, living on shore, 
and mingling freely with the natives, became fas- 
cinated with their easy and idle mode of life. Ex- 
empted by their simplicity from the painful cares 
and toils which civilized man inflicts upon himself 
by his many artificial wants, the existence of these 
islanders seemed to the Spaniards like a plea?ant 
dream. They disquieted themselves about nothing. 
A few fields, cultivated almost without labour, fur- 
nished the roots and vegetables which formed a 
great part of their diet. Their rivers and coasts 
abounded with fish; their trees were laden with 
fruits of golden or blushing hue, and heightened 
by a tropical sun to delicious flavour and fragrance. 
Softened by the indulgence of nature, a great part 
of their day was passed in indolent repose — in that 
luxury of. sensation inspired by a serene sky and a 
voluptuous climate ; and in the evenings they danced 
in their fragrant groves, to their national songs, or 
the rude sounds of their sylvan drums. 

" Such was the indolent and holiday life of these 
simple people ; which, if it had not the great scope 
of enjoyment, nor the high-seasoned poignancy of 
pleasure, which attend civilization, was certainly 
destitute of most of its artificial miseries." 

It was from this scene of enchantment and 
promise, unclouded as yet by any shadow of 
animosity or distrust that Columbus, without 
one drop of blood on his hands, or one stain of 
cruelty or oppression on his conscience, set 
sail on his return to Europe, with the proud 
tidings of his discovery. In the early part of 
his voyage he fell in with the Carribee Islands, 
and had some striking encounters with the 
brave but ferocious tribes who possessed 
them. The distresses which beset him on his 
home passage are well known ; but we wil- 
lingly pass these over, to treat our readers with 
Mr. Ining's splendid description of his mag- 
nificent reception by the court at Barcelona. 
34 



" It was about the middle of April that Columbus 
arrived at Barcelona, where every preparation had 
been made to give him a solemn and magnificent 
reception. The beauty and serenity of the weather 
in that genial season and favoured climate, contrib- 
uted to give splendour to this memorable cere- 
mony. As he drew near the place, many of the 
more youthful courtiers, and hidalgos of gallant 
bearing, together with a vast concourse of the popu- 
lace, came forth to meet and welcome him. His 
entrance into this noble city has been compared to 
one of those triumphs which the Romans were ac- 
customed to decree to conquerors. First, were 
paraded the Indians, painted according to their sav- 
age fashion, and decorated with their national orna- 
ments of gold. After these were borne various 
kinds of live parrots, togeiher with stuffed birds and 
animals of unknown species, and rare plants, sup- 
posed to be of precious qualities ; while great care 
was taken to make a conspicuous display of Indian 
coronets, bracelets, and other decorations of gold, 
which might give an idea of the wealth of the newly- 
discovered regions. After this, followed Columbus 
on horseback, surrounded by a brilliant cavalcade 
of Spanish chivalry. The streets were almost im- 
passable from the countless multitude ; the win- 
dows and balconies were crowded with the fair ; the 
very roofs were covered with spectators. It seemed 
as if the public eye could not be sated with gazing 
on these trophies of an unknown world ; or on the 
remarkable man by whom it had been discovered. 
There was a sublimity in this event that mingled a 
solemn feeling with the public joy. It was looked 
upon as a vast and signal dispensation of Provi- 
dence, in reward for the piety of the monarchs ; and 
the majestic and venerable appearance of the dis 
coverer, so different from the youth and buoyancy 
that are generally expected from roving enterprise, 
seemed in harmony with the grandeur and dignity 
of his achievement. 

" To receive him with suitable pomp and dis- 
tinction, the sovereigns had ordered their throne to 
be placed in public, under a rich canopy of brocade 
of gold, in a vast and splendid saloon. Here the 
king and queen awaited his arrival, seated in state, 
with the prince Juan beside them, and attended by 
the dignitaries of their court, and the principal no- 
bility of Castile, Valentia, Catalonia, and Arragon, 
all impatient to behold the man who had conferred 
so incalculable a benefit upon the nation. At length 
Columbus entered the hall, surrounded by a bril- 
liant crowd of cavaliers, among whom, says Las 
Casas, he was conspicuous for his stately and com- 
manding person, which, with his countenance, 
rendered venerable by his grey hairs, gave him the 
august appearance of a senator of Rome ; a modest 
smile lighted up his features, showing that he en- 
joyed the state and glory in which he came ; and 
certainly nothing could be more deeply moving to 
a mind inflamed by noble ambition, and conscious 
of having greatly deserved, than these testimonials 
of the admiration and gratitude of a nation, or rather 
of a world. As Columbus approached, the sover- 
eigns rose, as if receiving a person of the highest 
rank. Bending his knees, he requested to kiss 
their hands ; but there was some hesitation on the 
part of their majesties to permit this act of vassal- 
age. Raising him in the most gracious manner, 
they ordered him to seat himself in their presence ; 
a rare honour in this proud and punctilious court." 

In his second voyage he falls in again with 
the Caribs, of whose courage and cannibal 
propensities he had now sufficient assurance. 
Mr. living's remarks upon this energetic but 
untameable race are striking, and we think 
original. 

" The warlike and unyielding character of these 
people, so different from that of the pusillanimous 
nations around them, and the wide scope of their 

enterprises and wanderings, like those of the 



26* 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



Nomade tribes of the Old World, entitle them to dis- 
tinguished attention. They were trained to war 
from their infancy. As soon as they could walk, 
their intrepid mothers put in their hands the bow 
nnd arrow, and prepared them to take an early part 
in the hardy enterprises of their fathers. Their 
distant roamings by sea made them observant and 
intelligent. The natives of the other islands only 
knew how to divide time by day and night, by the 
sun and moon ; whereas these had acquired some 
knowledge of the stars, by which to calculate the 
times and seasons. 

" The traditional accounts of their origin, though 
of course extremely vague, are yet capable of being 
verified to a great degree by geographical facts,, and 
open one of the rich veins of curious inquiry and 
speculation which abound in the New World. They 
are said to have migrated from the remole valleys 
embosomed in the Apalachian mountains. The 
earliest accounts we have of them represent them 
with their weapons in their hands, continually en- 
gaged in wars, winning their way and shifting their 
abode, until, in the course of time, they found them- 
selves at the extremity of Florida. Here, abandon- 
ing the northern continent, they passed over to the 
Lucayos, and from thence gradually, in the pro- 
cess of years, from island to island of that vast and 
verdant chain, which links, as it were, the end of 
Florida to the coast of Paria, on the southern con- 
tinent. The Archipelago, extending from Porto 
Rico to Tobago, was their strong hold, and the 
island of Guadaloupe in a manner their citadel. 
Hence they made their expeditions, and spread the 
terror of their name through all the surrounding 
countries. Swarms of i hem landed upon the south- 
ern continent, and overran some parts of Terra 
Firma. Traces of them have been discovered far 
in the interior of the country through which flows 
the Oroonoko. The Dutch found colonies of them 
on the banks of the Ikouteka, which empties into 
the Surinam, along the Esquibi, the Maroni, and 
other rivers of Guayana, and in the country watered 
by the windings of the Cayenne ; and it would ap- 
pear that they have exiended their wanderings to 
the shores of the southern ocean, where, among the 
aboriginals of Brazil, were some who called them- 
selves Caribs, distinguished from the surrounding 
Indians by their superior hardihood, subtlety, and 
enterprise. 

11 To trace the footsteps of this roving tribe 
throughout its wide migrations from the Apalachian 
mountains of the northern continent, along the 
clusters of islands which stud the Gulf of Mexico 
and the Caribbean sea to the shores of Paria, and 
so across the vast regions of Guayana and Amazonia 
to the remote coast of Brazil, would be one of the 
most curious researches in aboriginal history, and 
might throw much light upon the mysterious ques- 
tion of the population of the New World." 

We pass over the melancholy story of the 
ruined fort, and murdered garrison, to which 
our adventurer returned on his second voyage; 
and of the first dissensions that broke out in 
his now increasing colony ; but must pause 
for a moment to accompany him on his first 
march, at the head of four hundred armed 
followers, into the interior of the country, and 
to the mountain region of expected gold. For 
two days the party proceeded up the banks 
of a stream, which seemed at last to lose itself 
in a narrow and rocky recess. 

" On the following day, the army toiled up this 
steep defile, and arrived where the gorge of the 
mountain opened into the interior. Here a land of 
promise suddenly burst upon their view. It was 
the same glorious prospect which had delighted Oje- 
da and his companions. Below lay a vast and de- 
licious plain, painted and enamelled, as it were, 
with all the rich variety of tropical vegetation. The 



magnificent forests presented that mingled beauty 
and majesty of vegetable forms known only to thes* 
generous climates. Palms of prodigious height, 
and spreading mahogany trees, towered from amid 
a wilderness of variegated foliage. Universal fresh- 
ness and verdure were maintained by numerous 
streams, which meandered gleaming through the 
deep bosom of the woodland ; while various villages 
and hamlets, peeping from among the trees, and 
the smoke of others rising out of the midst of the 
forests, gave signs of a numerous population. The 
luxuriant landscape extended as far as the eye «ould 
reach, until it appeared to melt away and mingle 
with the horizon. The Spaniards gazed with rap- 
ture upon this soft voluptuous country, which 
seemed to realise their ideas of a lerresiial paradise ; 
and Columbus, struck with its vast extent, gave it 
the name of the Vega Real, or Royal Plain. 

" Having descended the rugged pass, the army 
issued upon the plain, in military array, with great 
clangour of warlike instruments. When the In- 
dians beheld this shining band of warriors, glitter- 
ing in steel, emerging from the mountains with 
prancing steeds and flaunting banners, and heard, 
for the first time, their rocks and forests echoing to 
the din of drum and trumpet, they might well have 
taken such a wonderful pageant for a supernatural 
vision. 

" On the next morning they resumed their march 
up a narrow and steep glen, winding among craggy 
rocks, where they were obliged to lead the horses. 
Arrived at the summit, they once more enjoyed a 
prospect of the delicious Vega, which here presented 
a still grander appearance, stretching far and wide 
on either hand, like a vast verdant lake. This 
noble plain, according to Las Casas, is eighty 
leagues in length, and from twenty to thirty in 
breadth, and of incomparable beauty." 

" The natives appeared to them a singularly idle 
and improvident race, indifferent to most of the ob- 
jects of human anxiety and toil. They were im- 
patient of all kinds of labour, scarcely giving 
themselves the trouble to cultivate the yuca root, 
the maize, and the potatoe, which formed the main 
articles of subsistence. For the rest, their streams 
abounded with fish ; they caught the utia or coney, 
the guana, and various birds ; and they had a per- 
petual banquet from the fruits spontaneously pro- 
duced by their groves. Though the air was some- 
times cold among the mountains, yet they preferred 
submitting to a little temporary suffering, rather 
than take the trouble to weave garments from the 
gossampine cotton which abounded in their forests. 
Thus they loitered away existence in vacant inac- 
tivity, under the shade of their trees, or amusing 
themselves occasionally with various games and 
dances." 

" Having accomplished the purposes of his resi- 
dence in the Vega, Columbus, at the end of a few 
days, took leave of its hospitable inhabitants, and 
resumed his march for the harbour, returning with 
his little army through the lofty and rugged gorge 
of the mountains called the Pass of the Hidalgos. 
As we accompany him in imagination over the 
rocky height, from whence the Vega first broke 
upon the eye of the Europeans, we cannot help 
pausing to cast back a look of mingled pity and ad- 
miration over this beautiful but devoted region. 
The dream of natural liberty, of ignorant content, 
and loitering idleness, was as yet unbroken, but the 
fiat had gone forth ; the white man had penetrated 
into the land ; avarice, and pride, and ambition, and 
pining care, and sordid labour, were soon to follow, 
and the indolent paradise of the Indian to disappear 
for ever!" 

There is something to us inexpressibly 
pleasing in these passages ; but we are aware 
that there are readers to whom they may 
Rftfim tedious — and believe, at all events, that 
we have now given a large enough specimen 
of the kind of beauty they present. For per- 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



267 



nons of a different taste we ought to have ex- 
tracted some account of the incredible darings, 
and romantic adventures, of Alonzo de Ojeda; 
or of the ruder prowess and wild magnanimity 
of the cacique Caonabo, who alone of the 
island chieftains dared to offer any resistance 
to the invaders. When made prisoner, and 
carried off from the centre of his dominions, 
by one of the unimaginable feats of Ojeda, 
Mr. Irving has reported that 

" He always maintained a haughty deportment 
towards Columbus, while he never evinced the 
least animosity against Ojeda for the artifice to which 
he had fallen a victim. It rather increased his ad- 
miration of him, as a consummate warrior, looking 
upon it as the exploit of a master-spirit to have 
pounced upon him, and borne him off, in this hawk- 
like manner, from the very midst of his fighting- 
men. There is nothing that an Indian more admires 
in warfare, than a deep, well-executed stratagem. 

" Columbus was accustomed to bear himself 
with an air of dignity and authority as admiral and 
viceroy, and exacted great personal respect. When 
he entered the apartment therefore where Caonabo 
was confined, all present rose, according to custom, 
and paid him reverence. The cacique alone neither 
moved, nor took any notice of him. On the con- 
trary, when Ojeda entered, though small in person 
and without external state, Caonabo immediately 
rose and saluted him with profound respect. On 
being asked the reason of this, Columbus being 
Guamiquina, or great chief over all, and Ojeda but 
one of his subjects, the proud Carib replied, that 
the admiral had never dared to come personally to 
his house and seize him, it was only through the 
valour of Ojeda he was his prisoner ; to Ojeda, 
therefore, he owed reverence, not the admiral." 

The insolent licence of the Spaniards, and 
the laborious searches for gold which they 
imposed on the natives, had at last overcome 
their original feelings of veneration ; and, 
trusting to their vast superiority in numbers, 
they ventured to make war on their heaven- 
descended visitants. The result w T as unre- 
sisted carnage and hopeless submission ! A 
tax of a certain quantity of gold dust was im- 
posed on all the districts that afforded that 
substance, and of certain quantities of cotton 
and of grain on all the others — and various 
fortresses were erected, and garrisons station- 
ed, to assist the collection of the tribute. 

" In this way," says Mr. Irving, " was the yoke 
of servitude fixed upon the island, and its thraldom 
effectually ensured. Deep despair now fell upon 
the natives, when they found a perpetual task in- 
flicted upon them, enforced at stated and frequently 
recurring periods. Weak and indolent by nature, 
unused to labour of any kind, and brought up in the 
untasked idleness of their soft climate and their 
fruitful groves, death itself seemed preferable to a 
life of toil and anxiety. They saw no end to this 
harassing evil, which had so suddenly fallen upon 
them ; no escape from its all-pervading influence ; 
no prospect of return to that roving independence 
and ample leisure, so dear to the wild inhabitants 
of the forests. The pleasant life of the island was 
at an end ; the dream in the shade by day ; the 
slumber during the sultry noon-tide heat by the 
fountain or the stream, or under the spreading 
palm-tree ; and the song, the dance, and the game 
in the mellow evening, when summoned to their 
simple amusements by the rude Indian drum. They 
were now obliged to grope day by day, with bend- 
ing body and anxious eye, along the borders of 
their rivers, sifting the sands for the grains of gold 
which every day grew more scanty ; or to labour 



in their fields beneath the fervour of a tropical rjn, 
to raise food for their task-mastcis, or to produce 
the vegetable tribute imposed upon them. They 
sunk to sleep weary and exhausted at night, with 
the certainty that the next day was but to be a 
repetition of the same toil and suffering. Or if they 
occasionally indulged in their national dances, the 
ballads to which they kept time were of a melan- 
choly and plaintive character. They spoke of the 
times that were past before the white men had in- 
troduced sorrow and slavery, and weary labour 
among them ; and they rehearsed pretended prophe- 
cies, handed down from their ancestors, foretelling 
the invasion of the Spaniards; that strangers should 
come into their island, clothed in apparel, with 
swords capable of cleaving a man asunder at a 
blow, under whose yoke their posterity should be 
subdued. These ballads, or areytos, they sang 
with mournful tunes and doleful voices, bewailing 
the loss of their liberty and their painful servitude." 

There is an interest of another kind in fol- 
lowing the daring route of Columbus along 
the shores of Cuba and Jamaica, and through 
the turbulent seas that boil among the keys in 
the gulf of Paria. The shores still afforded the 
same beauty of aspect — the people the same 
marks of submission and delighted wonder. 

"It is impossible to resist noticing the striking 
contrasts which are sometimes forced upon the 
mind. The coast here described as so populous and 
animated, rejoicing in the visit of the discoverers, is 
the same that extends westward of the city of 
Trinidad, along the gulf of Xagua. All is now 
silent and deserted. Civilization, which has covered 
some parts of Cuba with glittering cities, has ren- 
dered this a solitude. The whole race of Indians 
has long since passed away, pining and perishing 
beneath the domination of the strangers whom they 
welcomed so joyfully to their shores. Before me 
lies the account of a night recentlv passed on this 
very coast, by a celebrated traveller, (Humboldt,) 
but with what different feelings from those of Co- 
lumbus ! ' I passed,' says he, ' a great part of the 
night upon the deck. What deserted coasts ! not a 
light to announce the cabin of a fisherman. From 
Batabano to Trinidad, a distance of fifty leagues, 
there does not exist a village. Yet in the time of 
Columbus this land was inhabited even along the 
margin of the sea. When pits are digued in the 
soil, or the torrents plough open the surface of the 
earth, there are often found hatchets of stone and 
vessels of copper, relics of the ancient inhabitants 
of the island.' " 

We cannot resist the temptation of adding 
the following full-length picture ; which has 
all the splendour of a romance, with the ad- 
ditional charm of being true. 

" One morning, as the ships were standing along 
the coast, with a light wind and easy sail, they be- 
held three canoes issuing from among the islands 
of the bay. They approached in regular order; 
one, which was very large and handsomely carved 
and painted, was in the centre, a little in advance 
of the two others, which appeared to attend and 
guard it. In this were seated the cacique and his 
family, consisting of his wife, two daughters, two 
sons, and five brothers. One of the daughters was 
eighteen years of age, beautiful in form and counte- 
nance ; her sister was somewhat younger ; both 
were naked, according to the custom of these 
islands, but were of modest demeanour. In the 
prow of the canoe stood the standard-bearer of the 
cacique, clad in a kind of mantle of variegated 
feathers, with a tuft of gay plumes on his head, and 
bearing in his hand a fluttering white banner. Two 
Indians, with caps or helmets of feathers of uniform 
shape and colour, and their faces painted in a simi 
lar manner, beat upon tabors ; two others, with 



268 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



hats curiously wrought of green feathers, held 
trumpets of a fine black wood, ingeniously carved ; 
and there were six others, in large hats and white 
feathers, who appeared to be guests to the cacique. 
This gallant little armada having arrived alongside 
of the admiral's ship, the cacique entered on board 
with all his train. He appeared in his full regalia. 
Around his head was a band of small stones of 
various colours, but principally green, symmetri- 
cally arranged, with large white stones at intervals, 
and connected in front by a large jewel of gold. 
Two plates of gold were suspended to his ears by 
rings of small green stones. Toa necklace of white 
beads, of a kind deemed precious by them, was 
suspended a large plate, in the form of a fleur-de- 
lys, of guanin, an inferior species of gold ; and a 
girdle of variegated stones, similar to those round 
his head, completed his regal decorations. His 
wife was adorned in a similar manner, having also 
a very small apron of cotton, and bands of the same 
round her arms and legs. The daughters were 
without ornaments, excepting the eldest and hand- 
somest, who had a girdle of small stones, from 
which was suspended a tablet, the size of an ivy 
leaf, composed of various-coloured stones, em- 
broided on network of cotton. 

" When the cacique entered on board the ship, 
he distributed presents of the productions of his 
island among the officers and men. The admiral 
was at this lime in his cabin, engaged in his morn- 
ing devotions. When he appeared on deck, the 
chieftain hastened to meet him with an animated 
countenance. 4 My friend,' said he, ' I have de- 
termined to leave my country, and to accompany 
thee. I have heard from these Indians who are with 
thee, of the irresistible power of thy sovereigns, 
and of the many nations thou hast subdued in their 
name. Whoever refuses obedience to thee is sure 
to suffer. Thou hast destroyed the canoes and 
dwellings of the Caribs, slaying their warriors, and 
carrying into captivity their wives and children. 
All the islands are in dread of thee ; for who can 
withstand thee now, that thou knowest the secrets 
of the land, and the weakness of the people ? 
Rather, therefore, ihan thou shouldst take away 
my dominions, I will embark with all my house- 
hold in thy ships, and will go to do homage to thy 
king and queen, and to behold their marvellous 
country, of which the Indians relate such wonders.' 
When this speech was explained to Columbus, and 
he beheld the wife, the sons and daughters of the 
cacique, and thought upon the snares to which 
their ignorance and simplicity would be exposed, 
he was touched with compassion, and determined 
not to take them from their native land. He replied 
to the cacique, therefore, that he received him 
under his protection as a vassal of his sovereigns ; 
but having many lands yet to visit before he re- 
turned to his country, he would at some future 
time fulfil his desire. Then, taking leave with 
many expressions of amity, the cacique, with his 
wife and daughters, and all his retinue, re-embarked 
in the canoes, returning reluctantly to their island, 
and the ships continued on their course." 

But we must turn from these bright le- 
gends ; and hurry onward to the end of our 
extracts. It is impossible to give any abstract 
of the rapid succession of plots, tumults, and 
desertions, which blighted the infancy of this 
great settlement ; or of the disgraceful calum- 
nies, jealousies, and intrigues, which gradu- 
ally undermined the credit of Columbus with 
his sovereign, and ended at last in the mission 
of Bobadilla, with power to supersede him in 
command — and in the incredible catastrophe 
of his being sent home in chains by this arro- 
gant and precipitate adventurer ! When he 
arrived on board the caravel which was to 
carry him to Spain, the master treated him 



with the most profound respect, and offered 
instantly to release him from his fetters. 

" But to this he would not consent. ' No,' said 
he proudly, 'their majesties commanded me by 
letter to submit to whatever Bodadilla should order 
in their name; by their authority he has put upon 
me these chains— 1 will wear them until they shall 
order them to be taken off, and I will preserve them 
afterwards as relics and memorials of the reward 
of my services.' " 

" ' He did so,' adds his son Fernando; ' I saw 
them always hanging in his cabinet, and he re- 
quested that when he died they might be buried 
with him !' " 

If there is something in this memorable 
brutality which stirs the blood with intense 
indignation, there is something soothing and 
still more touching in the instant retribution. 

" The arrival," says Mr. Irving, " of Columbus 
at Cadiz, a prisoner and in chains, produced almost 
as great a sensation as his triumphant return from 
his first voyage. It was one of those striking and 
obvious facts, which speak to the feelings of the 
multitude, and preclude the necessity of reflection. 
No one stopped to inquire into the case. It was 
sufficient to be told that Columbus was brought 
home in irons from the world he had discovered ! 
A general burst of indignation arose in Cadiz, and 
in the powerful and opulent Seville, which was im- 
mediately echoed throughout all Spain." 

"Ferdinand joined with his generous queen in 
her reprobation of the treatment of the admiral, and 
both sovereigns hastened to give evidence to the 
world that his imprisonment had been without their 
authority, and contrary to their wishes. Without 
waiting to receive any documents that might, arrive 
from Bobadilla, they sent orders to Cadiz that the 
prisoners should be instantly set at liherty, and 
treated with all distinction. They wrote a letter to 
Columbus couched in terms of gratitude and affec- 
tion, expressing their grief at all he had suffered, 
and inviting him to court. They ordered, at the 
same time, that two thousand ducats should be ad- 
vanced to defray his expenses. 

" The loyal heart of Columbus was again cheered 
by this declaration of his sovereigns. He felt con- 
scious of his integrity, and anticipated an immediate 
restitution of all his rights and dignities. He ap- 
peared at court in Granada on the 17th of Decem- 
ber, not as a man ruined and disgraced, but richly 
dressed, and attended by an honourable retinue. 
He was received by their majesties with unqualified 
favour and distinction. When the queen beheld 
this venerable man approach, and thought on all he 
had deserved and all that he had suffered, she was 
moved to tears. Columbus had borne up firmly 
against the stern conflicts of the world, — he had 
endured with lofty scorn the injuries and insults of 
ignoble men, but he possessed strong and quick 
sensibility. When he found himself thus kindly 
received by his sovereigns, and beheld tears in the 
benign eyes of Isabella, his long-suppressed feel- 
ings burst forth ; he threw himself upon his knees, 
and for some time could not utter a word for the 
violence of his tears and sobbings!" 

In the year 1502, and in the sixty-sixth 
year of his age, the indefatigable discoverer 
set out on his fourth and last voyage. In this 
he reached the coast of Honduras ; and fell 
in with a race somewhat more advanced in 
civilization than any he had yet encountered 
in these romote regions. They had mantles 
of woven cotton and some small utensils of 
native copper. He then ran down the shore 
of Veragua, and came through tremendous 
tempests to Portobello, in search, it appears, 
of a strait or inlet ; by which he had per- 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



26* 



suaded himself he should find a ready way 
to the shores of the Ganges : The extreme 
severity of the season, and the miserable con- 
dition of his ships, compelled him, however, 
lo abandon this great enterprise ; the account 
of which Mr. living winds up with the fol- 
lowing quaint and not very felicitous observa- 
tion : " If he was disappointed in. his expec- 
tation of finding a strait through the Isthmus 
of Darien, it was because nature herself had 
been disappointed— for she appears to have 
attempted to make one, but to have attempted 
it in vain." 

After this he returned to the coast of Vera- 
gua, where he landed, and formed a tempo- 
rary settlement, with a view of searching for 
certain gold mines which he had been told 
were in the neighbourhood. This, however, 
was but the source of new disasters. The 
natives, who were of a fierce and warlike 
character, attacked and betrayed him — and 
his vessels were prevented from getting to 
sea, by the formation of a formidable bar at 
the mouth of the river. 

At last, by prodigious exertions, and the 
heroic spirit of some of his officers, he was 
enabled to get away. But his altered fortune 
still pursued him. He was harassed by per- 
petual storms, and after having beat up nearly 
to Hispaniola, was assailed by 

" A sudden tempest, of such violence, that, ac- 
cording to the strong expression of Columbus, it 
seemed as if the world would dissolve. They lost 
three of their anchors almost immediately, and the 
caiavel Bermuda was driven with such violence 
upon the ship of the admiral, that the bow of the 
one, and the stern of the other, were greatly shat- 
tered. The sea running high, and the wind being 
boisterous, the vessels chafed and injured each other 
dreadfully, and it was with great difficulty that they 
were separated. One anchor only remained to the 
admiral's ship, and this saved him from being driven 
upon the rocks ; but at daylight the cable was found 
nearly worn asunder. Had the darkness continued 
an hour longer, he could scarcely have escaped 
shipwreck. 

" At the end of six days, the weather having 
moderated, he resumed his course, standing east- 
ward for Hispaniola : ' his people,' as he says, ' dis- 
mayed and down-hearted, almost all his anchors 
lost, and his vessels bored as full of holes as a 
honeycomb." 

His proud career seemed now to be hasten- 
ing to a miserable end. Incapable of strag- 
gling longer with the elements, he was obliged 
to run before the wind to Jamaica, where he 
was not even in a condition to attempt to 
make any harbour. 

" His ships, reduced to mere wrecks, could no 
longer keep the sea, and were ready to sink even 
in port. He ordered them, therefore, to be run 
aground, within a bow-shot of the shore, and fast- 
ened together, side by side. They soon rilled with 
water to the decks. Thatched cabins were then 
erected at the prow and stern for the accommoda- 
tion of the crews, and the wreck was placed in the 
best possible state of defence. Thus castled in the 
sea, Columbus trusted to be able to repel any sud- 
den attack of the natives, and at the same time to 
keep his men from roving about the neighbourhood 
and indulging in their usual excesses. No one was 
allowed to go on shore without especial licence, and 
the utmost precaution was taken to prevent any 
oftence from being given to the Indians. Any ex- 



asperation of them might be fatal to the Spaniards 
in their present forlorn situation. A firebrand 
thrown into their wooden fortress might wrap it in 
flames, and leave them defenceless amidst hostile 
thousands." 

" The envy," says Mr. Irving, " which had once 
sickened at the glory and prosptrity of Columbus, 
could scarcely have devised for him a more forlorn 
heritage in the world he had discovered ; the tenant 
of a wreck on a savage coast, in an untraversed 
ocean, at the mercy of barbarous hordes, who, in a 
moment, from precarious friends, might be trans 
formed into ferocious enemies; afflicted, too, by 
excruciating maladies which confined him to his 
bed, and by the pains and infirmities which hard- 
ship and anxiety had heaped upon his advancing 
age. But Columbus had not yet exhausted his cup 
of bitterness. He had yet to experience an evil 
worse than storm, or shipwreck, or bodily anguish, 
or the violence of savage hordes, in the perfidy of 
those in whom he confided." 

The account of his sufferings during the 
twelve long months he was allowed to remain 
in this miserable condition, is full of the deep- 
est interest, and the strangest variety of ad- 
venture. But we can now only refer to it. — 
Two of his brave and devoted adherents un- 
dertook to cross to Hispaniola in a slender 
Indian canoe, and after incredible miseries, at 
length accomplished this desperate under- 
taking — but from the cold-hearted indecision, 
or paltry jealousy, of the new Governor 
Ovando, it was not till the late period we have 
mentioned, that a vessel was at length des- 
patched to the relief of the illustrious sufferer. 

But he was not the only, or even the most 
memorable sufferer. From the time he was 
superseded in command, the misery and op- 
pression of the natives of Hispaniola had in- 
creased beyond all proportion or belief. By 
the miserable policy of the new governor, 
their services were allotted to the Spanish 
settlers, who compelled them to work by the 
cruel infliction of the scourge ; and, with- 
holding from them the nourishment necessary 
for health, exacted a degree of labour which 
could not have been sustained by the most 
vigorous men. 

" If they fled from this incessant toil and barba- 
rous coercion, and took refuge in the mountains, 
they were hunted out like wild beasts, scourged in 
the most inhuman manner, and laden with chain9 
to prevent a second escape. Many perished long 
before their term of labour had expired. Those 
who survived their term of six or eight months, 
were permitted to return to their homes, until the 
next term commenced. But their homes were 
often forty, sixty, and eighty leagues distant. They 
had nothing to sustain them through the journey 
but a few roots or agi peppers, or a little cassava- 
bread. Worn down by long toil and cruel hard- 
ships, which their feeble constitutions were incapa- 
ble of sustaining, many had not strength to perform 
the journey, but sunk down and died by the way ; 
some by the side of a brook, others under the shade 
of a tree, where they had crawled for shelter from 
the sun. ' I have found many dead in the road,' 
says Las Casas, ' others gasping under the trees, 
and others in the pangs of death, faintly crying, 
Hunger ; hunger !' Those who reached their 
homes most commonly found them desolate. Du- 
ring the eight months that they had been absent 
their wives and children had either perished or 
wandered away ; the fields on which they depended 
for food were overrun with weeds, and nothing was 
left them but to lie down, exhausted and despairing, 
and die at the threshold of their habitations. 



£70 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



It is impossible to pursue any farther the picture 
drawn by the venerable Las Casas, not of what he 
had heard, but of what he had seen — nature and 
humanity revolt at the details. Suffice it to say 
that, so intolerable were the toils and sufferings in- 
flicted upon this wenk and unoffending race, that 
they sunk under them, dissolving as it were from 
♦he face of the earth. Many killed themselves in 
despair, and even mothers overcame the powerful 
instinct of nature, and destroyed the infants at their 
breasts, to spare them a life of wretchedness. 
Twelve years had not elapsed since the discovery 
of the island, and several hundred thousands of its 
native inhabitants had perished, miserable victims 
to the grasping avarice of the white men." 

These pictures are sufficiently shocking; 
but they do not exhaust the horrors that cover 
the brief history of this ill-fated people. The 
province or district of Xaragua, -which was 
ruled over by a princess, called Anacaona, 
celebrated in all the contemporary accounts 
for the grace and dignity of her manners, and 
her confiding attachment to the strangers, had 
hitherto enjoyed a happy exemption from the 
troubles which distracted the other parts of 
the island, and when visited about ten years 
before by the brother of Columbus, had im- 
pressed all the Spaniards with the idea of an 
earthly paradise : both from the fertility and 
sweetness of the country, the gentleness of 
its people, and the beauty and grace of the 
women. Upon some rumours that the neigh- 
bouring caciques were assembling for hostile 
purposes, Ovando now marched into this de- 
voted region with a well-appointed force of 
near four hundred men. He was hospitably 
and joyfully received by the princess : and 
affected to encourage and join in the festivity 
which his presence had excited. He was even 
himself engaged in a sportful game with his 
officers, when the signal for massacre was 
given — and the place was instantly covered 
with blood ! Eighty of the caciques were 
burnt over slow fires ! and thousands of the 
unarmed and unresisting people butchered, 
without regard to sex or age. "Humanity," 
Mr. Irving very justly observes, " turns with 
horror from such atrocities, and would fain 
discredit them : But they are circumstantially 
and still more minutely recorded by the 
venerable Las Casas — who was resident in the 
island at the time, and conversant with the 
principal actors in the tragedy." 

Still worse enormities signalised the final 
subjugation of the province of Higuey — the 
last scene of any attempt to resist the tyran- 
nical power of the invaders. It would be 
idle to detail here the progress of that savage 
and most unequal warfare : but it is right that 
the butcheries perpetrated by the victors 
should not be forgotten — that men may see 
to what incredible excesses civilised beings 
may be tempted by the possession of absolute 
and unquestioned power — and may learn, 
from indisputable memorials, how far the 
abuse of delegated and provincial authority 
may be actually carried. If it be true, as 
Homer has alleged, that the day which makes 
a man a slave, takes away half his worth — it 
seems to be still more infallibly .and fatally 
irue, that the master generally suffers a yet 
larger privation. 



" Sometimes," says Mr. Irving, tney would 
hunt down a straggling Indian, and compel him, by 
torments, to betray the hiding-place of his com- 
panions, binding him and driving him before them 
as a guide. Wherever they discovered one of 
these places of refuge, filled wiih the aged and ihe 
infirm, with feeble women and helpless children, 
they massacred them without mercy ! They 
wished to inspire terror throughout the land, and to 
frighten ihe whole tribe into submission. They cut 
off the hands of those whom they took roving at 
large, and sent them, as they said, to deliver them 
as letters to their friends, demanding their surrender. 
Numberless were those, says Las Casas, whose 
hands were amputated in this manner, and many 
of them sunk down and died by the way, through 
anguish and loss of blood. 

*' The conquerors delighted in exercising strange 
and ingenious cruelties. They mingled "horrible 
levity with their bloodthirstiness.. They erected 
gibbets long and low, so that the feet of the suf- 
ferers might reach the ground, and their death be 
lingering. They hanged thirteen together, in reve- 
rence, says the indignant Las Casas, of our blessed 
Saviour and the twelve apostles ! While their 
victims were suspended, and still living, they hack- 
ed them with their swords, to prove the strength 
of their arm and the edge of their weapons. They 
wrapped them in dry straw, and setting fire to it, 
terminated their existence by the fiercest agony. 

11 These are horrible details; yet a veil is drawn 
over others still more detestable. They are related 
by the venerable Las Casas, who was an eye-witness 
of the scenes he describes. He was young at the 
time, but records them in his advanced years. • All 
these things,' says he, 'and others revolting' to 
human nature, my own eyes beheld ! and now I 
almost fear to repeat them, scarce believing myself, 
or whether 1 have not dreamt them.' 

" The system of Columbus may have borne hard 
upon the Indians, born and brought up in unfasked 
freedom ; but it was never cruel nor sanguinary. 
He inflicted no wanton massacres nor vindictive 
punishments ; his desire was to cherish and civilise 
the Indians, and to render them useful subjects, not 
to oppress, and persecute, and destroy them. When 
he beheld the desolation that had swept them from 
the land during his suspension from authority, he 
could not restrain the strong expression of his feel- 
ings. In a letter written to the king after his return 
to Spain, he thus expresses himself on the subject : 
' The Indians of Hispaniola were and are the riches 
of the island ; fork is ihey who cultivate and make 
the bread and the provisions for the Christians, who 
dig the gold from the mines, and perform all the 
offices and labours both of men and beasts. I am 
informed that, since I left this island, ((hat is, in less 
than three years,) six farts out of seven of ihe natives 
are dead, all through ill treatment and inhumanity ! 
some by the sword, others by blows and cruel 
usage, and others through hunger. The greater 
part have perished in the mountains and glens, 
whither they had fled, from not being able to sup- 
port the labour imposed upon them.' " 

The story now draws to a close. Columbus 
returned to Spain, broken down with age 
and affliction — and after two years spent in 
unavailing solicitations at the court of the 
cold-blooded and ungrateful Ferdinand (his 
generous patroness, Isabella, having died im- 
mediately on his return), terminated with 
characteristic magnanimity a life of singular 
energy, splendour, and endurance. Indepen 
dent of his actual achievements, he was un 
doubtedly a great and remarkable man ; and 
Mr Irving has summed up his general char- 
acter in a very eloquent and judicious way. 

"His ambition," he observes, "was lofty and 
noble. He was full of high thoughts, and anxiou9 



IRVING'S COLUMBUS. 



271 



to distinguish himself by great achievements. It 
has been said that a mercenary feeling mingled 
with his views, and that his stipulations with the 
Spanish Court were selfish and avaricious. The 
charge is inconsiderate and unjust. He aimed at 
dignity and wealth in the same lofty spirit in which 
he sought renown; and the gains that promised to 
arise from his discoveries, he intended to appropriate 
in the same princely and pious spirit in which they 
were demanded. He contemplated works and 
achievements of benevolence and religion : vast con- 
tributions for the relief of the poor of his native 
city ; the foundation of churches, where masses 
should be said for the souls of the departed ; and 
armies for the recovery of the holy sepulchre in 
Palestine. 

" In his testament, he enjoined on his son Diego, 
and whoever after him should inherit his estates, 
whatever dignities and titles might afterwards be 
granted by the king, always to sign himself simply 
1 the Admiral,' by way of perpetuating in the family 
its real source of greatness." 

" He was devoutly pious ; religion mingled with 
the whole course of his thoughts and actions, and 
shines forth in all his most private and unstudied 
writings. Whenever he made any great discovery, 
he celebrated it by solemn thanks to God. The 
voice of prayer and melody of praise rose from his 
ships when he first beheld the New World, and 
his first action on landing was to prostrate himself 
upon the earth and return thanksgivings. Every 
evening, the Salve Regina, and other vesper hymns, 
were chanted by his crew, and masses were per- 
formed in the beautiful groves that bordered the 
wild shores of this heathen land. The religion 
thus deeply seated in the soul, diffused a sober dig- 
nity and benign composure over his whole demean- 
our. His language was pure and guarded, free 
from all imprecations, oaths, and other irreverent 
expressions. But his piety was darkened by the 
bigotry of the age. He evidently concurred in the 
opinion that all the nations who did not acknowledge 
the Christian faith were destitute of natural rights; 
that the sternest measures might be used for their 
conversion, and the severest punishments inflicted 
upon their obstinacy in unbelief. In this spirit 
of bigotry he considered himself justified in making 
captives of the Indians, and transporting them to 
Spain to have them taught the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, and in selling them for slaves if they 
pretended to resist his invasions. He was counte- 
nanced in these views, no doubt, by the general 
opinion of the age. But. it i9 not the inteniion of 
the author to justify Columbus on a point where it 
is inexcusable to err. Let it remain a blot on his 
iilustrious name, — and let others derive a lesson 
from it." 

He was a man, too, undoubtedly, as all 
truly great men have been, of an imaginative 
and sensitive temperament — something, as 
Mr. Irving has well remarked, even of a vis- 
ionary — but a visionary of a high and lofty 
order, controlling his ardent imagination by a 
powerful judgment and great practical sa- 

facity, and deriving not only a noble delight 
ut signal accessions of knowledge from this 
vigour and activity of his fancy. 

" Yet, with all this fervour of imagination," as 
Mr. Irving has strikingly observed, "its fondest 
dreams fell short of the reality. He died in igno- 
rance of the real grandeur of his discovery. Until 
his last breath he entertained the idea that he had 
merely opened a new way to the old resorts of opu- 
lent commerce, and had discovered some of the 
wild regions of the east. He supposed Hispaniola 
to be the ancient Ophir which had been visited by 
the ships of Solomon, and that Cuba and Terra 
Firma were but remote parts of Asia. What visions 



of glory would have broke upon his mind could he 
have known that he had indeed discovered a new 
continent, equal to the whole of the old world in mag- 
nitude, and separated by two vast oceans from all the 
earth hitherto known by civilised man ! And how 
would his magnanimous spirit have been consoled, 
amidst the afflictions of age and the cares of penury, 
the neglect of a fickle public, and the injustice of an 
ungrateful king, could he have anticipated the 
splendid empires which were to spread over the 
beautiful world he had discovered ; and the nations, 
and tongues, and languages which were to fill its 
lands with his renown, and to revere and bless his 
name to the latest poste-ity !" 

The appendix to Mr. living's work, which 
occupies the greater part of the last volume, 
contains most of the original matter which 
his learning and research have enabled him 
to bring to bear on the principal subject, and 
constitutes indeed a miscellany of a singularly 
curious and interesting description. It con- 
sists, besides very copious and elaborate ac- 
counts of the family and descendants of Co- 
lumbus, principally of extracts and critiques 
of the discoveries of earlier or contemporary 
navigators — the voyages of the Carthaginians 
and the Scandinavians, — of Behem. the Pin- 
zons, Amerigo Vespucci, and others — with 
some very curious remarks on the travels of 
Marco Polo, and Mandeville — a dissertation 
on the ships used by Columbus and his con- 
temporaries — on the Atalantis of Plato — the 
imaginary island of St. Brandan, and of the 
Seven Cities — together with remarks on the 
writings of Peter Martyr, Oviedo, Herrera, 
Las Casas, and the other contemporary chroni- 
clers of those great discoveries. The whole 
drawn up, we think, with singular judgment, 
diligence, and candour; and presenting the 
reader, in the most manageable form, with 
almost all the collateral information which 
could be brought to elucidate the transactions 
to which they relate. 

Such is the general character of Mr. Irving's 
book — and such are parts of its contents. We 
do not pretend to give any view whatever of 
the substance of four large historical volumes ; 
and fear that the specimens we have ventured 
to exhibit of the author's way of writing are 
not very well calculated to do justice either 
to the occasional force, or the constant variety, 
of his style. But for judicious readers they 
will probably suffice — and, we trust, will be 
found not only to warrant the praise we have 
felt ourselves called on to bestow, but to in- 
duce many to gratify themselves by the peru- 
sal of the work at large. 

Mr. Irving, we believe, was not in England 
when his work was printed : and we must say 
he has been very insufficiently represented 
by the corrector of the press. We do not 
recollect ever to have seen so handsome a 
book with so many gross typographical errors., 
In many places they obscure the sense — and 
are very frequently painful and offensive. 
It will be absolutely necessary that this be 
looked to in a new impression ; and the au- 
thor would do well to avail himself of the 
same opportunity, to correct some verbal in- 
accuracies, and to polish and improve some 
passages of slovenly writing. 



272 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



(June, 1827.) 

Muraoirs of Zehir-ed-din Muhaivimed Baber, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, in 
the Jaghatai Turki, and translated, partly by the late John Leyden, Esq. M.D., partly by 
William Erskine, Esq. With Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction : to- 
gether with a Map of the Countries between the Oxus and Jaxartes, and a Memoir regarding 
tts Construction, by Charles Waddington, Esq., of the East India Company's Engineers. 
London: 1826. 



This is a very curious, and admirably edited 
work. But the strongest impression which 
the perusal of it has left on our minds is the 
boundlessness of authentic history; and, if 
we might venture to say it, the uselessness 
of all history which does not relate to our own 
fraternity of nations, or even bear, in some 
way or other, on our own present or future 
condition. 

We have here a distinct and faithful account 
of some hundreds of battles, sieges, and great 
military expeditions, and a character of a pro- 
digious number of eminent individuals, — men 
famous' in their day, over wide regions, for 
genius or fortune — poets, conquerors, martyrs 
— founders of cities and dynasties — authors 
of immortal works — ravagers of vast districts 
abounding in wealth and population. Of all 
these great personages and events, nobody in 
Europe, if we except a score or two of studi- 
ous Orientalists, has ever heard before ; and 
it would not, we imagine, be very easy to 
show that we are any better for hearing of 
them now. A few curious traits, that hap- 
pen to be strikingly in contrast with our own 
manners and habits, may remain on the 
memory of a reflecting reader — with a gene- 
ral confused recollection of the dark and gor- 
geous phantasmagoria. But no one, we may 
fairly say, will think it worth while to digest 
or develope the details of the history ; or be 
at the pains to become acquainted with the 
leading individuals, and fix in his memory the 
series and connection of events. Yet the ef- 
fusion of human blood was as copious — the 
display of talent and courage as imposing — 
the perversion of high moral qualities, and the 
waste of the means of enjoyment as unspar- 
ing, as in other long-past battles and intrigues 
and revolutions, over the details of which we 
still pore with the most unwearied atten- 
tion : and to verify the dates or minute cir- 
cumstances of which, is still regarded as a 
great exploit in historical research, and among 
the noblest employments of human learning 
and sagacity. 

It is not perhaps very easy to account for 
the eagerness with which we still follow the 
fortunes of Miltiades, Alexander, or Caesar — 
of the Bruce and the Black Prince, and the 
interest which yet belongs to the fields of 
Marathon and Pharsalia, of Crecy and Ban- 
nockburn, compared with the indifference, or 
rather reluctance, with which we listen to the 
details of Asiatic warfare — the conquests that 
transferred to the Moguls the vast sovereign- 
ties of India, or raised a dynasty of Manchew 



Tartars to the Celestial Empire of China. It 
will not do to say, that we want something 
nobler in character, and more exalted in in- 
tellect, than is to be met with among those 
murderous Orientals — that there is nothing to 
interest in the contentions of mere force and 
violence ; and that it requires no very fine- 
drawn reasoning to explain why we should 
turn with disgust from the story, if it had 
been preserved, of the savage affrays which 
have drenched the sands of Africa or the rocks 
of New Zealand — through long generations of 
murder — with the blood of their brutish popu- 
lation. This may be true enough of Mada- 
gascar or Dahomy; but it does not apply to 
the case before us. The nations of Asia gene- 
rally — at least those composing its great states 
— were undoubtedly more polished than those 
of Europe, during all the period that preceded 
their recent connection. Their warriors were 
as brave in the field, their statesmen more 
subtle and politic in the cabinet : In the arts 
of luxury, and all the elegancies of civil life, 
they were immeasurably superior; in inge- 
nuity of speculation — in literature — in social 
politeness — the comparison is still in their 
favour. 

It has often occurred to us, indeed, to con- 
sider what the effect would have been on the 
fate and fortunes of the world, if, in the four- 
teenth, or fifteenth century, when the germs 
of their present civilisation were first disclosed, 
the nations of Europe had been introduced to 
an intimate and friendly acquaintance with 
the great polished communities of the East, 
and had been thus led to take them for their 
masters in intellectual cultivation, and their 
models in all the higher pursuits of genius, 
polity, and art. The difference in our social 
and moral condition, it would not perhaps be 
easy to estimate : But one result, we conceive, 
would unquestionably have been, to make U3 
take the same deep interest in their ancient 
story, which we now feel, for similar reasons, 
in that of the sterner barbarians of early Rome, 
or the more imaginative clans and colonies 
of immortal Greece. The experiment, how- 
ever, though there seemed oftener than once 
to be some openings for it, was not made. 
Our crusading ancestors were too rude them- 
selves to estimate or to feel the value of the 
oriental refinement which presented itself to 
their passing gaze, and too entirely occupied 
with war and bigotry, to reflect on its causes 
or effects; and the first naval adventurers who 
opened up India to our commerce, were both 
too few and too far off to communicate to 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



273 



their brethren at home any taste for the splen- 
dours which might have excited their own 
admiration By the time that our intercourse 
w r ith those regions was enlarged, our own 
career of improvement had been prosperously 
begun j and our superiority in the art, or at 
least the discipline of war, having given us a 
signal advantage in the conflicts to which 
that extending intercourse immediately led, 
naturally increased the aversion and disdain 
with which almost all races of men are apt to 
regard strangers to their blood and dissenters 
from their creed. Since that time the genius 
of Europe has been steadily progressive, whilst 
that of Asia has been at least stationary, and 
most probably retrograde ; and the descendants 
of the feudal and predatory warriors of the 
West have at last attained a decided pre- 
dominancy over those of their elder brothers 
in the East ; to whom, at that period, they 
were unquestionably inferior in elegance and 
ingenuity, and whose hostilities were then 
conducted on the same system with our own. 
They, in short, have remained nearly where 
they were : while we, beginning v. r ith the im- 
provement of our governments and military 
discipline, have gradually outstripped them 
in all the lesser and more ornamental attain- 
ments in which they originally excelled. 

This extraordinary fact of the stationary or 
degenerate condition of the two oldest and 
greatest families of mankind — those of Asia 
and Africa, has always appeared to us a sad 
obstacle in the way of those who believe in 
the general progress of the race, and its con- 
stant advancement towards a state of perfec- 
tion. Two or three thousand years ago, those 
vast communities were certainly in a happier 
and more prosperous state than they are now; 
and in many of them we know that their most 
powerful and flourishing societies have been 
corrupted and dissolved, not by any accidental 
or extrinsic disaster, like foreign conquest, 
pestilence, or elemental devastation, but by 
what appeared to be the natural consequences 
of that very greatness and refinement which 
had marked and rewarded their earlier exer- 
tions. In Europe, hitherto, the case has cer- 
tainly been different : For though darkness 
did fall upon its nations also, after the lights 
of Roman civilisation were extinguished, it is 
to be remembered that they did not burn out 
of themselves, but were trampled down by 
hosts of invading barbarians, and that they 
blazed out anew, with increased splendour 
and power, when the dulness of that superin- 
cumbent mass was at length vivified by their 
contact, and animated by the fermentation 
of that leaven which had all along been se- 
cretly working in its recesses. In Europe 
certainly there has been a progress: And th» 
more polished of its present inhabitants have 
not only regained the placp which was held 
of old by their iUn&triaas masters of Greece 
and Rome, but have plainly outgone them in 
the most substantial and exalted of their im- 
provements. Far more humane and refined 
than the Romans — far less giddy and turbulent 
and treacherous than the Greeks, they have 
given a security to life and property that was 
35 



unknown to the earlier ages of the world — 
exalted the arts of peace to a dignity with 
which they were never before invested : and, 
by the abolition of domestic servitude, for the 
first time extended to the bulk of the popula- 
tion those higher capacities and enjoyments 
which were formerly engrossed by a few. By 
the invention of printing, they have made ail 
knowledge, not only accessible, but imperish- 
able : and by their improvements in the art 
of war, have effectually secured themselves 
against the overwhelming calamity of bar- 
barous invasion — the risk of subjugation by 
mere numerical or animal force : Whilst the 
alternations of conquest and defeat amongst 
civilised communities, who alone can now be 
formidable to each other, though productive 
of great local and temporary evils, may be 
regarded on the whole as one of the means 
of promoting and equalising the general civili- 
sation. Rome polished and enlightened all 
the barbarous nations she subdued — and was 
herself polished and enlightened by her con- 
quest of elegant Greece. If the European 
parts of Russia had been subjected to the do- 
minion of France, there can be no doubt that 
the loss of national independence would have 
been compensated by rapid advances both in 
liberality and refinement ; and if, by a still 
more disastrous, though less improbable con- 
tingency, the Moscovite hordes were ever to 
overrun the fair countries to the south-west 
of them, it is equally certain that the invaders 
would speedily be softened and informed by 
the union; and be infected more certainly 
than by any other sort of contact, with the 
arts and the knowledge of the vanquished. 

All these great advantages, however — this 
apparently irrepressible impulse to improve- 
ment — this security against backsliding and 
decay, seems peculiar to Europe,* and not 
capable of being communicated, even by her, 
to the most docile races of the other quarters 
of the world : and it is really extremely diffi- 
cult to explain, upon what are called philo- 
sophical principles, the causes of this superi- 
ority. We should be very glad to ascribe it 
to our greater political Freedom : — and no 
doubt, as a secondary cause, this is among the 
most powerful : as it is to the maintenance of 
that freedom that we are indebted for the self- 
estimation, the feeling of honour, the general 
equity of the laws, and the substantial se- 
curity both from sudden revolution and from 
capricious oppression, which distinguish our 
portion of the globe. But we cannot bring 
ourselves to regard this freedom as a mere- 
accident in our history, that is not itself to be 
accounted far, as well as its consequences: 
And when it is said that our greater stability 



* When we speak of Europe, it will be under' 
stood that we speak, not of the land, but of the 
people — and include, therefore, all the settlements 
and colonies of that favoured race, in wnaterer 
quarter of the globe they may now be established. 
Some situations seem more, and some less, favour- 
able to the preservation of the original character. 
The Spaniards certainly degenerated in Peru — and 
the Dutch perhaps in Batavia; — but the EtigUsfc 
remain, we trust, unimpaired in America. 



274 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



and prosperity is owing to our greater freedom, 
we are immediately tempted to ask, by what 
that freedom has itself been produced ? In 
the same way we might ascribe the superior 
mildness and humanity of our manners, the 
abated ferocity of our wars, and generally our 
respect for human life, to the influence of a 
Religion which teaches that all men are equal 
in the sight of God, and inculcates peace and 
charity as the first of our duties. But, besides 
the startling contrast between the profligacy, 
treachery, and cruelty of the Eastern Empire 
after its conversion to the true faith, and the 
simple and heroic virtues of the heathen re- 
public, it would still occur to inquire, how it 
has happened that the nations of European 
descent have alone embraced the sublime 
truths, and adopted into their practice the 
mild precepts, of Christianity, while the peo- 
ple of the East have uniformly rejected and 
disclaimed them, as alien to their character 
and habits — in spite of all the efforts of the 
apostles, fathers, and martyrs, in the primitive 
and most effective periods of their preaching'? 
How, in short, it has happened that the sensual 
and sanguinary creed of Mahomet has super- 
seded the pure and pacific doctrines of Chris- 
tianity in most of those very regions where it 
was first revealed to mankind, and first es- 
tablished by the greatest of existing govern- 
ments % The Christian revelation is no doubt 
-the most precious of all Heaven's gifts to the 
benighted world. But it is plain, that there 
was a greater aptitude to -embrace and to 
profit by it in the European than in the Asiatic 
race. A free government, in like manner, is 
unquestionably the most valuable of all human 
inventions — the great safeguard of all other 
temporal blessings, and the mainspring of all 
intellectual and moral improvement : — But 
such a government is not the result of a lucky 
thought or happy casualty ; and could only be 
established among men who had previously 
learned both to relish the benefits it secures, 
and to understand the connection between the 
means it employs and the ends at which it aims. 
We come then, though a little reluctantly, 
to the conclusion, that there is a natural and in- 
herent difference in the character and temper- 
ament of the European and the Asiatic races 
— consisting, perhaps, chiefly in a superior 
capacity of patient and persevering thought in 
the former — and displaying itself, for the most 
part, in a more sober and robust understanding, 
and a more reasonable, principled, and inflexi- 
ble morality. It is this which has led us, at 
once to temper our political institutions with 
prospective checks and suspicious provisions 
against abuses, and, in our different orders 
and degrees, to submit without impatience to 
those checks and restrictions ; — to extend our 
reasonings by repeated observation and ex- 
periment, to larger and larger conclusions — 
and thus gradually to discover the paramount 
importance of discipline and unity of purpose 
in war, and of absolute security to person and 
property in all peaceful pursuits — the folly of 
all passionate and vindictive assertion of sup- 
posed rights and pretensions, and the certain 
recoil of long-continued injustice on the heads 



of its authors— the substantial advantages of 
honesty and fair dealing over the most inge- 
nious systems of trickery and fraud ;— and 
even — though this is the last and hardest, as 
well as the most precious, of all the lessons 
of reason and experience — that the toleration 
even of religious errors is not only prudent 
and merciful in itself, and most becoming a 
fallible and erring being, but is the surest 
and speediest way to compose religious differ- 
ences, and to extinguish that most formidable 
bigotry, and those most pernicious errors, 
which are fed and nourished by persecution. 
It is the want of this knowledge, or rather of 
the capacity for attaining it, that constitutes 
the palpable inferiority of the Eastern races ; 
and, in spite of their fancy, ingenuity, and 
restless activity, condemns them, it would 
appear irretrievably, to vices and sufferings, 
from which nations in a far ruder condition 
are comparatively free. But we are wander- 
ing too far from the magnificent Baber and 
his commentators, — and must now leave these 
vague and general speculations for the facts 
and details that lie before us. 

Zehir-ed-din Muhammed, surnamed Baber, 
or the Tiger, was one of the descendants of 
Zengiskhan and of Tamerlane ; and though 
inheriting only the small kingdom of Ferg- 
hana in Bucharia, ultimately extended his 
dominions by conquest to Delhi and the 
greater part of Hindostan ; and transmitted to 
his famous descendants, Akber and Aureng- 
zebe, the magnificent empire of the Moguls. 
He was born in 1482, and died in 1530. 
Though passing the greater part of his time 
in desperate military expeditions, he was an 
educated and accomplished man; an elegant 
poet j a minute and fastidious critic in all the 
niceties and elegances of diction; a curious 
and exact observer of the statistical pheno- 
mena of every region he entered ; a great ad- 
mirer of beautiful prospects and fine flowers ; 
and, though a devoted Mahometan in his 
way, a very resolute and jovial drinker of 
wine. Good-humoured, brave, munificent, 
sagacious, and frank in his character, he 
might have been a Henry IV. if his training 
had been in Europe : — and even as he is, is 
less stained, perhaps, by the Asiatic vices of 
cruelty and perfidy than any other in the list 
of her conquerors. The work before us is a 
faithful translation of his own account of his 
life and transactions ; written, with some con- 
siderable blanks, up to the year 1508, in the 
form of a narrative — and continued after- 
wards, as a journal, . till 1529. It is here 
illustrated by the most intelligent, learned, 
and least pedantic notes we have ever seen 
annexed to such a performance ; and by two 
or three introductory dissertations, more clear, 
masterly, and full of instruction than any it 
has ever been our lot to peruse on the history 
or geography of the East. The translation 
was begun by the late very learned and en- 
terprising Dr. Leyden. It has been com- 
pleted, and the whole of the valuable com- 
mentary added by Mr. W. Erskine, on the 
solicitation of the Hon. Mountstewart Elphin- 
stone and Sir John Malcolm, the two indi- 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



275 



viduals in the world best qualified to judge 
of the value or execution of such a work. The 
greater part of the translation was finished 
and transmitted to this country in 1817; but 
was only committed to the press in the course 
of last year. 

The preface contains a learned account of 
the Turki language, (in which these memoirs 
were written.) the prevailing tongue of Cen- 
tral x^sia, and of which the Constantinopolitan 
Turkish is one of the most corrupted dialects. 
— some valuable corrections of Sir William 
Jones' notices of the Institutes of Taimur, — 
and a very clear explanation of the method 
employed in the translation, and the various 
helps by which the great difficulties of the 
task were relieved. The first Introduction, 
however, contains much more valuable mat- 
ters : It is devoted to an account of the great 
Tartar tribes, who, under the denomination 
of the Turki, the Moghul. and the Mandshur 
races, may be said to occupy the whole vast 
extent of Asia, north of Hindostan and part 
of Persia, and westward from China. Of 
these, the Mandshurs. who have long been 
the sovereigns of China, possess the countries 
immediately to the north and east of that 
ancient empire — the Turki, the regions imme- 
diately to the north and westward of India 
and Persia Proper, stretching round the Cas- 
pian, and advancing, by the Constantinopoli- 
tan tribes, considerably to the southeast of 
Europe. The Moghuls lie principally be- 
tween the other two. These three tribes 
speak, it would appear, totally different lan- 
guages — the name of Tartar or Tatar, by 
which they are generally designated in Eu- 
rope, not being acknowledged by any of them, 
and appearing to have been appropriated only 
to a small clan of Moghuls. The Huns, who 
desolated the declining empire under Attila*. 
are thought by Mr. Erskine to have been 
of the Moghul race ; and Zengiskhan, the 
mighty conqueror of the thirteenth century, 
was certainly of that family. Their princes, 
however, were afterwards blended, by family 
alliances, with those of the Turki; and sev- 
eral of them, reigning exclusively over con- 
quered tribes of that descent, came gradually 
though of proper Moghul ancestry,, to reckon 
themselves as Turki sovereigns. Of this de- 
scription was Taimur Beg, or Tamerlane, 
whose family, though descended from Zengis, 
had long been settled in the Turki kingdom 
of Samarkand ; and from him the illustrious 
Baber, the hero of the work before us, a 
decided Turki in language, character, and 
prejudices, was lineally sprung. The relative 
condition of these enterprising nations, and 
their more peaceful brethren in the south, 
cannot be more clearly or accurately described 
than in the words of Mr. Erskine : — 



* The learned translator conceives that the sup- 
posed name of this famous barbarian was truly only 
the denomination of his office. It is known that lie 
succeeded his uncle in the government, though 
there were children of his alive. It is probable, 
therefore, that he originally assumed authority in 
the character of their guardian ; and the word Ata- 
lik, in Tartar, signifies guardian, or quasi parens. 



" The whole of Asia may be considered as divi- 
ded into two parts by the great chain of mountains 
which runs from China and the Birman Empire on 
the east, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean 
on the west. From the eastward, where it is of 
great breadth, it keeps a north-westerly course, 
rising in height as it advances, and forming the hill 
countries of Assam. Bootan, Nepal, Sirinagr.r, 
Tibet, and Ladak. It encloses the valley of Kash- 
mir, near which it seems to have gained its greatest 
height, and thence proceeds westward, passing to 
the norih of Peshawer and Kabul, after which it 
appears to break into a variety of smaller ranges 
of hills that proceed in a westerly and south-west- 
erly direction, generally terminating in the province 
of Khorasan. Near Herat, in that province, the 
mountains sink away ; but the range appears to 
rise again near Meshhed. and is by some consid- 
ered as resuming its course, running to the south 
of the Caspian and bounding MazenderSn, whence 
it proceeds on through Armenia, and thence into 
Asia Minor, rinding its termination in the moun- 
tains of ancient Lycia. This immense range, which 
some consider as terminating at Herat, while it di- 
vides Bengal, Hindustan, the Penjab, Afghanistan, 
Persia, and part of the Turkish territory, from the 
country of the Moghul and Turki tribes, whfch, 
with few exceptions, occupy the whole extent of 
country from the borders of China to the sea of 
Azof, may also be considered as separating in its 
whole course, nations of comparative civilisation, 
from uncivilised tribes. To the south of this range, 
if we perhaps except some part of the Afghan ter- 
ritory, which, indeed, may rather be held as part 
of the range itself than as south of it, there is no 
nation which, at some period or other of its history, 
has not been the seat of a poweriul empire, and of 
all those arts and refinements of life which attend 
a numerous and wealthy population, when pro- 
tected by a government that permits the fancies and 
energies of the human mind to follow their natural 
bias. The degrees of civilisation and of happiness 
possessed in these various regions may have been 
extremely different ; but many of the comforts of 
wealth and abundance, and no small share of the 
higher treasures of cultivated judgment and imagi- 
nation, must have been enjoyed by nations that 
could produce the various systems of Indian phi- 
losophy and science, a drama so polished as the 
Sakontala, a poet like Ferdousi. or a moralist like 
Sadi. While to the south of this range we every 
where see flourishing cities, cultivated fields, and. 
all the forms of a regular government and policy, 
to the north of it, if we except China and the coun- 
tries to the south of the Sirr or Jaxarres, and along 
its banks, we find tribes who, down to the present 
day, wander over their extensive regions as their 
forefathers did, little if at all more refined than they 
appear to have been at the very dawn of history. 
Their flocks are still their wealth, their camp their 
city, and the same government exists of separate 
chiefs, who are not much exalted in luxury or 
information above the commonest of their subjects 
around them." 

These general remarks are followed up by 
an exact and most luminous geographical 
enumeration of all the branches of this great 
northern family, — accompanied with histori- 
cal notices, and very interesting elucidations 
of various passages both in ancient and 
modern writers. The following observations 
are of more extensive application : — 

" The general state of society which prevailed 
in the age of Baber, within the countries that have 
been described, will be much better understood 
from a perusal of the following Memoirs than from 
any prefatory observations that could be offered. 
It is evident that, in consequence of the protection 
which had been afforded to the people of Maweral. 



276 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



nahir by their regular governments, a considerable 
degree of comfort, and perhaps still more of ele- 
gance and civility, prevailed in the towns. The 
whole age of Baber, however, was one of great 
confusion. Nothing contributed so much to pro- 
duce the constant wars, and eventual devastation 
of the country, which the Memoirs exhibit, as the 
want of some fixed rule of Succession to the Throne. 
The ideas of regal descent, according to primogeni- 
ture, were very indistinct, as is the case in all Ori- 
ental, and, in general, in all purely despotic king- 
doms. When the succession to the crown, like 
every thing else, is subject to the will of the prince, 
on his death it necessarily becomes the subject of 
contention ; — since the will of a dead king is of 
much less consequence than the intrigues of an 
.able minister, or the sword of a successful com- 
mander. It is the privilege of liberty and of law 
alone to bestow equal security on the rights of the 
monarch and of the people. The death of the 
ablest sovereign was only the signal for a general 
war. The different parties at court, or in the harem 
of the prince, espoused the cause of different com- 
petitors, and every neighbouring potentate believed 
himself to be perfectly justified in marching to seize 
his portion of the spoil. In the course of the Me- 
moirs, we shall find that the grandees of the court, 
while they take their place by the side of the candi- 
date of their choice, do not appear to believe that 
fidelity to him is any very necessary virtue. The 
nobility, unable to predict the events of one twelve- 
month, degenerate into a set of selfish, calculating, 
though perhaps brave partizans. Rank, and wealth, 
and present enjoyment, become their idols. The 
prince feels the influence of the general want of 
stability, and is himself educated in the loose princi- 
ples of an adventurer. In all about him he sees 
merely the instruments of his power. The subject, 
seeing the prince consult only his pleasures, learns 
on his part to consult only his private convenience. 
In such societies, the steadiness of principle that 
flows from the love of right and of our country 
can have no place. It may be questioned whether 
the prevalence of the Mahommedan religion, by 
swallowing up civil in religious distinctions, has not 
a tendency to increase this indifference to country, 
wherever it is established." 

" That the fashions of the East are unchanged, 
is, in general, certainly true ; because the climate 
and the despotism, from the one or other of which 
a very large proponion of them arises, have con- 
tinued the same. Yet one who observes the way 
in which a Mussulman of rank spends his day, will 
be led to suspect that the maxim has sometimes 
been adopted with too little limitation. Take the 
example of his pipe and his coffee. The Kalliun, 
or Hukka, is seldom out of his hand ; while the 
coffee-cup makes its appearance every hour, as if 
it contained a necessary of life. Perhaps there are 
no enjoyments the loss of which he would feel 
more severely ; or which, were we to judge only 
by the frequency of the call for them, we should 
suppose to have entered from a more remote pe- 
riod into the system of Asiatic life. Yet we know 
that the one (which has indeed become a necessary 
of life to every class of Mussulmans) could not have 
been enjoyed before the discovery of America ; 
and there is every reason to believe that the other 
was not introduced into Arabia from Africa, where 
coffee is indigenous, previously to the sixteenth 
century ;* and what marks the circumstance more 
strongly, both of these habits have forced their 
way, in spite of the remonstrances of the rigorists 
in religion. Perhaps it would have been fortunate 
for Baber had they prevailed in his age, as they 
might have diverted him from the immoderate use 
first of wine, and afterwards of deleterious drugs, 
which ruined his constitution, and hastened on his 
end." 



* La Roque, Traite Historique de i'Origine et du 
Progres du Cafe, &c. Paris, 1716, lSaao. 



The Ydsi, or institutions of Chengiz, are 
often mentioned. 

" They seem," says Mr. Erskine, " to have been 
a collection of the old usages of the Moghul tribes, 
comprehending some rules of state and ceremony, 
and some injunctions for the punishment of partic- 
ular crimes. The punishments were only two- 
death and the bastinado* ; the number of blows ex- 
tending from seven to seven hundred. There is 
something very Chinese in the whole of the Mo- 
ghul system of punishment, even princes advanced 
in years, and in command of large armies, being 
punished by bastinado with a stick, by their father's 
orders. t Whether they received their usage in this 
respect from the Chinese, or communicated it to 
them, is not very certain. As the whole body of 
their laws or customs was formed before the intro- 
duction of the Mussulman religion, and was proba- 
bly in many respects inconsistent with the Koran, 
as, for instance, in allowing the use of the blood of 
animals, and in the extent of toleration granted to 
other religions, it gradually fell into decay." 

The present Moghul tribes, it is added, 
punish most offences by fines of cattle. The 
art of war in the days of Baber had not been 
very greatly matured ; and though matchlocks 
and unwieldy cannon had been recently in- 
troduced from the West, the arms chiefly 
relied on were still the bow and the spear, 
the sabre and the battle-axe. Mining was 
practised in sieges, and cavalry seems to have 
formed the least considerable part of the 
army. 

There is a second Introduction, containing 
a clear and brief abstract of the history of 
those regions from the time of Tamerlane to 
that of Baber, — together with an excellent 
Memoir on the annexed map. and an account 
of the hills and rivers of Bokara, of which it 
would be idle to attempt any abstract. 

As to the Memoirs themselves, we have 
already said that we think it in vain to re- 
commend them as a portion of History with 
which our readers should be acquainted, — - 
or consequently to aim at presenting them 
with any thing in the nature of an abstract, 
or connected account of the events they so 
minutely detail. All that we propose to do, 
therefore, is, to extract a few of the traits 
which appear to us the most striking and 
characteristic, and to endeavour, in a very 
short compass, to give an idea of whatever 
curiosity or interest the work possesses. The 
most remarkable thing about it, or at least 
that which first strikes us. is the simplicity 
of the style, and the good sense, varied know- 
ledge, and extraordinary industry of the royal 
author. It is difficult, indeed, to believe that 
it is the work of an Asiatic, and a sovereign. 
Though copiously, and rather diffusely writ- 
ten, it is perfectly free from the ornamental 
verbosity, the eternal metaphor, and puerile 
exaggerations of most Oriental compositions ; 
and though savouring so far of royalty as to 
abound in descriptions of dresses and cere- 
monies, is yet occupied in the main with con- 
cerns greatly too rational and humble to be 
much in favour with monarchs. As a speci- 
men of the adventurous life of the chieftains 



* D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient, art. Turk. 

t Hist, de Timur Bee, vol. iii. pp. 227. 263. 326, 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



277 



of those days, and of Babers manner of de- 
scribing it, we may pass at once to his account 
of his being besieged in Samarkand, and the 
particulars of his flight after he was obliged 
to abandon it : — 

" During the continuance of the siege, the rounds 
of I he rampart were regularly gone, once every 
night, sometimes by Kasim Beg, and sometimes by 
other Begs and captains. From the Firozeh gate 
to the Sheikh-Zadeh gate, we were able to go along 
the ramparts on horseback ; everywhere else we 
were obliged to go on foot. Setting out in the 
beginning of the night, it was morning before we 
had completed our rounds. 

" One day Sheibani Khan made an attack be- 
tween the Iron gate and that of the Sheikh-Zadeh. 
As I was with the reverse, 1 immediately led ihem 
to the quarter that was attacked, without attending 
to the Washing-green gate or the Needlemakers' 
gate. That same day, from the top of the Sheikh- 
Zadeh's gateway, I struck a palish white coloured 
horse an excellent shot with my cross-bow : it fell 
dead the moment my arrow touched it ; but in the 
meanwhile, they had made such a vigorous attack, 
near the Camel's Neck, that they effected a lodg- 
ment close under the rampart. Being hotly engaged 
in repelling the enemy where I was, I had enter- 
tained no apprehensions of danger on the other side, 
where they had prepared and brought with them 
twenty-five or twenty-six scaling-ladders, each of 
them so broad that two and three men could mount 
a-breast. He had placed in ambush, opposite to 
the city-wall, seven or eight hundred chosen men 
with these ladders, between the Ironsmiths' and 
Needlemakers' gates, while he himself moved to 
the other side, and made a false attack. Our atten- 
tion was entirely drawn off to this attack ; and the 
men in ambush no sooner saw the works opposite 
to ihem empty of defenders, by the watch having 
left them, than they rose from the place where they 
had lain in ambush, advanced with extreme speed, 
and applied their scaling-ladders all at once between 
the two gates that have been mentioned, exactly 
opposite to Muhammed Mazid Terkhan's house. 
The Begs who were on guard had only two or 
three of their servants and attendants about them. 
Nevertheless Kuch Beg, Muhammed Kuli Kochin, 
Shah Sufi, and another brave cavalier, boldly assail- 
ed them, and displayed signal heroism. Some of 
the enemy had already mounted the wall, and 
several others were in the act of scaling it, when 
the four persons who have been mentioned arrived 
on the spot, fell upon them sword in hand, with the 
greatest bravery, and dealing out furious blows 
around them, drove the assailants back over the 
wall, and put them to flight. Kuch Beg distin- 
guished himself above all the rest; and this was 
an exploit for ever to be cited to his honour. He 
twice during this siege performed excellent service 
by his valour. 

" It was now the season of the ripening of the 
grain, and nobody had brought in any new corn. 
As the siege had drawn out to great length, the in- 
habitants were reduced to extreme distress, and 
things came to such a pass, that the poor and meaner 
sort were forced to feed on dogs' and asses' flesh. 
Grain for the horses becoming scarce, they were 
obliged to be fed on the leaves of trees; and it was 
ascertained from experience, that the leaves of the 
mulberry and blackwood answered best. Many 
used the shavings and raspings of wood, which 
they soaked in water, and gave to their horses. 
For three or four months Sheibani Khan did not 
approach the fortress, but blockaded it at some dis- 
tance on all sides, changing his ground from time 
to time. 

" The ancients have said, that in order to main- 
tain a fortress, a head, two hands, and two feet are 
necessary. The head is a captain, the two hands 
are. two friendly forces that must advance from op- 
posite sides; the two feet are water and stores of 



provision within the fort. I looked for aid and as- 
sistance from the princes my neighbours; but each 
of them had his attention fixed on some other ob- 
ject. For example, Sultan Hussain Mirza was un- 
doubtedly a brave and experienced monarch, yet 
neither did he give me assistance, nor even send 
an ambassador to encourage me." 

He is obliged, in consequence, to evacuate 
the city, and moves off privately in the night. 
The following account of his flight, we think, 
is extremely picturesque and interesting. 

" Having entangled ourselves among the great 
branches of the canals of the Soghd, during the. 
darkness of the night, we lost our way, and after 
encountering many difficulties we passed Khwajeh 
Didar about dawn. By the time of early morning 
prayers, we arrived at the hillock of Karbogh, arid 
passing it on the north below the village of Kherdek, 
we made for Ilan-uti. On the road, I had a race 
with Kamber Ali and Kasim Beg. My horse got 
the lead. As I turned round on my seat to t-ee 
how far I had left them behind, my saddle-girth 
being slack, the saddle turned round, and I came 
to the ground right on my head. Although I im- 
mediately sprang up and mounted, yet I did not 
recover the full possession of my faculties till the 
evening, and the world, and all that occurred at the 
time, passed before my eyes and apprehension like 
a dream, or a phantasy, and disappeared. The 
time of afternoon prayers was past ere we reached 
Ilan-uti, where we alighted, and having killed a 
horse, cut him up, and dressed slices of his flesh ; 
we stayed a little time to rest our horses, then 
mounting again, before day-break we alighted at 
the village of Khalileh.* From Khalileh we pro- 
ceeded to Dizak. At that time Taher Duldai, the 
son of Hafez Muhammed Beg Duldai, was governor 
of Dizak. Here we found nice fat flesh, bread cf 
fine flour well baked, sweet melons, and excellent 
grapes in great abundance ; thus passing from the 
extreme of famine to plenty, and from an estate of 
danger and calamity to peace and ease. 

" In my whole life, I never enjoyed myself so 
much, nor at any period of it felt so sensibly the 
pleasures of peace and plenty. Enjoyment after 
suffering, abundance after want, come with in- 
creased relish, and afford more exquisite delight. I 
have four or five times, in the course of my life, 
passed in a similar manner from distress to ease, 
and from a state of suffering to enjoyment : but this 
was the first time that I had ever been delivered at 
once from the injuries of my enemy, and the pres- 
sure of hunger, and passed to the ease of security, 
and the pleasures of plenty. Having rested and 
enjoyed ourselves two or three days in Dizak, we 
proceeded on to Uratippa. 

" Dekhatis one of the hill-districts of Uratippa. 
It lies on the skirts of a very high mountain, imme- 
diately on passing which you come on the country 
of Masikha. The inhabitants, though Sarts, have 
large flocks of sheep, and herds of mares, like the 
Turks. The sheep belonging to Dekhat may 
amount to forty thousand. We took up our lodg- 
ings in the peasants' houses. I lived at the house 
of one of the head men of the place. He was an 
aged man, seventy or eighty years old. His mother 
was still alive, and had attained an extreme old 
age, being at this time a hundred and eleven years 
old. One of this lady's relations had accompanied 
the army of Taimur Beg, when it invaded Hin- 
dustan. The circumstances remained fresh in her 
memory, and she often told us stories on that sub- 
ject. In the district of Dekhat alone, there still 
were of this lady's children, grandchildren, great- 
grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, to 
the number of ninety-six persons; and including 
those deceased, the whole amounted to two hun- 
dred. One of her great-grandchildren was at this 
time a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six 
years of age, with a fine black beard. While I 



278 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



remained in Dekbat, I was accustomed to walk on 
foot' all about the hills in the neighbourhood. I 
generally went out barefoot, and, from this habit 
ol walking barefoot, I soon found that our feet be- 
came so hardened that we did not mind rock or 
stone in the least. In one of these walks, between 
afternoon and evening prayers, we met a man who 
was going with a cow in a narrow road. I asked 
him the way. He answered, Keep your eye fixed 
on the cow ; and do not lose sight of her till you 
come to the issue of the road, when you will know 
your ground. Khwajeh Asedulla, who was with me, 
enjoyed the joke, observing, What would become 
of us wise men, were the cow to lose her way? 

" It was wonderfully cold, and the wind of Ha- 
derwish had here lost none of its violence, and 
blew keen. So excessive was the cold, that in the 
course of two or three days we lost two or three 
persons from its severity. I required to bathe on 
account of my religions purificaiions ; and went 
down for that purpose to a rivulet, which was frozen 
on the banks, but not in the middle, from the ra- 
pidity of the current. I plunged myself into the 
wafer, and dived sixteen times. The extreme 
chilliness of the water quite penetrated me." 

" It was now spring, and intelligence was brought 
that Sheibani Khan was advancing against Uratippa. 
As Dpkhat was in the low country, I passed by 
Abburden and Amani, and came to the hill country 
of Masikha. Abburden is a village which lies at 
the foot of Masikha. Beneath Abburden is a spring, 
and close by the spring is a tomb. From this 
spring, towards the upland, the country belongs to 
Masikha, but downwards from the spring it de- 
pends on Yelghar, On a stone which is on the 
brink of this spring, on one of its sides, I caused 
the following verses* to be inscribed : — 

I have heard that the exalted Jemshid 

Inscribed on a stone beside a fountain, 

'Many a man like us has rested by this fountain, 

And disappeared in the twinkling of an eye ! 

Should we conquer the whole world by our manhood 

and strength, 
Yet could we not carry it with us to the grave.' 

In this hill-country, the practice of cutting verses 
and oiber inscriptions on the rocks is extremely 
common." 

After this, he contrives partly to retrieve 
his affairs, by uniting himself with a warlike 
Khan of his family, and takes the field with 
a considerable force against Tambol. The 
following account of a night skirmish reminds 
us of the chivalrous doings of the heroes of 
Froissart : — 

" Just before the dawn, while o"" men were still 
• enjoying themselves in sleep, Kamber Ali Beg 
galloped up, exclaiming, * The enemy are upon us — 
rouse up!' Having spoken these words, without 
halting a moment, he passed on. I had gone to 
sleep, as was my custom even in times of security, 
without taking off my jama, or frock, and instantly 
arose, girt on my sabre and quiver, and mounted 
my horse. My standard-bearer seized the standard, 
but without having time to tie on the horse-tail and 
colours; but, taking the banner-staff in his hand 
just as it was, leaped on horseback, and we pro- 
ceeded towards the quarter from which the enemy 
were advancing. When I first mounted there were 
ten or fifteen men with me. By the time I had 
advanced a bowshot, we fell in with the enemy's 
skirmishers. At this moment there might be about 
ten men with me. Riding quick up to them, and 
giving a discharge of our arrows, we came upon 
the most advanced of them, attacked and drove 
them back, and continued to advance, pursuing 
them for the distance of another bowshot, when 
we fell in with the main body of the enemy. 
Sultan Ahmed Tambol was standing, with about' a 



* From the Boslan of Sadi. — Leyden. 



hundred men. Tambol was speaking with another 
person in the front of the line, and in the act of 
saying, ' Smite them ! Smile them !' but his men 
were sideling in a hesitating way, as if saying, 
' Shall we flee? Let us flee!' but yet standing 
still. At this instant there were left with me only 
three persons: one of these was Dost Nasir, 
another Mirza Kuli Gokultash, and Kerimdad Kho- 
daidad, the Turkoman, the third. One arrow, 
which was then on the notch, I discharged on the 
helmit of Tambol, and again applied my hand to- 
my quiver, and brought out a green-tipped barbed 
arrow, which my uncle, the Khan, had given me. 
Unwilling to throw it away, I returned it to the 
quiver, and thus lost as much time as would have 
allowed of shooting two arrows. I then placed 
another arrow on the string, and advanced, while the 
other three lagged a little behind me. Two persons 
came right on to meet me ; one of them was'l'amboI r 
who preceded the other. There was a highway 
between us. He mounting on one side of it as I 
mounted on the other, we encountered on it in such 
a manner, that my right hand was towards my 
enemy, and Tambol's right hand towards me. 
Except the mail for his horse, Tambol had all his 
armour and accoutrements complete. I had only 
my sabre and bow and arrows. I drew up to my 
tar, and sent right for him the arrow which I 
had in my hand. At that very moment, an arrow 
of the kind called Sheibah struck me on the right 
thigh, and pierced through and through. I had a 
steel cap on my head. Tambol, rushing on, smote 
me such a blow on it with his sword as to stun me ; 
though not a thread of the cap was penetrated, yet 
my head was severely wounded. I had neglected 
to clean my sword, so that it was rusty, and I lost 
time in drawing it. I was alone and single in the 
midst of a multitude of enemies. It was no season 
for standing still ; so I turned my bridle round, re- 
ceiving another sabre stroke on the arrows in my 
quiver. I had gone back seven or eight paces, 
when three foot soldiers came up and joined us. 
Tambol now attacked Dost Nasir sword in hand. 
They followed us about a bowshot. Arigh-Jakan- 
shah is a large and deep stream, which is not ford- 
able everywhere; but God directed us right, so 
that we came exactly upon one of the fords of the 
river. Immediately on crossing the river, the horse 
of Dost Nasir fell from weakness. We halted to 
remount him, and passing among the hillocks that 
are between Khirabuk and Feraghineh. and going 
from one hillock to another, we proceeded by bye- 
roads towards Ush." 

We shall conclude our warlike extracts 
with the following graphic and lively account 
of the author's attack en Akhsi, and his sub- 
sequent repulse : — 

" Sheikh Bayezid had just been released, and 
was entering the gate, when I met him. I imme- 
diately drew to the head the arrow which was on 
my notch, and discharged it full at him. It only 
grazed his neck, but it was a fine shot. The mo- 
ment he had entered the gate, he turned short to 
the right, and fled by a narrow street in great per- 
turbation. I pursued him. Mirza Kuli Gokultash 
struck down one foot-soldier with his mace, and 
had passed another, when the fellow aimed an ar- 
row at Ibrahim Beg, who startled him by exclaim- 
ing, Hai ! II ai ! and went forward ; after which the 
man, being about as far off as the porch of a house 
is from the hall, let fly at me an arrow, which struck 
me under the arm. I had on a Kalmuk mail ; two 
plates of it were pierced and broken from the blow. 
After shooting the arrow, he fled, and I discharged 
an arrow after him. At that very moment a foot- 
soldier happened to be flying along the rampart, 
and my arrow pinned his cap to the wall, where it 
remained shot through and through, and dangling 
from the parapet. He took off his turban, which 
he twisted round his arm, and ran away. A man 
on horseback passed close by me, fleeing up the 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



279 



-narrow lane by which Sheikh Bayezid had escaped. 
1 struck him such a blow on the lemples with the 
point of my sword, that he bent over as if ready to 
fall from his horse ; but supporting himself on the 
wall of the lane, he did not lose his seat, but es- 
caped with the utmost hazard. Having dispersed 
all the horse and foot that were at the gate, we took 
possession of it. There was now no reasonable 
chance of success; for they had two or three thou- 
sand well-armed men in the citadel, while I had 
only a hundred, or two hundred at most, in the 
outer stone fort: and, besides, Jehan^ir Mirza, 
about as long before as milk takes to boil, had been 
beaten and driven out, and half of my men were 
with him." 

Soon after this there is an unlucky hiatus 
in all the manuscripts of the Memoirs, so that 
it is to this day unknown by what means the 
heroic prince escaped from his treacherous 
associates, only that we find him, the year 
after, warring prosperously against a new set 
of enemies. Of his military exploits and ad- 
ventures, however, we think we have now 
given a sufficient specimen. 

In these we have said he resembles the 
paladins of Europe, in her days of chivalric 
enterprise. But we doubt greatly whether 
any of her knightly adventurers could have 
given so exact an account of the qualities and 
productions of the countries they visited as 
the Asiatic Sovereign has here put on record. 
Of Kabul, for example, after describing its 
boundaries, rivers, and mountains, he says — 

" This country lies between Hindustan and Kho- 
rasan. It is an excellent and profitable market for 
commodities. Were the merchants to carry their 
goods as far as Khiia or Rum,* they would scarcely 
get the same profit on them. Every year, seven, 
eight, or ten thousand horses arrive in Kabul. From 
Hindustan, every year, fifteen or twenty thousand 
pieces of cloth are brought by caravans. The com- 
modiies of Hindustan are slaves, white cloths, 
sugar-candy, refined and common sugar, drugs, 
and spices. There are many merchants that are 
not satisfied with getting thirty or forty for ten.t 
The productions of Khorasan, Rum, Irak, and 
Chint, may all be found in Kabul, which is the very 
emporium of Hindustan. Its warm and cold dis- 
tricts are close by each other. From Kabul you 
may in a single day go to a place where snow never 
falls, and in the space of two astronomical hours, 
you may reach a spot where snow lies always, ex- 
cept now and then when the summer happens to 
be peculiarly hot. In the districts dependant on 
Kabul, there is great abundance of the fruits both 
of hot and cold climates, and they are found in its 
immediate vicinity. The fruits of the cold dis- 
tricts in Kabul are grapes, pomegranates, apricots, 
peaches, pears, apples, quinces, jujubes, damsons, 
almonds, and walnuts ; all of which are found in 
great abundance. I caused the sour-cherry-tree $ 
to be brought here and planted ; it produced ex- 
cellent fruit, and continues thriving. The fruits it 
possesses peculiar to a warm climate are the orange, 
citron. II the amluk, and sugar-cane, which are 
brought from the Lamghanat. I caused the sugar- 
cane to be brought, and planted it here. They bring 
the Jelghuzektf from Nijrow. They have num- 



*Khita is Northern China, and its dependent 
provinces. Rum is Turkey, particularly the pro- 
vinces about Trebizond. 

t Three or four hundred per cent. 

t Chin is all China. § Alubala. 

II A berry like the karinda. 

TT The jeighuzek is the seed of a kind of pine, the 
cones of which are as big as a man's two fists. 



bers of bee-hives, but honey is brought only from 
the hill-country on the west. The rawash * of Ka- 
bul is of excellent quality; its quinces and damask 
plums are excellent, as well as its badrengs.t There 
is a species of grape which they call the water-grape, 
that is very delicious ; its wines are strong and in- 
toxicating. That produced on the skirt of the 
mountain of Khwajeh Khan-Saaid is celebrated for 
its potency, though I describe it only from what I 
have heard : 

"The drinker knows the flavour of the wine; how 
should the sober know it?" 

"Kabul is not fertile in grain ; a return of four or 
five to one is reckoned favourable. The melons too 
are not good, but those raised from seed brought 
from Khorasan are tolerable. The climate is ex- 
tremely delightful, and in this respect there is no 
such place in the known world. In the nights of 
summer you cannot sleep without a postin (or lamb- 
skin cloak.) Though the snow talis very deep in 
the winter, yet the cold is never excessively intense. 
Samarkand and Tabriz are celebrated for their fine 
climate, but the winter cold there is extreme be- 
yond measure." 

" Opposite to the fort of Adinahpur,t to the south, 
on a rising ground, I formed a charbagh (or great 
garden), in the year nine hundred and fourteen 
(150S). It is called Baghe Vaf'a (the Garden of Fi- 
delity). It overlooks the river, which flows between 
the fort and the palace. In the year in which I 
defeated Behar Khan and conquered Lahore and 
Dibalpur, I brought plantains and planted them 
here. They grew and thrived. The year before I 
had also planted the sugar-cane in it, which throve 
remarkably well. I sent some of them to Badakh- 
shan and Bokhara. Tt is on an elevated site, enjoys 
running water, and the climate in the winter season 
is temperate. In the garden there is a small hillock, 
from which a stream of water, sufficient to drive a 
mill, incessantly flows into the garden below. The 
four-fold field-plot of this garden is situated on this 
eminence. On the south-west part of this garden 
is a reservoir of water ten gez square, which is 
wholly planted round with orange trees ; there are 
likewise pomegranates. All around the piece of 
water the ground is quite covered with clover. This 
spot is the very eye of the beauty of the garden. 
At the time when the orange becomes yellow, the 
prospect is delightful. Indeed the garden is charm- 
ingly laid out. To the south of this garden lies the 
Koh-e-Sefid (the White Mountain) of Nangenhar, 
which separates Bengash from Nangenhar. There 
is no road by which one can pass it on horseback. 
Nine streams descend from this mountain. The 
snow on its summit never diminishes, whence prob- 
ably comes the name of Koh-e-Sefid§ (the White 
Mountain). No snow ever falls in the dales at its 
foot." 

44 The wine of Dereh-Nur is famous all over 
Lamghanat. It is of two kinds, which they term 
arek-tashi (the stone-saw), and suhan-toshi (!he 
stone-file). The stone-saw is of a yellowish colour; 
the stone-file, of a fine red. The stone-saw, how- 
ever, is the better wine of the two. though neither 
of them equals their reputation. Higher up, at the 
head of the glens, in this mountain, there are some 
apes to be met with. Apes are found lower down 



*The rawash is described as a root something 
like beet-root, but much larger — white and red in 
colour, with large leaves, that rise little from the 
ground It has a pleasant mixture of sweet and 
acid. It may be the rhubarb, raweid. 

t The badreng is a large green fruit, in shape 
somewhat like a citron. The name is also applied 
to a large sort of cucumber. 

t The fort of Adinahpur is to the south of the 
Kabul river. 

% The Koh-e-Sefid is a remarkable position in 
the geography of Afghanistan. It is se<m from 
Peshawer. 



280 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



towards Hindustan, but none higher up than this 
hill. The inhabitants used formerly to keep hogs,* 
but in my time they have renounced the practice." 

His account of the productions of his pater- 
nal kingdom of Ferghana is still more minute 
— telling us even the number of apple-trees 
in a particular district, and making mention 
of an excellent way of drying apricots, with 
almonds put in instead of the stones ; and of 
a wood with a fine red bark ; of admirable use 
for making whip-handles and birds' cages! 
The most remarkable piece of statistics, how- 
ever, with which he has furnished us, is in 
his account of Hindustan, which he first en- 
tered as a conqueror in 1525. It here occu- 
pies twenty-five closely-printed quarto p ages ; 
and contains, not only an exact account of its 
boundaries, population, resources, revenues, 
and divisions, but a full enumeration of all its 
useful fruits, trees, birds, beasts, and fishes; 
with such a minute description of their sev- 
eral habitudes and peculiarities, as would make 
no contemptible figure in a modern work of 
natural history — carefully distinguishing the 
facts which rest on his own observation from 
those which he gives only on the testimony 
of others, and making many suggestions as to 
the means of improving, or transferring them 
from one region to another. From the de- 
tailed botanical and zoological descriptions, 
we can afford of course to make no extracts. 
What follows is more general : — 

" Hindustan is situated in the first, second, and 
third climates. No part of it is in the fourth. It is 
a remarkably fine country. It is quite a different 
world, compared with our countries. Its hills and 
rivers, its forests and plains, its animals and plants, 
its inhabitants and their languages, its winds and 
rains, are all of a different nature. Although the 
Germsils (or hot districts), in the territory of Kabul, 
bear, in many respects, some resemblance to Hin- 
dustan, while in other particulars they differ, yet 
you have no sooner passed the river Sind than the 
country, the trees, the stones, the wandering 
tribes, t the manners and customs of the people, are 
all entirely those of Hindustan. The northern 
range of hills has been mentioned. Immediately on 
Crossing the river Sind, we come upon several 
countries in this range of mountains, connected with 
Kashmir, such as Pekheli and Shemeng. Most of 
them, though now independent of Kashmir, were 
formerly included in its territories. After leaving 
Kashmir, these hills contain innumerable tribes and 
states, Pergannahs and countries, and extend all the 
way to Bengal and the shores of the Great Ocean. 
About these hills are other tribes of men." 

"The country and towns of Hindustan are ex- 
tremely ugly. All its towns and lands have an 
uniform look ; its gardens have no walls ; the 
greater part of it is a level plain. The banks of its 
rivers and streams, in consequence of the rushing 
of the torrents that descend during the rainy season, 
are worn deep into the channel, which makes it 

fenerally difficult and troublesome to cross them, 
n many places the plain is covered by a thorny 
brush-wood, to such a degree that the people of the 
Pergannahs. relying on these forests, take shelter 
in them, and, trusting to their inaccessible situation, 
often continue in a state of revolt, refusing to pay 
their taxes. In Hindustan, if you except the rivers, 
there is little running water, t Now and then some 

* This practice Baber viewed with disgust, the hog 
being an impure animal in the Muhammedan law. 
t " The lis and Uluses." 
X In Persia there are few rivers, but numbers of 



standing water is to be met with. All these cities 
and countries derive their water from wells or tanks, 
in which it is collected during the rainy season. In 
Hindustan, the populousness and decay, or tota* 
destruction of villages, nay of cities, is almost in- 
stantaneous. Large cities that have been inhabited 
for a series of years, (if, on an alarm, the inhabitants 
take to flight,) in a single day, or a day and a half, 
are so completely abandoned, that you can scarcely 
discover a trace or mark of population."* 

The prejudices of the more active and 
energetic inhabitant of the hill country are 
still more visible in the following passage :- — 

" Hindustan is a country that has few pleasures 
to recommend it.t The people are not handsome. 
They have no idea of the charms of friendly society, 
of frankly mixing together, or of familiar intercourse. 
They have no genius, no comprehension of mind, 
no politeness of manner, no kindness or fellow- 
feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in 
planning or executing their handicraft works, no 
skill or knowledge in design or architecture ; they 
have no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes or 
musk-melonst, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, 
no good food or bread in their bazars, no baths or 
colleges, no candles, no torches, not a candlestick." 

" The chief excellency of Hindustan is, that it is 
a large country, and has abundance of gold and 
silver. The climate during the rains is very pleasant. 
On some days it rains ten, fifteen, and even twenty 
times. During the rainy season, inundations come 
pouring down all at once, and form rivers, even in 
places where, at other times, there is no water. 
While the rains continue on the ground, the air is 
singularly delightful — insomuch, that nothing can 
surpass its soft and agreeable temperature. Its de- 
fect is, that the air is rather moist and damp. 
During the rainy season, you cannot shoot, even 
with the bow of our country, and it becomes quite 
useless. Nor is it the bow alone that becomes 
useless; the coats of mail, books, clothes, and fur- 
niture, all feel the bad effects of the moisture. 
Their houses, too, suffer from not being substan- 
tially built. There is pleasant enough weather in 
the winter and summer, as well as in the rainy 
season ; but then the north wind always blows, and 
there is an excessive quantity of earth and dust fly- 
ing about. When the rains are at hand, this wind 
blows five or six times with excessive violence, and 



artifica! canals or water-runs for irrigation, and for 
the supply of water to towns and villages. The 
same is the case in the valley of Soghd, and the 
richer parts of Maweralnaher. 

* " This is the wulsa or walsa, so well described 
by Colonel Wilks in his Historical Sketches, vol. i. 
p. 309, note : ' On the approach of an hostile army, 
the unfortunate inhabitants of India bury under 
ground their most cumbrous effects, and each indi- 
vidual, man, woman, and child above six years of 
age, (the infant children being carried by their 
mothers,) with a load of grain proportioned to their 
strength, issue from their beloved homes, and take 
the direction of a country (if such can be found) 
exempt from the miseries of war ; sometimes of a 
strong fortress, but more generally of the most un- 
frequented hills and woods, where they prolong a 
miserable existence until the departure of the ene- 
my; and if this should be protracted beyond the 
time for which they have provided food, a large 
portion necessarily dies of hunger.' See the note 
itself. The Historical Sketches should be read by 
every one who desires to have an accurate idea of 
the South of India. It is to be regretted that we 
do not possess the history of any other part of In- 
dia, written with the same knowledge or research.' 

t Baber's opinions regarding India are nearly the 
same with those of most Europeans of the upper 
class, even at the present day. 

t Grapes and musk-melons, particularly the lat* 
ter, are now common all or*r India. 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



281 



ituch a quantity of dust flies about that you cannot 
■ee one another. They call this an Andhi.* It 
gets warm during Taurus and Gemini, but not so 
warm as to become intolerable. The heat cannot 
be compared to the heats of Balkh and Kandahar. 
It is not above half so warm as in these places. 
Another convenience of Hindustan is, that the 
workmen of every profession and trade are innu- 
merable and without end. For any work, or any 
employment, there is always a set ready, to whom 
the same employment and trade have descended 
from father to son for ages. In the Zefer-Nameh 
of Mulla Sherif-ed-din Ali Yezdi, it is mentioned 
as a surprising fact, that when Taimur Beg was 
building the Sangin (or stone) mosque, there were 
6tone-cutters of Azerbaejan, Fars, Hindustan, and 
other countries, to the number of two hundred, 
working every day on the mosque. In Agra alone, 
and of stone-cutters belonging to that place only, I 
every day employed on my palaces six hundred and 
eighty persons; and in Agra, Sikri, Biana, Dhulpur, 
Gualiar, and Koel, there were every day employed 
on my works one thousand four hundred and ninety- 
one stone-cutters. In the same way, men of every 
trade and occupation are numberless and without 
6tint in Hindustan. 

"The countries from Behreh to Behar, which 
are now under my dominion, yield a revenue of 
fifty-two krors,t as will appear from the particular 
and detailed statement. X Of this amount, Per- 
gannahs to the value of eight or nine krors§ are in 
the possession of some Rais and Rajas, who from 
old times have been submissive, and have received 
these Pergannahs for the purpose of confirming 
them in their obedience." 

These Memoirs contain many hundred char- 
acters and portraits of individuals: and it 
would not be fair not to give our readers one 
or two specimens of the royal author's minute 
style of execution on such subjects. We may 
begin with that of Omer-Sheikh Mirza, his 
grandfather, and immediate predecessor in 
the throne of Ferghana : — 

" Omer-Sheikh Mirza was of low stature, had a 
short bushy beard, brownish hair, and was very 
corpulent. He used to wear his tunic extremely 
tight ; insomuch, that as he was wont to contract 
his belly while he tied the strings, when he let him- 
self out again the strings often burst. He was not 
curious in either his food or dress. He tied his 
turban in the fashion called Destdr-pech (or plaited 
turban). At that time, all turbans were worn in 
the char-pech (or four-plait) style. He wore his 
without folds, and allowed the end to hang down. 
During the heats, when out of the Divan, he gene- 
rally wore the Moghulcap. 

"He read elegantly: his general reading was 
the KhamsahsJI the Mesnevis,1T and books of his- 
tory ; and he was in particular fond of reading the 
Shahnameh.** Though he had a turn for poetry, 
he did not cultivate it. He was so strictly just, that 
when the caravan from Khitatt had once reached the 



* This is still the Hindustani term for a storm, or 
tempest. 

t About a million and a half sterling, or rather 
1,380,0001. 

X This statement unfortunately has not been 
preserved. 

§ About 225,0007. sterling. 

|l Several Persian poets wrote Khamsahs, or 
poems, on five different given subjects. The most 
celebrated is Nezami. 

V The most celebrated of these Mesnevis is the 
mystical poem of Moulavi Jiluleddin Muhammed. 
The Sufis consider it as equal to the Koran. 

** The Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, is the fa- 
mous poem of the great Persian poet Ferdausi, 
and contains tne romantic history of ancient Persia. 

tt North China; but often applied to the whole 
36 



hill country to the east of Andejan, and the snow 
fell so deep as to bury it, so that of the whole only 
two persons escaped, he no sooner received in 
formation of the occurrence, than he despatched 
overseers to collect and take charge of all the prop- 
erty and effects of the people of the caravan ; and, 
wherever the heirs were not at hand, though him* 
self in great want, his resources being exhausted, 
he placed the property under sequestration, and pre- 
served it untouched ; till, in the course of one or 
two years, the heirs, coming from Khorasan and 
Samarkand, in consequence of the intimation which 
they received, he delivered back the goods safe 
and uninjured into their hands.* Hi> generosity 
was large, and so was his whole soul ; he was of an 
excellent temper, affable, eloquent, and sweet in 
his conversation, yet brave withal, and manly. 
On two occasions he advanced in front of the 
troops, and exhibited distinguished prowess; once, 
at the gates of»Akhsi, and once at the gates of 
Shahrokhia. He was a middling shot with the 
bow ; he had uncommon force in his fists, and 
never hit a man whom he did not knock down. 
From his excessive ambition for conquest, he often 
exchanged peace for war, and friendship for hostility. 
In the earlier part of his life he was greatly ad- 
dicted to drinking buzeh and talar.i" Latterly, 
once or twice in the week, he indulged in a drink* 
ing party. He was a pleasant companion, and in 
the course of conversation used often to cite, with 
great felicity, appropriate verses from the poets. In 
his latter days he was much addicted to the use of 
Maajun,t while under the influence of which he was 
subject to a feverish irritability. He was a humane 
man. He played a great deal fit backgammon, 
and sometimes at games of chance with die dice. : ' 

The following is the memorial of Hussain 
Mirza, king of Khorasan, who died in 1506 : 

"He had straight narrow eyes, his body was robust 
and firm ; from the waist downwards he was of a 
slenderer make. Although he was advanced in 
years, and had a white beard, he dressed in gay-co- 
loured red and green woollen clothes. He usually 
wore a cap of black lamb's skin, or a kilpak. Now 
and then, on festival days, he put on a small turban 
tied in three folds, broad and showy, and having 
placed a plume nodding over it, went in this style to 
prayers. 

" On first mounting the throne, he took it into 
his head that he would cause the names of the 
twelve Imams to be recited in the Khutbeh. Many 
used their endeavours to prevent him. Finally, 
however, he directed and arranged every thing ac- 
cording to the orthodox Sunni faith. From a dis- 
order in his joints, he was unable to perform his 
prayers, nor could he observe the stated fasts. He 
was a lively, pleasant man. His temper was rather 
hasty, and his language took after his temper. In 
many instances he displayed a profound reverence 
for the faith ; on one occasion, one of his sons hav- 
ing slain a man, he delivered him up to the avengers 
of blood to be carried before the judgment-seat of 
the Kazi. For about six or seven years after he 
first ascended the throne, he was very guarded in 
abstaining from such things as were forbidden by 



country from China to Terfan, and now even west 
to the Ala-tagh Mountains. 

* This anecdote is erroneously related of Baber 
himself by Ferishta and others. — See Bow's Hist, 
of Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 218. 

t Buzeh is a sort of intoxicating liquor somewhat 
resembling beer, made from millet. Tatar I do 
not know, but understand it to be a preparation 
from the poppy. There is, however, nothing about 
buzeh or talar in the Persian, which only specifies 
sherdb, wine or strong drink. 

X Any medical mixture is called a maajun ; but 
in common speech the term is chiefly applied to in- 
toxicating comfits, and especially those prepared 
with bang. 

y2 



£82 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



the law ; afterwards he became addicted to drinking 
wine. During nearly forty years that he was King 
of Khorasan, not a day passed in which he did not 
drink after mid-day prayers; but he never drank 
wine in the morning. His sons, the whole of the 
soldiery, and the town's-people, followed his exam- 
ple in this respect, and seemed to vie with each 
other in debauchery and lasciviousness. He was a 
brave and valiant man. He often engaged sword 
in hand in fight, nay, frequently distinguished his 
prowess hand to hand several times in the course of 
the same fight. No person of the race of Taimur 
Beg ever equalled Sultan Hussain Mirza in the use 
of the scymitar. He had a turn for poetry, and com- 
posed a Di wan. He wrote in the Turki. His poet- 
ical name was Hussaini. Many of his verses are far 
from being bad, but the whole of the Mirza's Diwan 
is in the same measure. Although a prince of dignity, 
both as to years and extent of territory, he was as 
fond as a child of keeping butting rams, and of amu- 
sing himself with flying pigeons and cock-fighting." 

One of the most striking passages in the 
work is the royal author's account of the mag- 
nificence of the court and city of Herat, when 
he visited it in 1506; and especially his im- 
posing catalogue of the illustrious authors, art- 
ists, and men of genius, by whom it was then 
adorned. 

" The age of Sultan Hussain Mirza was certainly 
a wonderful age; and Khorasan, particularly the 
city of Heri, abounded with eminent men of unri- 
valled acquirements, each of whom made it his aim 
and ambition to carry to the highest perfection the 
art to which he devoted himself. Among these was 
the Moulana Abdal Rahman Jami,* to whom there 
was no person of that period who could be compar- 
ed, whether in respect to profane or sacred science. 
His poems are well known. The merits of the 
Mulla are of too exalted a nature to admit of being 
described by me ; but I have been anxious to bring 
the mention of his name, and an allusion to his ex- 
cellences, into these humble pages, for a good omen 
and a blessing!" 

He then proceeds to enumerate the names 
of between thirty and forty distinguished per- 
sons; ranking first the sages and theologians, 
to the number of eight or nine ; next the 
poets, about fifteen ; then two or three paint- 
ers ; and five or six performers and composers 
of music ; — of one of these he gives the fol- 
lowing instructive anecdote — 

" Another was Hussian Udi (the lutanist), who 
played with great taste on the lute, and composed 
elegantly. He could play, using only one string of 
his lute at a time. He had the fault of giving him- 
self many airs when desired to play. On one oc- 
casion Sheibani Khan desired him to play. After 
giving much trouble he played very ill, and besides, 
did not bring his own instrument, but one that was 
good for nothing. Sheibani Khan, on learning how 
matters stood, directed that, at that very party, he 
should receive a certain number of blows on the neck. 
This was one good deed that Sheibani Khan did in 
his day ; and indeed the affectation of such people 
deserves even more severe animadversion." 

In the seductions of this luxurious court, 
Baber's orthodox abhorrence to wine was first 
assailed with temptation : — and there is some- 
thing very naive, we think, in his account of 
his reasonings and feelings on the occasion. 



* No moral poet ever had a higher reputation 
than Jami. His poems are written with great 
beauty of language and versification, in a captivating 
strain of religious and philosophic mysticism. He 
is not merely admired for his sublimity as a poet, 
but venerated as a saint." 



" As we were guests at MozefTer Mirza s house, 
MozefTer Mirza placed me above himself, and hav- 
ing filled up a glass of welcome, the cupbeareis in 
waiting began to supply all who were of the party 
with pure wine, which they quaffed as if it had been 
the water of life. The party waxed warm, and the 
spirit mounted up to their heads. They took a fancy 
to make me drink too, and bring me into the same 
circle with themselves. Although, all thai lime, I 
had never been guilty of drinking wine, and from 
never having fallen into the practice was ignorant 
of the sensations it produced, yet I had a strong 
lurking inclination to wander in this desert, and my 
heart was much disposed to pass the stream. In 
my boyhood I had no wish for it, and did not know 
its pleasures or pains. When my father at any time 
asked me to drink wine, I excused myself, and ab- 
stained. After my father's death, by the guardian 
care of Khwajeh Kazi, I remained pure and unde- 
filed. I abstained even from forbidden foods; how 
then was I likely to indulge in wine ? Afterwards 
when, from the force of youthful imagination and 
constitutional impulse, I got a desire for wine, I had 
nobody about my person to invite me to gratify my 
wishes ; nay, there was not one who even suspected 
my secret longing for it. Though I had the appe- 
tite, therefore, it was difficult for me, unsolicited as 
I was, to indulge such unlawful desires. It now 
came into my head, that as they urged me so much, 
and as, besides, I had come into a refined city like 
Heri, in which every means of heightening pleasure 
and gaiety was possessed in perfection ; in which 
all the incentives and apparatus of enjoyment were 
combined with an invitation to indulgence, if I did 
not seize the present moment, I never could expect 
such another. I therefore resolved to drink wine ! 
But it siruck me, that as Badia-ez-zeman Mirza 
was the eldest brother, and as I had declined receiv- 
ing it from his hand, and in his house, he might now 
take offence. I therefore mentioned this difficulty 
which had occurred to me. My excuse was ap- 
proved of, and I was not pressed any more, at this 
party, to drink. It was settled, however, that the 
next time we met at Badia-ez-zeman Mirza's, I 
should drink when pressed by the two Miizas." 

By some providential accident, however, 
the conscientious prince escaped from this 
meditated lapse; and it was not till some 
years after, that he gave way to the long- 
cherished and resisted propensity. At what 
particular occasion he first fell into the snare, 
unfortunately is not recorded — as there is a 
blank of several years in the Memoirs pre- 
vious to 1519. In that year, however, we 
find him a confirmed toper; and nothing, in- 
deed, can be more ludicrous than the accuracy 
and apparent truth with which he continues 
to chronicle all his subsequent and very fre- 
quent excesses. The Eastern votary of in- 
toxication has a pleasant way of varying his 
enjoyments, which was never taken in the 
West. When the fluid elements of drunken- 
ness begin to pall on him, he betakes him to 
what is learnedly called a maajun, being a sort 
of electuary or confection, made up with 
pleasant spices, and rendered potent by a 
large admixture of opium, bang, and other 
narcotic ingredients: producing a solid intoxi- 
cation of a very delightful and desirable de- 
scription. One of the first drinking matches 
that is described makes honourable mention 
of this variety : — 

" The maajun-takers and spirit-drinkers, as they 
have different tastes, are very apt to take offence 
with each other. I said, ' Don't spoil the cordiality 
of the party ; whoever wishes to drink spirits, let 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



283 



liim drink Spirits; and let him that prefers maajun, 
take maajun ; and let not the one party give any 
idle or provoking language to the other.' Some sat 
down to spirits, some to maajun. The party went 
on for some time tolerably well. Baba Jan Kabuzi 
had not been in the boat ; we had sent for him when 
we reached the royal tents. He chose to drink 
spirits. Terdi Muhammed Kipchak, too, was sent 
for, and joined the spirit-drinkers. As the spirit- 
drinkers and maajun-takers never can agree in one 
party, the spirit-bibing party began to indulge in 
foolish and idle conversation, and to make provok- 
ing remarks on maajun and maajun-takers. Baba 
Jan, too, getting drunk, talked very absurdly. The 
tipplers, filling up glass after glass for Terdi Mu- 
hammed, made him drink them off, so that in a 
very short time be was mad drunk. Whatever 
exertions I could make to preserve peace, were all 
inavailing; there was much uproar and wrangling. 
The party became quite burdensome and unplea- 
sant, and soon broke up." 

The second day after, we find the royal 
Oacchanal still more grievously overtaken : 

" We continued drinking spirits in the boat till 
bed-time prayers, when, being completely drunk, 
we mounted, and taking torches in our hands came 
at full gallop back to the camp from the river-side, 
falling sometimes on one side of the horse, and 
sometimes on the other. I was miserably drunk, 
and next morning, when they told me of our having 
galloped into the camp with lighted torches in our 
hands, T had not the slightest recolleciion of the 
circumstance. After coming home, I vomited 
plentifully." 

Even in the middle of a harassing and des- 
ultory campaign, there is no intermission of 
this excessive jollity, though it sometimes puts 
the parties into jeopardy, — for example : — 

" We continued at this place drinking till the sun 
was on the decline, when we set out. Those v\ho 
had been of the party were completely drunk. 
Syed Kasim was so drunk, that two of his servants 
were obliged to put him on horseback, and brought 
him to the camp with great difficulty. Dost Mu- 
hammed Bakir was so far gone, that Antin Mu- 
hammed Terkhan, Masti Chehreh, and those who 
were along with him, were unable, with all their 
exertions, to get him on horseback. They poured 
a great quantity of water over him, but all to no 
purpose. At this moment a body of Afghans ap- 
peared in sight. Amin Muhammed Terkhan, 
being very drunk, gravely gave it as his opinion, 
that rather than leave him, in the condition in which 
he was, to fall into the hands of the enemy, it was 
better at once to cut off his head, and carry it 
away. Making another exertion, however, with 
much difficulty, they contrived to throw him upon 
a horse, which they led along, and so brought 
him off." 

On some occasions they contrive to be 
drunk four times in twenty-four hours. The 
gallant prince contents himself with a strong 
maajun one day ; but 

" Next morning we had a drinking party in the 
same tent. We continued drinking till night. On 
the following morning we again had an early cup. 
and, getting intoxicated, went to sleep. About 
noon-day prayers, we left Istalif, and I took a 
maajun on the road. It was about afternoon prayers 
before I reached Behzadi. The crops were ex- 
tremely good. While I was riding round the har- 
vest-fields, such of my companions as were fond 
of wine" began to contrive another drinking-bout. 
Although I had taken a maajun, yet, as the crops 
were uncommonly fine ! we sat down under some 
trees that had yielded a plentiful load of fruit, and 
began to drink. We kept up the party in the same 



place till bed-time prayers. Mull Mahmud Khalifeh 
having arrived, we invited him to join us. Abdalla, 
who had got very drunk, made an observation 
which affected Khalifeh. Without recoil' eting that 
Mulla Mahmud was present, he repeated the verse, 

{Persian.) Examine whom you will, you will find 
him suffering from the same wound. 

Mully Mahmud. who did not drink, reproved Ab- 
dalla for repeating this verse with levity.* Abdalla, 
recovering his judgment, was in terriiile perturba- 
tion, and. conversed in a wonderfully smooth and 
sweet strain all the rest of the evening." 

In a year or two after this, when he seems 
to be in a course of unusual indulgence, we 
meet with the following edifying remark : 
" As I intend, when forty years old, to abstain 
from wine ; and as I now want somewhat less 
than one year of being forty, I drink wine 
most copiously!" When forty comes, how- 
ever, we hear nothing of this sage resolution 
— but have a regular record of the wine and 
maajun parties as before, up to the year 1527. 
In that year, however, he is seized with rather 
a sudden fit of penitence, and has the resolu- 
tion to begin a course of rigorous reform. 
There is something rather picturesque in his 
very solemn and remarkable account of this 
great revolution in his habits : 

" On Monday the 23d of the first Jemadi, I had 
mounted to survey my posts, and, in the course of 
my ride, was seriously struck with the reflection 
that I had always resolved, one time or another, to 
make an effectual repentance, and that some traces 
of a hankering after the renunciation of forbidden 
works had ever remained in my heart. Having 
sent for the gold and silver goblets and cups, with 
all the other utensils used for drinking parties, I 
directed them to be broken, and renounced the use 
of wine — purifying my mind ! The fragments of 
the goblets, and other utensils of gold and silver, I 
directed to be divided among Derwishes and the 
poor. The first person who followed me in my re- 
pentance was Asas, who also accompanied me in 
my resolution of ceasing to cut the beard, and of 
allowing it to grow.t That night and the following, 
numbers of Amirs and courtiers, soldiers and per- 
sons not in the service, to the number of nearly 
three hundred men, made vows of reformation. 
The wine which we had with us we poured on the 
ground ! I ordered that the wine brought by Baba 
Dost should have salt thrown into it, that it might 
be make into vinegar. On the spot where the wine 
had been poured out, I directed a wain to be sunk 
and built of stone, and close by the wain an alms- 
house to be erected." 

He then issued a magnificent Firman, an- 
nouncing his reformation, and recommending 
its example to all his subjects. But he still 
persists, we find, in the use of a mild maajun. 
We are sorry to be obliged to add, that though 
he had the firmness to persevere to the last 
in his abstinence from wine, the sacrifice 
seems to have cost him very dear; and he 
continued to the very end of his life to hanker 
after his broken wine-cups, and to look back 
with fond regret to the delights he had ab- 



* " This verse, I presume, is from a religious 
poem, and has a mystical meaning. The profane 
application of it is the ground of offence." 

T " This vow was sometimes made by persons 
who set out on a war asainst the Infidels. They 
did not trim the beard till they returned victorious. 
Some vows of a similar nature may be found in 
Scripture." 



284 



HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



jured for ever. There is something abso- 
lutely pathetic, as well as amiable, in the 
following eandid avowal in a letter written 
the very year before his death to one of his 
old drinking companions : — 

" In a letter which I wrote to Abdalla, I men- 
tioned that I had much difficulty in reconciling my- 
self to the desert of penitence ; but that I had 
resolution enough to persevere, — 
(Turki verse) 

I am distressed since I renounced wine ; 
I am confounded and unfit for business, — 
Regret leads me to penitence, 
Penitence leads me to regret. 
Indeed, last year, my desire and longing for. wine 
and social parties were beyond measure excessive. 
It even came to such a length that I have found 
myself shedding tears from vexation and disappoint- 
ment. In the present year, praise be to God, these 
troubles are over, and I ascribe them chiefly to the 
occupation afforded to my mind by a poetical trans- 
lation, on which I have employed myself. Let me 
advise you too, to adopt a life of abstinence. Social 
parties and wine are pleasant, in company with our 
jolly friends and old boon companions. But with 
whom can you enjoy the social cup ? With whom 
can you indulge in the pleasures of wine ? If you 
have only Shir Ahmed, and Haider Kulli, for the 
companions of your gay hours and jovial goblet, 
you can surely find no great difficulty in consenting 
to the sacrifice. I conclude with every good wish." 

We have mentioned already that Baber ap- 
pears to have been of a frank and generous 
character — and there are, throughout the Me- 
moirs, various traits of clemency and tender- 
ness of heart, scarcely to have been expected 
in an Eastern monarch and professional war- 
rior. He weeps ten whole days for the loss 
of a friend who fell over a precipice after one 
of their drinking parties j and spares the lives, 
and even restores the domains of various 
chieftains, who had betrayed his confidence, 
and, afterwards fallen into his power. Yet 
there are traces of Asiatic ferocity, and of a 
hard-hearted wastefulness of life, which re- 
mind us that we are beyond the pale of Eu- 
ropean gallantry and Christian compassion. 
In his wars in Afghan and India, the prisoners 
are commonly butchered in cold blood after 
the action — and pretty uniformly a triumphal 
pyramid is erected of their skulls. These 
horrible executions, too, are performed with 
much solemnity before the royal pavilion ; 
and on one occasion, it is incidentally record- 
ed, that such was the number of prisoners 
brought forward for this infamous butchery, 
that the sovereign's tent had three times to 
be removed to a different station — the ground 
before it being so drenched with blood and 
encumbered with quivering carcasses ! On 
one occasion, and on one only, an attempt 
was made to poison him — the mother of one 
of the sovereigns whom he had dethroned 
having bribed his cooks and tasters to mix 
death in his repast. Upon the detection of 
the plot, the taster was cut to pieces, the cook 
flayed alive, and the scullions trampled to 
death by elephants. Such, however, was the 
respect paid to rank, or the indulgence to 
maternal resentment, that the prime mover 
of the whole conspiracy, the queen dowager, 
is merely put under restraint, and has a con- 



tribution levied on her private foitune. The 
following brief anecdote speaks volumes as to 
the difference of European and Asiatic man- 
ners and tempers : — 

" Another of his wives was Katak Begum, who 
was the foster-sister of this same Terkhan Begum. 
Sultan Ahmed Mirza married her for love. He was 
prodigiously attached to her, and she governed him 
with absolute sway. She drank wine. During her 
life, the Sultan durst not venture to frequent any 
other of his ladies. At last, however, he put her to 
death, and delivered himself from this reproach." 

In several of the passages we have cited, 
there are indications of this ambitious war- 
rior's ardent love for fine flowers, beautiful 
gardens, and bright waters. But' the work 
abounds with traits of this amiable and, with 
reference to some of these anecdotes, appar- 
ently ill-sorted propensity. In one place he 
says — 

"In the warm season they are covered with the 
chekin-laleh grass in^ a very beautiful manner, and 
the Aimaks and Turks resort to them. In the 
skirts of these mountains the ground is richly di- 
versified by various kinds of tulips. I once directed 
them to be counted, and they brought in thirty-two 
or thirty-three different sorts of tulips. There is 
one species which has a scent in some degree like 
the rose, and which I termed laleh-gul-bui (the rose- 
scented tulip). This species is found only in the 
Desht-e-Sheikh (the Sheikh's plain), in a small spot 
of ground, and nowhere else. In the skirts of the 
same hills below Perwan, is produced the laleh-sed- 
berg (or hundred-leaved tulip), which is likewise 
found only in one narrow spot of ground, as we 
emerge from the straits of Ghurbend." 

And a little after — 

" Few quarters possess a district that can rival 
Istalif. A large river runs through it, and on either 
side of it are gardens, green, gay, and beautiful. Its 
water is so cold, that there is no need of icing it ; 
and it is particularly pure. In this district is a gar- 
den, called Bagh-e-Kilan (or the Great Garden), 
which Ulugh Beg Mirza seized upon. I paid the 
price of the garden to the proprietors, and received 
from them a grant of it. On the outside of the 
garden are large and beautiful spreading plane 
trees, under the shade of which there are agreeable 
spots finely sheltered. A perennial stream, large 
enough to turn a mill, runs through the garden; 
and on its banks are planted planes and other trees. 
Formerly this stream Mowed in a winding and 
crooked course, but I ordered its course to be al- 
tered according to a regular plan, which added 
greatly to the beauty of the place. Lower down 
than these villages, and about a koss or a koss and 
a half above the level plain, on the lower skirts of 
the hills, is a fountain, named Khwajeh-seh-yaran 
(Kwajeh three friends), around which there are 
three species of trees ; above the fountain are many 
beautiful plane-trees, which yield a pleasant shade. 
On the two sides of the fountain, on small emi- 
nences at the bottom of the hills, there are a num. 
ber of oak trees ; except on these two spots, where 
there are groves of oak, there is not an oak to be 
met with on the hills to the west of Kabul. In front 
of this fountain, towards the plain, there are many 
spots covered with the flowery Arghwan* tree, anil 
besides these Arghwan plots, there are none else 
in the whole country." 

We shall add but one other notice of this 



" The name Arghwan is generally applied to the 
anemone ; but in Afghanistan it is given to a beau- 
tiful flowering shrub, which grows nearly to the 
size of a tree." 



MEMOIRS OF BABER. 



285 



elegant taste — though on the occasion there 
mentioned, the flowers were aided by a less 
delicate sort of excitement. 

" This day I ate a maajun. While under its in- 
fluence, I visited some beautiful gardens. In dif- 
ferent beds, the ground was covered with purple 
and yel!o\v Arghwan flowers. On one hand were 
beds of yellow flowers in bloom ; on the other hand, 
red flowers were in blossom. In many places they 
sprung up in the same bed, mingled together as if 
they had been flung and scattered abroad. I took 
my seat on a rising ground near the camp, to enjoy 
the view of all the flower-pots. On the six sides 
of this eminence they were formed as into regular 
beds. On one side were yellow flowers ; on another 
the purple, laid out in triangular beds. On two 
other sides, there were fewer flowers; but, as far 
as the eye could reach, there were flower-gardens 
of a similar kind. In the neighbourhood of Per- 
shawer, during the spring, the flower-plots are ex- 
quisitely beautiful." 

We have, now enabled our readers, we 
think, to judge pretty fairly of the nature of 
this very curious volume; and shall only 
present them with a few passages from tw r o 
letters written by the valiant author in the 
last year of his life. The first is addressed 
to his favourite son and successor Humaiun. 
whom he had settled in the government of 
Samarcand, and who was at this time a sover- 
eign of approved valour and prudence. There 
is a very diverting mixture of sound political 
counsel and minute criticism on writing and 
composition, in this paternal effusion. We 
can give but a small part of it. 

" In many of your letters you complain of sepa- 
ration from your friends. It is wrong for a prince 
to indulge in such a complaint. 

1 ' There is certainly no greater bondage than that 
in which a king is placed ; but it ill becomes him to 
complain of inevitable separation. 

"In compliance with my wishes, you have in- 
deed written me letters, but you certainly never 
read them over ; for had you attempted to read 
them, you must have found it absolutely impossible, 
and would then undoubtedly have put them by. I 
contrived indeed to decipher and comprehend the 
meaning of your last letter, but with much diffi- 
culty. It is excessively confused and crabbed. Who 
ever saw a Moamma (a riddle or a charade) in 
prose ? Your spelling is not bad, yet not quite 
correct. You have written iltafat with a toe (in- 
stead of a te), and Ttuling with a he (instead of a 
kaf). Your letter may indeed be read ; but in 
consequence of the far-fetched words you have 
employed, the meaning is by no means very intel- 
ligible. You certainly do not excel in letter- writing, 
and fail chiefly because you have too great a desire 
to show your acquirements. For the future, you 
should write unaffectedly, with clearness, using 
plain words, which would cost less trouble both to 
the writer and reader." 

The other letter is to one of his old com- 
panions in arms ; — and considering that it is 
written by an ardent and ambitious conqueror, 
from the capital of his new empire of Hin- 
dustan, it seems to us a very striking proof, 
not only of the nothingness of high fortune, 



but of the native simplicity and amiableness 
of this Eastern highlander. 

'• My solicitude to visit my western dominions is 
boundless, and great beyond expression. The 
affairs of Hindustan have at length, however, been 
reduced into a certain degree of order; and I trust 
in Almighty God that the time is near at hand, 
when, through the grace of the Most High, every 
thing will be completely settled in this country. 
As soon as matters are brought into that state, I 
shall, God willing, set out tor your quarter, with- 
out losing a moment's time. How is it possible 
that the delights of those lands should ever be 
erased from the heart? Above all, how is it possi- 
ble for one like me, who have made a vow of ab- 
stinence from wine, and of purity of life, to forget 
the delicious melons and grapes of that pleasant 
region? They very recently brought me a single 
musk-melon. While cutting it up, 1 felt myself 
affected with a stro?ig feeling of loneliness, and a 
sense of my exile from my native country; and I 
could not help shedding tears while I was eatingit!" 

On the whole, we cannot help having a 
liking for "the Tiger" — and the romantic, 
though somewhat apocryphal account that is 
given of his death, has no tendency to diminish 
our partiality. It is recorded by Abulfazi, 
and other native historians, that in the year 
after these Memoirs cease, Humaiun, the be- 
loved son of Baber, was brought to Agra in a 
state of the most miserable health : 

" When all hopes from medicine were over, and 
while several men of skill were talking to the em- 
peror of the melancholy situation of his son, Abul 
Baka, a personage highly venerated for his know- 
ledge and piety, remarked to Baber, that in such a 
case the Almighty had sometimes vouchsafed to 
receive the most valuable thing possessed by one 
friend, as an offering in exchange for the life of 
another. Baber, exclaiming that, of all things, his 
life was dearest to Humaiun, as Humaiun's was to 
him, and that, next to the life of Humaiun, his own 
was what he most valued, devoted his life to Hea- 
ven as a sacrifice for his son's ! The noblemen 
around him entreated him to retract the rash vow, 
and, in place of his first offering, to give the dia- 
mond taken at Agra, and reckoned the most valu- 
able on earth : that the ancient sages had said, 
that it was the dearest of our worldly possessions 
alone that was to be offered to Heaven. But he 
persisted in his resolution, declaring that no stone, 
of whatever value, could be put in competition with 
his life. He three times walked round the dying 
prince, a solemnity similar to that used in sacrifices 
and heave-offerings, and, retiring, prayed earnestly 
to God. After some time he was heard to exclaim, 
'I have borne it away! I have borne it away!' 
The Mussulman historians assure us, that Humaiun 
almost immediately began to recover, and that, in 
proportion as he recovered, the health and strength 
of Baber visibly decayed. Baber communicated 
his dying instructions toKhwajeh Khalifeh, Kamber 
Ali Beg, Terdi Beg, and Hindu Beg, who were 
then at court commending Humaiun to their pro- 
tection. With that unvarying affection for his 
family which he showed in all the circumstances 
of his life, he strongly besought Humaiun to be 
kind and forgiving to his brothers. Humaiun pro- 
mised — and, what in such circumstances is rare, 
kept his promise." 



POETRY. 



(Marti), 1819.) 

Specimens of the British Poets ; with Biographical and Critical Notices, and an Essay on English 
Poetry. By Thomas Campbell. 7 vols. 8vo. London: 1819. 



We would rather see Mr. Campbell as a 
poet, than as a commentator on poetry : — be- 
cause we would rather have a solid addition 
to the sum of our treasures, than the finest or 
most judicious account of their actual amount. 
But we are very glad to see him in any way: 
— and think the work which he has now given 
us very excellent and delightful. Still, how- 
ever, we think there is some little room for 
complaint ; and, feeling that we have not got 
all we were led to expect, are unreasonable 
enough to think that the learned author still 
owes us an arrear: which we hope he will 
handsomely pay up in the next edition. 

When a great poet and a man of distin- 
guished talents announces a large selection 
of English poetry, ''with biographical and 
critical notices," we naturally expect such 
notices of all, or almost all the authors, of 
whose works he thinks it worth while to 
favour us with specimens. The biography 
sometimes may be unattainable — and it may 
still more frequently be uninteresting — but 
the criticism must always be valuable ; and, 
indeed, is obviously that which must be 
looked to as constituting the chief value of 
any such publication. There is no author so 
obscure, if at all entitled to a place in this 
register, of whom it would not be desirable to 
know the opinion of such a man as Mr. Camp- 
bell — and none so mature and settled in fame, 
upon whose beauties and defects, and poetical 
character in general, the public would not 
have much to learn from such an authority. 
Now, there are many authors, and some of 
no mean note, of whom he has not conde- 
scended to say one word, either in the Essay, 
or in the notices prefixed to the citations. Of 
Jonathan Swift, for example, all that is here 
recorded is "Born 1667 — died 1744;" and 
Otway is despatched in the same summary 
manner— "Born 1651— died 1685." Mar- 
lowe is commemorated in a single page, and 
Butler in half of one. All this is rather ca- 
pricious : — But this is not all. Sometimes the 
notices are entirely biographical, and some- 
times entirely critical. We humbly conceive 
they ought always to have been of both des- 
criptions. At all events, we ought in every 
case to have had some criticism. — since this 
could always have been had, and could 
scarcely have failed to be valuable. Mr*. C. ; 
we think, has been a little lazy. 
286 



If he were like most authors, or even like 
most critics, we could easily have pardoned 
this ; for we very seldom find any work too 
shprt. It is the singular goodness of his criti- 
cisms that makes us regret their fewness; for 
nothing, we think, can be more fair, judicious 
and discriminating, and at the same time 
more fine, delicate and original, than the 
greater part of the discussions with which he 
has here presented us. It is very rare to find 
so much sensibility to the beauties of poetry, 
united with so much toleration for its faults;' 
and so exact a perception of the merits of 
every particular style, interfering so little 
with a just estimate of all. Poets, to be sure, 
are on the w T hole, we think, very indulgent 
judges of poetry; and that not so much, we 
verily believe, from any partiality to their own 
vocation, or desire to exalt their fraternity, 
as from their being more constantly alive to 
those impulses which it is the business of 
poetry to excite, and more quick to catch and 
to follow out those associations on which its 
efficacy chiefly depends. If it be true, as 
we have formerly endeavoured to show, \% ith 
reference to this very author, that poetry pro- 
duces all its greater effects, and works its 
more memorable enchantments, not so much 
by the images it directly presents, as by these 
which it suggests t6 the fancy; and melts or 
inflames us less by the fires which it applies 
from without, than by those which it kindles 
within, and of which the fuel is in our own 
bosoms, — it will be readily understood how 
these effects should be most powerful in the 
sensitive breast of a poet; and how a spark, 
which would have been instantly quenched 
in the duller atmosphere of an ordinary brain, 
may create a blaze in his combustible imagi- 
nation, to warm and enlighten the world. 
The greater poets, accordingly, have almost 
always been the warmest admirers, and the 
most liberal patrons of poetry. The smaller 
only — your Laureates and Ballad-mongers — 
are envious and irritable — jealous even of the 
dead, and less desirous of the praise of others 
than avaricious of their own. 

But though a poet is thus likely to be a 
gentler critic of poetry than another, and, 
by having a finer sense of its beauties, to be 
better qualified for the most pleasing and im- 
portant part of his office, there is another 
requisite in which we should be afraid he 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



287 



would generally be found wanting, especially 
in a work of the large and comprehensive 
nature of that now before us — we mean, in 
absolute fairness and impartiality towards the 
different schools or styles of poetry which he 
may have occasion to estimate and compare. 
Even the most common and miscellaneous 
reader has a peculiar taste in this way — and 
lias generally erected for himself some ob- 
scure but exclusive standard of excellence, 
by which he measures the pretensions of all 
that come under his view. One man admires 
witty and satirical poetry, and sees no beauty 
in rural imagery or picturesque description; 
while another doats on Idyls and Pastorals, 
and will not allow the affairs of polite life to 
form a subject for verse. One is for simplic- 
ity and pathos ; another for magnificence and 
Bplendour. One is devoted to the Muse of 
terror ; another to that of love. Some are all 
for blood and battles, and some for music and 
moonlight — some for emphatic sentiments, 
and some for melodious verses. Even those 
whose taste is the least exclusive, have a lean- 
ing to one class of composition rather than to 
another; and overrate the beauties which fall 
in with their own propensities and associations 
— while they are palpably unjust to those 
which wear a different complexion, or spring 
from a different race. 

But, if it be difficult or almost impossible 
to meet with an impartial judge for the whole 
great family of genius, even among those 
quiet and studious readers who ought to find 
delight even in their variety, it is obvious that 
this bias and obliquity of judgment must be 
still more incident to one who, by being him- 
self a Poet, must not only prefer one school 
of poetry to all others, but must actually be- 
long to it, and be disposed, as a pupil, or still 
more as a Master, to advance its pretensions 
above those of all its competitors. Like the 
votaries or leaders of other sects, successful 
poets have been but too apt to establish ex- 
clusive and arbitrary creeds; and to invent 
articles of faith, the slightest violation of 
which effaces the merit of all other virtues. 
Addicting themselves, as they are apt to do, 
to the exclusive cultivation of that style to 
which the bent of their own genius naturally 
inclines them, they lc*»k everywhere for those 
beauties of which it i& peculiarly susceptible, 
and are disgusted if they cannot be found. — 
Like discoverers in science, or improvers in 
art. they see nothing in the whole system but 
their own discoveries and improvements, and 
undervalue every thing that cannot be con- 
nected with their own studies and glory. As 
the Chinese mapmakers allot all the lodgeable 
area of the earth to their own nation, and 
thrust the other countries of the world into 
little outskirts and by-corners — so poets are 
disposed to represent their own little field of 
exertion as occupying all the sunny part of 
Parnassus, and to exhibit the adjoining regions 
under terrible shadows and most unmerciful 
foreshortenings. 

With those impressions of the almost in- 
evitable partiality of poetical judgments in 
general, we could not recollect that Mr. Camp- 



bell was himself a Master in a distinct scnooi 
of poetry, and distinguished by a very pecu- 
liar and fastidious style of composition, with- 
out being apprehensive that the effects of this 
bias would be apparent in his work; and that, 
with all his talent and discernment, he would 
now and then be guilty of great, though un- 
intended injustice, to some of those whose 
manner was most opposite to his own. We 
are happy to say that those apprehensions 
have proved entirely groundless ; and that 
nothing in the volumes before us is more ad- 
mirable, or to us more surprising, than the 
perfect candour and undeviating fairness with 
which the learned author passes judgment on 
all the different authors who come before him ; 
— the quick and true perception he has of the 
most opposite and almost contradictory beau- 
ties — the good-natured and liberal allowance 
he makes for the disadvantages of each age 
and individual — and the temperance and 
brevity and firmness with which he reproves 
the excessive severity of critics less entitled 
to be severe. No one indeed, we will venture 
to affirm, ever placed himself in the seat of 
judgment with more of a judicial temper — 
though, to obviate invidious comparisons, we 
must beg leave just to add, that being called 
on to pass judgment only on the dead, whose 
faults were no longer corrigible, or had already 
been expiated by appropriate pains, his tem- 
per was less tried, and his severities less pro- 
voked, than in the case of living offenders, — 
and that the very number and variety of the 
errors that called for animadversion, in the 
course of his wide survey, must have made 
each particular case appear comparatively 
insignificant, and mitigated the sentence of 
individual condemnation. 

It is to this last circumstance, of the large 
and comprehensive range which he was ob- 
liged to take, and the great extent and variety 
of the society in which he was compelled to 
mingle, that we are inclined to ascribe, not 
only the general mildness and indulgence of 
his judgments, but his happy emancipation 
from those narrow and limitary maxims by 
which w T e have already said that poets are so 
peculiarly apt to be entangled. As a large 
and familiar intercourse with men of different 
habits and dispositions never fails, in charac- 
ters of any force or generosity, to dispel the 
prejudices with which we at first regard them, 
and to lower our estimate of our own superior 
happiness and wisdom, so, a very ample and 
extensive course of reading in any depart- 
ment of letters, tends naturally to enlarge our 
narrow principles of judgment; and not only 
to cast down the idols before which we had 
formerly abased ourselves, but to disclose to 
us the might and the majesty of much that 
we had mistaken and contemned. 

In this point of view, we think such a work 
as is now before us, likely to be of great use 
to ordinary readers of poetry — not only as 
unlocking to them innumerable new springs 
of enjoyment and admiration, but as having 
a tendency to correct and liberalize their 
judgments of their old favourites, and to 
strengthen and enliven all those faculties by 



288 



POETRY. 



which they derive pleasure from such studies. 
Nor would the benefit, if it once extended so 
far. by any means stop there. The character 
of our poetry depends not a little on the taste 
of our poetical readers : — and though some 
bards have always been before their age, and 
some behind it, the greater part must be 
pretty nearly on its level. Present popularity, 
whatever disappointed writers may say, is, 
after all, the only safe passage of future glory; 
■ — and it is really as unlikely that good poetry 
should be produced in any quantity where it 
is not relished, as that cloth should be manu- 
factured and thrust into the market, of a 
pattern and fashion for which there was no 
demand. A shallow and uninstructed taste 
is indeed the most flexible and inconstant — 
and is tossed about by every breath of doc- 
trine, and every wind of authority ; so as 
neither to derive any permanent delight from 
the same works, nor to assure any permanent 
fame to their authors ; — while a taste that is 
formed upon a wide and large survey of en- 
during models, not only affords a secure basis 
for all future judgments, but must compel, 
whenever it is general in any society, a salu- 
tary conformity to its great principles from all 
who depend on its suffrage. — To accomplish 
such an object, the general study of a work 
like this certainly is not enough: — But it 
would form an excellent preparation for more 
extensive reading — and would, of itself, do 
much to open the eyes of many self-satisfied 
persons, and startle them into a sense of their 
own ignorance, and the poverty and paltriness 
of many of their ephemeral favourites. Con- 
sidered as a nation, we are yet but very im- 
perfectly recovered from that strange and 
ungrateful forgetfulness of our older poets, 
which began with the Restoration, and con- 
tinued almost unbroken till after the middle 
of the last century. — Nor can the works which 
have chiefly tended to dispel it among the 
instructed orders, be ranked in a higher class 
than this which is before us. — Percy's Relics 
of Antient Poetry produced, we believe, the 
first revulsion — and this was followed up by 
Wharton's History of Poetry. — Johnson's Lives 
of the Poets did something; — and the great 
effect has been produced by the modern com- 
mentators on Shakespeare. Those various 
works recommended the older writers, and 
reinstated them in some of their honours ; — 
but still the works themselves were not placed 
before the eyes of ordinary readers. This 
was done in part, perhaps overdone, by the 
entire republication of some of our older dra- 
matists — and with better effect by Mr. Ellis's 
Specimens. If the former, however, was 
rather too copious a supply for the returning 
appetite of the public, the latter was too 
scanty ; and both were confined to too narrow 
a period of time to enable the reader to enjoy 
the variety, and to draw the comparisons, by 
which he might be most pleased and instruct- 
ed. — Sou they 's continuation of Ellis did harm 
rather than good ; for though there is some 
cleverness in the introduction, the work itself 
is executed in a crude, petulant, and super- 
ficial manner, — and bears all the marks of 



being a mere bookseller's speculation. — An 
we have heard nothing of it from the time of 
its first publication, we suppose it has had the 
success it deserved. 

There was great room therefore, — and, we 
will even say, great occasion, for such a work 
as this of Mr. Campbell's, in the present state 
of our literature : — and we are persuaded, that 
all who care about poetry, and are not already 
acquainted with the authors of whom it treats 
— and even all who are — cannot possibly do 
better than read it fairly through, from the 
first page to the last — without skipping the 
extracts which they know, or those which may 
not at first seem very attractive. There is no 
reader, we wiU venture to say, who will rise 
from the perusal even of these partial and 
scanty fragments, without a fresh and deep 
sense of the matchless richness, variety, and 
originality of English Poetry : while the jux- 
taposition and arrangement of the pieces not 
only gives room for endless comparisons and 
contrasts, — but displays, as it were in minia- 
ture, the whole of its wonderful progress ; and 
sets before us, as in a great gallery of pictures, 
the w T hole course and history of the art, from 
its first rude and infant beginnings, to its 
maturity, and perhaps its decline. While it 
has all the grandeur and instruction that be- 
longs to such a gallery, it is free from the 
perplexity and distraction which is generally 
complained of in such exhibitions ; as each 
piece is necessarily considered separately and 
in succession, and the mind cannot wander, 
like the eye, through the splendid labyrinth 
in which it is enchanted. Nothing, we think, 
can be more delightful, than thus at our ease 
to trace, through all its periods, vicissitudes, 
and aspects, the progress of this highest and 
most intellectual of all the arts — coloured as 
it is in every age by the manners of the times 
which produce it, and embodying, besides 
those flights of fancy and touches of pathos 
that constitute its more immediate essence, 
much of the wisdom and much of the morality 
that was then current among the people ; and 
thus presenting us, not merely with almost 
all that genius has ever created for delight, 
but with a brief chronicle and abstract of all 
that was once interesting to the generations 
which have gone by. 

The steps of the progress of such an art, 
and the circumstances by which they have 
been effected, would form, of themselves, a 
large and interesting theme of speculation. 
Conversant as poetry necessarily is with all 
that touches human feelings, concerns, and 
occupations, its character must have been im- 
pressed by every change in the moral and 
political condition of society, and must even 
retain the lighter traces of their successive 
follies, amusements, and pursuits ; while, in 
the course of ages, the very multiplication 
and increasing business of the people have 
forced it through a progress not wholly dis- 
similar to that which the same causes have 
produced on the agriculture and landscape of 
the country ; — whereat first we had rude and 
dreary wastes, thinly sprinkled with sunny 
spots of simple cultivation — then vast forests 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



289 



and chases, stretching far around feudal cas- 
tles and pinnacled abbeys — then woodland 
hamlets, and goodly mansions, and gorgeous 
gardens, and parks rich with waste fertility, 
and lax habitations — and. finally, crowded 
cities, and road-side villas, and brick-walled 
gardens, and turnip-fields, and canals, and 
artificial ruins, and ornamented farms, and 
cottages trellised over with exotic plants ! 

But, to escape from those metaphors and 
enigmas to the business before us, we must 
remark, that in order to give any tolerable 
idea of the poetry which was thus to be rep- 
resented, it was necessary that the specimens 
to be exhibited should be of some compass 
and extent. We have heard their length 
complained of — but we think with very little 
justice. Considering the extent of the works 
from which they are taken, they are almost 
all but inconsiderable fragments; and where 
the original was of an Epic or Tragic charac- 
ter, greater abridgment would have been 
mere mutilation, — and would have given only 
such a specimen of the whole, as a brick 
might do of a building. From the earlier and 
less familiar authors, we rather think the cita- 
tions are too short ; and, even from those that 
are more generally known, we do not well 
see how they could have been shorter, with 
any safety to the professed object, and only 
use, of the publication. That object, we con- 
ceive, was to give specimens of English 
poetry, from its earliest to its latest periods; 
and it would be a strange rule to have fol- 
lowed, in making such a selection, to leave 
out the best and most popular. The work 
certainly neither is, nor professes to be, a col- 
lection from obscure and forgotten authors — 
but specimens of all who have merit enough 
to deserve our remembrance ; — and if some 
few have such redundant merit or good for- 
tune as to be in the hands and the minds of 
all the world, it was necessary, even then, to 
give some extracts from them, — that the 
series might be complete, and that there 
might be room for comparison with others, 
and for tracing the progress of the art in the 
strains of its best models and their various 
imitators. 

In one instance, and one only, Mr. C. has 
declined doing this duty : and left the place 
of one great luminary to be filled up by recol- 
lections that he must have presumed would 
be universal. He has given but two pages to 
Shakespeare — and not a line from any of his 
plays ! Perhaps he has done rightly. A 
knowledge of Shakespeare may be safely pre- 
sumed, we believe, in every reader ; and, if 
he had begun to cite his Beauties, there is no 
saying where he would have ended. A little 
book, calling itself Beauties of Shakespeare, 
was published some years ago, and shown, as 
we have heard, to Mr. Sheridan. He turned 
over the leaves for some time with apparent 
satisfaction, and then said, "This is very 
well ; but where are the other seven volumes ?" 
There is no other author, however, whose 
fame is such as to justify a similar ellipsis, 
or whose works can be thus elegantly under- 
stood, in a collection of good poetry. Mr. C. 
37 



has complied perhaps too far with the popular 
prejudice, in confining his citations from Mil- 
ton to the Comus and the smaller pieces, and 
leaving the Paradise Lost to the memory of 
his readers. But though we do not think the 
extracts by any means too long on the whole, 
we are certainly of opinion that some are too 
long and others too short ; and that many, 
especially in the latter case, are not very 
well selected. There is far too little of Mar- 
lowe for instance, and too much of Shirley, 
and even of Massinger. We should have 
liked more of Warner, Fairfax, Phineas 
Fletcher, and Henry More — all poets of no 
scanty dimensions — and could have spared 
several pages of Butler, Mason, Whitehead, 
Roberts, Meston, and Amhurst Selden. We 
do not think the specimens from Burns very 
well selected ; nor those from Prior — nor can 
we see any good reason for quoting the whole 
Castle of Indolence, and nothing else, for 
Thomson — and the whole Rape of the Lock, 
and nothing else, for Pope. 

Next to the impression of the vast fertility, 
compass, and beauty of our English poetry, 
the reflection that recurs most frequently and 
forcibly to us, in accompanying Mr. C. through 
his wide survey, is that of the perishable na- 
ture of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion 
that has overtaken so many of the promised 
heirs of immortality ! Of near two hundred 
and fifty authors, whose works are cited in 
these volumes, by far the greater part of whom 
were celebrated in their generation, there are 
not thirty who now enjoy any thing that can 
be called popularity — whose works are to be 
found in the hands of ordinary readers — in 
the shops of ordinary booksellers — or in the 
press for republication. About fifty more may 
be tolerably familiar to men of taste or litera- 
ture : — the rest slumber on the shelves of col- 
lectors, and are partially known to a few anti- 
quaries and scholars. Now, the fame of a 
Poet is popular, or nothing. He does not ad- 
dress himself, like the man of science, to the 
learned, or those who desire to learn, but to 
all mankind ; and his purpose being to delight 
and be praised, necessarily extends to all who 
can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It 
is strange, then, and somewhat humiliating, 
to see how great a proportion of those who 
had once fought their way successfully to dis- 
tinction, and surmounted the rivalry of con- 
temporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. 
We have great deference for public opinion ; 
and readily admit, that nothing but what is 
good can be permanently popular. But though 
its vivat be generally oracular, its percat ap- 
pears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; 
and while we would foster all that it bids to 
live, we would willingly revive much that it 
leaves to die. The very multiplication of 
works of amusement, necessarily withdraws 
many from notice that deserve to be kept in 
remembrance ; for we should soon find it 
labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged 
to make use of them all, or even to take all 
upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and 
instruction accumulate around us, more and 
more, we fear, must thus be daily rejected, and 



?90 



POETRY. 



left to waste: For while our tasks lengthen, 
our lives remain as short as ever; and the 
calls on our time multiply, while our time 
itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity 
and abundance of our treasures, therefore, 
necessarily renders much of them worthless; 
and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, 
determine what part shall be preserved, and 
what thrown away and neglected. When an 
army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; 
and many poets, worthy of eternal remem- 
brance, have probably been forgotten, merely 
because there was not room in our memories 
for all. 

By such a work as the present, however, 
this injustice of fortune may be partly re- 
dressed — some small fragments of an immor- 
tal strain may still be rescued from oblivion — 
and a wreck of a name preserved, which time 
appeared to have swallowed up for ever. 
There is something pious we think, and en- 
dearing, in the office of thus gathering up the 
ashes of renown that has passed away; or 
rather, of calling back the departed life for 
a transitory glow, and enabling those great 
spirits which seemed to be laid for ever, still 
to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admira- 
tion, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. 
The body of their poetry, probably, can never 
be revived ; but some sparks of its spirit may 
yet be preserved, in. a narrower and feebler 
frame. 

When we look back upon the havoc which 
two hundred years have thus made in the 
ranks of our immortals — and, above all, 
when we. refer their rapid disappearance to 
the quick succession of new competitors, and 
the accumulation of more good works than 
there is time to peruse, we cannot help being 
dismayed at the prospect which lies before 
the writers of the present day. There never 
was an a^e so prolific of popular poetry as 
that in which we now live ; — and as w r ealth, 
population, and education extend, the produce 
is likely to go on increasing. The last ten 
years have produced, we think, an annual 
supply of about ten thousand lines of good 
staple poetry — poetry from the very first 
hands that we can boast of — that runs quickly 
to three or four large editions — and is as likely 
to be permanent as present success can make 
it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years 
longer, what a task will await the poetical 
readers of 1919 ! Our living poets w r ill then 
be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at pres- 
ent — but there will stand between them and 
that generation nearly ten times as much fresh 
and fashionable poetry as is now interposed 
between us and those writers : — and if Scott 
and Byron and Campbell have already cast 
Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in 
what form and dimensions are they themselves 
likely to be presented to the eyes of our great 
grandchildren'? The thought, w r e own, is a 
little appalling; — and we confess we see noth- 
ing better to imagine than that they may find 
a comfortable place in some new collection 
of specimens — the centenary of the present 
publication. There — if the future editor have 
any thing like the indulgence and veneration 



I for antiquity of his predecessor — thers glial! 
| posterity still hang with rapture on the half of 
Campbell — and the fourth part of Byron — and 
the sixth of Scott — and the scattered tythe* 
of Crabbe — and the three per cent, of Souther, 
— while some good-natured critic shall sit in 
our mouldering chair, and more than half pre- 
fer them to those by whom they have been 
superseded ! — It is an hyperbole of good na- 
ture, however, we fear, to ascribe io them even 
those dimensions at the end of a century. Af- 
ter a lapse of two hundred and fifty years, we 
are afraid to think of the space they may have 
shrunk into. We have no Shakespeare, alas! 
to shed a never-setting light on his contem- 
poraries : — and if we Continue. Jo write and 
rhyme at the present rate for two hundred 
years longer, there must be some new art of 
short-hand reading invented— or all reading 
will be given up in despair. We need not 
distress ourselves, however, with these afflic- 
tions of our posterity; — and it is quite time 
that the reader should know a little of the 
work before us. 

The Essay on English Poetry is very clev- 
erly, and, in many places, very finely written 
— but it is not equal, and it is not complete. 
There is a good deal of the poet's wayward- 
ness even in Mr. C.'s prose. His historical 
Muse is as disdainful of drudgery and plain 
work as any of her more tuneful sisters; — 
and so we have things begun and abandoned 
— passages of great eloquence and beauty 
followed up by others not a little careless and 
disorderly — a large outline rather meagerly 
filled up, but with some morsels of exquisite 
finishing scattered irregularly up and down 
its expanse — little fragments of detail and 
controversy — and abrupt and impatient con- 
clusions. Altogether, however, the work is 
very spirited; and abounds with the indica- 
tions of a powerful and fine understanding, 
and of a delicate and original taste. We can- 
not now afford to give any abstract of the in- 
formation it contains — but shall make a few 
extracts, to show the tone and manner of the 
composition. 

The following sketch of Chaucer, for in- 
stance, and of the long interregnum that 
succeeded his demise, is given with great 
grace and spirit. 

" His first, and long-continued predilection, was 
attracted by the new and allegorical siyle of ro- 
mance, which had sprung up in France, in the 
thirteenth century, under William de Lorris. We 
find him, accordingly, during a great part of his 
poetical career, engaged among the dreams, em- 
blems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parlia- 
ments, of that visionary school. This, we may 
say, was a gymnasium of rather too light and play- 
ful exercise for so strong a genius ; and it must be 
owned, that his allegorical poetry is often puerile 
and prolix. Yet, even in this walk of fiction, We 
never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace and 
gaiety, which distinguish the Muse of Chaucer; 
and no one who remembers his productions of the 
House of Fame, and the Flower and the Leaf, will 
regret that he sported, for a season, in the field ol 
allegory. Even his pieces of this description, the 
most fantastic in design, and tedious in execution, 
are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous 
descriptions of external nature. In this new species 
of romance, we perceive the youthful Muse of the 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



291 



language, in love with mystical meanings and forms 
of fancy, more remote, if possible from reality, 
than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we 
could, sometimes, wish her back from her em- 
blematic castles, to the more solid ones of the elder 
fable ; but still she moves in pursuit of those shad- 
ows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuber- 
ance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attrac- 
tion and delight. Chaucer was, afterwards, happily 
drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio ; and 
from him he derived the hint of a subject, in which, 
besides his own original portraits of contemporary 
life, he could introduce stories of every description, 
from the most heroic to the most familiar." — 

pp. 71—73. 
" Warton, with great beauty and justice, com- 
pares the appearance of Chaucer in our language, 
to a premature day in an English spring; after 
which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds 
and blossoms, which have been called forth by a 
transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts, and scat- 
tered by storms. The causes of the relapse of our 
poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the 
annals of English history ; which, during five reigns 
of the fifteenth century, continue to display but a 
tissue of conspiracies, proscriptions, and bloodshed. 
Inferior even to France in literary progress, Eng- 
land displays in the fifteenth century a still more 
mortifying contrast with Italy. Italy, too, had her 
religious schisms and public distractions ; but her 
arts and literature had always a sheltering place. 
They were even cherished by the rivalship of inde- 
pendent communities, and received encouragement 
from the opposite sources of commercial and eccle- 
siastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the 
Fifth, nor House of Medicis. In England, the evils 
of civil war agitated society as one mass. There 
was no refuge from them — no enclosure to fence 
in the field of improvement — no mound to stem the 
torrent of public troubles. Before the death of 
Henry VI. it is said that one half of the nobility and 
gentry in the kingdom had perished in the field, or 
on the scaffold !" 

The golden age of Elizabeth has often been 
extolled, and the genius of Spenser delineated, 
with feeling and eloquence. But all that has 
been written, leaves the following striking 
passages as original as they are eloquent. 

"In the reign of Elizabeth, the English mind 
put forth its energies in every direction, exalted by 
a purer religion, and enlarged by new views of truth. 
This was an age of loyalty, adventure, and gener- 
ous emulation. The chivalrous character was soft- 
ened by intellectual pursuits, while the genius of 
•chivalry itself still lingered, as if unwilling to de- 
part ; and paid his last homage to a Warlike and 
Female reign. A degree of romantic fancy re- 
mained, too, in the manners and superstitions of 
the people ; and Allegory might be said to parade 
the streets in their public pageants and festivities. 
Quaint and pedantic as those allegorical exhibitions 
might often be, they were nevertheless more ex- 
pressive of erudition, ingenuity, and moral meaning, 
than they had been in former times. The philoso- 
phy of the highest minds, on the other hand, still 
partook of a visionary character. A poetical spirit 
infused itself into the practical heroism of the age; 
and some of the worthies of that period seem less 
like ordinary men, than like beings called forth out 
of fiction, and arrayed in the brightness of her 
dreams. They had ' high thoughts seated in hearts 
of courtesy.' The life of Sir Philip Sydney was 
poetry put into action. 

11 The result of activity and curiosity in the public 
mind was to complete the revival of classical litera- 
ture, to increase the importation of foreign books, 
and to multiply translations, from which poetry sup- 
plied herself with abundant subjects and materials, 
and in the use of which she showed a frank and 
fearless energy, that criticism and satire had not 
yet acquired power to overawe. Romance came 



back to us from the southern languages, clothed in 
new luxury by the warm imagination of the south. 
The growth of poetry under such circumstances 
might indeed be expected to be as irregular as it was 
profuse. The field was open to daring absurdity, 
as well as to genuine inspiration ; and accordingly 
there is no period in which the extremes of good and 
bad writing are so abundant." — pp. 120 — 122. 

" The mistaken opinion that Ben Jonson censured 
the antiquity of the diction in the ' Fairy Queen,' has 
been corrected by Mr. Malone, who pronounces it 
to be exactly that of his contemporaries. His au- 
thority is weighty; still, however, without reviving 
the exploded error respecting Jonson's censure, one 
might imagine the difference of Spenser's style from 
that of Shakespeare's, whom he so shortly pre- 
ceded, to indicate that his Gothic subject and story 
made him lean towards words of the elder time. 
At all events, much of his expression is now become 
antiquated ; though it is beautiful in its antiquity, 
and, like' the moss and ivy on some majestic build- 
ing, covers the fabric of his language with romantic 
and venerable associations. 

" His command of imagery is wide, easy, and 
luxuriant. He threw the soul of harmony into our 
verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and 
magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, 
or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been 
since. It must certainly be owned, that in descrip- 
tion he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and 
robust power which characterize the very greatest 
poets: But we shall nowhere find more airy and 
expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone 
of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of lan- 
guage, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His 
fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circum- 
stance ; like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure 
through the utmost extremities of the foliage which 
it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the 
whole work, we certainly miss the charm of 
strengih, symmetry, and rapid or interesting pro- 
gress ; for though the plan which the poet designed 
is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional 
cantos could have rendered it less perplexed. But 
still there is a richness in his materials, even where 
their coherence is loose, and their disposition con- 
fused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to 
spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the 
clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story 
grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his 
manner still abide by him. We always rise from 
perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and 
with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the 
imagination." — pp. 124 — 127. 

In his account of the great dramatic writers 
of that and the succeeding reign, Mr. C.'s 
veneration for Shakespeare has made him 
rather unjust, we think, to the fame of some 
of his precursors. — We have already said that 
he passes Marlowe with a very slight notice, 
and a page of citation. — Greene, certainly a 
far inferior wniter, is treated with the same 
scanty courtesy — and there is no account 
and no specimen of Kyd or Lodge, though 
both authors of very considerable genius and 
originality. — With the writings of Peele, we 
do not profess to be acquainted — but the quo- 
tations given from him in the Essay should 
have entitled him to a place in the body of 
the work. — We must pass over what he says 
of Shakespeare and Jonson, though full of 
beauty and feeling. — To the latter, indeed, he 
is rather more than just. — The account of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher is lively and discriminating. 

" The theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher contains 
all manner of good and evil. The respective shares 
of those dramatic partners, in the works collectively 
published with their names, have been stated in a 



292 



POETRY. 



different part of these volumes. Fletcher's share 
in them is by far the largest ; and he is chargeable 
with the greatest number of faults, although at the 
lame time his genius was more airy, prolific, and 
fanciful. There are such extremes of grossness 
and magnificence in their drama, so much sweetness 
and beauiy interspersed with views of nature either 
falsely romantic, or vulgar beyond reality ; there is 
so much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much 
that we would willingly overlook, that I cannot 
help comparing the contrasted impressions which 
they make to those which we receive from visiting 
some great and ancient city, picturesquely but irreg- 
ularly built, glittering v^th spires and surrounded 
with gardens, but exhibiting in many quarters the 
lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have 
scenes of wealthy and high life, which remind us of 
courts and palaces frequented by elegant females 
and high-spirited gallants, whilst their noble old 
martial characters, with Caractacus in the miu'st of 
them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard 
which we pay to the rough- hewn magnificence of 
an ancient fortress. 

" Unhappily, the same simile, without being 
hunted down, will apply but too faithfully to the 
nuisances of the drama. Their language is often 
basely profligate. Shakespeare's and Jonson's in- 
delicacies are but casual blots; whilst theirs are 
sometimes essential colours of their painting, and 
extend, in one or two instances, to entire and offen- 
sive scenes. This fault has deservedly injured their 
reputation ; and, saving a very slight allowance for 
the fashion and taste of their age, admits of no sort 
of apology. Their drama, nevertheless, is a very 
wide one, and ' has ample room and verge enough' 
to permit the attention to wander from these, 
and to fix on more inviting peculiarities — as on 
the great variety of their fables and person- 
ages, their spirited dialogue, their wit, pathos, and 
humour. Thickly sown as their blemishes are, 
their merits will bear great deductions, and stilt 
•■emain great. We never can forget such beautiful 
characters as their Cellide, their Aspatia and Bella- 
rio, or such humorous ones as their La Writ and 
Cacafogo. Awake they will always keep us, 
whether to quarrel or to be pleased with them. 
Their invention is fruitful ; its beings are on the 
whole an active and sanguine generation ; and their 
scenes are crowded to fulness with the warmth, 
agitation, and interest of actual life." — pp. 210 — 213. 

Some of the most splendid passages in the 
Essay are dedicated to the fame of Milton — 
and are offerings not unworthy of the shrine. 

" In Milton," he says, " there may be traced ob- 
ligations to several minor English poets: But his 
genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any 
school. Though he acknowledged a filial rever- 
ence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregu- 
lar tracery in the design of his own great work, but 
gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous 
pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of 
which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, 
but which expands more and more to the eye while 
it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have 
neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste of his 
age. — Comus came into the world unacknowledged 
by its author, and Lycidas appeared at first only 
with his initials. These, and other exquisite pieces, 
composed in the happiest years of his life, at his 
father's country-house at Horton, were collectively 
published, with his name affixed to them, in 1645; 
but that precious volume, which included L' Allegro 
and II Penseroso did not (I believe) come to a 
second edition, till it was republished by himself at 
the distance of eight-and-twenty years. Almost a 
century elapsed before his minor works obtained 
their proper fame. 

" Even when Paradise Lost first appeared, though 
it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imi- 
tators, and made no visible change in the poetical 



practice of the age. He stood alone, and aloof abova 
his times; the bard of immortal subjects, and, as far 
as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. 
The very choice of those subjects bespoke a eon- 
tempt for any species of excellence that wa3 attain- 
able by other men. There is something that 
overawes the mind in conceiving his long-deliber- 
ated selection of that theme — his attempting it after 
his eyes were shut upon the face of nature — his de- 
pendence, we might almost say, on supernatural 
inspiration, and in the calm air of strength with 
which he opens Paradise Lost, beginning a mighty 
performance without the appearance of an effort." 

" The warlike part of Paradise Lost was insepa- 
rable from its subject. Whether it could have been 
differently managed, is a problem which our rever- 
ence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. ] 
feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the 
possibility that Milton could have improved his 
poem, by having thrown his angelic warfare into 
more remote perspective : But it seems to me to be 
most sublime when it is least distinctly brought 
home to the imagination. What an awful effect has 
the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, 
which we gather from the retrospects in the first 
book ! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn 
between us and a subject which the powers of de- 
scription were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers 
of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled 
— the thunders had ceased 

4 To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,' 

(in that line what an image of sound and space is 
conveyed !) — and our terrific conception of the past 
is deepened by its indistinctness. In optics there 
are some phenomena which are beautifully decep- 
tive at a certain distance, but which lose their illu- 
sive charm on the slightest approach to them that 
changes the light and position in which they are 
viewed. Something like this takes place in the 
phenomena of fancy. The array of the fallen 
angels in hell — the unfurling of the standard of 
Satan — and the march of his troops 

'In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders' — 

all this human pomp and circumstance of war is 
magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination 
is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of 
language are tried with very unequal effect, to inter- 
est us in the immediate and close view of the battle 
itself in the sixth book; and the martial demons, 
who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some 
portion of their sublimity, when their artillery is 
discharged in the daylight of heaven. 

44 If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, 
in his style, may be said to wear the costume of 
sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages 
contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned 
of poets ; yet his learning interferes not with his 
substantial English purity. His simplicity is unim- 
paired by glowing ornament, — like the bush in the 
sacred flame, which burnt but ' was not consumed.' 

"In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has 
exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be 
given to pictures of unshaded sanctity ; but it is 
chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excel- 
lence is conspicuous above every thing ancient or 
modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal 
council, and had given the hint to our poet of as- 
cribing the origin of pagan worship to those repro- 
bate spirits. But how poor and squalid in com- 
parison of the Miltonic Pandaemonium are the 
Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the 
Infernal Council of the Jerusalem ! Tasso's con- 
clave of fiends is a den of ugly incongruous mon- 
sters. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike 
shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every 
other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated 
eyes from contemplating them. It is not their ex- 
ternal attributes alone which expand the imagina- 
tion, but their souls, which are as colossal as their 
stature — their ' thoughts that wander through eter- 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



293 



nity" 1 — ihe pride that burns amidst the ruins of their 
divine natures, and their genius, that feels with the 
ardour and debates with the eloquence of heaven." 

pp. 242, 247. 

We have already said, that we think Shir- 
ley overpraised — but he is praised with great 
eloquence. There is but little said of Dryden 
m the Essay — but it is said with force and 
with judgment. In speaking of Pope and his 
contemporaries, Mr. C. touches on debateable 
ground : Aod we shall close our quotations 
from this part of his work, with the passage 
in which he announces his own indulgent, and, 
perhaps, latitudinarian opinions. 

" There are exclusionists in taste, who think that 
they cannot speak, with sufficient disparagement of 
the English poets of the first part of the eighteenth 
century ; and they are armed with a noble provoca- 
tive to English contempt, when they have it to say 
that those poets belong to a French school. Indeed 
Dryden himself is generally included in that school; 
though more genuine English is to be found in no 
man's pages. But in poetry ' there are many man- 
sions.' I am free to confess, that I can pass from 
the elder writers, and still find a charm in the cor- 
rect and equable sweetness of Parnell. Conscious 
that his diction has not the freedom and volubility 
of the better strains of the elder time, I cannot but 
remark his exemption from the quaintness and false 
metaphor which so often disfigure the style of the 
preceding age ; nor deny my respect to the select 
choice of his expression, the clearness and keeping 
of his imagery, and the pensive dignity of his moral 
feeling. 

" Pope gave our heroic couplet its strictest me- 
lody and tersest expression. 

D'un mot mis en sa place il enseigne It pouvoir. 

If his contemporaries forgot other poets in admiring 
him, let him not be robbed of his just fame on pre- 
tence that a part of it was superfluous. The public 
ear was long fatigued with repetitions of his man- 
ner ; but if we place ourselves in the situation of 
those to whom his brilliancy, succinctness and ani- 
mation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at 
their being captivated to the fondest admiration. — 
In order to do justice to Pope, we should forget 
his imitators, if that were possible ; but it is easier 
to remember than to forget by an effort — to acquire 
associations than to shake them off. Every one 
may recollect how often the most beautiful air has 
palled upon his ear, and grown insipid, from being 
played or sung by vulgar musicians. It is the same 
thing with regard to Pope's versification. That his 
peculiar rhythm and manner are the very best in 
the whole range of our poetry need not be asserted. 
He. has a gracefully peculiar manner, though it is 
not calculated to be an universal one ; and where, 
indeed, shall we find the style of poetry that could 
be pronounced an exclusive model for every com- 
poser ? His pauses have little variety, and his 
phrases are too much weighed in the balance of 
antithesis. But let us look to the spirit that points 
his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his 
thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too 
antithetic and sententious." — pp. 259 — 262. 

And to this is subjoined a long argument, to 
rhovv that Mr. Bowles is mistaken in suppos- 
ing that a poet should always draw his images 
from the works of nature, and not from those 
of art. We have no room at present for any 
discussion of the question; but we do not 
think it is quite fairly stated in the passage to 
which we have referred ; and confess that we 
are rather inclined, on the whole, to adhere to 
the creed of Mr. Bowles. 



Of the Specimens, which compose tne body 
of the work, we cannot pretend to give any 
account. They are themselves but tiny and 
slender fragments of the works from which 
they are taken ; and to abridge them further 
would be to reduce them to mere dust and 
rubbish. Besides, we are not called upon to 
review the poets of England for the last four 
hundred years! — but only the present editor 
and critic. In the little we have yet to say. 
therefore, we shall treat only of the merits of 
Mr. Campbell. His account of Hall and Cham- 
berlayn is what struck us most in his first 
volumes — probably because neither of the 
writers whom he so judiciously praises were 
formerly familiar to us. Hall, who was the 
founder of our satirical poetry, wrote his satires 
about the year 1597, when only twenty-three 
years old ; and whether we consider the age 
of the man or of the world, they appear to us 
equally wonderful. In this extraordinary work, 

"He discovered," says Mr. C. "not only the 
early vigour of his own genius, bat the power and 
pliability of his native tongue: for in the point, and 
volubility and vigour of Hall's numbers, we might 
frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden. 
This may be exemplified in the harmony and pic- 
turesqueness of the following description of a magnif- 
icent rural mansion, which the traveller approaches 
in the hopes of reaching the seat of ancient hospi- 
tality, but finds it deserted by its selfish owner. 

Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound, 

VVith double echoes, doth again rebound ; 

But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,' 

Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see. 

All dumb and silent, like the dead of night, 

Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite; 

The marble pavement hid with desert weed, 

VVith house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed. 

Look to the tow'red chimnies, which should be 
The wind-pipes of good hospitality, 
Through which it breatheth to the open air, 
Betokening life and liberal welfare, 
Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest, 
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest. 

" His satires are neither cramped by personal hos- 
tility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice ; 
but give us the form and pressure of the times, ex- 
hibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the 
foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The 
age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity." 

Vol. ii. pp. 257, 258. 

What he says of Chamberlayn, and the ex- 
tracts he has made from his Pharonnida, have 
made us quite impatient for an opportunity of 
perusing the whole poem. 

The poetical merits of Ben Jonson are 
chiefly discussed in the Essay ; and the No- 
tice is principally biographical. It is very 
pleasingly written, though with an affectionate 
leaning towards his hero. The following short 
passage affords a fair specimen of the good 
sense and good temper of all Mr. Campbell's 
apologies. 

" The poet's journey to Scotland (1617) awakens 
many pleasing recollections, when we conceive him 
anticipating his welcome among a people who might 
be proud of a share in his ancestry, and setting out, 
with manly strength, on a journey of four hundred 
miles, on foot. We are assured, by one who saw 
him in Scotland, that he was treated with respect 
and affection among the nobility and gentry ; nor 
z 2 



294 



POETRY. 



was the romantic scenery of the country lost upon 
his fancy. From the poem which he meditated on 
Lochlomond, it is seen ihat he looked on it with a 
poet's eye. But, unhappily, the meagre anecdotes 
of Drummond have made this event of his life too 
prominent, by the over-importance which has been 
attached to them. Drummond, a smooth and sober 
gentleman, seems to have disliked Jonson's indul- 
gence in that conviviality which Ben had shared 
with hi3 Fletcher and Shakespeare at the Mermaid. 
In consequence of those anecdotes, Jonson's mem- 
ory has been damned for brutality, and Drum- 
mond's for perfidy. Jonson drank freely at Haw- 
thornden, and talked big — things neither incredible 
nor unpardonable. Drummond's perfidy amounted 
to writing a letter, beginning Sir, with one very 
kind sentence in it, to the man whom he had de- 
scribed unfavourably in a private memorandum, 
which he never meant for publication. As to Drum- 
mond's decoying Jonson under his roof with any 
premeditated design on his reputation, no one can 
seriously believe it." — Vol. iii. pp. 150, 151. 

The notice of Cotton may be quoted, as a 
perfect model for such slight memorials of 
writers of the middle order. 

" There is a careless and happy humour in this 
poet's Voyage to Ireland, which seems to anticipate 
the manner of Anstey, in the Bath Guide. The 
tasteless'indelicacy of his parody of the iEneid has 
found but too many admirers. His imitations of 
Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humor- 
ous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that 
which is ludicrous already. He was acquainted 
with French and Italian ; and among several works 
from the former language, translated the Horace of 
Corneille, and Montaigne's Essays. 

" The father of Cotton is described by Lord Cla- 
rendon as an accomplished and honourable man, 
who was driven by domestic afflictions to habits 
which rendered his age less reverenced than his 
youth, and made his best friends wish that he had 
not lived so long. From him our poet inherited an 
incumbered estate, with a disposition to extrava- 
gance little calculated to improve it. After having 
studied at Cambridge, and returned from his travels 
abroad, he married the daughter of Sir Thomas 
Owihorp, in Nottinghamshire. He went to Ireland 
as a captain in the army ; but of his military pro- 
gress nothing is recorded. Having embraced the 
soldier's life merely as a shift in distress, he was 
not likely to pursue it with much ambition. It was 
probably in Ireland that he met with his second wife, 
Mary, Countess-Dowager of Ardglass, the widow 
of Lord Cornwall. She had a jointure of 1500Z. a 
year, secured from his imprudent management. 
He died insolvent, at Westminster. One of his 
favourite recreations was angling ; and his house, 
which was situated on the Doso, a fine trout stream 
which divides the counties of Derby and Stafford, 
was the frequent resort of his friend Isaac Walton. 
There he built a fishing house, ' Piscatoribus sa- 
crum,' with the initials of honest Isaac's name and 
his own uniied in ciphers over the door. The walls 
were painted with fishing-scenes, and the portraits 
of Cotton and Walton were upon the beaufet. — 

pp. 293, 294. 

There is a very beautiful and affectionate 
account of Parnell. — But there is more power 
of writing, and more depth and delicacy of 
feeling, in the following masterly account and 
estimate of Lillo. , 

11 George Lillo, was the son of a Dutch jeweller, 
who married an Englishwoman, and settled in Lon- 
don. Our poet was born near Moorfields, was bred 
to his father's business, and followed it for many 
years. The story of his dying in distress was a 
fiction of Hammond, the poet ; for he bequeathed a 
considerable property to his nephew, whom he 



made his heir. It has been said, that this bequest 
was in consequence of his finding the young man 
disposed to lend him a sum of money at a lime 
when he thought proper to feign pecuniary distress, 
in order that he might discover the sincerity of 
those calling themselves his friends. Thomas Da- 
vies, his biographer and editor, professes to have 
got this anecdote from a surviving partner of Lillo. 
It bears, however, an intrinsic air of improbability. 
It is not usual for sensible tradesmen to affect be- 
ing on the verge of bankruptcy; and Lillo's char- 
acter was that of an uncommonly sensible man. 
Fielding, his intimate friend, ascribes to him a 
manly simplicity of mind, that is extremely unlike 
such a stratagem. 

" Lillo is the tragic poet of middling and familiar 
life. Instead of heroes from romance and history, 
he gives the merchant and his apprentice ; and the 
Macbeth of his ' Fatal Curiosity' is a private gen- 
tleman, who has been reduced by his poverty to 
dispose of his copy of Seneca for a morsel of bread. 
The mind will be apt, after reading his works, to 
suggest to itself the question, how far the graver 
drama would gain or lose by a more general adop- 
tion of this plebeian principle. The cares, it may 
be said, that are most familiar to our existence, and 
the distresses of those nearest to ourselves in situa- 
tion, ought to lay the strongest hold upon our sym- 
pathies; and the general mass of society ought to 
furnish a more express image of man than any de- 
tached or elevated portion of the species. But, 
notwithstanding the power of Lillo's works, we 
entirely miss in them that romantic attraction which 
invites to repeated perusal of them. They give us 
life in a close and dreadful semblance of reality, 
but not arrayed in the magic illusion of poetry. 11:3 
strength lies in conception of situations, not in 
beauty of dialogue, or in the eloquence of the pas- 
sions. Yet the effect of his plain and homely sub- 
jects was so strikingly superior to that of the vapid 
and heroic productions of the day, as to induce 
some of his contemporary admirers to pronounce, 
that he had reached the acme of dramatic excel- 
lence, and struck into the best and most genuine 
path of tragedy. George Barnwell, it was observed, 
drew more tears than the rants of Alexander. This 
might be true; but it did not bring the comparison 
of humble and heroic subjects to a fair test ; for the 
tragedy of Alexander is bad, not from its subject, 
but from the incapacity of the poet who composed 
it. It does not prove that heroes, drawn from his- 
tory or romance, are not at least as susceptible of 
high and poetical effect, as a wicked apprentice, or 
a distressed gentleman pawning his moveables. It 
is a different question whether Lillo has given to his 
subjects from private life, the degree of beauty of 
which they are susceptible. He is a master of ter- 
rific, but not of tender impressions. We feel a 
harshness and gloom in his genius, even while we 
are compelled to admire its force and originality. 

" The peculiar choice of his subjects was, at all 
events, happy and commendable, as far as it re- 
garded himself; for his talents never succeeded so 
well when he ventured out of them. But it is 
another question, whether the familiar cast of those 
subjects was fitted to constitute a more genuine, 
or only a subordinate walk in tragedy. Undoubt- 
edly the genuine delineation of the human heart 
will please us, from whatever station or circum- 
stances of life it is derived : and, in the simple 
pathos of tragedy, probably very little difference 
will be felt from the choice of characters being 
pitched above or below the line of mediocrity in 
station. But something more than pathos is re- 
quired in tragedy ; and the very pain that attends 
our sympathy, would seem to require agreeable 
and romantic associations of the fancy to be blended 
with its poignancy. Whatever attaches ideas of 
importance, publicity, and elevation to the object 
of pity, forms a brightening and alluring medium 
to the imagination. Athens herself, with all her 
simplicity and democracy, delighted on the stage iq 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



295 



'Let gorgeous Tragedy 
In scepter'd pall come sweeping by.' 

"Even situations far depressed beneath the famil- 
iar mediocrity of life, are more picturesque and 
poetical than its ordinary level. It is certainly on 
the virtues of the middling rank of life, that the 
strength and comforts of society chiefly depend, in 
the same way as we look for the harvest, not on 
cliffs and precipices, but on the easy slope and the 
uniform plain. But the painter does not in general 
fix on level countries for the subjects of his noblest 
landscapes. There is an analogy, I conceive, to 
this in the moral painting of tragedy. Disparities 
of station give it boldness of outline. The com- 
manding situations of life are its mountain scenery 
— the region where its storm and sunshine may be 
portrayed in their strongest contrast and colouring." 
Vol. v. pp. 58—62. 

Nothing, we think, can be more exquisite 
than this criticism, — though we are far from 
being entire converts to its doctrines ; and are 
moreover of opinion, that the merits of Lillo, 
as a poet at least, are considerably overrated. 
There is a flatness and a weakness in his dic- 
tion, that we think must have struck Mr. C. 
more than he has acknowledged, — and a tone, 
occasionally, both of vulgarity and of paltry 
affectation, that counteracts the pathetic effect 
of his conceptions, and does injustice to the 
experiment of domestic tragedy. 

The critique on Thomson is distinguished 
by the same fine tact, candour, and concise- 



" Habits of early admiration teach us all to look 
back upon this poet as the favourite companion of 
our solitary walks, and as the author who has first 
or chiefly reflected back to our minds a heightened 
and refined sensation of the delight which rural 
scenery affords us. The judgment of cooler years 
may somewhat abate our estimation of him, though 
it will still leave us the essential features of his 
poetical character to abide the test of reflection. 
The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most 
unfavourable comparison with the manly and idiom- 
atic simplicity of Cowper : at the same time, the 
pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry is in gene- 
ral more bland and delightful than that of his great 
rival in rural description. Thomson seems to con- 
template the creation with an eye of unqualified 
pleasure and ecstasy, and to love its inhabitants 
with a lofty and hallowed feeling of religious hap- 
piness ; Cowper has also his philanthropy, but it is 
dashed with religious terrors, and with themes of 
satire, regret, and reprehension. Cowper's image 
of nature is more curiously distinct and familiar. 
Thomson carries our associations through a wider 
circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches 
cannot be more faithful than Cowper's, but they 
are more soft and select, and less disturbed by the 
intrusion of homely objects. It is but justice to say, 
that amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons, 
we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy 
.narrative, and unhappy digression — with a parhelion 
eloquence that throws a counterfeit glow of expres- 
sion on commort-place ideas — as when he treats us 
to the solemnly ridiculous bathing of Musidora ; or 
draws from the classics instead of nature; or, after 
invoking inspiration from her hermit seat, makes his 
dedicatory bow to a patronizing countess, or speaker 
of the House of Commons. As long as he dwells 
in the pure contemplation of nature, and appeals to 
the universal poetry of the human breast, his re- 
dundant style comes to us as something venial and 
adventitious — it is the flowing vesture of the druid ; 
and perhaps to the general experience is rather im- 
posing ; but when he returns to the familiar narra- 
tions or courtesies of life, the same diction ceases 
to seem the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes 



us by its unwieldy difference from the common cos- 
tume of expression." — pp. 215 — 218. 

There is the same delicacy of taste, and 
beauty of writing, in the following remarks 
on Collins — though we think the Specimens 
afterwards given from this exquisite .poet are 
rather niggardly. 

" Collins published his Oriental Eclogues while 
at college, and his lyrical poetry at the age of 
twenty-six. Those works will abide comparison 
with whatever Milton wrote under the age of thirty. 
If they have rather less exuberant wealth of genuis, 
they exhibit more exquisite touches of pathos. 
Like Milton, he leads us into the haunted ground 
of imagination ; like him, he has the rich economy 
of expression haloed with thought, which by single 
or few words often hints entire pictures to the imagi- 
nation. In what short and simple terms, for in- 
stance, does he open a wide and majestic landscape 
to the mind, such as we might view from Benlo- 
mond or Snowden — when he speaks of the hut 

'That from some mountain's side 
Views wilds and swelling floods.' 

And in the line, ' Where faint and sickly winds 
for ever howl around,' he does not seem merely to 
describe the sultry desert, but brings it home to the 
senses. 

"A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his 
highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of his 
associations, and the daring sweep of his illusions ; 
but the shadow is transitory, and interferes very 
little with the light of his imagery, or the warmth 
of his feelings. The absence of even this speck of 
mysticism from his Ode on the Passions is perhaps 
the happy circumstance that secured its unbounded 
popularity. Nothing, however, is common -place 
in Collins. The pastoral eclogue, which is insipid 
in all other English hands, assumes in his a touch- 
ing interest, and a picturesque air of novelty. It 
seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those 
eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners ; but 
surely no just reader of them cares any more about 
this circumstance than about the authenticity of the 
tale of Troy. 

"In his Ode to Fear he hints at his dramatic 
ambition ; and he planned several tragedies. Had 
he lived to enjoy and adorn existence, it is not easy 
to conceive his sensitive spirit and harmonious ear 
descending to mediocrity in any path of poetry ; 
yet it may be doubted if his mind had not a pas- 
sion for the visionary and remote forms of imagina- 
tion, too strong and exclusive for the general pur- 
poses of the drama. His genius loved to breathe 
rather in the preternatural and ideal element of 
poetry, than in the atmosphere of imitation, which 
lies closest to real life ; and his notions of poetical 
excellence, whatever vows he might address to 
' the manners,' were still tending to the vast, the 
undefinable, and the abstract. Certainly, how- 
ever, he carried sensibility and tenderness into the 
highest regions of abstracted thought : His enthu- 
siasm spreads a glow even amongst ' the shadowy 
tribes of mind,' and his allegory is as sensible to 
the heart as it is visible to the fancy." — pp. 310,. 312. 

Though we are afraid our extracts are be- 
coming unreasonable, we cannot resist indulg- 
ing our own nationality, by producing this 
specimen of Mr. Campbell's. 

" The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd must 
perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of 
national partiality, while they do justice to their 
own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a 
picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be 
saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more 
agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could 
expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criti- 
cism. We should think the painter had finished 
the likeness of a mother very indifferently, if it 



296 



POETRY. 



did not bring home to her children traits of unde- 
finable expression which had escaped every eye 
but thai of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the 
force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to 
his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English 
reader. The fire of Burns' wit and passion glows 
through an obscure dialect by its confinement to 
short and concentrated bursts. The interest which 
Ramsay excites is spread over along poem, deline- 
ating manners more than passions, and the mind 
must be at home both in the language and manners, 
to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which 
he has heightened the display of rustic character 
without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view 
of peasant life by situations of sweetness and ten- 
derness, without departing in the least degree from 
its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite 
apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern 
Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simple- 
tons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but 
distinct characters and amusing incidents. The 
principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency 
with the habits of a peasant ; but he moves in that 
sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much 
cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with max- 
ims of life so rational and independent, and with 
an ascendency over his fellow swains so well main- 
tained by his force of character, that if we could 
suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be sud- 
denly changed into situations of trouble and danger, 
we should, in exact consistency with our former 
idea of him, expect him to become the leader of 
the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. 
Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully 
conceived. She is represented, like himself, as 
elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to 
opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the 
ornament of either. A Richardson or a D' Arblay, 
had they continued her history, might have height- 
ened the portrait, but they would not have altered 
its outline. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, 
that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the 
memory, and has sunk into the heart, of its native 
country. Its verses have passed into proverbs, and 
it continues to be the delight and solace of the 
peasantry whom it describes." — pp. 344 — 346. 

We think the merits of Akenside under- 
rated, and those of Churchill exaggerated : 
But we have found no passage in which the 
amiable but equitable and reasonable indulg- 
ence of Mr. Campbell's mind is so conspicu- 
ous, as in his account of Chatterton — and it 
is no slight thing for a poet to have kept him- 
self cool and temperate, on a theme which 
has hurried so many inferior spirits into pas- 
sion and extravagance. 

"When we conceive," says Mr. C, "the in- 
spired boy transporting himself in imagination back 
to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his 
ideal character, and giving to airy nothing a ' local 
habitation and a name,' we may forget the im- 
postor in the enthusiast, and forgive the falsehood 
of his reverie for its beauty and ingenuity. One 
of his companions has described the air of rapture 
,and inspiration with which he used to repeat his 
passages from Rowley, and the delight which he 
took to contemplate the church of St. Mary Red- 
cliffe, while it awoke the associations of antiquity 
in his romantic mind. There was one spot in 
particular, full in view of the church, where he 
would often lay himself down, and fix his eyes, as 
It were, in a trance. On Sundays, as long as day- 
light lasted, he would walk alone in the country 
around Bristol, taking drawings of churches, or 
other objects that struck his imagination. 

" During the few months of his existence in 
London, his letters to his mother and sister, which 
were always accompanied with presents, expressed 
the most joyous anticipations. But suddenly all 



the flush of his gay hopes and busy projects ler 
minaled in despair. The particular causes whu.fc 
led to his catastrophe have not been distinctly 
traced. His own descriptions of his prospect's 
are but little to be trusted ; for while apparently 
exchanging his shadowy visions of Rowley for the 
real adventures of life, he was still moving under 
the spell of an imagination that saw every thing in 
exaggerated colours. Out of this dream he was 
at length awakened, when he found that he had 
miscalculated the chances of patronage and the 
profits of literary labour. 

" The heart which can peruse the faie of Chat- 
terton without being moved, is little to be envied 
for its tranquillity ; but the intellects of those men 
must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, 
who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, 
have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the 
same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery ; and 
have calculated that if he had not died by his own 
hand he would have probably ended his days upon 
a gallows ! This disgusting sentence has been 
pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for 
severe study, temperance, and natural affection. 
His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced 
improper by the general law which condemns all 
serious and deliberate falsifications ; but it deprived 
no man of his fame; it had no sacrilegious interfer- 
ence with the memory of departed genius ; it had 
not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive 
to rob a party, or a country, of a name which was 
its pride and ornament. 

" Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable 
biographers, whose imaginations have conducted 
him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his un- 
formed character exhibited strong and conflicting 
elements of good and evil. Even the momentary 
project of the infidel boy to become a Methodist 
preacher, betrays an obliquity of design and a con- 
tempt of human credulity that is not very amiable. 
But had he been spared, his pride and ambition 
would probably have come to flow in their proper 
channels. His understanding would have taught 
him the practical value of truth and the dignity of 
virtue, and he would have despised artifice, when 
he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. 
In estimating the promises of his genius, I would 
rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admir- 
ers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid 
of being blinded to the defects of the poems attrib- 
uted to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology 
which is thrown over them. 

"The inequality of Chatterton's various pro- 
ductions may be compared to the disproportions of 
the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the 
definite neatness of that precocious talent which 
stops short in early maturity. His thirst for know- 
ledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay 
up materials for the exercise of great and unde- 
veloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, 
pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by 
abstinence and perseverance might accomplish 
whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications 
of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works 
of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him 
as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equal- 
led him at the same age." — Vol. vi. pp. 156 — 162. 

The account of Gray is excellent, and that 
of Goldsmith delightful. We can afford to 
give but an inconsiderable part of it. 

" Goldsmith's poetry enjoys a calm and steady 
popularity. It inspires us, indeed, with no admira- 
tion of daring design, or of fertile invention ; but it 
presents, within its narrow limits, a distinct and un- 
broken view of poetical delightfulness. His descrip- 
tions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. 
He is refined without false delicacy, and correct 
without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual 
composure in his manner, which may, in some pas» 
sages, be said to approach to the reserved and pro* 



CAMPBELL'S SPECIMENS OF THE POETS. 



297 



*aic; but he unbends from this graver strain of 
reflection, to tenderness, and even to playfulness, 
with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own : 
and connects extensive views of the happiness and 
interests of society, with pictures of life, that touch 
the heart by their familiarity. His language is cer- 
tainly simple, though it is not cast in a rugged or 
careless mould. He is no disciple of the gaunt and 
famished school of simplicity. Deliberately as he 
wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and 
idiomatic expression ; but still it is select and re- 
fined expression. He uses the ornaments which 
must always distinguish true poetry from prose ; 
and when he adopts colloquial plainness, it is with 
the utmost care and skill, to avoid a vulgar humility. 
There is more of this elegant simplicity, of this 
chaste economy and choice of words, in Goldsmith, 
than in any modern poet, or perhaps than would be 
attainable or desirable as a standard for every writer 
of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such a 
style would be too difficult. There is a noble pro- 
priety even in the careless strength of great poems 
as in the roughness of castle walls; and, generally 
speaking, where there is a long course of story, or 
observation of life to be pursued, such exquisite 
touches as those of Goldsmith would be too costly 
materials for sustaining it. The tendency towards 
abstracted observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly 
with the compendious form of expression which he 
studied; whilst the homefelt joys, on which his 
fancy loved to repose, required at once the chastest 
and sweetest colours of language, to make them 
harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical poem. 
His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and 
reflection, which gives back the image of nature 
unruffled and minutely. He has no redundant 
thoughts, or false transports ; but seems on every 
occasion to have weighed the impulse to which he 
surrendered himself. Whatever ardour or casual 
felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he gained a 
high degree of purity and self-possession. His 
chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist ; 
and throws a charm of Claude-like softness over his 
descriptions of homely objects, that would seem 
only fit to be the subjects of Dutch painting. But 
his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble 
things without a vulgar association ; and he inspires 
us with a fondness to trace the simplest recollections 
of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its ale- 
house, and listen to the 'varnished clock that 
clicked behind the door.' "—pp. 261—263. 

There is too much of William Whitehead, 
and almost too much of Richard Glover, — and 
a great deal too much of Amhurst Selden, 
Bramston. and Meston. Indeed the ne quid 
nimis seems to have been more forgotten by 
the learned editor in the last, than in any of 
the other volumes. Yet there is by no means 
too much of Burns, or Cowper, or even of the 
Wartons. The abstract of Burns' life is beau- 
tiful ; and we are most willing to acknowledge 
that the defence of the poet, against some of 
the severities of this Journal, is substantially 
successful. No one who reads all that we 
have written of Burns, will doubt of the sin- 
cerity of our admiration for his genius, or of 
the depth of our veneration and sympathy for 
his lofty character and his untimely fate. 
We Btfll think he had a vulgar taste in letter- 
writing; and too frequently patronized the 
belief of a connection between licentious in- 
dulgences and generosity of character. But, 
on looking back on what we have said on 
these subjects, we are sensible that we have 
expressed ourselves with too much bitter- 
ness, and made the words of our censure far 
more comprehensive than our meaning. A 



certain tone of exaggeration is incident, we 
fear, to the sort of writing in which we are 
engaged. Reckoning a little too much, per- 
haps, on the dulness of our readers, we are 
often led, unconsciously, to overstate oc.r 
sentiments, in order to make them under- 
stood ; and, where a little controversial 
warmth is added to a little love of effect, 
an excess of colouring is apt to steal over 
the canvass w r hich ultimately offends no 
eye so much as our own. We gladly make 
this expiation to the shade of our illustrious 
countryman. 

In his observations on Joseph War ton, Mr. 
C. resumes the controversy about the poetical 
character of Pope, upon which he had entered 
at the close of his Essay ; and as to which 
we hope to have some other opportunity of 
giving our opinions. At present, however, we 
must hasten to a conclusion; and shall make 
our last extracts from the notice of Cowper, 
which is drawn up on somewhat of a larger 
scale than any other in the work. The ab- 
stract of his life is given with great tenderness 
and beauty, and with considerable fulness of 
detail. But the remarks on his poetry are the 
most precious, — and are all that we have now 
room to borrow. 

" The nature of Cowper's works makes us 
peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing 
them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned 
from the vanities of the world ; and, as an original 
writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects 
of fiction and passion, for those of real life and sim- 
ple nature, and for the development of his own 
earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious 
truth. His language has such a masculine idiom- 
atic strength, and his manner, whether he rises 
into grace or falls into negligence, has so much 
plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry 
with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having 
come from the author's heart ; and of the enthu- 
siasm, in whatever he describes, having been un- 
feigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with 
the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long 
enough in the mixed society of the world to be 
polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so 
soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and 
simplicity. He was advanced in years before he 
became an author; but his compositions display a 
tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and 
even a vein of humour so far from being extinguished 
by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his 
not having written them at an earlier period of life. 
For he blends the determination of age with an 
exquisite and ingenuous sensibility ; and though he 
sports very much with his subjects, yet, when he is 
in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction 
in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripe- 
ness of character to his poetry. 

" It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this 
unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, con- 
sidered as representations of himself, because he 
forms a striking instance of genius writing the his- 
tory of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and 
enjoyments, in a shape so interesiing as to engage 
the imagination like a work of fiction. He has in- 
vented no character in fable, nor in the drama ; but 
he has left a record of his own character, whjrh 
forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a 
subject fcr f he study of human nature. His verse 
it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with 
opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of play- 
fulness and superstition, of solemnity and mirth, 
which appear almost anomalous ; and there is, un- 
doubtedly, sometimes an air of moody versatility in 
the extreme contrasts of his feelings. But looking 



298 



POETRY. 



to his poetry as an entire s/ructure, it has a massive 
air of sincerity. It is founded in steadfast princi- 
ples of belief; and, if we may prolong the archi- 
tectural metaphor, though its arches may be some- 
times gloomy, its tracery sportive, and its lights and 
shadows grotesquely crossed, yet altogether it still 
forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of 
the builder's mind. Young's works are as devout, 
as satirical, sometimes as merry, as those of Cow- 
per; and, undoubtedly, more witty. But the melan- 
choly and wit of Young do not make up to us the 
idea of a conceivable or natural being. He has 
sketched in his pages the ingenious, but incongruous 
form of a fictitious mind — Cowper's soul speaks 
from his volumes." 

" Considering the tenor and circumstances of his 
life, it is not much to be wondered at, that some 
asperities and peculiarities should have adhered to the 
strong stem of his genius, like the moss and fungus 
that cling to some noble oak of the forest, amidst the 
damps of its unsunned retirement. It is more sur- 
prising that he preserved, in such seclusion, so much 
genuine power of comic observation. There is much 
of the full distinctness of Theophrastus, and of the 
nervous and concise spirit of La Bruyere, in his 
piece entitled ' Conversation,' with a cast of humour 
superadded, which is peculiarly English, and not to 
be found out of England." — Vol. vii. pp. 357, 358. 

Of his greatest work, The Task, he after- 
wards observes, 

" His whimsical outset in a work, where he 
promises so little and performs so much, may be 
advantageously contrasted with those magnificent 
commencement of poems, which pledge both the 
reader and the writer, in good earnest, to a task. 
Cowper's poem, on the contrary, is like a river, 
which rises from a playful little fountain, and 
gathers beauty and magnitude as it proceeds. He 
leads us abroad into his daily walks ; he exhibits 
the landscapes which he was accustomed to con- 
template, and the trains of thought in which he 
habitually indulged. No attempt is made to in- 
terest us in legendary fictions, or historical recol- 
lections connected with the ground over which he 
expatiates; all is plainness and reality: But we 
instantly recognise the true poet, in the clearness, 
sweetness, and fidelity of his scenic draughts; in 
his power of giving novelty to what is common ; 
and in the high relish, the exquisite enjoyment of 
rural sig its and sounds, which he communicates 
to the spirit. ' His eyes drink the rivers with de- 
light.' He excites an idea, that almost amounts to 
sensation, of the freshness and delight of a rural 
walk, even when he leads us to the wasteful com- 
mon, which 

' Overgrown with fern, and rough 

With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform'd, 
And dang'rous to the touch, has yet its bloom, 
And decks itself with ornaments of gold, 
Yields no unpleasing ramble. There the turf 
Smells fresh, and, rich in odorif'rous herbs 
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense 
With luxuries of unexpected sweets.' 

" His rural prospects have far less variety and 
compass than those of Thomson ; but his graphic 
touches are more close and minute : not that 
Thomson was either deficient or undelightful in 
circumstantial traits of the beauty of nature, but 
he looked to her as a whole more than Cowper. 
His genius was more excursive and philosophical. 
The poet of Olney, on the contrary, regarded 
human philosophy with something of theological 
contempt. To his eye, the great and little things 
of this world were levelled into an equality, by his 
recollection of the power and purposes of Him 
who made them. ■ They are, in his view, only as 
toys spread on the lap and carpet of nature, for 
this childhood of our immortal being. This reli- 

fious indifference to the world is far, indeed, from 
iunting hu sensibility to the genuine and simple 



beauties of creation ; but it gives his taste s con- 
tentment and fellowship with humble things. It 
makes him careless of selecting and refining his 
views of nature beyond their actual appearances. 
He contemplated the face of plain rural English 
life, in moments of leisure and sensibility, till its 
minutest features were impressed upon his fancy ; 
and he sought not to embellish what he loved. 
Hence his landscapes have less of the ideally beau- 
tiful than Thomson's ; but they have an unrivalled 
charm of truth and reality. 

" He is one of the few poets, who have indulged 
neither in descriptions nor acknowledgments of 
the passion of love ; but there is no poet, who has 
given us a finer conception of the amenity of 
female influence. Of all the verses that have been 
ever devoted to the subject of domestic happiness, 
those in his winter evening, at the opening of the 
fourth book of The Task, are perhaps the most 
beautiful. In perusing that scene of ' intimate de- 
lights,' 'fireside enjoyments,' and 'home-born 
happiness,' we seem to recover a part of the for- 
gotten value of existence ; when we recognise the 
means of its blessedness so widely dispensed, and 
so cheaply attainable, and find them susceptible 
of description at once so enchanting and so faithful. 

" Though the scenes of The Task are laid in 
retirement, the poem affords an amusing perspec- 
tive of human affairs. Remote as the poet was 
from the stir of the great Babel, from the ' con- 
fuses so?ius U?-bis, et illcetabile murmur,' he glances 
at most of the subjects of public interest which 
engaged the attention of his contemporaries. On 
those subjects, it is but faint praise to say that ho 
espoused the side ofi6sticeand humanity. Abund- 
ance of mediocrity of talent is to be found on the 
same side, rather injuring than promoting the 
cause, by its officious declamation. But nothing 
can be further from the stale commonplace and 
cuckooism of sentiment, than the philanthropio 
eloquence of Cowper — he speaks ' like one having 
authority.' Society is his debtor. Poetical expo- 
sitions of the horrors of slavery may, indeed, 'seem 
very unlikely agents in contributing to destroy it ; 
and it is possible that the most refined planter in 
the West Indies, may look with neither shame 
nor compunction on his own image in the pages 
of Cowper. But such appeals to the heart of the 
community are not lost ! They fix themselves 
silently in the popular memory ; and they become, 
at last, a part of that public opinion, which must, 
sooner or later, wrench the lash from the hand of 
the oppressor." — pp.359 — 364. 

But we must now break away at once from 
this delightful occupation ; and take our final 
farewell of a work, in which, what is original. 
is scarcely less valuable than what is repub- 
lished, and in which the genius of a living 
Poet has shed a fresh grace over the fading 
glories of so many of his departed brothers. 
We wish somebody would continue the work, 
by furnishing us with Specimens of our Living 
Poets. It would be more difficult, to be sure, 
and more dangerous; but. in some respects, 
it would also be more useful. The beauties 
of the unequal and voluminous writers would 
be more conspicuous in a selection ; and the 
different styles and schools of poetry would 
be brought into fairer and nearer terms of 
comparison, by the mere juxtaposition of their 
best productions ; while a better and clearer 
view would be obtained, both of the general 
progress and apparent tendencies of the art, 
than can easily be gathered from the separate 
study of each important production. The 
mind of the critic, too, would be at once en- . 
lightened and tranquillized by the very great- 
ness of the horizon thus subjected to his 



FORD'S DRAMATIC WORKS. 



survey; and he wornd probably regard, both 
with less enthusiasm and less offence, those 
contrasted and compensating beauties and 
defects, when presented together, and as it 
were in combination, than he can ever do 
when they come upon him in distinct masses, 
ana without the relief and softening of so va- 
ried an assemblage. On the other hand, it 
cannot be dissembled, that such a work would 
be very trying to the unhappy editor's pro- 
phetic reputation, as well as to his imparti- 
ality and temper'; and would, at all events, 



subject him to the most furious imputations 
of unfairness and malignity. In point of 
courage and candour, we do not know any- 
body who would do it much better than 
ourselves! And if Mr. Campbell could 
only impart to us a fair share of his ele- 
gance, his fine perceptions, and his con- 
ciseness, we should like nothing better tnan 
to suspend, for a while, these periodical lu- 
cubrations, and furnish out a gallery of Liv- 
ing Bards, to match this exhibition of the 
Departed. 



(a»gust, 1811.) 

The Dramatic Works 0/ John Ford; with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. ByHEKRY 
Weber, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 950. Edinburgh and London: 1811. 



All true lovers of English poetry have 
been long in love with the dramatists of 
the time of Elizabeth and James; and 
must have been sensibly comforted by their 
late restoration to some degree of favour 
and notoriety. If there was any good rea- 
son, indeed, to believe that the notice which 
they have recently attracted proceeded from 
any thing but that indiscriminate rage for 
editing and annotating by which the present 
times are so happily distinguished, we should 
be disposed to hail it as the most unequivocal 
symptom of improvement in public taste that 
has yet occurred to reward and animate our 
labours. At all events, however, it gives us 
a chance for such an improvement ; by placing 
in the hands of many, who would not other- 
wise have heard of them, some of those beau- 
tiful performances which we have always 
regarded as among the most pleasing and 
characteristic productions of our native genius. 

Ford certainly is not the best of those ne- 
glected writers, — nor Mr. Weber by any means 
the best of their recent editors : But Ave cannot 
resist the opportunity which this publication 
seems to afford, of saying a word or two of a 
class of writers, whom we have long wor- 
shipped in secret with a sort of idolatrous 
veneration, and now find once more brought 
forward as candidates for public applause. 
The aera to which they belong, indeed, has 
always appeared to us by far the brightest in 
the history of English literature, — or indeed 
of human intellect and capacity. There 
never was, any where, any thing like the 
sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the 
middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of 
the Restoration. In point of real force and 
originality of genius, neither the age of Peri- 
cles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the times 
of Leo X.j nor of Louis XIV., can come at all 
into comparison : For, in that short period, 
we shall find the names of almost all the 
very great men that this nation has ever 
produced, — the names of Shakespeare, and 
Bacon, and Spenser, and Sydney, — and 
Hooker, and Taylor, and Barrow, and Raleigh, 



— and Napier, and Milton, and Cudworth, 
and Hobbes, and many others ; — men, all of 
them, not merely of great talents and ac- 
complishments, but of vast compass and 
reach of understanding, and of minds truly 
creative and original ; — not perfecting art by 
the delicacy of their taste, or digesting know- 
ledge by the justness of their reasonings ; but 
making vast and substantial additions to the 
materials upon which taste and reason must 
hereafter be employed, — and enlarging, to an 
incredible and unparalleled extent, both the 
stores and the resources of the human facul 
ties. 

Whether the brisk concussion which was 
given to men's minds by the force of the 
Reformation had much effect in producing 
this sudden development of British genius, 
we cannot undertake to determine. For our 
own part, we should be rather inclined to 
hold, that the Reformation itself was but one 
symptom or effect of that great spirit of pro- 
gression and improvement which had been 
set in operation by deeper and more general 
causes; and which afterwards blossomed out 
into this splendid harvest of authorship. But 
whatever may have been the causes that 
determined the appearance of those great 
works, the fact is certain, not only that they 
appeared together in great numbers, but that 
they possessed a common character, which, 
in spite of the great diversity of their sub- 
jects and designs, would have made them be 
classed together as the works of the same 
order or description of men, even if they had 
appeared at the most distant intervals of 
time. They are the works of Giants, in 
short, — and of Giants of one nation and 
family ; — and their characteristics are, great 
force, boldness, and originality ; together with 
a certain raciness of English peculiarity, 
which distinguishes them from all those per- 
formances that have since been produced 
among ourselves, upon a more vague and 
general idea of European excellence. Their 
sudden appearance, indeed, in all this splen- 
dour of native luxuriance, can only be com 



300 



POETRY. 



splei 
Til 



pared to what happens on the breaking up of 
a virgin soil, — where all the indigenous plants 
spring up at once with a rank and irrepressi- 
ble fertility, and display whatever is peculiar 
or excellent in their nature, on a scale the 
most conspicuous and magnificent. The crops 
are not indeed so clean, as where a more 
exhausted mould has been stimulated by 
systematic cultivation ; nor so profitable, as 
where their quality has been varied by a 
judicious admixture of exotics, and accom- 
modated to the demands of the universe by 
the combinations of an unlimited trade. But 
to those whose chief object of admiration is 
the living power and energy of vegetation, 
and who take delight in contemplating the 
various forms of her unforced and natural 
perfection, no spectacle can be more. rich, 
splendid, or attractive. 

n the times of which we are speaking, 
classical learning, though it had made great 
progress, had by no means become an exclu- 
sive study; and the ancients had not yet 
been permitted to subdue men's minds to a 
sense of hopeless inferiority, or to condemn 
the moderns to the lot of humble imitators. 
They were resorted to, rather to furnish ma- 
terials and occasional ornaments, than as 
models for the general style of composition ; 
and, while they enriched the imagination, and 
insensibly improved the taste of their suc- 
cessors, they did not at all restrain their free- 
dom, or impair their originality. No common 
standard had yet been erected, to which all 
the works of European genius were required 
to conform ; and no general authority was 
acknowledged, by which all private or local 
ideas of excellence must submit to be cor- 
rected. Both readers and authors were com- 
paratively few in number. The former were 
infinitely less critical and difficult than they 
have since become; and the latter, if they 
were not less solicitous about fame, were at 
least much less jealous and timid as to the 
hazards which attended its pursuit. J Men, 
indeed, seldom took to writing in those days, 
unless they had a great deal of matter to 
communicate ; and neither imagined that 
they could make a reputation by delivering 
commonplaces in an elegant manner, or that 
the substantial value of their sentiments 
would be disregarded for a little rudeness or 
negligence in the finishing. They were^ 
habituated, therefore, both to depend upon 
their own resources, and to draw upon them 
without fear or anxiety; and followed the 
dictates of their own taste and judgment, 
without standing much in awe of the ancients, 
of their readers, or of each other. 

The achievements of Bacon, and those who 
set free our understandings from the shackles 
of Papal and of tyrannical imposition, afford 
sufficient evidence of the benefit which re- 
sulted to the reasoning faculties from this 
happy independence of the first great wri- 
ters of this nation. But its advantages were, 
if possible, still more conspicuous in the mere 
literary character of their productions. The 
quantity of bright thoughts, of original images, 
and splendid expressions, which they poured 



forth upon every occasion, and by which they 
illuminated and adorned the darkest and most 
rugged topics to which they had happened to 
turn themselves, is such as has never been 
equalled in any other age or country; and 
places them at least as high, in point of 
fancy and imagination, as of force of reason, 
or comprehensiveness of understanding. In 
this highest and most comprehensive sense 
of the word, a great proportion of the writers 
we have alluded to were Poets : and, without 
going to those who composed in metre, and 
chiefly for purposes of delight, we will ven- 
ture to assert, that there is in any one of the 
prose folios of Jeremy Taylor more fine fancy 
and original imagery — more brilliant concep- 
tions and glowing expressions— more new 
figures, and new applications of old figures — 
more, in short, of the body and the soul of 
poetry, than in all the odes and the epics that 
have since been produced in Europe. There 
are large portions of Barrow, and of Hooker 
and Bacon, of which we may say nearly as 
much : nor can any one have a tolerably ade- 
quate idea of the riches of our language and 
our native genius, who has not made himself 
acquainted with the prose writers, as well as 
the poets, of this memorable period. 

The civil wars, and the fanaticism by which 
they were fostered, checked all this fine bloom 
of the imagination, and gave a different and 
less attractive character to the energies which 
they could not extinguish. Yet, those were 
the times that matured and drew forth the 
dark, but powerful genius of such men as 
Cromwell, and Harrison, and Fleetwood, &c. 
— the milder and more generous enthusiasm 
of Blake, and Hutchison, and Hampden — 
and the stirring and indefatigable spirit of 
Pym, and Hollis, and Vane — and the chival- 
rous and accomplished loyalty of Strafford and 
Falkland ; at the same time that they stimu- 
lated and repaid the severer studies of Coke, 
and Selden, and Milton. The Drama, how- 
ever, was entirely destoyed, and has never 
since regained its honoufs; and Poetry, in 
general, lost its ease, and its majesty and 
force, along with its copiousness and origi- 
nality. 

The Restoration made things still worse: 
for it broke dowm the barriers of our literary 
independence, and reduced us to a province 
of the great republic of Europe. The genius 
and fancy which lingered through the usur- 
pation, though soured and blighted by the 
severities of that inclement season, were still 
genuine English genius and fancy; and 
owned no allegiance to any foreign authori- 
ties. j$ut\he Restoration brought in a French 
taste upon us, and what was called a classical 
and a polite taste ; and the wings of our Eng- 
lish Muses were clipped and trimmed, and 
their flights regulated at the expense of all 
that was peculiar, and much of what was 
brightest in their beauty. The King and hia 
courtiers, during their long exile, had of course 
imbibed the taste of their protectors; and, 
coming from the gay court of France, with 
something of that additional profligacy that 
belonged to their outcast and adventurer 



FORD'S DRAMATIC WORKS. 



301 



character, were likely enough to be revolted 
by the peculiarities, and by the very excel- 
lences, of our native literature. The grand 
and sublime tone of our greater poets, ap- 
peared to them dull, morose, and gloomy; 
and the fine play of their rich and unre- 
strained fancy, mere childishness and folly : 
while their frequent lapses and perpetual ir- 
regularity were set down as clear indications 
of barbarity and ignorance. Such sentiments, 
too, were natural, we must admit, for a few 
dissipated and witty men, accustomed all 
their days to. the regulated splendour of a 
court — to the gay and heartless gallantry of 
French manners — and to the imposing pomp 
and brilliant regularity of French poetry. 
But, it may appear somewhat more unac- 
countable that they should have been able to 
impose their sentiments upon the great body 
of the nation. A court, indeed, never has so 
much influence as at the moment of a resto- 
ration : but the influence of an English court 
has been but rarely discernible in the litera- 
ture of the country j and had it not been for 
the peculiar circumstances in which the nation 
was then placea", we believe it would have 
resisted this attempt to naturalise foreign no- 
tions, as sturdily as it was done on almost 
every other occasion. 

At this particular moment, however, the 
native literature of the country had been sunk 
into a very low and feeble state by the rigours 
of the usurpation, — the best of its recent 
models laboured under the reproach of re- 
publicanism, — and the courtiers were not only 
disposed to see all its peculiarities with an 
eye of scorn and aversion, but had even a 
good deal to say in favour of that very oppo- 
site style to which they had been habituated. 
It was a witty, and a grand, and a splendid 
style. It showed more scholarship and art, 
than the luxuriant negligence of the old 
English school ; and was not only free from 
many of its hazards and some of its faults, 
but possessed merits of its own, of a charac- 
ter more likely to please those who had then 
the power of conferring celebrity, or con- 
demning to derision. Then it was a style 
which it was peculiarly easy to justify by 
argument ) and in support of which great 
authorities, as well as imposing reasons, were 
always ready to be produced. It came upon 
us with the air and the pretension of being the 
style of cultivated Europe, and a true copy 
of the style of polished antiquity. England, 
on the other hand, had had but little inter- 
course with the rest of the world for a con- 
siderable period of time : Her language was 
not at all studied on the Continent, and her 
native authors had not been taken into account 
in forming ihose ideal standards of excellence 
which ha'd been recently constructed in France 
and Italy upon the authority of the Roman 
classics, and of their own most celebrated 
writers. When the comparison came to be 
made, therefore, it is easy to imagine that it 
should generally be thought to be very much 
to our disadvantage, and to understand how 
the great multitude, even among ourselves, 
should be dazzled with the pretensions of the 



fashionable style of writing, and actually feel 
ashamed of their own richer and more varied 
productions. 

It would greatly exceed our limits to de- 
scribe accurately tiie particulars in which 
this new Continental style differed from our 
old insular one : But, for our present purpose, 
it may be enough perhaps to say, that it was 
more worldly, and more townish, — holding 
more of reason, and ridicule, and authority — 
more elaborate and more assuming — address- 
ed more to the judgment than*to the feelings, 
and somewhat ostentatiously accommodated 
to the habits, or supposed habits, of persons 
in fashionable life. Instead of tenderness and 
fancy, we had satire and sophistry — artificial 
declamation, in place of the spontaneous ani- 
mation of genius — and for the universal lan- 
guage of Shakespeare, the personalities, the 
party politics, and the brutal obscenities of 
Dryden. Nothing, indeed, can better charac- 
terize the change which had taken place in 
our national taste, than the alterations and 
additions which this eminent person presumed 
— and thought it necessary — to make on the 
productions of Shakespeare and Milton. The 
heaviness, the coarseness, and ihe bombast 
of that abominable travestie, in which he has 
exhibited the Paradise Lost in the form of an 
opera, and the atrocious indelicacy and com- 
passionable stupidity of the new characters 
with which he has polluted the enchanted 
solitude of Miranda and Prospero in the 
Tempest, are such instances of degeneracy 
as we would be apt to impute rather to some 
transient hallucination in the author himself, 
than to the general prevalence of any sys- 
tematic bad taste in the public, did we not 
know that Wycherly and his coadjutors were 
in the habit of converting the neglected dramas 
of Beaumont and Fletcher into popular plays, 
merely hy leaving out all the romantic sweet- 
ness of their characters — turning their melo- 
dious blank verse into vulgar prose — and 
aggravating the indelicacy of their lower 
characters, by lending a more disgusting 
indecency to tlft whole dramatis persona. 

Dryden was, beyond all comparison, the 
greatest poet of his own day; and, endued 
as he was with a vigorous and discursive 
imagination, and possessing a mastery over 
his language which no later writer has at- 
tained, if he had known nothing of foreign 
literature, and been left to form himself on 
the models of Shakespeare, Spenser, and 
Milton ; or if he had lived in the country, 
at a distance from the pollutions of courts, 
factions, and playhouses, there is reason to 
think that he would have built up the pure 
and original school of English poetry so firmly, 
as to have made it impossible for fashion, or 
caprice, or prejudice of any sort, ever to have 
rendered any other popular among our own 
inhabitants. As it is, he has not written one 
line that is pathetic, and very few that can 
be considered as sublime. 

Addison, however, was the consummation 

of this Continental style j and if it had not 

been redeemed about the same time by the 

fine talents of Pope, would probably have so 

2 A 



S02 



POETRY. 



far discredited it, as to have brought us back 
to our original faith half a century ago. The 
extreme caution, timidity, and flatness of this 
author in his poetical compositions — the nar- 
rowness of his range in poetical sentiment 
and diction, and the utter want either of pas- 
sion or of brilliancy, render it difficult to be- 
lieve that he was born under the same sun 
with Shakespeare, and wrote but a century 
after him.f His fame, at this day stands soleiy 
upon the delicacy, the modest gaiety, and in- 
genious purity "'of his prose style f— for the 
occasional elegance and small ingenuity of 
his poems can never redeem the poverty 
of their diction, and the tameness of their 
conception. Pope has incomparably more 
spirit and taste and animation : but Pope is a 
satirist, and a moralist, and a wit. and a critic, 
and a iine writer, much more than he is a 
poet. /He has all the delicacies and proprie- 
ties and felicities of diction — but he has not a 
great deal of fancy, and scarcely ever touches 
any of the greater passions^ He is much the 
best, we think, of the classical Continental 
school ; but he is not to be compared with the 
masters — nor with the pupils — of that Old 
English one from which there had been so 
lamentable an apostacy. There are no pic- 
tures of nature or of simple emotion in all his 
writings. \ He is the poet of town life, and of 
high life, and of literary life ; and seems so 
much afraid of incurring ridicule by the dis- 
play of natural feeling or unregulated fancy, 
that it is difficult not to imagine that he would 
have thought such ridicule very well directed. 

The best of what we copied from the Con- 
tinental poets, on this desertion of our own 
great originals, is to be found, perhaps, in the 
lighter pieces of Prior. That tone of polite 
raillery — that airy, rapid, picturesque narra- 
tive, mixed up with wit and naivete — that 
style, in short, of good conversation concentra- 
ted into flowing and polished verses, was not 
within the vein of our native poets ; and prob- 
ably never would have been known among 
us, if we had been left to oijr own resources. 
It is lamentable that this, which alone was 
worth borrowing, is the only thing which has 
jot been retained. The tales and little apol- 
ogues of Prior are still the only examples of 
lhis style in our language. 

With the wits of Queen Anne this foreign 
school attained the summit of its reputation ; 
and has ever since, we think, been declining, 
though by slow and almost imperceptible 
gradations. Thomson was the first writer of 
any eminence who seceded from it, and made 
some steps back to the force and animation 
of our original poetry. Thomson, however, 
was educated in Scotland, where the new 
style, we believe, had not yet become famil- 
iar ; and lived, for a long time, a retired and 
unambitious life, with very little intercourse 
with those who gave the tone in literature at 
the period of his first appearance. Thomson, 
accordingly, has always been popular with a 
much wider circle of readers, than either 
Pope or Addison; and, in spite of consid- 
erable vulgarity and signal cumbrousness ' 
of diction, has drawn, even from the fas- ! 



tidious, a much deeper and more heartfelt 
admiration. 

Young exhibits, we think, a curious com- 
bination, or contrast rather, of the two styles 
of which we have been speaking. Though 
incapable either of tenderness or passion, he 
had a richness and activity of fancy that be- 
longed rather to the days of James and Eliza- 
beth, than to those of George and Anne : — 
But then, instead of indulging it, is the older 
writers would have done, in easy and playful 
inventions^ in splendid descriptions, or glow- 
ing illustrations, he was led, by the restraints 
and established taste of his age. to work it up 
into strange and fantastical epigrams, or into 
cold and revolting hyperboles. Instead of 
letting it flow gracefully on, in an easy and 
sparkling current, he perpetually forces it out 
in jets, or makes it stagnate in formal canals ; 
and thinking it necessary to write like Pope, 
when the bent of his genius led him rather 
to copy what was best in Cowley and most 
fantastic in Shakespeare, he has produced 
something which excites wonder instead of 
admiration, and is felt by every one to be at 
once ingenious, incongruous, and unnatural. 

After Young, there was a plentiful lack of 
poetical talent, down to a period comparatively 
recent. Akenside and Gray, indeed, in the 
interval, discovered a new way of imitating 
the ancients ; — and Collins and Goldsmith pro- 
duced some small specimens of exquisite and 
original poetry. At last, Co wper threw off the 
whole trammels of French criticism and arti- 
ficial refinement ; and, setting at defiance all 
the imaginary requisites of poetical diction 
and classical imagery — dignity of style, and 
politeness of phraseology — ventured to write 
again with the force and the freedom which 
had characterised the old school of English 
literature, and been so unhappily sacrificed, 
upwards of a century before. Cowper had 
many faults, and some radical deficiencies ; 
— but this atoned for all. There was some- 
thing so delightfully refreshing, in seeing 
natural phrases and natural images again dis- 
playing their unforced graces, and waving 
their unpruned heads in the enchanted gar- 
dens of poetry, that no one complained of the 
taste displayed in the selection; — and Cow- 
per is, and is likely to continue, the most 
popular of all who have written for the present 
or the last generation. 

Of the poets who have come after him, we 
cannot, indeed, say that they have attached 
themselves to the school of Pope and Addi- 
son ; or that they have even failed to show a 
much stronger predilection for the native beau- 
ties of their great predecessors. Southey, 
and Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Miss 
Baillie, have all of them copied the manner 
of our older poets ; and, along with this indi- 
cation of good taste, have given great proofs 
of original genius. The misfortune is, that 
their copies of those great originals are liable 
to the charge of extreme affectation. They 
do not write as those great poets would have 
written: they merely mimic their manner, and 
ape their peculiarities; — and consequently, 
though they profess to imitate the freest and 



FORD'S DRAMATIC WORKS.' 



most careless of all versifiers ? their style is 
more remarkably and offensively artificial 
than that of any other class of writers. They 
have mixed in, too, so much of the mawkish 
tone of pastoral innocence and babyish sim- 
plicity, with a sort of pedantic emphasis and 
ostentatious glitter, that it is difficult not to 
be disgusted with their perversity, and with 
the solemn self-complacency, and keen and 
vindictive jealousy, with which they have put 
in their claims on public admiration. But we 
have said enough elsewhere of the faults of 
those authors ; and shall only add, at present, 
that, notwithstanding all these faults, there is 
a fertility and a force, a warmth of feeling 
and an exaltation of imagination about, them, 
which classes them, in our estimation, with 
a much higher order of poets than the fol- 
lowers of Dryden and Addison ; and justifies 
an anxiety for their fame, in all the admirers 
of Milton and Shakespeare. 

Of Scott, or of Campbell, we need scarcely 
say any thing, with reference to our present 
object, after the very copious accounts we 
have given of them on former occasions. The 
former professes to copy something a good 
deal older than what we consider as the golden 
age of English poetry, — and, in reality, has 
copied every style, and borrowed from every 
manner that has prevailed, from the times of 
Chaucer to his own : — illuminating and unit- 
ing, if not harmonizing them all, by a force 
of colouring, and a rapidity of succession, 
which is not to be met with in any of his 
many models. The latter, we think, can 
scarcely be said to have copied his pathos, or 
his energy, from any models whatever, either 
recent or early. The exquisite harmony of 
his versification is elaborated, perhaps, from 
the Castle of Indolence of Thomson, and the 
serious pieces of Goldsmith; — and it seems 
to be his misfortune, not to be able to reconcile 
himself to any thing which he cannot reduce 
within the limits of this elaborate harmony. 
This extreme fastidiousness, and the limita- 
tion of his efforts to themes of unbroken ten- 
derness or sublimity, distinguish him from the 
careless, prolific, and miscellaneous authors 
of our primitive poetry ; — while the enchant- 
ing softness of his pathetic passages, and the 
power and originality of his more sublime 
conceptions, place him at a still greater dis- 
tance from the wits, as they truly called 
themselves, of Charles II. and Queen Anne. 

r We do not know what other apology to 
offer for this hasty, and, we fear, tedious 
sketch of the history of our poetry, but that 
it appeared to us to be necessary, in order to 
explain the peculiar merit of that class of 
writers to which the author before us belongs ; 
and that it will very greatly shorten what we 
have still to say on the characteristics of our 
older dramatists.) An opinion prevails very 
generally on the Continent, and with foreign- 
bred scholars among ourselves, that our na- 
tional taste has been corrupted chiefly by our 
idolatry of Shakespeare ; — and that it is our 
patriotic and traditional admiration of that 
singular writer, that reconciles us to the mon- 
strous compound of faults and beauties that 



occur in his performances, and must to alJ 
impartial judges appear quite absurd and 
unnatural. Before entering upon the charac- 
ter of a contemporary dramatist, it was of 
some importance, therefore, to show that 
there was a distinct, original, and independent 
school of literature in England in the time of 
Shakespeare ; to the general tone of whose 
productions his works were sufficiently con- 
formable ; and that it was owing to circum- 
stances in a great measure accidental, that this 
native school was superseded about the time 
of the Restoration, and a foreign standard of ex- 
cellence intruded on us, not in the drama only, 
but in every other department of poetry. This 
new style of composition, however, though 
adorned and recommended by the splendid 
talents of many of its followers, was never 
perfectly naturalised, we think, in this coun- 
try; and has ceased, in a great measure, to 
be cultivated by those who have lately aimed 
w T ith the greatest success at the higher hon- 
ours of poetry. Our love of Shakespeare, 
therefore, is not a monomania or solitary and 
unaccountable infatuation ; but is merely the 
natural love which all men bear to those forms 
of excellence that are accommodated to their 
peculiar character, temperament, and situa- 
tion j and which will always return, and assert 
its power over their affections, long after 
authority has lost its reverence, fashions been 
antiquated, and artificial tastes passed away. 
In endeavouring, therefore, to bespeak some 
share of favour for such of his contemporaries 
as had fallen out of notice, during the preva- 
lence of an imported literature, we conceive 
that we are only enlarging that foundation of 
native genius on which alone any lasting 
superstructure can be raised, and invigorating 
that deep-rooted stock upon which all* the 
perennial blossoms of our literature must still 
be engrafted. 

The notoriety of Shakespeare may seem to 
make it superfluous to speak of the peculiari- 
ties of those old dramatists, of whom he will 
be admitted to be so worthy a representative. 
Nor shall we venture to say any thing of the 
confusion of their plots, the disorders of their 
chronology, their contempt of the unities, or 
their imperfect discrimination between the 
provinces of Tragedy and Comedy. Yet there 
are characteristics which the lovers of litera- 
ture may not be displeased to find enumerated, 
and which may constitute no dishonourable 
distinction for the whole fraternity, independ- 
ent of the splendid talents and incommunica- 
ble graces of their great chieftain. 

Of the old English dramatists, then, in- 
cluding under this name (besides Shake- 
speare), Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, 
Jonson, Ford, Shirley, Webster, Dekkar, Field, 
and Rowley, it may be said, in general, that 
they are more poetical, and more original in 
their diction, than the dramatists of any other 
age or country. Their scenes abound more 
in varied images, and gratuitous excursions 
of fancy. Their illustrations, and figures of 
speech, are more borrowed from rural life, 
and from the simple occupations or universal 
feelings of mankind. They are not confined 



S04 



POETRY. 



lo a certain range of dignified expressions, 
nor restricted to a particular assortment of 
imagery, beyond which it is not lawful to look 
for embellishments. Let any one compare 
the prodigious variety, and wide-ranging free- 
dom of Shakespeare, with the narrow round 
of flames, tempests, treasons, victims, and 
tyrants, that scantily adorn the sententious 
pomp of the French drama, and he will not 
fail .o recognise the vast superiority of the 
former, in the excitement of the imagination, 
and all the diversities of poetical delight. 
That very mixture of styles, of which the 
French critics have so fastidiously complained, 
forms, when not carried to any height of ex- 
travagance, one of the greatest charms of our 
ancient dramatists. It is equally sweet and 
natural for personages toiling on the barren 
heights of life, to be occasionally recalled to 
some vision of pastoral innocence and tran- 
quillity, as for the victims or votaries of am- 
bition to cast a glance of envy and agony on 
the joys of humble content. 

Those charming old writers, however, have 
a still more striking peculiarity in their con- 
duct of the dialogue. On the modern stage, 
every scene is visibly studied and digested 
beforehand, — and every thing from beginning 
to end, whether it be description, or argument, 
or vituperation, is very obviously and osten- 
tatiously set forth in the most advantageous 
light, and with all the decorations of the most 
elaborate rhetoric. Now, for mere rhetoric, 
and fine composition, this is very right ; — but, 
for an imitation of nature, it is not quite so 
well.: And however we may admire the skill 
of the artist, we are not very likely to be 
moved with any very lively sympathy in the 
emotions of those very rhetorical interlocutors. 
When we come to any important part of the 
play, on the Continental or modern stage, we 
are sure to have a most complete, formal, 
and exhausting discussion of it, in long flourish- 
ing orations ; — argument after argument pro- 
pounded and answered with infinite ingenuity, 
and topic after topic brought forward in well- 
digested method, without any deviation that 
the most industrious and practised pleader 
would not approve of, — till nothing more re- 
mains to be said, and a new scene introduces 
us to a new set of gladiators, as expert and 
persevering as the former. It is exactly the 
same when a story is to be told, — a tyrant to 
be bullied, — or a princess to be wooed. | On 
the old English stage, however, the proceed- 
ings were by no means'so regular. There the 
discussions always appear to be casual, and 
the argument quite artless and disorderly. 
The persons of the drama, in short, are made 
to speak like men and women who meet 
without preparation, in real life. Their rea- 
sonings are perpetually broken by passion, or 
left imperfect for want of skill. They con- 
stantly wander from the point in hand, in the 
most unbusinesslike manner in the world ; — 
and after hitting upon a topic that would afford 
a judicious playwright room for a magnificent 
seesaw of pompous declamation, they have 
generally the awkwardness to let it slip, as 
if perfectly unconscious of its value ; and uni- 



formly leave the scene without exhausting 
the controversy, or stating half the plausible 
things for themselves that any ordinary ad- 
visers might have suggested — after a few 
weeks' reflection. As specimens of eloquent 
argumentation, we must admit the signal in- 
feriority of our native favourites ; but as true 
copies of nature, — as vehicles of passion, and 
representations of character, we confess we 
are tempted to give them the preference. 
When a dramatist brings his chief characters 
on the stage, we readily admit that he must 
give them something to say, — and that this 
something must be interesting and character- 
istic ; — but he should recollect also, that they 
are supposed to come there, without having 
anticipated all they were to hear, or medi- 
tated on all they were to deliver; and that it 
cannot be characteristic, therefore, because it 
must be glaringly unnatural, that they should 
proceed regularly through every possible view 
of the subject, and exhaust, in set order, the 
whole magazine of reflections that can be 
brought to bear upon their situation. 

It would not be fair, however, to leave this 
view of the matter, without observing, that 
this unsteadiness and irregularity of dialogue, 
which gives such an air of nature to our older 
plays, and keeps the curiosity and attention 
so perpetually awake, is frequently carried to 
a most blameable excess ; and that, indepen- 
dent of their passion for verbal quibbles, there 
is an inequality and a capricious uncertainty 
in the taste and judgment of these good old 
writers, which excites at once our amazement 
and our compassion. )If it be true, that no 
other man has ever written so finely as Shake- 
speare has done in his happier passages, it is 
no less true that there is not a scribbler now 
alive who could possibly write worse than ha 
has sometimes written, — who could, on occa- 
sion, devise more contemptible ideas, or mis- 
place them so abominably, by the side of suck 
incomparable excellence. That there wer* 
no critics, and no critical readers in those daySj 
appears to us but an imperfect solution of th* 
difficulty. He who could write so admirably,, 
must have been a critic to himself. Children. 
indeed, may play with the most preciour 
gems, and the most worthless pebbles, with 
out being aware of any difference in thei 
value ; but the fiery powers which are neces- 
sary to the production of intellectual excel- 
lence, must enable the possessor to recognise 
it as excellence ; and he who knows when he 
succeeds, can scarcely be unconscious of hia 
failures. Unaccountable, however, as it is, 
the fact is certain, that almost all the dramatic 
writers of this age appear to be alternately 
inspired, and bereft of understanding; and 
pass, apparently without being conscious of 
the change, from the most beautiful displays 
of genius to the most melancholy exemplifi- 
cations of stupidity^ 

There is only one other peculiarity which 
we shall notice in those ancient dramas; and 
that is, the singular, though very beautiful 
style, in which the greater part of them are 
composed, — a style which we think must be 
felt as peculiar by all who peruse them, though 



FORDS DRAMATIC WORKS. 



305 



it is by no means easy to describe in what its 
peculiarity consists. It is not, for the most 
part a lofty or sonorous style, — nor can it be 
6aid generally to be finical or affected, — or 
Strained, quaint, or pedantic: — But it is, at 
the same time, a style full of turn and con- 
trivance, — with some little degree of constraint 
and involution. — very often characterised by 
a studied briefness and simplicity of diction, 
yet relieved by a certain indirect and figura- 
tive cast of expression, — and almost always 
coloured with a modest tinge of ingenuity, 
and fashioned, rather too visibly, upon a par- 
ticular model of elegance and purity. In 
scenes of powerful passion, this sort of arti- 
ficial prettiness is commonly shaken off; and, 
in Shakespeare, it disappears under all his 
forms of animation : But it sticks closer to 
most of his contemporaries. In Massinger 
(who has no passion), it is almost always dis- 
cernable ; and, in the author before us, it gives 
a peculiar tone to almost all the estimable 
parts of his productions. — It is now time, how- 
ever, and more than time, that we should turn 
to this author. 
j( His biography will not detain us long ; for 
very little is known about him. He was born 
in Devonshire, in 15S6;- and entered as a 
student in the Middle Temple; where he 
began to publish poetry, and probably to write 
plays, soon after his "twenty-first year. He 
did not publish any of his dramatic works, 
however, till 1629 : and though he is supposed 
to have written fourteen or fifteen pieces for 
the theatres, only nine appear to have been 
printed, or to have found their way down to 
the present times. He is known to have 
written in conjunction with Rowley and Dek- 
kar, and is supposed to have died about 1640; 
— and this is the whole that the industry of 
Mr. Weber, assisted by the researches of 
Steevens and Malone, has been able to dis- 
cover of this author. 

It would be useless, and worse than use- 
less, to give our readers an abstract of the 
fable and management of each of the nine 
plays contained in the volumes before us. A 
very few brief remarks upon their general 
character, will form a sufficient introduction 
to the extracts, by which we propose to let 
our readers judge for themselves of the merits 
of their execution. The comic parts are all 
utterly bad. With none of the richness of 
Shakespeare's humour, the extravagant mer- 
riment of Beaumont and Fletcher, or the 
strong colouring of Ben Johnson, they are as 
heavy and as indecent as those of Massinger, 
and not more witty, though a little more va- 
ried, than the buffooneries of Wycherley or 
Dryden. Fortunately, however, the author's 
merry vein is not displayed in very many 
parts of his performances. His plots are not 
very cunningly digested; nor developed, for 
the most part, by a train of probable incidents. 
His characters are drawn rather with occa- 
sional felicity, than with general sagacity and 
judgment. Like those of Massinger. they are 
very apt to startle the reader with sudden and 
unexpected transformations, and to turn out. 
in the latter half of the play, very differently 
39 



from what they promised to do in the begin- 
ning. This kind of surprise has been repic- 
sented by some as a master-stroke of art in 
the author, and a great merit in the perform- 
ance. We have no doubt at all, however, that 
it is to be ascribed merely to the writer's 
carelessness, or change of purpose ; and have 
never failed to feel it a great blemish in every 
serious piece where it occurs. 

The author has not much of the oratorical 
stateliness and imposing flow of Massinger; 
nor a great deal of the smooth and flexible 
diction, the wandering fancy, and romantic 
sweetness of Beaumont and Fletcher : and yet 
he comes nearer to these qualites than to any 
of the distinguishing characteristics of Jonson 
or Shakespeare. He excels most in represent- 
ing the pride and gallantry, and high-toned 
honour of youth, and the enchanting softness, 
or the mild and graceful magnanimity of fe- 
male character. There is a certain melan- 
choly air about his most striking representa- 
tions ; and, in the tender and afflicting pathetic, 
he appears to us occasionally to be second 
only to him who has never yet had an equal. 
The greater part of every play, however, is 
bad ; and there is not one which does not 
contain faults sufficient to justify the derision 
even of those who are incapable of compre- 
hending its contrasted beauties. 

The diction we think for the most part 
beautiful, and worthy of the inspired age 
which produced it. That we may not be sus- 
pected of misleading our readers by partial 
and selected quotations, we shall lay before 
them the very first sentence of the play which 
stands first in this collection. The subject is 
somewhat revolting; though managed with 
great spirit, and, in the more dangerous parts, 
with considerable dignity. A brother and 
sister fall mutually in love with each other, 
and abandon themselves, with a sort of splen- 
did and perverted devotedness, to their in- 
cestuous passion. The sister is afterwards 
married, and their criminal intercourse de- 
tected by her husband, — when the brother, 
perceiving their destruction inevitable, first 
kills her, and then throws himself upon the 
sword of her injured husband. The play 
opens with his attempting to justify his passion 
to a holy friar, his tutor — who thus addresses 
him. 

"Friar. Dispute no more in this; TOr know 
young man, 
These are no school points ; Nice philosophy 
Mav tolerate unlikely arguments, 
But heaven admits no jest. Wits that presum'd 
On wit too much, by striving how to prove 
There was no God, with foolish grounds of art, 
Discover' d first the nearest way to hell, 
And filled the world with dev'lish atheism. 
Such questions, youth, are fond : for better 'tis 
To bless the sun, than reason why it shines 
Yet he thou talk'st of is above the sun. 
No more ! I may not hear it. 

Gio. Gentle father, 

To you I have unclasp'd my burden'd soul, 
Emptied the storehouse of my thoughts and heart, 
Made myself poor of secrets: have not left 
Another word untold, which hath not spoke 
All what I ever durst, or think, or know ; 
A nd vet is here the comfort I shall have ? 
Must'l not do what all men else may,— love ? 
Ill 



306 



POETRY. 



No, father ! in your eyes I see the change 
Of pity and compassion ; from your age, 
.As from a sacred oracle, distils 
The life of counsel. Tell me, holy man, 
What cure shall give me ease in these extremes ? 

Friar. Repentance, son, and sorrow for this sin : 
For thou hast mov'd a majesty above 
With thy unranged, almost, blasphemy. 

Gio. O do not speak of that, dear confessor. 

Friar. Then I have done, and in thy wilful flames 
Already see thy ruin ; Heaven is just. 
Yet hear my counsel ! 

Gio, As a voice of life. 

Friar. Hie to thy father's house ; there lock thee 
Alone within thy chamber; then fall down [fast 
On both thy knees, and grovel on the ground; 
Cry to thy heart ; wash every word thou utter' st 
In tears (and if 't be possible) of blood : 
Beg Heaven to cleanse the leprosy of love 
That rots thy soul ; weep, sigh, pray 
Three times a day, and three times every night : 
For seven days' space do this; then, if thou find'st 
No change in thy desires, return to me; 
I'll think on remedy. Pray for thyself 
At home, whilst I pray for thee here. Away ! 
My blessing with thee ! We have need to pray." 
Vol. i. pp. 9—12. 

In a subsequent scene with the sister, the 
game holy person maintains the dignity of his 
style. 

Friar. I am glad to see this penance ; for, believe 
You have unripp'd a soul so foul and guilty, [me 
As I must tell you true, I marvel how 
The earth hath borne you up ; but weep, weep on, 
These tears may do you good ; weep faster yet, 
Whilst I do read a lecture. 

Ann. Wretched creature ! 

Friar. Ay, you are wretched, miserably wretch- 
Almost condemned alive. There is a place, [ed, 
List, daughter,) in a black and hollow vault, 
Where day is never seen ; there shines no sun, 
But flaming horror of consuming fires; 
A lightless sulphur, chok'd with smoky fogs 
Of an infected darkness; in this place 
Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts 
Of never-dying deaths. There damned souls 
Roar without pity ; there are gluttons fed 
With toads and adders ; there is burning oil 
Pour'd down the drunkard's throat ; the usurer 
Is fore'd to sup whole draughts of molten gold; 
There is the murderer for ever stabb'd, 
Yet can he never die ; there lies the wanton 
On racks of burning steel, whilst in his soul 
He feels the torment of his raging lust. 

Ann. Mercy ! oh mercy ! "" [things, 

Friar. There stand these wretched 

Who have dream'dout whole years in lawless sheets 
And secret incests, cursing one another," &c. 

Vol. i. pp. 63, 64. 

The most striking scene of the play, how- 
ever, is that which contains the catastrophe 
of the lady's fate. Her husband, after shut- 
ting her up for some time in gloomy privacy, 
invites her brother, and all his family, to a 
solemn banquet; and even introduces him, 
before it is served up, into her private cham- 
ber, \\ here he finds her sitting on her mar- 
riage-bed, in splendid attire, but filled with 
boding terrors and agonising anxiety. He, 
though equally aware of the fate that was 
prepared lor them, addresses her at first with 
a kind of wild and desperate gaiety, to which 
she tries for a while to answer with sober and 
earnest warnings, — and at last exclaims im- 
patiently, 

" Ann. O let's not waste 

These precious hours in vain and useless speech. 



Alas, these gay attires were not put on 

But to some end ; this sudden solemn feast 

Was not ordain'd to riot in expense ; 

I that have now been chamber'd here alone, 

Barr'd of my guardian, or of any else, 

Am not for nothing at an instant freed 

To fresh access. Be not deceiv'd, my brother, 

This banquet is an harbinger of Death 

To you and me ! resolve yourself it is, 

And be prepar'd to welcome it. [fac« 

Gio. Look up, look here ; what see you in mj 

Ann. Distraction and a troubled countenance, 

Gio. Death and a swift repining wrath ! Yet 

What see you in mine eyes ? [look, 

Ann. Melhinks you weep. 

Gio. I do indeed. These are the funeral tears 
Shed on your grave ! These furrow'd up my cheeks 
When first I Iov'd and knew not how to woo. 
Fair Annabella! should I here repeat 
The story of my life, we might lose time ! 
Be record, all the spirits of the air, 
And all things else that are, that day and night, 
Early and late, the tribute which my heart 
Hath paid to Annabella's sacred love '[now ! 

Hath been these tears, — which are her mourners 
Never till now did nature do her best 
To show a matchless beauty to the world, 
Which in an instant, ere it scarce was seen, 
The jealous destinies require again. 
Pray, Annabella, pray ! since we must part, 
Go thou, white in thy soul, to fill a throne 
Of innocence and sanctity in heaven. 
Pray, pray, my sister. . 

Ann. " Then I see your drift; 

Ye blessed angels, guard me ! 

Gio. So say I. 

Kiss me ! If ever after-times should hear 
Of our fast- knit affections, though perhaps 
The laws of conscience and of civil use 
May justly blame us, yet when they but know 
Our loves, that love will wipe away that rigour, 
Which would in other incests be abhorr'd. 
Give me your hand. How sweetly life doth run 
In these well-colour' d veins ! how constantly 
These palms do promise health ! but I could chide 
With nature for this cunning flattery. — 
Kiss me again ! — forgive me ! 

Ann. With my heart. 

Gio. Farewell. 

Ann. Will you be gone ? 

Gio. Be dark, bright sun, 

And make this mid-day night, that thy gilt rays 
May not behold a deed will turn their splendour 
More sooty than the poets feign their Styx! 
One other kiss, my sister ! 

Ann. What means this? 

Gio. To save thy fame, and kill thee in a kiss ! 

[Slabs her. 
Thus die ! and die by me, and by my hand ! 

Ann. Oh brother, by your hand! 

Gio. When thou art dead 

I'll give my reasons for't ; for to dispute 
With thee, even in thy death, most lovely beauty, 
Would make me stagger to perform this act 
Which I most glory in. 

Ann. Forgive him, Heaven — and me my sins ! 
Farewell. 
Brother unkind, unkind, — mercy, great Heaven, — 
oh — oh. [Dies. 

Gio. She's dead, alas, good soul ! This marriage 
In all her best, bore her alive and dead. [bed, 

Soranzo, thou hast miss'd thy aim in this; 
I have prevented now thy reaching plots, 
And kill'd a love, for whose each drop of blood 
I would have pawn'd my heart. Fair Annabella, 
How over-glorious art thou in thy wounds, 
Triumphing over infamy and hate ! 
Shrink not, courageous hand ; stand up, my heart, 
And boldlv act my last, and greater part !" 
—Vol. i. pp. 98—101. [Exit with the body. 

There are few things finer than this in 
Shakespeare. It bears an obvious resemblance 



FORD'S DRAMATIC WORKS. 



30 < 



indeed to the death of Desdemona; and, 
taking it as a detached scene, we think it 
rather the more beautiful of the two. The 
sweetness of the diction — the natural tone of 
tenderness and passion — the strange perver- 
sion of kind and magnanimous natures, and 
the horrid catastrophe by which their guilt is 
at once consummated and avenged, have not 
often been rivalled, in the pages either of the 
modern or the ancient drama. 

The play entitled "The Broken Heart," is 
in our author's best manner ; and would sup- 
ply more beautiful quotations than we have 
left room for inserting. The story is a little 
complicated j but the following slight sketch 
of it will make our extracts sufficiently in- 
telligible. Penthea, a noble lady of Sparta, 
was betrothed, with her father's approbation 
and her own full consent, to Orgilus; but 
being solicited, at the same time, by Bassanes, 
a person of more splendid fortune, was. after 
her father's death, in a manner compelled by 
her brother Ithocles to violate her first en- 
gagement, and yield him her hand. In this 
ill-sorted alliance, though living a life of un- 
impeachable purity, she was harassed and 
degraded by the perpetual jealousies of her 
unworthy husband ; and pined away, like her 
deserted lover, in sad and bitter recollections 
of the happy promise of their youth. Itho- 
cles, in the meantime, had pursued the course 
of ambition with a bold and commanding 
spirit, and had obtained the highest honours 
of his country; but too much occupied in the 

Eursuit to think of the misery to which he 
ad condemned the sister who was left to his 
protection : At last, however, in the midst of 
his proud career, he is seized with a sudden 
passion for Calantha, the heiress of the sover- 
eign ; and, after many struggles, is reduced to 
ask the intercession and advice of his un- 
happy sister, who was much in favour with 
the princess. The following is the scene in 
which he makes this request ; — and to those 
who have learned, from the preceding pas- 
sages, the lofty and unbending temper of the 
suppliant, and the rooted and bitter anguish 
of her whom he addresses, it cannot fail to 
appear one of the most striking in the whole 
compass of dramatic composition.* 

" lth. Sit nearer, sister, to me! — nearer yet! 
We had one father; in one womb took life; 
Were brought up twins together; — Yet have Iiv'd 
At distance, like two strangers! I could wish 
That the first pillow, whereon I was cradled, 
Had proved to me a grave ! 

Pen. You had been happy ! 

Then had you never known that sin of life 
Which blots all following glories with a vengeance, 
For forfeiting the last will of the dead, 
From whom you had your being. 

lth. Sad Penthea ! 

Thou canst not be too cruel ; mv rash spleen 
Hath with a violent hand pluck'd from thy bosom 
A love-blest heart, to grind it into dust — 
For which mine's now a-breaking. 

* I have often fancied what a splendid effect Mrs. 
Siddons and John Kemble would have given to the 
opening of this scene, in actual representation !— 
with the deep throb of their low voices, their pa- 
thetic pauses, and majestic attitudes and move- 
ments! 



Pen. Not yet, heaven 

I do beseech thee ! first, let some wild fires 
Scorch, not consume it ! may the heat be cherish'd 
With desires infinite, but hopes impossible ! 

lth. Wrong'd soul, thy prayers are heard. 

Pen. Here, lo, 1 breathe, 

A miserable creature, led to ruin 
By an unnatural brother! 

llh. I consume 

In languishing affections of that trespass; 
Yet cannot die. 

Pen. The handmaid to the wages, 

The untroubled but of country toil, drinks streams 
Wiih leaping kids and with the bleating lambs, 
And so allays her thirst secure ; whilst I 
Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears. 

Ith. The labourer doth eat his coarsest bread, 
Earn'd with his sweat, and lies him down to sleep; 
Whilst every bit I touch turns in digestion 
To gall, as bitter as Penthea's curse. 
Put me to any penance for my tyranny 
And I will call thee merciful. 

Pen. Pray kill me! 

Rid me from living with a jealous husband, 
Then we will join in friendship, be again 
Brother and sister. — Kill me, pray ! nay, will ye ? 

lth. Thou shalt stand 
A deity, my sister, and be worshipp'd 
For thy resolved martyrdom: wrong'd maids 
And married wives shall to thy hallow'd shrine 
Offer their orisons, and sacrifice 
Pure turtles, crown'd with myrtle, if thy pity 
Unto a yielding brother's pressure, tend 
One finger but, to ease it. 

Pen. Who is the saint you serve ? [daughter ! 

lth. Calantha 'tis! — the princess! the king's 
Sole heir of Sparta. — Me, most miserable!— 
Do I now love thee ? For my injuries 
Revenge thyself with bravery, and gossip 
My treasons* to the king's ears ! Do ! — Calantha 
Knows it not yet ; nor Prophilus, my nearest. 

Pen. We are reconcil'd ! — 
Alas, sir, being children, but two branches 
Of one stock, 'tis ng.t fit we should divide : 
Have comfort ; you may find it. 

lth. Yes, in thee ; 

Only in thee, Penthea mine! 

Pen. If sorrows 

Have not too much dull'd my infected brain, 
Pll cheer invemion for an active strain. 

Ith. Mad man ! why have I wrong'd a maid so 
excellent ?" Vol. i. pp. 273—277. 

We cannot resist the temptation of adding 
a part of the scene in which this sad ambas- 
sadress acquits herself of the task she had 
undertaken. There is a tone of heart-struck 
sorrow and female gentleness and purity 
about it that is singularly engaging, and con- 
trasts strangely with the atrocious indecen- 
cies with which the author has polluted his 
paper in other parts of the same play. — The 
princess says, 

" Cal. Being alone, Penthea, you now have 
The opportunity you sought ; and might [granted 
At all times have commanded. 

Pen. 'Tis a benefit 

Which I shall owe your goodness even in death for : 
My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes 
Remaining to run down ; the sands are spent ; 
For by an inward messenger I feel 
The summons of departure short and certain. 

Cal. You feed too much your melancholy. 

Pen. Glories 

Of human greatness are but pleasing d (jams 
And shadows soon decaying. On the itage 
Of my mortality, my youth hath acteo 
Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length 
By varied pleasures, sweetened in the mix\\r 
But tragical in issue. Beauty, pomp, 



308 



POETRY. 



With every sensuality our giddiness 
Doth frame an idol, are unconstant friends, 
When any troubled passion makes us halt 
On the unguarded castle of the mind. 

Cal. To what end 
Reach all these moral texts ? 

Pen. To place before ye 

A perfect mirror, wherein you may see 
How weary I am of a lingering life; 
Who count the best a misery. 

Cal, Indeed 

You have no little cause ; yet none so great 
As to distrust a remedy. 

Pen. That remedy 

Must be a winding sheet ! a fold of lead, 
And some untrod-on corner of the earth. — 
Not to detain your expectation, princess, 
I have an humble suit. 

Cal. Speak ; and enjoy it. 

Pen. Vouchsafe, then, to be my executrix, 
And take that trouble on you to dispose 
Such legacies as 1 bequeath, impartially ; 
I have not much to give ; the pains are easy, 
Heav'n will reward your piety, and thank it 
When I am dead ; for sure I must not live : 
I hope I cannot." 

After leaving her fame, her youth, &c. in 
some very pretty but fantastical verses, she 
proceeds — 

"Pen. 'Tis longagone, since first I lost my heart; 
Long have I lived without it ; else for certain 
I should have given that too ; But instead 
Of it, to great Calantha, Sparta's heir, 
By service bound, and by affection vow'd, 
I do bequeath in holiest rites of love 
Mine only brother, Ithocles. 

Cal. What say'st thou ? 

Pen. I must leave the world 

To revel in Elysium ; and 'tis just 
To wish my brother some advantage here ; 
Yet by my best hopes, Ithocles is ignorant 
Of this pursuit. 

Cal. You have forgot, Penthea, 

How still I have a father. 

Pen. But remember 

I am a sister, though to me this brother 
Hath been, you know, unkind ! Oh, most unkind !" 
Vol. i. pp. 291—293. 

There are passages of equal power and 
beauty in the plays called " Love's Sacrifice," 
" The* Lover's Melancholy," and in "Fancies 
Chaste and Noble." In Perkin Warbeck, there 
is a more uniform and sustained elevation of 
style. But we pass all those over, to give our 
readers a word or two from " The Witch of 
Edmonton," a drama founded upon the recent 
execution of a miserable old woman for that 
fashionable offence ; and in which the devil, 
in the shape of a black dog, is a principal per- 
former ! The greater part of the play, in which 
Ford was assisted by Dekkar and Rowley, is 
of course utterly absurd and contemptible — 
though not without its value as a memorial 
of the strange superstition of the age ; but it 
contains some scenes of great interest and 
beauty, though written in a lower and more 
familiar tone than most of those we have al- 
jeady exhibited. As a specimen of the range 
of the author's talents, we shall present our 
leaders with one of these. Frank Thorney 
had privately married a woman of inferior 
rank ; and is afterwards strongly urged by his 
father, and his own inclination, to take a 
second wife, in the person of a rich yeoman's 
daughter whose affections were fixed upon 



him. After taking this unjustifiable step, he 
is naturally troubled with certain inward 
compunctions, which manifest themselves ip 
his exterior, and excite the apprehensions o\ 
his innocent bride. It is her dialogue with 
him that we are now to extract ; and we think 
the picture that it affords of unassuming inno 
cence and singleness of heart, is drawn witl 
great truth, and even elegance. She begins 
with asking him why he changes countenance 
so suddenly. He answers — 

" Who, I ? For nothing. 

Sus. Dear, say not so: a spirit of your constancy 
Cannot endure this change for nothing. I've ob- 

serv'd 
Strange variations in you. 

Frank. In me ? 

Sus. In you, sir. 

Awake, you seem to dream, and in your sleep 
You utter sudden and distracted accents, [band, 
Like one at enmity with peace. Dear loving hus- 
If I may dare to challenge any interest 
In you, give me thee fully ! you may trust 
My breast as safely as your own. 

Frank. With what ? 

You half amaze me ; pr'ythee-- 

Sus. Come, you shall not, 

Indeed you shall not shut me from partaking 
The least dislike that grieves you. I'm all yours* 

Frank. And I all thine. 

Sus. You are not ; if you keep 

The least grief from me : but I know the cause ; 
It grows from me. 

Frank. From you ? 

Sus. From some distaste 

In me or my behaviour: you're not kind 
In the concealment. 'Las, sir, I am young, 
Silly and plain ; more strange to those contents 
A wife should offer. Say but in what I fail, 
I'll study satisfaction. 

Frank. Come; in nothing. 

Sus. I know I do: knew I as well in what, 
You should not long be sullen. Pr'ythee, love, 
If I have been immodest or too bold, 
Speak't in a frown ; if peevishly too nice, 
Shew't in a smile. Thy liking is a glass 
By which I'll habit my behaviour. 

Frank. Wherefore 

Dost weep now ? 

Sus. You, sweet, have the power 

To make me passionate as an April day. 
Now smile, then weep ; now pale, then crimson red. 
You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea, 
To make it ebb or flow into my face, 
As your looks change. 

Frank. Change thy conceit, I pr'ythee : 

Thou'rt all perfection : Diana herself 
Swells in thy thoughts and moderates thy beauty. 
Within thy clear eye amorous Cupid sits 
Feathering love-shafts, whose golden heads he dips 
In thy chaste breast. 

Sus. Come, come: these golden strings of flattery 
Shall not tie up my speech, sir ; I must know 
The ground of your disturbance. 

Frank. Then look here; 

For here, here is the fen in which this hydra 
Of discontent grows rank. 

Sus. Heaven shield it ! Where ? 

Frank. In mine own bosom ! here the cause has 
root; 
The poisoned leeches twist about my heart, 
And will, I hope, confound me. 

Sus. You speak riddles." 

Vol. ii. pp. 437—440. 

The unfortunate bigamist afterwards re- 
solves to desert this innocent creature ; but, 
in the act of their parting, is moved by the 
devil, who rubs against him in the shape of a 



HAZLITT'S CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



30* 



dog) to murder her. We are tempted to 
give the greater part of this scene, just to 
show how much beauty of diction and natu- 
ral expression of character may be com- 
bined with the most revolting and degrading 
absurdities. The unhappy bridegroom says — 

"Why would you delay? we have no other 
business 
Now, but to part. [time? 

Sits. And will not that, sweet-heart, ask a long 
Methinks it is the hardest piece of work 
That e'er I took in hand. 

Frank. Fie, fie ! why look, 

I'll make it plain and easy to you. Farewell. 

[Kisses her. 

Sus. Ah, 'las ! I'm not half perfect in it yet. 
1 must have it thus read an hundred times. 
Prav you take some pains, I confess my dulness. 

Frank. Come ! again and again, farewell. [Kisses 
Iter.] Yet wilt return ? 
All questions of my journey, my stay, employment, 
And revisitation, fully I have answered all. 
There's nothing now behind but — 

Sus. But this request — 

Frank. What is't ? [more, 

Sus. That I may bring you thro' one pasture 
Up to yon knot of trees: amongst those shadows 
I'll vanish from you ; they shall leach me how. 

Frank. Why 'tis granted: come, walk then. 

Sus. Nay, not too fast : 

They say, slow things have best perfection ; 
The gentle show'r wets to fertility, 
The churlish storm makes mischief with his bounty. 

Frank. Now, your request 
Is out : yet will you leave me? 

Sun. What ? so churlishly ! 

You'll make me stay for ever, 
Rather than part with such a sound from you. 

Frank. Why, you almost anger me. — 'Pray you 
You have no company, and 'tis very early ; [begone. 
Some hurt may betide you homewards. 

^ Sus. Tush ! I fear none : 

To leave you is the greatest I can suffer. 

Frank. So ! I shall have more trouble." 

Here the dog rubs against him : and. after 



" Sm. Why then I thank you; 

You have done lovingly, leaving yourself, 
That you would thus bestow me on another. 



Thou art my husband, Death ! I embrace thee 

With all the love I have. Forget the stain 

Of my unwitting sin: and then I come 

A crystal virgin to thee. My soul's purity 

Shall, with bold wings, ascend the doors of mercy ; 

For innocence is ever her companion. 

Frank. Not yet mortal ? I would not linger you, 
Or leave you a tongue to blab. [Slabs her again. 

Sus. Now heaven reward you ne'er the worse for 
I did not think that death had been so sweet, [me ! 
Nor I so apt to love him. I could ne'er die better, 
Had I stay'd forty years for preparation: 
For I'm in charity with all the world. 
Let me for once be thine example, heaven ; 
Do to this man as I, forgive him freely, 
And may he better die, and sweeter live. [Dies." 
Vol. ii. pp. 452—445. 

We cannot afford any more space for Mr. 
Ford ; and what we have said, and what we 
have shown of him, will probably be thought 
enough, both by those who are disposed to 
scoff, and those who are inclined to admire. 
It is but fair, however, to intimate, that a 
thorough perusal of his works will afford more 
exercise to the former disposition than to the 
latter. His faults are glaring and abundant ; 
but v/e have not thought it necessary to pro- 
duce any specimens of them, because they 
are exactly the sort of faults which every one 
acquainted with the drama of that age reckons 
upon finding. No body doubts of the exist- 
ence of such faults : But there are many who 
doubt of the existence of any counterbalanc- 
ing beauties; and therefore it seemed worth 
while to say a word or two in their explana- 
tion. There is a great treasure of poetry, we 
think, still to be brought to light in the neglect- 
ed writers of the age to which this author be- 
longs; and poetry of a kind which, if purified 
and improved, as the happier specimens show 
that it is capable of being, would be far more 
delightful to the generality of English readers 
than any other species of poetry. We shall 
readily be excused for our tediousness by those 
who are of this opinion ; and should not have 
been forgiven, even if we had not been tedious, 
by those who look upon it as a heresy. 



(August, 1817.) 

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. By William Hazlitt. 8vo. pp. 352. London : 1817.* 



This is not a book of black-letter learning, 
or historical elucidation ; — neither is it a me- 
taphysical dissertation, full of wise perplexi- 
ties and elaborate reconcilements. It is, in 

* It may be thought that enough had been said 
of our early dramatists, in the immediately preced- 
ing article ; and it probably is so. But I could not 
resist the temptation of thus renewing, in my own 
name, that vow of allegiance, which f had so often 
taken anonymously, to the only true and lawful 
King of our English Poetry! and now venture, 
therefore, fondly to replace this slight and perish- 
able wreath on his august and undecaying shrine : 
with no farther apology than that it presumes to 
direct attention but to one, and that, as I think, a 
comparatively ne£lected, aspect of his universal 
genius. 



truth, rather an encomium on Shakespeare, 
than a commentary or critique on him — and 
is written, more to show extraordinary love, 
than extraordinary knowledge of his produc- 
tions. Nevertheless, it is a very pleasing 
book — and, we do not hesitate to say, a book 
of very considerable originality and genius. 
The author is not merely an admirer of our 
great dramatist, but an Idolater of him ; and 
openly professes his idolatry. We have our- 
selves too great a leaning to the same super 
stition, to blame him very much for his error: 
and though we think, of course, that our own 
admiration is, on the whole, more discriminat- 
ing and judicious, there are not many points 
on which, especially after reading his eloquent 



310 



POETRY. 



exposition of them, we should be much in- 
clined to disagree with him. 

The book, as we have already intimated, is 
w ritten less to tell the reader what Mr. H. knows 
about Shakespeare or his writings, than to 
explain to them what he feels about them — 
and why he feels so — and thinks that all who 
profess to love poetry should feel so likewise. 
What we chiefly look for in such a work, ac- 
cordingly, is a fine sense of the beauties of 
the author, and an eloquent exposition of 
them j and all this, and more, we think, may 
be found in the volume before us. There is 
nothing niggardly in Mr. H.'s praises, and 
nothing affected in his raptures. He seems 
animated throughout with a full and hearty 
sympathy with the delight which his author 
should inspire, and pours himself gladly out 
in explanation of it, with a fluency and ardour, 
obviously much more akin to enthusiasm than 
affectation. He seems pretty generally, in- 
deed, in a state of happy intoxication — and 
has borrowed from his great original, not in- 
deed the force or brilliancy of his ip.ncy, but 
something of its playfulness, and a large share 
of his apparent joyousness and self-indulgence 
in its exercise. It is evidently a great plea- 
sure to him to be fully possessed with the 
beauties of his author, and to follow the im- 
pulse or his unrestrained eagerness to impress 
them upon his readers. 

When we huve said that his observations 
are generally right, we have said, in sub- 
Btance, that they are not generally original ; 
for the beauties of Shakespeare are not of so 
dim or equivocal a nature as to be visible only 
to learned eyes — and undoubtedly his finest 
passages are those which please all classes of 
readers, and are admired for the same quali- 
ties by judges from every school of criticism. 
Even with regard to those passages, however, 
a skilful commentator will find something- 
worth hearing to tell. Many persons are very 
sensible of the effect of fine poetry on their 
feelings, who do not well know how to refer 
these feelings to their causes ; and it is always 
a delightful thing to be made to see clearly 
the sources from which our delight has pro- 
ceeded — and to trace back the mingled stream 
that has flowed upon our hearts, to the remo- 
ter fountains from which it has been gathered. 
And when this is done with warmth as well 
as precision, and embodied in an eloquent de- 
scription of the beauty which is explained, it 
forms one of the most attractive, and not the 
least instructive, of literary exercises. In all 
works of merit, however, and especially in all 
works of original genius, there are a thousand 
retiring and less obtrusive graces, which es- 
cape hasty aild superficial observers, and only 
give out their beauties to fond and patient 
contemplation ; — a thousand slight and har- 
monising touches, the merit and the effect of 
which are equally imperceptible to vulgar 
eyes ; and a thousand indications of the contin- 
ual presence of that poetical spirit, which can 
only be recognised by those who are in some 
measure under its influence, or have prepared 
themselves to receive it, by worshipping 
meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. 



In the exposition of these, theie is rooirt 
enough for originality, — and more room than 
Mr. H. has yet filled. In many points, how- 
ever, he has acquitted himself excellently ; — 
partly in the development of the principal 
characters -with which Shakespeare has peo- 
pled the fancies of all English readers — but 
principally, we think, in the delicate sensi- 
bility with \fhjch he has traced, and the 
natural eloquence with which he has pointed 
out that fond familiarity with beautiful forms 
and images — that eternal recurrence to what 
is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of 
nature — that indestructible love of flowers 
and odours, and dews and clear waters, and 
soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and 
woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, 
which are the Material elements of Poetry — 
and that fine sense of their undefinable rela- 
tion to mental emotion, which is its essence 
and vivifying Soul— and which, in the midst 
of Shakespeare's most busy and atrocious 
scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks 
and ruins — contrasting with all that is rugged 
and repulsive, and reminding us of the exist- 
ence of purer and brighter elements! — which 
he alone has poured out from the richness 
of his own mind, without effort or restraint ; 
and contrived to intermingle with the play of 
all the passions, and the vulgar course of this 
world's affairs, without deserting for an instant 
the proper business of the scene, or appearing 
to pause or digress, from the love of ornament 
or need of repose ! — He alone, who, when 
the object requires it, is always keen and 
worldly and practical — and who yet, without 
changing his hand, or stopping his course, 
scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds 
and shapes of sweetness — and conjures up 
landscapes of immortal fragrance and fresh- 
ness, and peoples them with Spirits of glo- 
rious aspect and attractive grace — and is a 
thousancl times more full of fancy and ima- 
gery, and splendour, than those -who, in pur- 
suit of such enchantments, have shrunk back 
from the delineation of character or passion, 
and declined the discussion of human duties 
and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule 
and sagacity, than all the moralists and sa- 
tirists that ever existed — he is more wild, 
airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and 
fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and 
ages of the world : — and has all those ele- 
ments so happily mixed up in him, and bears 
his high faculties so temperately, that the 
most severe reader cannot complain of him 
for want of strength or of reason — nor the most 
sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. 
Every thing in him is in unmeasured abund- 
ance, and unequalled perfection — but every- 
thing so balanced and kept in subordination, 
as not to jostle or disturb or take the place 
of another. The most exquisite poetical con- 
ceptions, image©, and descriptions, are given 
with such brevity, and introduced with such 
skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the 
sense they accompany. Although his sails 
are purple and perfumed, and his prow of 
beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not 
less, but more rapidly and directly than if 



HAZLITT'S CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



311 



f hey. had been composed of baser materials. 
All his excellences, like those of Nature her- 
self, are thrown out together; and, instead of 
interfering with, support and recommend each 
other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, 
nor his fruits crushed into baskets — but spring 
living from the soil, in all the dew and fresh- 
ness of youth; while the graceful foliage in 
which they lurk, and the ample branches, the 
rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spread- 
ing roots on which they depend, are present 
along with them, and share, in their places, 
the equal care of their Creator. 

What other poet has put all the charm of a 
Moonlight landscape into a single line \ — and 
that by an image so true to nature, and so 
simple, as to seem obvious to the most com- 
mon observation 1 — 
" See how the Moonlight sleeps on yonder bank !" 

Who else has expressed, in three lines, all 
that is picturesque and lovely in a Summer's 
Dawn? — first setting before our eyes, with 
magical precision, the visible appearances of 
the infant light, and then, by one graceful 
and glorious image, pouring on our souls all 
the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity of 



" See, love ! what envious streaks 

Do lace the Severing clouds in yonder East. ! 
Night's candles'* are burnt out, — and jocund Day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops!" 

Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours 
so luxuriously blended and illustrated, as in 
these few words of sweetness and melody, 
where the author says of soft music — 

" O it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour !" 

This is still finer, we think, than the noble 
speech on Music in the Merchant of Venice, 
and only to be compared with the enchant- 
ments of Prospero's island ; where all the 
effects of sweet sounds are expressed in mi- 
raculous numbers, and traced in their opera- 
tion on all the gradations of being, from the 
delicate Arial to the brutish Caliban, who, 
savage as he is, is still touched with those 
supernatural harmonies; and thus exhorts his 
less poetical associates — 

11 Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises. 
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and 
hurt not. 

* If the advocates for the grand style object to 
this expression, we shall not stop to defend it : But 
to us, it seems equally beautiful, as it is obvious and 
natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber 
into the pale dawn. The word candle, we admit, 
is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is 
sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs 
her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy 
of verses ; and she could not he called the candle 
of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are 
the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage 
before us much befter as it is. than if the candles 
were changed into lamps. If we should read, 
" The letups of heaven are quenched," or " wax- 
dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of 
the expression would be lost : as our fancies would 
no longed he recalled to the privacy of that dim- 
lighted chamber which the lovers were so reluct- 
antly leaving. 



Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments 
Will hum about mine, ears, and sometimes voicea, 
That if I then had waked after a long sleep, 
Would make me sleep again." 

Observe, too, that this and the other poeti- 
cal speeches of this incarnate demon, are not 
mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but ex- 
plain his character, and describe his situation 
more briefly and effectually, than any other 
words could have done. In this play, indeed, 
and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream, all 
Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole 
treasury of natural and supernatural beauty 
poured out profusely, to the delight of all our 
faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with 
quotations ; but we refer to those plays gen- 
erally — to the forest scenes in As You Like 
It — the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale — 
several entire scenes in Cymbeline, and in 
Romeo and Juliet — and many passages in all 
the other plays — as illustrating this love of 
nature and natural beauty of which we have 
been speaking — the power it had over the 
poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who 
else would have thought, on the very thres- 
hold of treason and midnight murder, of 
bringing in so sweet and rural an image as 
this, at the portal of that blood-stained castle 
of Macbeth ? 

41 This guest of summer, 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
By his loved masonry that heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here. No jutting frieze, 
Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird 
Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle," 

Nor is this brought in for the sake of an 
elaborate contrast between the peaceful inno- 
cence of this exterior, and the guilt and hor- 
rors that are to be enacted within. There ia 
no hint of any such suggestion — but it is set 
down from the pure love of nature and re- 
ality — because the kindled mind of the poet 
brought the. whole scene before his eyes, 
and he painted all that he saw in his vision. 
The same taste predominates in that em- 
phatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Mac- 
beth says, 

" Look like the innocent flower, 

But be the serpent under it." 

And in that proud boast of the bloody 
Richard — 

"But I was horn so high : 
Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, 
And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun !" 

The same splendour of natural imagery, 
brought simply and directly to bear upon stern 
and repulsive passions, is to be found in the 
cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon. 

" Will these moist trees 
That have ouf-liv'd the eagle, page thy heels, 
And skip when thou point's! out? will the cold 

brook, 
Candied with ire. caudle thy morning taste 
To cure thine oer-night's surfeit ?" 

No one but Shakespeare would have thought 
of putting this noble picture into the taunting 
address of a snappish misanthrope — any more 
than the following into the mouth of a mer- 
cenary murderer. 



312 



POETRY. 



Their lips #sre four red roses on a stalk, 

And in their summer beauty kissed each other !" 

Or this delicious description of concealed love, 
mto that of a regretful and moralizing parent. 

"Bat he, his own affections Counsellor, 
Is to himself so secret and so close, 
As is the bud bit with an envious worm 
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." 

And yet all these are so far from being un- 
natural, that they are no sooner put where 
they are, than we feel at once their beauty 
and their effect : and acknowledge our obli- 
gations to that exuberant genius which alone 
could thus throw out graces and atractions 
where there seemed to be neither room nor 
call for them. In the same spirit of prodi- 
gality he puts this rapturous and passionate 
exaltation of the beauty of Imogen, into the 
mouth of one who is not even a lover. 

— " It is her breathing that 
Perfumes the chamber thus ! the flame o' th taper 
Bows towards her ! and would under-peep her lids 
To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied 
Under the windows, white and azure, laced 
With blue of Heaven's own tinct ! — on her left 

breast 
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
I' the bottom of a cowslip !" 

But we must break at once away from these 
manifold enchantments — and recollect that 
our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with 
the great and gifted author on whom he is 
employed : And, to avoid the danger of any 
further preface, we shall now let him speak 
a little for himself. In his remarks on Cym- 
beline, which is the first play in his arrange- 
ment, he takes occasion to make the follow- 
ing observations on the female characters of 
his. author. 

" It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare's 
heroines, that they seem to exist only in their at- 
tachment to others. They are pure abstractions of 
the affections. We think as little of their persons 
as they do themselves ; because we are let into the 
secreisof their hearts, which are more important. 
We are too much interested in their affairs to stop 
to look at their faces, except by stealth and at inter- 
vals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the 
female character, the sense of weakness leaning 
on the strength of its affections for support, so well 
as Shakespeare — no one ever so well painted natu- 
ral tenderness free from affectation and disguise — 
no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and 
timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic 
and extravagant : For the romance of his heroines 
(in which they abound) is only an excess of the 
habitual prejudices of their sex ; scrupulous of being 
false to their vows or truant to their affections, and 
taught by the force of feeling when to forego the 
forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women 
were in this respect exquisite logicians ; for there is 
nothing so logical as passion. Gibber, in speaking 
of the early English stage, accounts for the want 
of prominence and theatrical display in Shake- 
speare's female characters, from the circumstance, 
that women in those days were not allowed to play 
the parts of women, which made it necessary to 
keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does 
not this state of manners itself, which prevented 
their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined 
them to the relations and charities of domestic life, 
afford a truer explanation of the matter ? His wo- 
men are certainly very unlike stage heroines." — 

pp.3, 4. 



His remarks on Macbeth are of a higher 
and bolder character. After noticing the 
wavering and perplexity of Macbeth's resolu- 
tion, " driven on, as it were, \>y the violence 
of his Fate, and staggering under the weight 
of his own purposes," he strikingly observes, 

" This part of his character is admirably set off 
by being brought in connection with that of Lady 
Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and mas- 
culine firmness give her the ascendancy over her 
husband's faltering virtue. She at once seizes on 
the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment 
of their wished-for greatness ; and never flinches 
from her object till all is over. The magnitude of 
her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her 
guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, 
but whom we fear more than we hate. She does 
not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan 
and Gonnerill. She is only wicked to gain a great 
end ; and is perhaps more distinguished by her 
commanding presence of mind and inexorable self- 
wiil, which do not suffer her to be diverted from a 
bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and 
womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart 
or want of natural affections." — pp. 18, 19. 

But the best part perhaps of this critique, 
is the comparison of the Macbeth with the 
Richard of the same author. 

" The leading features in the character of Mac- 
beth are striking enough, and they form what may 
be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. 
By comparing it with other characters of the same 
author we shall perceive the absolute truth and 
identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy 
whirl and rapid career of events. Thus he is as 
distinct a being from Richard III. as it is possible 
to imagine, though these two characters in common 
hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, 
would have been a repetition of the same general 
idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are 
tyrants, usurpers, murderers, — both aspiring and 
ambitious, — both courageous, cruel, treacherous. 
But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. 
Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. 
Richard is from his birth deformed in body and 
mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth 
is full of " the milk of human kindness," is frank, 
sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commis- 
sion of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instiga- 
tions of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. 
' Fate and metaphysical aid' conspire against his 
virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary 
needs no prompter ; but wades through a series of 
crimes to the height ofhis ambition, from the un- 
governable violence of his temper and a reckless* 
love of mischief. He is never gay but in the pros- 
pect or in the success of his viuanies : Macbeth is 
full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of 
Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to 
commit; and of remorse after its perpetration. 
Richard has no mixture of common humanity in 
his composition, no regard to kindred or posterity — 
he owns no fellowship with others ; he is ' himself 
alone.' Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of 
sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in 
some measure the dupe of his uxoriousness ; ranks 
the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his follow- 
ers, and of his good name, among the causes which 
have made him weary of life ; and regrets that rje 
has ever seized the Crown by unjust mea he're"*are 
he cannot transmit it to his posterity. T Wo c ]j a 
other decisive differences inherent in the ari f ,u~ 
acters. Richard may be regarded as a n> regard- 
world, a plotting hardened knave, whol'he means 
less of everything but his own ends, and supersti- 
to secure them. — Not so Macbeth. Tj C iety, the 
tions of the age, the rude state ofiiidness' and 
local scenery and customs, all give a F rom ^ 
imaginary grandeur to his characte 



HAZLITT'S CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



313 



strangeness of the events that surround him, he is 
full of amar.ement and fear; and stands in doubt 
between the world of reality and the world of 
fancy. He sees sights not shown to mortal eye, 
and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and dis- 
order within and without his mind ; his purposes 
recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed ; he 
is the double thrall of his passions and his destiny. 
Richard is not a character either of imagination or 
pathos, but of pure self-will. There is no conflict 
of opposite feelings in his breast. In the busy tur- 
bulence of his projects he never loses his self-pos- 
session, and makes use of every circumstance that 
happens as an instrument of his long-reaching de- 
signs. In his last extremity we regard him but as 
a wild beast taken in the toils: But we never en- 
tirely lose our concern for Macbeth ; and he calls 
back all our sympathy by that fine close of thought- 
ful melancholy. 

" My way of life 
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
And that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
I must not look 10 have ! But in their stead, 
Curses not loud but deep ; mouth-honour, breath, 
Which the poor heart would fain denv, and dares 
not!" — pp. 26— 30. 

In treating of the Julius Caesar, Mr. H. ex- 
tracts the following short scene, and praises it 
so highly, and, in our opinion, so juslly, that 
we cannot resist the temptation of extracting 
it too — together with his brief commentary. 

" Brutus. The games are done, and Caesar is 
returning. [sleeve, 

Cassius. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the 
And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you 
What has proceeded worthy note to-day. 

Brutus. I will do so ; but look you, Cassius — 
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar's brow, 
And all the rest look like a chidden train. 
Calphurnia's cheek is pale ; and Cicero 
Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes, 
As we have seen him in the Capitol, 
Being crost in conference by some senator. 

Cassius. Casca will tell us what the matter is. 

Ccesar. Antonius 

Antony. Caesar? 

Ccesar. Let me have men about me that are fat, 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nighis : 
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, 
He thinks too much ; such men are dangerous. 

Antony. Fear him not, Caesar, he's not danger- 
ous: 
He is a noble Roman, and well given. [not : 

Ccesar. Would he were fatter ! But I fear him 
Yet if my name were liable to fear, 
I do not know the man I should avoid 
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much ; 
He is a great observer; and he looks 
Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays, 
As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music : 
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, 
As if he mock'd himself, and scorned bis spirit, 
That could be moved to smile at any thing. 
Such men as he be never at heart's ease 
Whilst they behold a greater than themselves; 
And therefore are they very dangerous. 
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd 
Than what I fear; for always I am Caesar. 
Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, 
And tell me truly what thou think st of him." 

" We know hardly any passage more expressive 
of the genius of Shakespeare than this. It is as if 
he had been actually present, had known the dif- 
ferent characters and what they thought of one 
another, and had taken down what, he heard and 
saw, their looks, words, and gestures, just as they 
happened." — pp. 36, 37. 

We may add the following as a specimen 
40 



of the moral and political reflections which 
this author has intermixed with his criticisms. 

"Shakespeare has in this play and elsewhere 
shown the same penetration into political character 
and the springs of public events as into those of 
every-day life. For instance, the whole design to 
liberate their country fails from the generous tem- 
per and overweening confidence of Brutus in the 
goodness of their cause and the assistance of others. 
Thus it has always been. Those who mean well 
themselves think well of others, and fall a prey to 
their security. The friends of liberty trust to the 
professions of others, because they are themselves 
sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good 
with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who 
have no regard to any thing but their own un- 
principled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish 
them. Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. 
His heart prompted his head. His habitual jealousy 
made him fear the worst that might happen, and his 
irritability of temper added to his inveteracy of pur- 
pose, and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed 
nature of his motives made him fitter to contend 
with bad men. The vices are never so well em- 
ployed as in combating one another. Tyranny and 
servility are to be dealt with after their own fashion : 
otherwise, they will triumph over those who spare 
them, and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric, 
as Antony did that of Brutus. 

"All the conspirators, save only he, 
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar: 
He only in a general honest thought 
Of common good to all, made one of them. 

pp. 38, 39. 

The same strain is resumed in his remarks 
on Coriolanus. 

"Shakespeare seems to have had a leaning to 
the arbitrary side of the question ; perhaps from 
some feeling of contempt for his own origin ; and 
to have spared no Occasion of baiting the rabble. 
What he says of them is very true : what he says 
of their betters is also very true; But he dwells 
less upon it. — The cause of the people is indeed but 
little calculated as a subject for poetry : it admits of 
rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, 
but it presents no immediate or distinct images to 
the mind. The imagination is an exaggerating and 
exclusive faculty. The understanding is a dividing 
and measuring faculty. The one is an aristocrati- 
cal, the other a republican faculty. The principle 
of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims 
at effect, and exists by contrast. It is every thing 
by excess. It puts the individual for the species, 
the one above the infinite many, might before right. 
A lion hunting a flock of sheep is a more poetical 
object than they ; and we even take part with the 
lordly beast, because our vanity or some other feel- 
ing makes us disposed to place ourselves in the 
situation of the strongest party. There is nothing 
heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not 
wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are 
like to be so : but when a single man comes for- 
ward to brave their cries and to make them submit 
to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, 
our admiration of his prowess is immediately con- 
verted into contempt for their pusillanimity. We 
had rather, in short, be the oppressor than the op- 
pressed. The love of power in ourselves and the 
admiration of it in others are both natural to man: 
But the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave/' 
—pp. 69—72. 

There are many excellent remarks and 
several fine quotations, in the discussions on 
Troilus and Cressida. As this is no longer 
an acted play, we venture to give one extract, 
with Mr. H.'s short observations, which per- 
fectly express our opinion of its mevits. 
2B 



314 



POETRY. 



"It cannot be said of Shakespeare, as was said 
»f some one, that he was ' without o'erflowing full.' 
He was full, eveVi to o'erflowing. He gave heaped 
measure, running over.* This was his greatest 
fault. He was only in danger ' of losing distinction 
in his thoughts' (to borrow his own expression) 

" As doih a battle when they charge on heaps 
The enemy flying." 

" There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses 
1o Achilles, showing him the thankless nature of 
popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral 
observation and richness ot illustration than the 
former. 

"Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his 
Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion ; [back, 

A great-siz'd monster of ingratitudes ; 
Those scraps are good deeds past ; 
Which are devour'd-as fast as they are made, 
Forgot as soon as done : Persev' ranee, dear my lord, 
Keeps Honour bright : to have done, is to hang 
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail 
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way ; 
For Honour travels in a strait so narrow, 
That one but goes abreast ; keep then the path, 
For Emulation hath a thousand sons, 
That one by one pursue ; if you give way, 
Or hedge aside from ihe direct fonh-right, 
Like to an entered tide they all rush by, 

And leave you hindmost ; 

Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, [present, 
O'er-run and trampled on: ihen what they do in 
Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours : 
For Time is like a fashionable host, 
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, 
And with his arms outstretch'd as he would fly, 
Grasps in the comer : thus Welcome ever smiles, 
And Farewel goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek 
Remuneration for the thing it was ; For beauty, wit, 
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, 
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all 
To envious and calumniating time: 
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 
That all, with one consent, praise new born gauds, 
Though they are made and moulded of things past." 

" The throng of images in the above lines is pro- 
digious ; and though they sometimes jostle against 
one another, they everywhere raise and carry on 
the feeling, which is metaphsically true and pro- 
found."— pp. 85 — 87. 

This Chapter ends with an ingenious paral- 
lel between the genius of Chaucer and that 
of Shakespeare, which we have not room to 
insert. 

The following observations on Hamlet are 
very characteristic of Mr. H.'s manner of 
writing in the work now before us ; in which 
he continually appears acute, desultory, and 
capricious — with great occasional felicity of 
conception and expression — frequent rashness 
and carelessness — constant warmth of admi- 
ration for his author — and some fits of extrav- 
agance and folly, into which he seems to be 
hurried, either by the hasty kindling of his 
zeal as he proceeds, or by a selfwilled deter- 
mination not to be balked or baffled in any 
thing he has taken it into his head he should 
say. 

" Hamlet is a name: his speeches and sayings 
but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. But are 
they not red ? They are as real as our own thoughts 
Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who 
are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which 
is above that of history. Whoever has become 
thoughtful and melancholy through his own mis- 
haps or those oi others ; whoever has borne about 



with him the clouded brow of reflection, and though! 
himself ' too much i' th J sun ;' whoever has seen 
the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious misfa 
rising in his own breast, and could find in the world 
before him only a dull blank, with nothing left re- 
markable in it ; whoever has known ' the pangs of 
despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns 
which patient merit of the unworthy takes ;' he who 
has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling 
to his heart like a malady ; who has had his hopes 
blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions 
of strange things ; who cannot be well at ease, while 
he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre ; whose 
powers of action have been eaten up by thought; 
he to whom the universe seems infinite, and him- 
self nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him 
careless of consequences, and who goes to a play, 
as his best resource to shoveoff, to a second re- 
move, the evils of life, by a mock-representation of 
them. This is the true Hamlet. 

" We have been so used to this tragedy, that we 
hardly know how to criticise it, any more than we 
should know how to describe our own faces. But 
we must make such observations as we can. It is 
the one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of 
oftenest because it abounds most in striking reflec- 
tions on human life, and because the distresses of 
Hamlet are transfer) ed, by the turn of his mind, to 
the general account of humanity. Whatever hap- 
pens to him, we apply to ourselves; because he 
applies it so himself as a means of general reason- 
ing. He is a great moralizer, and what makes him 
worth attending to is, that he moralizes on his own 
feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace 
pedant. If Lear shows the greatest depth of pas- 
sion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the inge- 
nuity, originality, and unstudied development of 
character. There is no attempt to force an interest : 
every thing is left for time and circumstances to 
unfold. The attention is excited without effort ; the 
incidents succeed each other as matters of course ; 
the characters think, and speak, and act, just as 
they might do if left entirely to themselves. There 
is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The ob 
servations are suggested by the passing scene — the 
gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music 
borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact 
transcript of what might be supposed to have taken 
place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period 
of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements 
in morals and manners were heard of. It would 
have been interesting enough to have been admit- 
ted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, 
to have heard and seen something of what was 
going on. But here we are more than spectators. 
We have not only ' the outward pageants and the 
signs of grief,' but 'we have that within which 
passes show.' We read the thoughts of the heart, 
we catch the passions living as they rise. Other 
dramatic writers give us very fine versions and 
paraphrases of nature ; but Shakespeare, together 
with his own comment, gives us the original text, 
thai we may judge for ourselves. This is a great 
advantage. 

" The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effu- 
sion of genius. It is not a character marked by 
strength of will, or even of passion, but by refine- 
ment of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little 
of the hero as a man can well be : but he is a young 
and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and 
quick sensibility, — the sport of circumstances, 
questioning with fortune, and refining on his own 
feelings ; and forced from the natural bias of his 
disposition by the strangeness of his situation." — 
pp. 104—107. 

His account of the Tempest is all pleasingly 
written, especially his remarks on Caliban; 
but we rather give out readers his specula- 
tions on Bottom and his associates. 

" Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not 
had justice done him. He is the most romantic of 



HAZLITT'S CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



315 



mechanics ; He follows a sedentary trade, and he is 
accordingly represented as conceited, serious, and 
fantastical. He is ready to undertake any thing and 
every thing, as if it was as much a matter of course 
as the motion of his loom and shuttle. He is-for play- 
ing the tyrant, the lover, the lady, the lion. ' He will 
roar that it shall do any man's heart good to hear 
him ;' and this being objected to as improper, he 
still has a resource in his good opinion of himself, 
and 'will roar you an 'twere any nightingale.' 
Snug the Joiner is the moral man of the piece, 
who proceeds by measurement and discretion in 
all things. You see him with his rule and com- 
passes m his hand. ' Have you the lion's part 
written ? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am 
slow of study. ? — ' You may do it extempore,' says 
Quince, ' for it is nothing but roaring.' Starve- 
ling the Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the 
lion and the drawn sword. ' I believe we must 
leave the killing out when all's done.' Starveling, 
however, does not start the objections himself, but 
seconds them when made by others, as if he had 
no spirit to express his fears without encourage- 
ment. It is too much to suppose all this intentional : 
but it very luckily falls out so." — pp. 126, 127. 

Mr. H. admires Romeo and Juliet rather too 
much — though his encomium on it is about 
the most eloquent part of his performance : 
But we really cannot sympathise with all the 
conceits and puerilities that occur in this play ; 
for instance, this exhortation to Night, which 
Mr. H. has extracted for praise !— - 

" Give me my Romeo — and when he shall die, 
Take him ai,d cut him out in little stars, 
And he will make the face of heaven so fine, 
That all the world willbein love with Night, "&c. 

We agree, however, with less reservation, 
in his rapturous encomium on Lear — but can 
afford no extracts. The following speculation 
on the character of Falstaff is a striking, and, 
on the whole, a favourable specimen of our 
author's manner. 

" Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasure- 
able sensation ; an effusion of spleen and petty 
spi'e at the comforts of others, from feeling none in 
itself. FalstafFs wit is an emanation of a fine con- 
stitution ; an exuberance of good-humour and good- 
nature ; an overflowing of his love of laughter, and 
good-fellowship ; a giving vent to his heart's ease 
and over-contentment with himself and others. — 
He would not be in character if he were not so fat 
as he is ; for there is the greatest keeping in the 
boundless luxury of his imagination and the pam- 
pered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. He 
manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he 
does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out 
his jokes, a3 he would a capon, or a haunch of 
*venison, where there is cut and come again: and 
lavishly pours out upon them the oil of gladness. 
His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of 
his brain ' it snow-; of meat and drink.' He keeps 
up perpetual holiday and open house, and we live 
with him in a round of invitations to a rump and 
dozen. — Yet we are not left to suppose that he was 
a mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagina- 
tion as in reality. His sensuality does not engross 
and stupify his other faculties, but 'ascends me 
into the brain, clears away all the dull, crude va- 
pours that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, 
fiery, and delectable shapes.' His imagination 
keeps up the ball long after his senses have done 
with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoy- 
ment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, 
of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal and exagge- 
rated descriptions which he gives of them, than 
in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse 
with allusions to eating and drinking; but we 



never see him at table. He carries his own larder 
about with him, and he is himself 'atun of man.' 
His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle is a 
joke to show his contempt for glory accompanied 
with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epi- 
curean philosophy in the most trying circumstances. 
Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of his 
own vices, that it does not seem quite certain 
whether the account of his hostess' bill, found in 
his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way charge for 
capons and sack with only one half- penny-worth 
of bread, was not put there by himself, as a trick to 
humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and 
as a conscious caricature of himself. 

" The secret of Falstaff' s wit is for the most part 
a masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-pos- 
session, which nothing can disturb. His repartees 
are involuntary suggestions of his self-love ; instinc • 
live evasions of every thing that threatens to inter- 
rupt the career of his triumphant jollity and 
self-complacency. His very size floats him out of 
all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits ; and he 
turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with 
every occasion and at a moment's warning. His 
natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or 
circumstance, of itself makes light of objections, 
and provokes the most extravagant and licentious 
answers in his own justification. His indifference 
to truth puts no check upon his invention ; and (he 
more improbable and unexpected his contrivances 
are, the more happily does he seem to be delivered 
of them, the anticipation of their effect acting as a 
stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy. The success of 
one adventurous sally gives him spirits to undertake 
another: he deals always in round numbers, and 
his exaggerations and excuses are ' open, palpable, 
monstrous as the father that begets them.' " 

pp. 189—192. 

It is time, however, to make an end of this. 
We are not in the humour to discuss points 
of learning with this author; and our readers 
now see well enough what sort of book he 
has written. We shall conclude with his re- 
marks on Shakespeare's style of Comedy, in- 



" This is justly considered as one of the most de-. 
lightful of Shakespeare's comedies. It is full of 
sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps too good- 
natured for comedy. It has little satire, and no 
spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the 
ridiculous. It makes us laugh at. the follies of 
mankind ; not despise them, and still less bear any 
ill-will towards them. Shakespeare's comic genius 
resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting 
sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a 
sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exag- 
geration of the prevailing foibles of his characters, 
but in a way that they themselves, instead of being 
offended at, would almost join in to humour; he 
rather contrives opportunities for them to show 
themselves off in the happiest lights, than renders 
them contemptible in the perverse construction of 
the wit or malice of others. 

" There is a certain stage of society, in which 
people become conscious of their peculiarities and 
absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set 
up pretensions to what they are not. This gives 
rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object 
of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and 
to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions 
of vanily, by marking the contrast between the real 
and the affected character as severely as possible, 
and denying to those, who would impose on us for 
what they are not, even the merit which they have. 
This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and sa 
tire, such as we see in Congreve. Wycherley, Van- 
brugh, &c* But there is a period in the progress 
of manners anterior to this, in which !he foibles and 
follies of individuals are of nature's planting, not tha 
growth of art or study ; in which they are therefore 



316 



POETRY. 



unconscious of them themselves, or care not who 
knows ihem, if they can but have their whim out; 
and in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, 
the spectators rather receive pleasure from humour- 
ing the inclinations of the persons they laugh at, 
than wish to give them pain by exposing their ab- 
surdity. This may be called the comedy of na- 
ture ; and it is the comedy which we generally find 
in Shakespeare. — Whether the analysis here given 
be just or not, the spirit of his comedies is evidently 
quite distinct from that of the authors above men- 
tioned; as it is in its essence the same with that of 
Cervantes, and also very frequently of Moliere, 
though he was more systematic in his extravagance 
than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's comedy is of a 
pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to 
the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, un- 
checked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encour- 
agement afforded it; and nonsense has room to 
flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy 
hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot 
in a conceit, and idolizes a quibble. His whole ob- 
ject is to turn the meanest or rudest objects to a 
f Measurable account. And yet the relish which he 
tas of a pun, or of the quaint humour of a low 
character, does not interfere with the delight with 
which he describes a beautiful image, or the most 
refined love. The clown's forced jests do not spoil 
the sweetness of the character of Viola. The same 
house is big enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess 



Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. : 
For instance, nothing can fall much lower than this' 
last character in intellect or morals: yet how are his 
weaknesses nursed and dandled by Sir Toby into 
something ' high fantastical ;' when on Sir Andrew's 
commendation of himself for dancing and fencing, 
Sir Toby answers, — ' Wherefore are these things 
hid ? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before 
them ? Are they like to take dust, like Mrs. Moll's 
picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a 
galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very 
walk should be a jig ! I would not so much as make 
water but in a cinque-pace. What dost thou mean ? 
Is this a world to hide virtues in ? I did think by 
the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was framed 
under the star of a galliard !' — How Sir Toby, Sir 
Andrew, and the Clown afterwards chirp over their 
nips! how they 'rouse the night-owl in a catch, 
able to draw three ouls out of one weaver !' What 
can be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer 
to Malvolio, ' Dost thou think, because thou art 
virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale V — 
In a word, the best turn is given to everything, in- 
stead of the worst. There is a constant infusion of 
the romantic and enthusiastic, in proportion as the 
characters are natural and sincere: whereas, in the 
more artificial sfyle of comedy, everything gives 
way to ridicule and indifference ; there being noth- 
ing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity 
on the other." — pp. 255 — 259. 



( Jebrttars, 1822.) 

Sardanapalus, a Tragedy. The Two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery. 
8vo. pp. 440. Murray. London: 1822.* 



By Lord Byron. 



It must be a more difficult thing to write a 
good play — or even a good dramatic poem — 
than we had imagined. Not lhat we should, 
a priori, have imagined it to be very easy : 
But it is impossible not to be struck with the 
fact, that, in comparatively rude times, when 
the resources of the art had been less care- 
fully considered, and Poetry certainly had not 
collected all her materials, success seems to 
have been more frequently, and far more 
easily obtained. From the middle of Eliza- 
beth's reign till the end of James', the drama 
formed by far the most brilliant and beautiful 
part of our poetry, — and indeed of our litera- 
ture in general. From that period to the 
Revolution, it lost a part of its splendour and 
originality; but still continued to occupy the 
most conspicuous and considerable place in 
our literary annals. For the last century, it 
has been quite otherwise. Our poetry has 
ceased almost entirely to be dramatic; and, 
though men of great name and great talent 
have occasionally adventured into this once 
fertile field, they have reaped no laurels, and 
left no trophies behind them. The genius of 
Dryden appears nowhere to so little advantage 
as in his tragedies; and the contrast is truly 
humiliating when, in a presumptuous attempt 
to heighten ihe colouring, or enrich the sim- 
plicity of Shakespeare, he bedaubs with ob- 



* I have thought it best to put all my Dramatical 
criticisms in one series: and, therefore, I take the 
tragedies of Lord Byron in this place — and apart 
from his other poetry. 



scenity, or deforms with rant, the genuine 
passion and profligacy of Antony and Cleopatra 
— or intrudes on the enchanted solitude of 
Prospero and his daughter, with the tones of 
worldly gallantry, or the caricatures of affected 
simplicity. Otway, with the sweet and mel- 
low diction of the former age, had none of its 
force, variety, or invention. Its decaying fires 
burst forth in some strong and irregular flashes, 
in the disorderly scenes of Lee ; and sunk at 
last in the ashes, and scarcely glowing embers, 
of Rowe. 

Since his time — till very lately — the school 
of our ancient dramatists has been deserted : 
and we can scarcely say that any new one 
has been established. Instead of the irregular 
and comprehensive plot — the rich discursive 
dialogue — the ramblings of fancy — the magic 
creations of poetry — the rapid succession of 
incidents and characters — the soft, flexible, 
and ever-varying diction— and the flowing, 
continuous, and easy versification, which char- 
acterised those masters of the golden time, 
we have had tame, formal, elaborate, and 
stately compositions — meagre stories— few 
personages — characters decorous and consist- 
ent, but without nature or spirit — a guarded, 
timid, classical diction — ingenious and me- 
thodical disquisitions— turgid or sententious 
declamations — and a solemn and monotonous 
strain of versification. Nor can this be as- 
cribed, even plausibly, to any decay of genius 
among us; for the most remarkable failures 
have fallen on the highest talents. We have 
already hinted at the miscarriages of Dryden, 



LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDIES. 



317 



The exquisite taste and fine observation of 
Addison, produced only the solemn mawkish- 
ness of Cato. The beautiful fancy, the gor- 
geous diction, and generous affections of 
Thomson, were chilled and withered as soon 
as he touched the verge of the Drama; where 
his name is associated with amass of verbose 
puerility, which it is difficult to conceive could 
ever have proceeded from the author of the 
Seasons and the Castle of Indolence. Even 
the mighty intellect, the eloquent morality, 
and lofty style of Johnson, which gave too 
tragic and magnificent a tone to his ordinary 
writing, failed altogether to support him in his 
attempt to write actual tragedy; and Irene is 
not only unworthy of the imitator of Juvenal 
and the author of Rasselas and the Lives of 
the Poets, but is absolutely, and in itself, 
nothing better than a tissue of wearisome 
and unimpassioned declamations. We have 
named the most celebrated names in our 
literature, since the decline of the drama, al- 
most to our own days ; and if they have neither 
lent any new honours to the stage, nor bor- 
rowed any from it, it is needless to say, that 
those who adventured with weaker powers 
had no better fortune. The Mourning Bride 
of Congreve, the Revenge of Young, and the 
Douglas of Home [we cannot add the Mys- 
terious Mother of Walpole — even to please 
Lord Byron], are almost the only tragedies of 
the last age that are familiar to the present ; 
and they are evidently the works of a feebler 
and more effeminate generation — indicating, 
as much by their exaggerations as by their 
timidity, their own consciousness of inferiority 
to their great predecessors — whom they af- 
fected, however, not to imitate, but to supplant. 
But the native taste of our people was not 
thus to be seduced and perverted ; and when 
the wits of Queen Anne's time had lost the 
authority of living authors, it asserted itself 
by a fond recurrence to its original standards, 
and a resolute neglect of the more regular 
and elaborate dramas by which they had been 
succeeded. Shakespeare, whom it had long- 
been the fashion to decry and even ridicule, 
as the poet of a rude and barbarous age*, was 
reinstated in his old supremacy: and when 
his legitimate progeny could no longer be 
found at home, his spurious issue were hailed 
with rapture from foreign countries, and in- 
vited and welcomed with the most eager 
enthusiasm on their arrival. The German 

* It is not a little remarkable to find such a man 
ns Goldsmith joining in this pitiful sneer. In his 
Vicar of Wakefield, he constantly represents his 
famous town ladies, Miss Carolina Amelia Wilhel- 
mina Skeggs, and the other, as discoursing about 
" high life, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses !" 
— And, in a more serious passage, he introduces a 
player as astonishing the Vicar, by informing him 
that " JDryden and Rowe's manner were quite out 
of fashion — our taste has gone back a whole century ; 
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and, above all, the plays of 
Shakespeare, are the only things that go down." 
"How!" says the Vicar, "is "it possible that the 
present age can be pleased with that antiquated dia- 
lect, that obsolete humour, and those overcharged 
characters which abound in the works you men- 
tion ?" No writer of name, who was not aiming at 
a paradox, would venture to say this now 



imitations, of Schiller and Kotzebue, carica- 
tured and distorted as they were by the aber- 
rations of a vulgar and vitiated taste, had s!ill 
so much of the raciness and vigour of the old 
English drama, from which they were avow- 
edly derived, that they instantly became more 
popular in England than any thing that her 
own artists had recently produced ; and served 
still more effectually to recal our affections to 
their native and legitimate rulers. Then fol- 
lowed republications of Massinger, and Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, and Ford, and their 
contemporaries — and a host of new tragedies, 
all written in avowed and elaborate imitation 
of the ancient models. Miss Baillie, we rather 
think, had the merit of leading the way in this 
return to our old allegiance — and then came 
a volume of plays by Mr. Chenevix, and a 
succession of single plays, all of considerable 
merit, from Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Maturin, Mr. 
Wilson, Mr. Barry Cornwall, and Mr. Milman. 
The first and the last of these names are the 
most likely to be remembered ; but none of 
them, we fear, will ever be ranked with the 
older worthies; nor is it conceivable that any 
age should ever class them together. 

We do not mean, however, altogether to 
deny, that there may be some illusion, in our 
habitual feelings, as to the merits of the great 
originals — consecrated as they are, in our 
imaginations, by early admiration, and asso- 
ciated, as all their peculiarities, and the mere 
accidents and oddities of their diction now 
are, with the recollection of their intrinsic ex- 
cellences. It is owing to this, we suppose, 
that we can scarcely venture to ask ourselves, 
steadily, and without an inward startling and 
feeling of alarm, what reception one of Shake- 
speare's irregular plays — the Tempest for ex- 
ample, or the Midsummer Night's Dream — 
would be likely to meet with, if it were now 
to appear for the first time, without name, 
notice, or preparation 1 Nor can we pursue 
the hazardous supposition through all the pos- 
sibilities to which it invites us, without some- 
thing like a sense of impiety and profanation. 
Yet, though some little superstition may min- 
gle with our faith, we must still believe it to 
be the true one. Though time may have 
hallowed many things that were at first but 
common, and accidental associations imparted 
a charm to much that was in itself indifferent, 
we cannot but believe that there was an orig- 
inal sanctity, which time only matured and 
extended — and an inherent charm from which 
the association derived all its power. And 
when we look candidly and calmly to the 
works of our early dramatists, it is impossible, 
we think, to dispute, that after criticism has 
done its worst on them — after all deductions 
for impossible plots and fantastical characters, 
unaccountable forms of speech, and occasional 
extravagance, indelicacy, and horrors — there 
is a facility and richness about them, both of 
thought and of diction — a force of invention, 
and a depth of sagacity — an originality of 
conception, and a play of fancy — a nakedness 
and energy of passion, and, above all, a co- 
piousness of imagery, and a sweetness and 
flexibility of verse, which is altogether unri- 
2 62 



SIS 



POETRY. 



vailed, in earlier or in later times; — and places 
them, in our estimation, in the very highest 
and foremost place among ancient or modem 
poets. 

It is in these particulars that the inferiority 
of their recent imitators is most apparent — in 
the want of ease and variety — originality and 
grace. There is, in all their attempts, what- 
ever may be their other merits or defects, an 
air of anxiety and labour — and indications, by 
far too visible, at once of timidity and ambi- 
tion. This may arise, in part, from the fact 
of their being, too obviously and consciously, 
imitators. They do not aspire so much to 
rival the genius of their originals, as to copy 
their manner. They do not wvite as they 
would have written in the present day, but as 
they imagine they themselves would have 
written two hundred years ago. They revive 
the antique phraseology, repeat the venerable 
oaths, and emulate the quaint familiarities of 
that classical period — and wonder that they 
are not mistaken for new incarnations of its 
departed poets ! One great cause why they 
are not, is, that they speak an unnatural dia- 
lect, and are constrained by a masquerade 
habit ; in neither of which it is possible to 
display that freedom, and those delicate traits 
of character, which are the life of the drama, 
and were among the chief merits of those who 
once exalted it so highly. Another bad effect 
of imitation, and especially of the imitation 
of unequal and irregular models in a critical 
age, is, that nothing is thought fit to be copied 
but the exquisite and shining passages ; — 
from which it results, in the first place, that 
all our rivalry is reserved for occasions in 
which its success is most hopeless; and, in 
the second place, that instances, even of occa- 
sional success, want their proper grace and 
effect, by being deprived of the relief, shading, 
and preparation, which they would naturally 
have received in a less fastidious composition ; 
and, instead of the warm and native and ever- 
varying graces of a spontaneous effusion, the 
work acquires the false and feeble brilliancy 
of a prize essay in a foreign tongue — a collec- 
tion of splendid patches of different texture 
and pattern. 

At the bottom of all this — and perhaps as 
its most efficient cause — there lurks, we sus- 
pect, an unreasonable and undue dread of 
criticism ; — not the deliberate and indulgent 
criticism which we exercise, rather for the 
encouragement of talent than its warning — 
but the vigilant and paltry derision which is 
perpetually stirring in idle societies, and but 
too continually present to the spirits of all who 
aspire to their notice. There is nothing so 
certain, we take it, as that those who are the 
most alert in discovering the faults of a work 
of genius, are the least touched with its beau- 
ties. Those who admire and enjoy fine poetry, 
in short, are quite a different class of persons 
from those who find out its flaws and defects 
— who are sharp at detecting a plagiarism or 
a grammatical inaccuracy, and laudably in- 
dustrious in bringing to light an obscure pas- 
sage — sneering at an exaggerated one — or 
wondering at the meaning of some piece of 



excessive simplicity. It is in vain to expect the 
praises of such people ; for they never praise; 
— and it is truly very little worth while to 
disarm their censure. It is only the praises 
of the real lovers of poetry that ever give it 
true fame or popularity — and these are little 
affected by the cavils of the fastidious. Yet 
the genius of most modern writers seems tc 
be rebuked under that of those pragmatical 
and insignificant censors. They are so much 
afraid of faults, that they will scarcely venture 
upon beauties; and seem more anxious in 
general to be safe, than original. They dare 
not indulge in a florid and magnificent way of 
writing, for fear of being charged with bom- 
bast by the cold-blooded and malignant. They 
must not be tender, lest they should be laugh- 
ed at for puling and whining; nor discursive 
and fanciful like their great predecessors, 
under pain of being held out to derision, as 
ingenious gentlemen who have dreamed that 
the gods have made them poetical ! 

Thus, the dread of ridicule, which they 
have ever before their eyes, represses all the 
emotions, on the expression of which their 
success entirely depends; and in order to 
escape the blame of those to whom they can 
give no pleasure, and through whom they can 
gain no fame, they throw away their best 
chance of pleasing those who are capable of 
relishing their excellences, and on whose ad- 
miration alone their reputation must at all 
events be founded. There is a great want of 
magnanimity, we think, as well as of wisdom, 
in this sensitiveness to blame; and we are 
convinced that no modern author will ever 
write with the grace and vigour of the older 
ones, who does not write with some portion 
of their fearlessness and indifference to cen- 
sure. Courage, in short, is at least as neces- 
sary as genius to the success of a work of 
imagination; since, without this, it is im- 
possible to attain that freedom and self-pos- 
session, without Avhich no. talents can ever 
have fair play, and, far less, that inward con- 
fidence and exaltation of spirit which must 
accompany all the higher acts of the under- 
standing. The earlier writers had probably 
less occasion for courage to secure them these 
advantages ; as the public was far less critical 
in their day, and much more prone to admira- 
tion than to derision : But we can still trace 
in their writings the indications both of a 
proud consciousness of their own powers and 
privileges, and of a brave contempt for the 
cavils "to which they might expose them- 
selves. In our own times, we know but one 
writer who is emancipated from this slavish 
awe of vulgar detraction — this petty timidity 
about being detected in blunders and faults 
and that is the illustrious author of Waverley, 
and the other novels that have made an era 
in our literature as remarkable, and as likely 
to be remembered, as any which can yet be 
traced in its history. We shall not now say 
how large a portion of his success we ascribe 
to this intrepid temper of his genius; but we 
are confident that no person can read any one 
of his wonderful works, without feeling that 
their author vas utterly careless of the re* 



LORD BORON'S TRAGEDIES. 



319 



proach of small imperfections; disdained the 
inglorious labour of perpetual correctness, and 
has consequently imparted to his productions 
that spirit and ease and variety, which re- 
minds us of better times, and gives lustre and 
effect to those rich and resplendent passages 
to which it left him free to aspire. 

Lord Byron, in some respects, may appear 
not to have been wanting in intrepidity. He 
lias not certainly been very tractable to ad- 
vice, nor very patient of blame. But this, in 
him,' we fear, is not superiority to censure, 
but aversion to it ; and, instead of proving 
that he is indifferent to detraction, shows 
only, that the dread and dislike of it operate 
with more than common force on his mind. 
A critic, whose object was to give pain, would 
desire no better proof of the efficacy of his in- 
flictions, than the bitter scorn and fierce de- 
fiance with which they are encountered ; and 
the more vehemently the noble author pro- 
tests that he despises the reproaches that 
have been bestowed on him, the more certain 
it is that he suffers from their severity, and 
would be glad to escape, if he cannot over- 
bear, them. But however this may be, we 
think it is certain that his late dramatic efforts 
have not been made carelessly, or without 
anxiety. To us, at least, they seem very elab- 
orate and hard-wrought compositions; and 
this indeed we take to be their leading char- 
acteristic, and the key to most of their pe- 
culiarities. 

Considered as Poems, we confess they ap- 
pear to us to be rather heavy, verbose, and 
inelegant- -deficient in the passion and energy 
which belongs to the other writings of the 
noble author — and still more in the richness 
of imagery, the originality of thought, and 
the sweetness of versification for which he 
used to be distinguished. They are for the 
most part solemn, prolix, and ostentatious — 
lengthened out by large preparations for catas- 
trophes that never arrive, and tantalizing us 
with slight specimens and glimpses of a 
higher interest, scattered thinly up and down 
many weary pages of declamation. Along 
with the concentrated pathos and homestruck 
sentiments of his former poetry, the noble 
author seems also, we cannot imagine why, 
to have discarded the spirited and melodious 
versification in which they wens! embodied, 
and to have formed to himself a measure 
equally remote from the spring and vigour of 
his former compositions, and from the soft- 
ness and flexibility of the ancient masters of 
the drama. There are some sweet lines, and 
many of great weight and energy ; but the 
general march of the verse is cumbrous and 
unmusical. His lines do not vibrate like 
polished lances, at once strong and light, in 
the hands of his persons, but are wielded like 
clumsy batons in a bloodless affray. Instead 
of the graceful familiarity and idiomatical 
melodies of Shakespeare, they are apt, too, to 
fall into clumsy prose, in their approaches to 
the ■in"-/ and colloquial style; and, in the 
loftier passages, are occasionally deformed by 
low and common images, that harmonize but 
ill with the general solemnity of the diction. 



As Plays, we are afraid we must also say 
that the pieces before us are wanting in inter- 
est, character, and action : — at least Ave must 
say this of the three last of them — for there is 
interest in Sardanapalus — and beauties be- 
sides, that make us blind to its other defects. 
There is, however, throughout, a want of 
dramatic effect and variety ; and we suspect 
there is something in the character or habit 
of Lord Byron's genius which will render this 
unattainable. He has too little sympathy with 
the ordinary feelings and frailties of humanity, 
to succeed well in their representation — --'His 
soul is like a star, and dwells apart." It does 
not "hold the mirror up to nature," nor catch 
the hues of surrounding objects; but, like a 
kindled furnace, throws out its intense glare 
and gloomy grandeur on the narrow scene 
which it irradiates. He has given us, in his 
other works, some glorious pictures of nature 
— some magnificent reflections, and some in- 
imitable delineations of character: But the 
same feelings prevail in them all; and his 
portraits in particular, though a little varied 
in the drapery and attitude, seem all copied 
from the same original. His Childe Harold, 
his Giaour, Conrad, Lara, Manfred, Cain, and 
Lucifer — are all one individual. There is the 
same varnish of voluptuousness on the sur- 
face — the same canker of misanthropy at the 
core, of all he touches. He cannot draw the 
changes of many-coloured life, nor transport 
himself into the condition of the infinitely di- 
versified characters by whom a stage should 
be peopled. The very intensity of his feel- 
ings — the loftiness of his views — the pride of 
his nature or his genius — withhold him from 
this identification; so that in personating the 
heroes of the scene, he does little but repeat 
himself. It would be better for him, we 
think, if it were otherwise. We are, sure it 
would be better for his readers. He would 
get more fame, and things of far more worth 
than fame, if he would condescend to a more 
extended and cordial sympathy with his fel- 
low-creatures : and we should have more 
variety of fine poetry, and, at all events, bet- 
ter tragedies. We have no business to read 
him a homily on the sinfulness of pride and 
uncharity ; but we have a right to say, that 
it argues a poorness of genius to keep always 
to the same topics and persons; and that the 
world will weary at last of the most energetic 
pictures of misanthropes and madmen — out* 
laws and their mistresses ! 

A man gifted as he is, when he aspires at 
dramatic fame, should emulate the greatest 
of dramatists. Let Lord Byron then think 
of Shakespeare — and consider what a noble 
range of character, what a freedom from man- 
nerism and egotism, there is in him! How 
much he seems to have studied nature; how 
little to have thought about himself; how 
seldom to have repeated or glanced back at 
his own most successful inventions ! Why 
indeed should he? Nature was still open 
before him, and inexhaustible ; and the fresh- 
ness and variety that still delight his readers, 
must have had constant atractions for him- 
self. Take his Hamlet, for instance. What 



320 



POETRY. 



a character is there ! — how full of thought 
and refinement, and fancy and individuality ! 
" How infinite in faculties! In form and 
motion how express and admirable ! The 
beauty of the universe, the paragon of ani- 
mals !" Yet close the play, and we meet with 
him no more — neither in the author's other 
works, nor any where else ! A common 
uthor who had hit upon such a character, 
would have dragged it in at every turn, and 
worn it to very tatters. Sir John Falstaff, 
again, is a world of wit and humour in him- 
self. But except in the two parts of Henry 
IV., there would have been no trace of such 
a being, had not the author been "ordered 
to continue him" in the Merry Wives of 
Windsor. He is not the least like Benedick, 
or Mercutio, or Sir Toby Belch, or any of the 
other witty and jovial personages of the same 
author — no rare they like each other. Othello 
is one of the most striking and powerful in- 
ventions on the stage. But when the play 
closes, we hear no more of him ! The poet's 
creation comes no more to life again, under a 
fictitious name, than the real man would have 
done. Lord Byron in Shakespeare's place, 
would have peopled the world with black 
Othellos ! What indications are there of Lear 
in any of his earlier plays ? What traces of 
it in any that he wrote afterwards] None. It 
might have been written by any other man, 
he is so little conscious of it. He never once 
returns to that huge sea of sorrow; but has 
left it standing by itself, shoreless and un- 
approachable ! Who else could have afforded 
not to have "'drowned the stage with tears" 
from such a source ? But we must break 
away from Shakespeare, and come at last to 
the work before us. 

In a very brief preface, Lord Byron renews 
his protest against looking upon any of his 
plays, as "having been composed "with the 
most remote view to the stage " — and, at the 
same time, testifies in behalf of the Unities, 
as essential to the existence of the drama — 
according to what "was, till lately, the law 
of literature throughout the world, and is still 
so, in the more civilised parts of it." We 
do not think those opinions very consistent ; 
and we think that neither of them could pos- 
sibly find favour with a person whose genius 
had a truly dramatic character. We should 
as soon expect an orator to compose a speech 
altogether unfit to be spoken. A drama is 
not merely a dialogue, but an action: and 
necessarily supposes that something is to 
pass before the eyes of assembled spectators. 
Whatever is peculiar to its written part, 
should derive its peculiarity from this con- 
sideration. Its style should be throughout 
an accompaniment to action — and should be 
calculated to excite the emotions, and keep 
alive the attention, of gazing multitudes. If 
an author does not bear this continually in 
his mind, and does not write in the ideal 
presence of an eager and diversified assem- 
blage, he may be a poet perhaps, but as- 
suredly he never will be a dramatist. If 
Lord Byron really does not wish to impreg- 
nate his elaborate scenes with the living 



spirit of the drama — if he has no hankenng 
after stage-effect — if he is not haunted with 
the visible presentment of the persons he has 
created — if, in setting down a vehement in- 
vective, he does not fancy the tone in which 
Mr. Kean would deliver it, and anticipate the 
long applauses of the pit, then he may be 
sure that neither his feelings nor his genius 
are in unison with the stage at all. Why, 
then, should he affect the form, without the 
power of tragedy % He may, indeed, produce 
a mystery like Cain, or a far sweeter vision, 
like Manfred, without subjecting himself to 
the censure of legitimate criticism : But if, 
with a regular subject before him, capable of 
all the strength and graces of the drama, he 
does not feel himself able or willing to draw 
forth its resources so as to affect an audience 
with terror and delight, he is not the man we 
want — and his time and talents are wasted 
here. Didactic reasoning and eloquent de- 
scription will not compensate, in a play, for a 
dearth of dramatic spirit and invention : ?.'/>.& 
besides, sterling sense and poetry, as s-; th- 
ought to stand by themselves, without thd 
unmeaning mockery of a dramatis persona. 

As to Lord Byron's pretending to set up the 
Unities at this time of day, as " the law of 
literature throughout the world," it is mere 
caprice and contradiction. He, if ever man 
was, is a law to himself — "a chartered liber- 
tine j" — and now, when he is tired of this 
unbridled licence, he wants to do penance 
within the Unities! This certainly looks very 
like affectation ; or, if there is any thing sin- 
cere in it, the motive* must be, that, by get- 
ting rid of so much story and action, in order 
to simplify the plot and bring it within the 
prescribed limits, he may fill up the blank 
spaces with long discussions, and have nearly 
all the talk to himself! For ourselves, we 
will confess that we have had a considerable 
contempt for those same Unities, ever since 
we read Dennis' Criticism on Cato in our 
boyhood — except indeed the unity of action, 
which Lord Byron does not appear to set 
much store by. Dr. Johnson, we conceive, 
has pretty w r ell settled this question : and if 
Lord Byron chooses to grapple with him, he 
will find that it requires a stronger arm than 
that with which he puts down our Laureates. 
We shall only add, that when the modems 
tie themselves down to write tragedies of the 
same length, and on the same simple plan, in 
other respects, with those of Sophocles and 
iEschylus, we shall not object to their adher- 
ing to* the Unities ; for there can. in that case, 
be no sufficient inducement for violating them. 
But, in the mean time, we hold that English 
dramatic poetry soars above the Unities, just as 
the imagination does. The only pretence for 
insisting on them is, that we suppose the 
stage itself to be, actually and really, the 
very spot on which a given action is peform 
ed ; and, if so, this space cannot be removed 
to another. But the supposition is manifestly 
quite contrary to truth and experience, fThe 
stage is considered merely as a place irt^hich 
any given action ad libitum may be perform- 
ed ; and accordingly may be shifted, and ia 



LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDIES 



321 



so iii imagination, as often as the action re- 
quires it. That any writer should ever have 
insisted on such an unity as this, must appear 
sufficiently preposterous; but, that the defence 
of it should be taken up by an author whose 
plays are never to be acted at all. and which, 
therefore, have nothing more than a nominal 
reference to any stage or locality whatever, 
must strike one as absolutely incredible. 

It so happens, however, that the disadvan- 
tage, and, in truth, absurdity of sacrificing 
higher objects to a formality of this kind, is 
strikingly displayed in one of these dramas — 
The Two Foscari. The whole interest here 
turns upon the younger of them having re- 
turned from banishment, in defiance of the 
law and its consequences, from an unconquer- 
able longing after his native country. Now, 
the only way to have made this sentiment 
palpable, the practicable foundation of stu- 
pendous sufferings, would have been, to have 
presented him to the audience wearing out 
his heart in exile — and forming his resolution 
to return, at a distance from his country, or 
hovering, in excruciating suspense, within 
sight of its borders. We might then have 
caught some glimpse of the nature of his 
motives, and of so extraordinary a character. 
But as this would have been contrary to one 
of the Unities, we first meet with him led from 
u the Question," and afterwards taken back 
to it in the Ducal Palace, or clinging to the 
dungeon- walls of his native city, and expiring 
from his dread of leaving them; and there- 
fore feel more wonder than sympathy, when 
we are told in a Jeremiad of wilful lamenta- 
tions, that these agonising consequences have 
resulted, not from guilt or disaster, but merely 
from the intensity of his love for his country. 

But we must now look at the other Trage- 
dies ; and on turning again to Sardanapalus, 
we are half inclined to repent of the severity 
of some of our preceding remarks, or to own 
at least that they are not strictly applicable 
to this performance. It is a work beyond all 
question of great beauty and power; and 
though the heroine has many traits in com- 
mon with the Medoras and Gulnares of Lord 
Byron's undramatic poetry, the hero must be 
allowed to be a new character in his hands. 
He has, indeed, the scorn of war, and glory, 
and priestcraft, and regular morality, which 
distinguishes the rest of his Lordship's favour- 
ites; but he has no misanthropy, and very 
little pride — and may be regarded, on the 
whole, as one of the most truly good-hu- 
moured, amiable, and respectable voluptuaries 
to whom we have ever been presented. In 
this conception of his character, the author 
has very wisely followed nature and fancy 
rather than history. His Sardanapalus is not 
an effeminate, worn-out debauchee, with shat- 
tered nerves and exhausted senses, the slave 
of indolence and vicious habits; but a san- 
guine votary of pleasure, a princely epicure, 
indulging, revelling in boundless luxury while 
he can, but with a soul so inured to volup- 
tuousness, so saturated with delights, that 
pain and danger, when they come uncalled 
For, give him neither concern nor dread; 
41 



and he goes forth, from the banquet to the 
battle, as to a dance or measure, attired by 
the Graces, and with youth, joy, and love for 
his guides. He dallies with Bellona as her 
bridegroom — for his sport and pastime ; and 
the spear or fan, the shield or shining mirror, 
become his hands equally well. He enjoys 
life, in short, and triumphs over death ; and 
whether in prosperous or adverse circum- 
stances, his soul smiles out superior to evil. 
The Epicurean philosophy of Sardanapalus 
gives him a fine opportunity, in his confer- 
ences with his stern and confidential adviser, 
Salemenes, to contrast his own imputed and 
fatal vices of ease and love of pleasure with 
the boasted virtues of his predecessors, War 
and Conquest; and we may as well begin 
with a short specimen of this characteristic 
discussion. Salemenes is brother to the ne- 
glected queen ; and the controversy originates 
in the monarch's allusion to her. 



u Sard. Thou think'st that I have wrong' d the 
queen : is't not so? 

Sale. Think ! Thou hast wrong'd her ! 

Sard. Patience, prince, and hear me 

She has all power and splendour of her station, 
Respect, the tutelage of Assyria's heirs, 
The homage and the appanage of sovereignty. 
I married her, as monarchs wed — for state, 
And loved her, as most husbands love their wives. 
If she or thou supposedst I could link me 
Like a Chaldean peasant to his mate, 
Ye knew nor me, nor monarchs, nor mankind. 

Sale. I pray thee, change the theme ; my blood 
disdains 
Complaint, and Salemenes' sister seeks not 
Reluctant love, even from Assyria's lord ! 
Nor would she deign to accept divided passion 
With foreign strumpets and Ionian slaves. 
The queen is silent. 

Sard. And why not her brother? 

Sale. I only echo thee the voice of empires, 
Which he who long neglects not long will govern. 

Sard. The ungrateful and ungracious skves! 
they murmur 
Because I have not shed their blood, nor led them 
To dry info the desert's dust by myriads, 
Or whiten with their bones the bankb of Ganges ; 
Nor decimated them with savage laws, 
Nor sweated them to build up pyramids, 
Or Babylonian walls. 

Sale. Yet these are trophies 

More worthy of a people and their prince 
Than songs, and lutes, and feasts, and concubines, 
And lavish'd treasures, and contemned vimies. 

Sard. Oh ! for my trophies I have founded cities » 
There's Tarsus and Anchialus, both buili 
In one day — what could that blood-loving beHame, 
My martial grandam, chaste Semiraniis, 
Do more — except destroy them? 

Sale. 'Tis most v'ue ; 

I own thy merit in those founded cities, 
Built for a whim, recorded with averse 
Which shames both them and thee to coming ages. 

Sard. Shame me ! By Baal, the cities, thotigj 
well built, 
Are not more goodly than the verse ! Say what 
Thou wilt against the truth of that brief reco.d, 
Why, those few lines contain the history 
Of all things human ; hear — ' Sardanapalus 
The king, and Son of Anacyndaraxes, 
In one day built Anchialus and Tarsus. 
Eat, drink, and love ! the rest's not worth a fillip. 

Sale. A worthy moral, and a wise inscription. 
For a king to put up before his subjects ! 

Sard. Oh, thou wouldst have me doubtless s«i 
up edicts — 



322 



POETRY. 



Obey the king — contribute to his treasure — 
Recruit his phalanx — spill your blood at bidding — 
Fall down and worship, or get up and toil.' 
Or thus — ' Sardanapalus on this spot 
Slew fidy thousand of his enemies. 
These are -.heir sepulchres, and this his trophy.' 
I leave such things to conquerors; enough 
For me, if I can make my subjects feel 
The weight of human misery lessj and glide 
Ungroaning to the tomb ; I take no licence 
Which I deny to them. We all are men. 
Sale. Thy sires have been revered as gods — 
Sard. In dust 

And death — where they are neither gods nor men. 
Talk not of such to me ! the worms are gods ; 
At least they banqueted upon your gods, 
And died for lack of farther nutriment. 
Those gods were merely men ; look to their issue — 
I feel a thousand mortal things about me, 
But nothing godlike — unless it may be 
The thing which you condemn, a disposition 
To love and to be merciful ; to pardon 
The follies of my species, and (that's human) 
To be indulgent to my own." — pp. 18 — 21. 

But the chief charm and vivifying angel of 
the piece is Myrrh a, the Greek slave of Sar- 
danapalus — a beautiful, heroic, devoted, and 
ethereal being — in love with the generous 
and infatuated monarch — ashamed of loving 
a* barbarian — and using all her influence over 
him to ennoble as well as to adorn his exist- 
ence, and to arm him against the terrors of 
its close. Her voluptuousness is that of the 
heart — her heroism of the affections. If the 
part she takes in the dialogue be sometimes 
too subdued and submissive for the lofty- 
daring of her character, it is still such as 
might become a Greek slave — a lovely Ionian 
girl, in whom the love of liberty and the 
scorn of death, was tempered by the con- 
sciousness of what she regarded as a degrading 
passion, and an inward sense of fitness and 
decorum with reference to her condition. The 
development of this character and its con- 
sequences form so material a part of the play, 
that most of the citations with which we shall 
illustrate our abstract of it will be found to 
bear upon it. 

Salemenes, in the interview to which we 
have just alluded, had driven li the Ionian 
minion" from the royal presence by his re- 
proaches. After his departure, the Monarch 
again recalls his favourite, and reports to her 
the warning he had received. Her answer 
lets us at once into the nobleness and delicacy 
of her character. 

" Myr. He did well. 

Sard. And say'st thou so ? 

Thou whom he spurn'd so harshly, and now dared 
Drive from our presence with his savage jeers, 
And made thee weep and blush ? 

Myr. I should do both 

More frequently ! and he did well to call me 
Back to my duty. But thou spakest of peril — 
Peril to thee — 

Sard. Ay, from dark plots and snares 

From Medes — and discontented troops and nations. 
I know not what — a labyrinth of things — 
A maze of mutter' d threats and mysteries : 
Thou know'st the man — it is his usual custom. 
But he is honest. Come, we'll think no more on't — 
But of the midnight festival. 

Myr. 'Tis time 

To think of aught save festivals. Thou hast not 
&purn'd his sage cautions ? 

Sard. What ? — and dost thou fear ? 



Myr. Fear!— T'm a Greek, and how should I 
fear death ? 
A slave, and wherefore should I dread my freedom ? 

Sard. Then wherefore dost thou turn so pale ? 

Myr. I l uve ~ 

Sard. And do not I ? I love thee far— far more 
Than either the brief life or the wide realm, 
Which, it may be, are menaced: yet I blanch not, 

Myr. When he who is their ruler 

Forgets himself, will they remember him ? 

Sard. Myrrha! 

Myr. Frown not upon me : you have smiled 
Too often on me, not to make those frowns 
Bitterer to bear than any punishment 
Which they may augur. — King, lam your subject ! 
Master, I am your slave ! Man, I have loved you !— 
Loved you, I know not by what fatal weakness, 
Although a Greek, and born a foe to monarchs — 
A slave, and hating fetters — an Ionian, 
And, therefore, when I love a stranger, more 
Degraded by that passion than by chains ! 
Still I have loved you. If that love were strong 
Enough to overcome all former nature, 
Shall it not claim the privilege to save you ! 

Sard. Save me. my beauty ! Thou art very fair, 
And what I seek of thee is love — not safety. 

Myr. And without love where dwells security ? 

Sard. I speak of woman's love. 

Myr. The very first 

Of human life must spring from woman's breast ; 
Your first small words are taught you from her lips, 
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last 

sighs 
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing, 
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care 
Of watching the last hour of him who led them. 

Sard. My eloquent Ionian ! thou speak'st music ! 
The very chorus of the tragic song 
I have heard thee talk of as the favourite pastime 
Of thy far father-land. Nay, weep not — calm thee. 

Myr. I weep not — But I pray thee, do not speak 
About my fathers, or their land ! 

Sard. Yet oft 

Thou speakest of them. 

Myr. True — true ! constant thought 

Will overflow in words unconsciously ; 
But when another speaks of Greece, it v)ound$ me. 

Sard. Well, then, how wouldst thou save me, as 
thou saidst ? [founders. 

Myr. Look to the annals of thine empire's 

Sard. They are so blotted over with blood, I 
cannot. [ed. 

But what wouldst have ? the empire has been found- 
1 cannot go on multiplying empires. 

Myr. Preserve thine own. 

Sard. At least I will enjoy it. 
Come, Myrrha, let us on to the Euphrates ; 
The hour invites, the galley is prepared, 
And the pavilion, deck'd for our return, 
In fit adornment for the evening banquet, 
Shall blaze with beauty and with light, until 
It seems unto the stars which are above us 
Itself an opposite star ; and we will sit 
Crown' d with fresh flowers like 

Myr. Victims. 

Sard. No, like sovereigns, 

The shepherd kings of patriarchal times, 
Who knew no brighter gems than summer wreaths. 
And none but tearless triumphs. Let us on." 

pp. 31—36. 

(The second act, which contains the details 
of the conspiracy of Arbaces, its detection by 
the vigilance of Salamenes, and the too rash 
and hasty forgiveness of the rebels by the 
King ; is. on the whole, heavy and uninterest- 
ing. ' Early in the third act, the royal ban- 
quet is disturbed by sudden tidings of trear 
son and revolt ; and then the reveller blazes 
out into the hero, and the Greek blood of 
Myrrha mounts to its proper office! The 



LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDIES. 



323 



following passages are striking. A messenger 
says, 

" Prince Salemenes doth implore the king 
To arm himself, although but for a moment, 
And show himself unto the soldiers: his 
Sole presence in this instant might do more 
Than hosts can do in his behalf. 

Sard. What, ho ! 

My armour there. 

Myr. And wilt thou ? 

Sard. Will I not ? 

Ho, there ! — But seek not for the buckler ; 'tis 
Too heavy : — a liijht cuirass and my sword. 

Myr. How I do love thee ! 

Sard. I ne'er doubted it. 

Myr. But now I know thee. 

Sard, (arming himself) 
Give me the cuirass — so: my baldric! now 
My sword : I had forgot the helm, where is it ? 
That's well — no, 'tis too heavy : you mistake, too — 
It was not this I meant, but that which bears 
A diadem around it. 

Sfero. Sire, I deem'd 

That too conspicuous from the precious stones 
To risk your sacred brow beneath — and, trust me, 
This is of better metal though less rich. 

Sard. You deem'd! Are you too turn'darebel ? 
Fellow ! 
Your part is to obey: return, and — no — 
It is too late — I will go forth without it. 

Sfero. At least wear this. 

Sard. Wear Caucasus ! why, 'tis 

A mountain on my temples. 
Myrrha, retire unto a place of safety. 
Why went you not forth with the other damsels ? 

Myr. Because my place is here. 

I dare all things 
Except survive what I have loved, to be 
A rebel's booty : forth, and do your bravest." 

pp. 85—89. 

The noise of the conflict now reaches her 
in doubtful clamour ; and a soldier comes in, 
of whom she asks how the King bears him- 
self — and is answered, 

" Alt. Like a king. I must find Sfero, 

And bring him a new spear and his own helmet. 
He fights till now bare-headed, and by far 
Too much exposed. The soldiers knew his face, 
And the foe too ; and in the moon's broad light, 
His silk tiara and his flowing hair 
Make him a mark too royal. Every arrow 
Is pointed at the fair hair and fair features, 
And the broad fillet which crowns both. 
The king ! the king fights as he revels. 

Myr. ''J 'is no dishonour — no — 

'Tis no dishonour! to have loved this man. 
I almost wish now, what I never wish'd 
Before, that he were Grecian. If Alcides 
Were shamed in wearing Lydian Omphale's 
She-garb, and wielding her vile distaff; surely 
He, who springs up a Hercules at once, 
Nurs'd in effeminate arts from youth to manhood, 
And rushes from the banquet to the battle, 
As though it were a bed of love, deserves 
That a Greek girl should be his parnmour, 
And a Greek bard his minstrel, a Greek tomb 
His monument!" — pp. 92, 93. 

Soon after, she rushes out in agony to meet 
the fate that seemed impending. The King, 
however, by his daring valour, restores the 
fortune of the fight ; and returns, with all his 
train, to the palace. The scene that ensues 
is very masterly and characteristic. Turning 
to Myrrha — 

" Know' st thou, my brother, where I lighted on 
This minion ? 



Sale. Herding with the other females 

Like frighten'd antelopes. 

Sard. No ? Like the dam 

Of the young lion, femininely raging, 
She urged on, with her voice and gesture, and 
Her floating hair and flashing eyes, the soldiers 
In the pursuit. 

Sale. Indeed ! 

Sard. You see, this night 

Made warriors of more than me. I paused 
To look upon her, and her kindled cheek ; 
Her large black eyes, that flash'd through her 

long hair 
As it stream'd o'er her ; her blue veins that rose 
Along her most transparent brow ; her nostril 
Dilated from its symmetry ; her lips 
Apart ; her voice that clove through all the din, 
As a lute's pierceth through the cymbal's clash, 
Jarr'd but not drown'd by the loud brattling ; her 
Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born 

whiteness 
Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up 
From a dead soldier's grasp ; all these things made 
Her seem unto the troops a prophetess 
Of victory, or Victory herself 
Come down to hail us hers. 

Sale, [in retiii7ig.) Myrrha ! 

Myr. Prince. 

Sale. You have shown a soul to-night, 

Which, were he not my sister's lord But now 
I have no time : thou lov'sl the king ? 

Myr. I love 

Sardanapalus. 

Sale. But wouldst have him king still ? 

Myr. I would not have him less than what he 
should be. 

Sale. Well, then, to have him king, and yours, 
and all 
He should, or should not be ; to have him live, 
Let him not sink back into luxury. 
You have more power upon his spirit than 
Wisdom within these walls, or fierce rebellion 
Raging without : look well that he relapse not. 
[Exit Salemenes. 

Sard. Myrrha ! what, at whispers 
With my stern brother? I shall soon be jealous. 

Myr. (smiling.) You have cause, sire ; for on the 
earth there breathes not 
A man more worthy of a woman's love — 
A soldier's trust — a subject's reverence — 
A king's esteem — the whole world's admiration ! 

Sard. Praise him, but not so warmly. I must not 
Hear those sweet lips grow eloquent in aught 
That throws me into the shade ; yet you speak 
truth."— pp. 100—105. 

After this, there is an useless and unnatural 
scene with the Queen, whose fondness her 
erring husband meets with great kindness 
and remorse. It is carefully, but rather tedi- 
ously written ; and ends, a great deal too long 
after it ought to have ended, by Salemenes 
carrying off his sister in a fit. 

The fifth act gives, rather languidly, the 
consummation of the rebellion. Salemenes 
is slain ; and the King, in spite of a desperate 
resistance, driven back to his palace and its 
gardens. He then distributes his treasure to 
his friends, and forces them to embark on the 
river, which is still open for their escape; 
only requiring, as the last service of his faith- 
ful veterans, that they should build up a huge 
pile of combustibles around the throne in his 
presence-chamber, and leave him there with 
Myrrha alone ; and commanding them, when 
they had cleared the city with their galleys, 
to sound their trumpets as a signal of safety. 
We shall close our extracts with a few frag- 



324 



POETRY. 



meats of the final scene. This is his fare- 
well to the troops. 

" Sard. My best ! my last friends! 

Let's not unman each other — part at once : 
Ail farewells should be sudden, when for ever, 
Else they make an eternity of moments, 
And clog the last sad sancta of life with tears. 
Hence, and be happy : trust me, I am not 
Noro to be pitied ; or far more for what 
Is past than present ; — for the future, 'tis 
In the hands of the deities, if such [well. 

There be : I shall know soon. Farewell — fare- 
[Exeunt Pania and Soldiers. 

Myr. These men were honest : It is comfort still 
That our last looks should be on loving faces, [me ! 

Sard. And lovely ones, my beautiful! — but hear 
If at this moment, for we now are on 
The brink, thou feel'st an inward shrinking from 
This leap through flame into the future, say it : 
I shall not love thee less ; nay, perhaps more, 
For yielding to thy nature : and there's time 
Yet for thee to escape hence. 

Myr. Shall I light 

One of the torches which lie heap'd beneath 
The ever-burning lamp that burns without, 
Before Baal's shrine, in the adjoining hall ? 

Sard. Do so. Is that thy answer ? 

Myr. Thou shalt see." — pp. 162, 163. 

There is then a long invocation to the 
shades of his ancestors ; at the end of which, 
Myrrha returns with a lighted torch and a 
cup of wine — and says, 

"Lo! 
I've lit the lamp which lights us to the stars. 

Sard. And the cup ? 

Myr. 'Tis my country's custom to 

Make a libation to the gods. ' 

Sard. And mine 

To make libations amongst men. I've not 
Forgot the custom ; and although alone, 
Will drain one draught in memory of many 
A joyous banquet past. 

Yet pause, 
My Myrrha ! dost ihou truly follow me, 
Freely and fearlessly ? 

Myr. And dost thou think 

A Greek girl dare not do for love, that which 
An Indian widow braves for custom ? 

Sard. Then 

We but await the signal. 

Myr. It is long 

In sounding. 

Sard. Now, farewell ; one last embrace. 

Myr. Embrace, but not the last ; there is one 
more. [ashes. 

Sard. True, the commingling fire will mix our 

Myr. Then farewell, thou earth ! 

And loveliest spot of earth ! farewell Ionia ! 
Be thou still free and beautiful, and far 
Aloof from desolation ! My last prayer [ihee ! 
Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of 

Sard. And that? 

Myr. Is yours. 

[The trumpet of Pania sounds without. 

Sard. Hark! 

Myr. Now ! 

Sard. Adieu, Assyria! 

1 loved thee well, my own, my fathers' land, 
And better as my country than my kingdom. 
I satiated thee with peace and joys ; and this 
Is my reward ! and now I owe thee nothing. 
Not even a grave. [He mounts the pile. 

Now, Myrrha ! 

Myr. Art thou ready ! 

Sard. As the torch in thy grasp. 

[Myrrha fires the pile. 

Myr. 'Tis fired ! I come. 

[As Myrrha springs forward to throw herself 
-into the flames, the Ctirtain falls ." 

pp. 164—167. 



Having gone so much at length iiuo ibis 
drama, which we take to be much the best in 
the volume, we may be excused for saying 
little of the others. ^-The two Foscari," we 
think, is a failure. The interest is founded 
upon feelings so peculiar or overstrained, as 
to engage no sympathy ; and the whole story 
turns on incidents that are neither pleasing 
nor natural. The Younger Foscari undergoes 
the rack twice (once in the hearing of the 
audience), merely because he has chosen to 
feign himself a traitor, that he might be 
brought back from undeserved banishment, 
and dies at last of pure dotage on this senti- 
ment ; while the Elder Foscari submits, in 
profound and immovable silence, to this treat- 
ment of his son, lest, by seeming to feel for 
his unhappy fate, he should be implicated in 
his guilt — though he is supposed guiltless. 

The '-Marino Faliero" — though rather more 
vigorously written — is scarcely more success- 
ful. The story, in so far as it is original in 
our drama, is extremely improbable ; though, 
like most other very improbable stories, de- 
rived from authentic sources: But, in the 
main, it is not original — being indeed merely 
another Venice Preserved; and continually 
recalling, though certainly without eclipsing, 
the memory of the first. Except that Jaffier 
is driven to join the conspirators by the natu- 
ral impulse of love and misery, and the Doge 
by a resentment so outrageous as to exclude 
all sympathy — and that the disclosure, which 
is produced by love in the old play, is here 
ascribed (with less likelihood) to mere friend- 
ship, the general action and catastrophe of 
the two pieces are almost identical — while, 
with regard to the writing and management, 
it must be owned that, if Lord Byron has most 
sense and vigour, Otway has by far the most 
passion and pathos; and that, though our new 
conspirators are better orators and reasonera 
than the gang of Pierre and Reynault, the 
tenderness of Belvidera is as much more 
touching, as it is more natural than the stoical 
and self-satisfied decorum of Angiolina. The 
abstract, or argument of the piece, is shortly 
as follows. 

Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, and nearly 
fourscore years of age, marries a young beauty 
of the name of Angiolina — and, soon after 
their union, a giddy young nobleman, whom 
he had had occasion to rebuke in public, sticks 
up some indecent lines on his chair of state ; 
purporting that he was the husband of a fair 
wife, whom he had the honour of keeping for 
the benefit of others. The Doge having dis- 
covered the author of this lampoon, complains 
of him to the Senate — who, upon proof of the 
charge, sentence him to a month's confine- 
ment. The Doge, considering this as alto- 
gether inadequate to the reparation of his in- 
jured honour, immediately conceives a most 
insane and unintelligible animosity at the 
whole body of the nobility — and, in spite of 
the dignified example and gentle soothing of 
Angiolina, puts himself at the head of a con- 
spiracy, which had just been organised for 
the overthrow of the government by certain 
plebeian malecontents, who had more sub- 



LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDIES. 



325 



stanlial wrongs and grievances to complain of. 
One of the faction, however, had a friend in 
the Senate whom he wished to preserve ; and 
goes to him, on the eve of the insurrection, 
with words of warning, which lead to its 
timely detection. The Doge and his asso- 
ciates are arrested and brought to trial : and 
the former, after a vain intercession from An- 
giolina, who candidly admits the enormity of 
his guilt, and prays only for his life, is led. in 
his ducal robes, to the place where he was 
first consecrated a sovereign, and there pub- 
licly decapitated by the hands of the execu- 
tioner. 

We can afford but a few specimens of the 
execution. The following passage, in which 
the ancient Doge, while urging his gentle 
spouse to enter more warmly into his resent- 
ment, reminds her of the motives that had 
led him to seek her alliance, (her father's re- 
quest, and his own desire to afford her orphan 
helplessness the highest and most unsuspect- 
ed protection,) though not perfectly dramatic, 
has great sweetness and dignity ; and reminds 
us, in its rich verbosity, of the moral and 
mellifluous parts of Massinger. 

"Doge. For love, romantic love, which in my 
I knew to be illusion, and ne'er saw [youth 

Lasting, but often fatal, it had been 
No lure for me, in my most passionate days, 
And could not be so now, did such exist. 
But such respect, and mildly paid regard 
As a true feeling for your welfare, and 
A free compliance with all honest wishes ; 
A kindness to your virtues, watchfulness 
Not shown, but shadowing o'er such little failings 
As youth is apt in, so as not to check 
Rashly, but win you from them ere you knew 
You had been won, but thought the change your 

choice ; 
A pride not in your beauty, but your conduct — 
A trust in you — a patriarchal love, 
And not a doting homage — friendship, faith — 
Such estimation in your eyes as these 
Might claim, I hoped for." — 
" I trusted to the blood of Loredano 
Pure in your veins; I trusted to the soul [you — 
God gave you — to the truths your father taught 
To your belief in heaven — to your mild virtues— 
To your own faith and honour, for iny own. — 
Where light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities 
Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart, 
Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know 
'Twere hopeless for humanity to dream 
Of honesty in such infected blood, 
Alihough 'twere wed to him it covets most: 
An incarnation of the poet's god 
In all his marble-chisell'd beauty, or 
The demi-deity, Alcides. in 
His majesty of superhuman manhood, 
Would not suffice to bind where virtue is not." 

pp, 50—53. 

lThe fourth Act opens with the most poeti- 
cal and brilliantly written scene in the play — 
though it is a soliloquy, and altogether alien 
from the business of the piece. Lioni, a 
young nobleman, returns home from a splen- 
did assembly, rather out of spirits; and, 
opening his palace window for air, contrasts 
the tranquillity of the night scene which lies 
before him, wilh the feverish turbulence and 
glittering enchantments of that which he has 
just quitted. Nothing can be finer than this 
Dic'ure in both its compartments. There is 



a truth and a luxuriance in the description of 
the rout, which mark at once the hand of a 
master, and raise it to a very high rank as a 
piece of poetical painting — while the moon- 
light view from the window is equally grand 
and beautiful, and reminds us of those mag- 
nificent and enchanting lookings forth in 
Manfred, which have left, we will confess, 
far deeper traces on our fancy, than any thing 
in the more elaborate work before us. Lioni 
says, 

" 1 will try 

Whether the air will calm my spirits: 'tis 
A goodly night ; the cloudy wind which blew 
From the Levant has crept into its cave, [ness ! 
And the broad moon hasbrighten'd. What a still- 
[Goes to an open lattice. 
And what a contrast with the scene I left, 
Where the tall torches' glare, and silver lamps' 
More pallid gleam, along the tapestried walls, 
Spread over the reluctant gloom which haunts 
Those vast and dimly-latticed galleries 
A dazzling mass of artificial light, [&.c. 

Which show'd all things, but nothing as they were, 

The music, and the banquet, and the wine — 
The garlands, the rose odours, and the flowers — 
The sparkling eyes and flashing ornaments — 
The white arms and the raven hair — the braids 
And bracelets ; swanlike bosoms, and the necklace, 
An India in itself, yet dazzling not 
The eye like what it circled ; the thin robes 
Floating like light clouds 'twixt our gaze and heaven* 
The many-twinkling feet, so small and sylphlike, 
Suggesting the more secret symmetry 
Of the fair forms which terminate so well ! 
All the delusion of the dizzy scene, 
Its false and true enchantments — art and nature, 
Which swam before my giddy eyes, that drank 
The sight of beauty as the parch'd pilgrim's 
On Arab sands the false mirage, which offers 
A lucid lake to his eluded thirst, 
Are gone. — Around me are the stars and waters 
Worlds mirror'd in the ocean ! goodlier sight 
Than torches glared back by a gaudy glass ; 
And the great element, which is to space 
What ocean is to earth, spreads its blue depths, 
Soften'd with the first breathings of the spring; 
The high moon sails upon her beauteous way, 
Serenely smoothing o'er the lofty walls 
Of those tall piles and sea-girt palaces, 
Whose porphyry pillars, and whose costly fronts, 
Fraught with the orient spoil of many marbles, 
Like altars ranged along the broad canal, 
Seem each a trophy of some mighty deed 
Rear'd up from out the waters, scarce less strangely 
Than those more massy and mysterious giants 
Of architecture, those Titanian fabrics, 
Which point in Egypt's plains to times that have 
No other record ! All is gentle : nought 
Stirs rudely; but, congenial with the night, 
Whatever walks is gliding like a spirit. 
The tinklings of some vigilant guitars 
Of sleepless lovers to a wakeful mistress, 
And cautious opening of the casement, showing 
That he is not unheard ; while her young hand, 
Fair as the moonlight of which it seems part, 
So delicately while, it trembles in 
The act of opening the forbidden lattice, 
To let in love through music, makes his heart 
Thrill like his lyre-strings at the sight ! — the dash 
Phosphoric of the oar. or rapid twinkle 
Of the far lights of skimming gondolas, 
And the responsive voices of the choir 
Of boatmen, answering back with verse for verse 
Some dusky shadow chequering the Rialto; 
Some glimmering palace roof, or tapering spire, 
Are all the sights and sounds which here pervade 
The ocean-born and earth-commanding city." 

pp. 98—101. 
2C 



326 



POETRY. 



Wo can now afford but one other extract ; 
— and we take it from the grand and prophetic 
rant of which the unhappy Doge delivers him- 
self at the place of execution. He asks 
whether he may speak ; and is told he may, 
but that the people are too far off to hear him. 
He then says, 

" I speak to Time and to Eternity, 
Of which I grow a portion — not to man ! 
Ye elements ! in which to be resolved 
I hasten ! Ye blue waves ! which bore, my banner, 
Ye winds ! which flutter'd o'er as if you loved it, 
And fill'd my swelling sails, as they were wafted 
To many a triumph ! Thou, my native earth, 
Which I have bled for, and thou foreign earth, 
Which drank this willing blood from many a 

wound ! [Thou ! 

Thou sun ! which shinest on these things, and 
Who kindlest and who quenchest suns ! — Attest ! 
I am not innocent — But are these guiltless? 
I perish : But not unavenged : For ages 
Float up from the abyss of time to be, 
And show these eyes, before they close, the doom 
Of this proud city ! — Yes, the hours 
Are silently engendering of the day, 
When she, who built 'gainst Attila a bulwark, 
Shall yield, and bloodlessly and basely yield 
Unto a bastard Attila ; without 
Shedding so much blood in her last defence 
As these old veins, oft drain'd in shielding her, 
Shall pour in sacrifice. — She shall be bought ! 
Then, when the Hebrews in thy palaces, 
The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek 
Walks o'er thy mart, and smiles on it for his ; 
When thy patricians beg their bitter bread 
In narrow streets, and in their shameful need 
Make their nobility a plea for pity ; — when 
Thy sons are in the lowest scale of being, 
Slaves turn'd o'er to the vanquished by the victors, 
Despised by cowards for greater cowardice, 
And scorn' d even by the vicious for their vices, 
When all the ills of conquer' d states shall cling thee, 
Vice without splendour, sin without relief; 
When these and more are heavy on thee, when 
Smiles without mirth, and pastimes without plea- 
Youth without honour, age without respect, [sure, 
Meanness and weakness, and a sense of woe 
'Gainst which thou wilt not strive, and dar'st not 

murmur, 
Have made thee last and worst of peopled deserts, 
Then — in the last gasp of thine agony, 
Amidst thy many murders, think of mine! 
Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes ! 
Gehenna of the waters ! thou sea Sodom ! 
Thus I devote thee to the infernal gods ! 
Thee and thy serpent seed ! 

[Here the Doge turns, and addresses the Exe- 
cutioner. 
Slave, do thine office ! 
Strike as I struck the foe ! Strike as I would 
Have struck those tyrants ! Strike deep as my 

curse ! 
Strike — and but once ! — pp. 162 — 165. 

It will not now be 'difficult to estimate the 
character of this work.— *As a play, it is defi- 
cient in the attractive passions ; in probability, 
and in depth and variety of interest ) and 
revolts throughout, by the extravagant dis- 
proportion which the injury bears to the 
unmeasured resentment with which it is 
pursued. Lord Byron is, undoubtedly, a poet 
of the very first order — and has talents to 
reach the very highest honours of the drama. 
But he must not again disdain love and am- 
bition and jealousy. He must not substitute 
what is merely bizarre and extraordinary, for 
what is naturally and universally interesting — 



nor expect, by any exaggerations, so to rouse 
and rule our sympathies, by the senseless 
anger of an old man, and the prudish proprie- 
ties of an untempted woman, as by the 
agency of the great and simple passions with 
which, in some of their degrees, all men are 
familiar, and by which alone the Dramatic 
Muse has hitherto wrought her miracles. 

Of "Cain, a Mystery," we are constrained 
to say, that, though it abounds in beautiful 
passages, and shows more power perhaps than 
any of the author's dramatical compositions, 
we regret very much that it should ever have 
been published. It will give great scandal 
and offence to pious persons in general — and 
may be the means of suggesting the most 
painful doubts and distressing perplexities, to 
hundreds of minds that might never other- 
wise have been exposed to such dangerous 
disturbance. It is nothing less than absurd, 
in such a case, to observe, that Lucifer cannot 
well be expected to talk like an orthodox 
divine — and that the conversation of the first 
Rebel and the first Murderer was not likely 
to be very unexceptionable — or to plead the 
authority of Milton, or the authors of the old 
mysteries, for such offensive colloquies. The 
fact is, that here the lohole argument — and a 
very elaborate and specious argument it is — 
is directed against the goodness or the power 
of the Deity, and against the reasonableness 
of religion in general ; and there is no answer 
so much as attempted to the offensive doc- 
trines that are so strenuously inculcated. The 
Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to 
themselves — and are encountered with noth- 
ing but feeble obtestations and unreasoning 
horrors. Nor is this argumentative blasphemy 
a mere incidental deformity that arises in the 
course of an action directed to the common 
sympathies of our nature. It forms, on the 
contrary, the great staple of the piece — and 
occupies, we should think, not less than two 
thirds of it ; so that it is really difficult to be- 
lieve that it was written for any other purpose 
than to inculcate these doctrines — or at least to 
discuss the question on which they bear. Now, 
we can certainly have no objection to Lord 
Byron writing an Essay on the Origin of Evil 
— and sifting the whole of that vast and per- 
plexing subject with the force and the free- 
dom that would be expected and allowed in 
a fair philosophical discussion. But we do 
not think it fair, thus to argue it partially and 
con amore, in the name of Lucifer and Cain ; 
without the responsibility or the liability to 
answer that would attach to a philosophical 
disputant — and in a form which both doubles 
the danger, if the sentiments are pernicious, 
and almost precludes his opponents from the 
possibility of a reply. >. 

Philosophy and Poetry are both very gooc 
things in their way; but, in our opinion, the) 
do not go very well together. It is but a poor 
and pedantic sort of poetry that seeks chiefly 
to embody metaphysical subtil ties and abstract 
deductions of reason— and a very suspicious 
philosophy that aims at establishing its doc- 
trines by appeals to the passions and the 
fancy. Though such arguments, however, 



LORD BY-RON'S TRAGEDIES. 



3*7 



are worth little in the schools, it does not 
follow that their effect is inconsiderable in the 
world. On the contrary, it is the mischief of 
all poetical paradoxes, that, from the very 
limits and end of poetry, which deals only in 
obvious and glancing views, they are never 
brought to the fair test of argument. An al- 
lusion to a doubtful topic will often pass for a 
definitive conclusion on it ; and. when clothed 
m beautiful language, may leave the most 
pernicious impressions behind. In the courts 
of morality, poets are unexceptionable wit- 
nesses; they may give in the evidence, and 
depose to facts whether good or ill ; but we 
demur to their arbitrary and self-pleasing 
summings up. They are suspected judges, 
and not very often safe advocates ; where great 
questions are concerned, and universal prin- 
ciples brought to issue. But we shall not 
press this point farther at present. 

We shall give but one specimen, and that 
the least offensive we can find, of the pre- 
vailing tone of this extraordinary drama. It 
is the address (for we cannot call it prayer) 
with which Cain accompanies the offering of 
ius sheaves on the altar — and directed to be 
delivered, standing erect. 

<: Spirit ! whate'er or whosoe'er thou art, 
Omnipotent, it may be — and, if good, 
Shown in the exemption of thy deeds from evil; 
Jehovah upon earth! and God in heaven ! 
And it may be with other names, because 
Thine attributes seem many, as thy works: — 
If thou must be propitiated with prayers, 
Take them ! If thou must be induced with altars, 
And soften' d with a sacrifice, receive them ! 
Two beings here erect them unto thee. [smokes 
If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which 
On my right hand, hath shed it for thy service, 
In the first of his flock, whose limbs now reek 
In sanguinary incense to thy skies; 
Or if the sweet and blooming fruits of earth, 
And milder seasons, which the unstain'd turf 
I spread them on now offers in the face 
Of the broad sun which ripen'd them, may seem 
Good to thee, inasmuch as they have not 
Suffer' d in limb or life, and rather form 
A sample of thy works, than supplication 
To look on ours ! If a shrine without Victim, 
And altar without gore, may win thy favour, 
Look on it ! and for him who dressefh it, 
He is — such as thou mad'st him ; and seeks nothing 
Which must be won by kneeling. If he's evil, 
Strike him ! thou art omnipotent, and may'st, — 
For what can he oppose ? If he be good, 
Strike him, or spare him, as thou wilt ! since all 
Rests upon thee ; and good and evil seem 
To have no power themselves, save in thy will; 
And whether that be good or ill I know not, 
Not being omnipotent, nor fit to judge 
Omnipotence ; but merely to endure 
Its mandate — which thus far I have endured." 

pp. 424, 425. 

The catastrophe follows soon after, and is 
brought about with great dramatic skill and 
effect. The murderer is sorrowful and con- 
founded — his parents reprobate and renounce 
him — his wife clings to him with eager and 
unhesitating affection ; and they wander forth 
together into the vast solitude of the universe. 

We have now gone through the poetical 
part of this volume, and ought here, perhaps, 
to close our account of it. But there are a 
few pages in prose that are more talked of 



than all the rest; and whicn lead irresistibly 
to topics, upon which it seems ui last neces- 
sary that we should express an opinion. We 
allude to the concluding part of the Appendix 
to u The Two Foscari, ,; in which Lord Byron 
resumes his habitual complaint of the hostil- 
ity which he has experienced from the wri- 
ters of his own country — makes reprisals on 
those who have assailed his reputation — and 
inflicts, in particular, a memorable chastise- 
ment upon the unhappy Laureate, interspersed 
with some political reflections of great weight 
and authority. 

It is not however with these, or the merits 
of the treatment which Mr. Sou they has either 
given or-received, that we have now any con- 
cern. But we have a word or two to say on 
the griefs of Lord Byron himself. < He com- 
plains bitterly of the detraction by which he 
has been assailed — and intimates that his 
works have been received by the public with 
far less cordiality and favour than he was en- 
titled to expect. fWe are constrained to say 
that this appears to us a very extraordinary 
mistake. /In the whole course of our experi- 
ence, we cannot recollect a single author who 
has had so little reason to complain of his 
reception — to whose genius the public has 
been so early and so constantly just — to whose 
faults they have been so long and so signally 
indulgent. From the very first, he must have 
been aware that he offended the principles 
and shocked the prejudices of the majority, 
by his sentiments, as much as he delighted 
them by his talents. (Yet there never was an 
author so universally and warmly applauded, 
so gently admonished — so kindly entreated to 
look more needfully to his opinions. He took 
the praise, as usual, and rejected the advice. 
As he grew in fame and authority, he aggra- 
vated all his offences — clung more fondly to 
all he had been reproached with — and only 
took leave of Childe Harold to ally himself to 
Don Juan ! That he has since been talked 
of, in public and in private, with less unmin- 
gled admiration — that his name is now men- 
tioned as often for censure as for praise — and 
that the exultation with which his country- 
men once hailed the greatest of our living 
poets, is now alloyed by the recollection of 
the tendency of his writings — is matter of 
notoriety to all the world; but matter of sur- 
prise, we should imagine, to nobody but Lord 
Byron himself. 

He would fain persuade himself, indeed, 
that for this decline of his popularity — or 
rather this stain upon its lustre — for he is still 
popular beyond all other example — and it is 
only because he is so that we feel any interest 
in this discussion; — he is indebted, not to any 
actual demerits of his own, but to the jealousy 
of those he has supplanted, the envy of those 
he has outshone, or the party rancour of those 
against whose corruptions he has testified ; — 
while, at other times, he seems inclined to 
insinuate, that it is chiefly because he is a 
Gentleman and a Nobleman that plebeian cen- 
sors have conspired to bear him down ! We 
scarcely think, however, that these theories 
will pass with Lord Byron himself — we are 



328 



POETRY. 



sure they win pass with no other person. — 
The}- are so manifestly inconsistent, as mutu- 
ally to destroy each other — and so weak, as 
to be quite insufficient to account for the fact, 
even if they could be effectually combined 
for that purpose. The party that Lord Byron 
has chiefly offended, bears no malice to Lords 
and Gentlemen. Against its rancour, on the 
contrary, these qualities have undoubtedly 
been his best protection; and had it not been 
for them, he may be assured that he would, 
long ere now, have been shown up in the 
pages of the Quarterly, with the same candour 
and liberality that has there been exercised 
towards his friend Lady Morgan. That the 
base and the bigoted — those whom he has 
darkened by his glory, spited by his talent, 
or mortified by his neglect — have taken ad- 
vantage of the prevailing disaffection, to vent 
their puny malice in silly nicknames and vul- 
gar scurrility, is natural and true. But Lord 
Byron may depend upon it, that the dissatis- 
faction is not confined to them — and, indeed, 
that they would never have had the courage 
to assail one so immeasurably their superior, 
if he had not at once made himself vulnera- 
ble by his errors, and alienated his natural 
defenders by his obstinate adherence to them. 
We are not bigots or rival poets. We have 
not been detractors from Lord Byron's fame, 
nor the friends of his detractors ; and we tell 
him — far more in sorrow than in anger — that 
we verily believe the great body of the Eng- 
lish nation — the religious, the moral, and the 
candid part of it — consider the tendency of 
his writings to be immoral and pernicious — 
and look upon his perseverance in that strain 
of composition with regret and reprehension. 

He has no priestlike cant or priestlike revil- 
ing to apprehend from us. We do not charge 
him with being either a disciple or an apostle 
of Satan ; nor do we describe his poetry as a 
mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. 
^On the contrary, we are inclined to believe 
that he wishes well to the happiness of man- 
kind — and are glad to testify, that his poems 
abound with sentiments of great dignity and 
tenderness, as well as passages of infinite 
sublimity and beauty. * But their general 
tendency we believe to be in the highest 
degree pernicious ; and we even think that it 
is chiefly by means of the fine and lofty sen- 
timents they contain, that they acquire their 
most fatal power of corruption. This may 
sound at first, perhaps, like a paradox; but 
we are mistaken if we shall not make it in- 
telligible enough in the end. 

We think there are indecencies and indeli- 
cacies, seductive descriptions and profligate 
representations, which are extremely repre- 
hensible; and also audacious speculations, 
and erroneous -and uncharitable assertions, 
equally indefensible. But if these had stood 
alone, and if the whole body of his works 
had been made up of gaudy ribaldry and 
flashy scepticism, the mischief, we think, 
would have been much less than it is. He is 
not more obscene, perhaps, than Dryden or 
Prior, and other classical and pardoned wri- 
ters • noi is there any passage in the history 



even of Don Juan, so offensively degrading as 
Tom Jones' affair with Lady Bella ston. It 
is no doubt a wretched apology for the inde- 
cencies of a man of genius, that equal inde- 
cencies have been forgiven to his predeces- 
sors : But the precedent of lenity might have 
been followed ; and we might have passed 
both the levity and the voluptuousness — the 
dangerous warmth of his romantic situations, 
and the scandal of his cold-blooded dissipa- 
tion. It might not have been so easy to get 
over his dogmatic scepticism — his hard-heart- 
ed maxims of misanthropy — his cold-blooded 
and eager expositions of the non-existence of 
virtue and honour. Even this, however, might 
have been comparatively harmless, if it had 
not been accompanied by that which may 
look, at first sight, as a palliation — the frequent 
presentment of the most touching pictures of 
tenderness, generosity, and faith. 

The charge we bring against Lord Byron, 
in short, is,fthat his writings have a tendency 
to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue 
— and to make all enthusiasm and con- 
stancy of affection ridiculous ; and this, not 
so much by direct maxims and examples, 
of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the 
constant exhibition of the most profligate 
heartlessness in the persons who had been 
transiently represented as actuated by the 
purest and most exalted emotions — and in the 
lessons of that very teacher who had been, 
but a moment before, so beautifully pathetic 
in the expression of the loftiest conceptions. 
When a gay voluptuary descants, somewhat 
too freely, on the intoxications of love and 
wine, we ascribe his excesses to the efferves- 
cence of youthful spirits, and do not consideT 
him as seriously impeaching either the value 
or the reality of the severer virtues ; and in 
the same way, when the satirist deals out his 
sarcasms against the sincerity of human pro- 
fessions, and unmasks the secret infirmities 
of our bosoms, we consider this as aimed at 
hypocrisy, and not at mankind : or, at all 
events, and in either case, we consider the 
Sensualist and the Misanthrope as wandering, 
each in his own delusion — and are contented 
to pity those who have never known the 
charms of a tender or generous affection. — 
The true antidote to such seductive or. revolt- 
ing views of human nature, is to turn to the 
scenes qf its nobleness and attraction ; and to 
reconcile ourselves again to our kind, by list- 
ening to the accents of pure affection and in- 
corruptible honour. But if those accents have 
flowed in all their sweetness, from the very 
lips that instantly open again to mock and 
blaspheme them, the antidote is mingled with 
the poison, and the draught is the more dead- 
ly for the mixture ! 

The reveller may pursue his orgies, and the 
wanton display her enchantments, with com- 
parative safety to those around them, as long as 
they know or believe that there are purer and 
higher enjoyments, and teachers and follow- 
ers of a happier way. But if the Priest pass 
from the altar, with persuasive exhortations to 
peace and purity still trembling on his tongue, 
to join familiarly in the grossest and most pro* 



LORD BYRON'S TRAGEDIES. 



329 



fb/ie debauchery — if the Matron, who has 
charmed all hearts by the lovely sanctimo- 
nies of her conjugal and maternal endear- 
ments, glides oat from the circle of her chil- 
dren, and gives bold and shameless way to 
the most abandoned and degrading vices — 
our notions of right and wrong are at once 
confounded — our confidence in virtue shaken 
to the foundation — and our reliance on truth 
and fidelity at an end for ever. 

This is the charge which we bring against 
Lord Byron. We say that, under some strange 
misapprehension as to the truth, and the duty 
of proclaiming it. he has exerted all the powers 
of his powerful mind to convince his readers, 
both d'rectly and indirectly, that all ennobling 
pursuits, and disinterested virtues, are mere 
deceits or illusions — hollow and despicable 
mockeries for the most part, and, at best, but 
laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, 
valour, devotion, constancy, ambition — all are 
to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and de- 
spised ! — and nothing is really good, so far as 
we can gather, but a succession of dangers to 
stir the blood, and of banquets and intrigues 
to soothe it again ! If this doctrine stood alone, 
with its examples, it would revolt, we believe 
more than it" would seduce : — But the author 
of it has the unlucky gift of personating all 
those sweet and lofty illusions, and that with 
such grace and force, and truth to nature, that 
it is impossible not to suppose, for the time, that 
he is among the most devoted of their votaries — 
till he casts off the character with a jerk — and. 
the moment after he has moved and exalted us 
to the very height of our conception, resumes 
his mockery at all things serious or sublime — 
and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, 
hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and relentless 
personality— as if on purpose to show 

" Whoe'er was edified, himself was not " — 

or to demonstrate practically as it were, and 
by example, how possible it is to have all fine 
and noble feelings, or their appearance, for a 
moment, and yet retain no particle of respect 
for them — or of belief in their intrinsic worth 
or permanent reality. Thus, we have an in- 
delicate but very clever scene of young Juan's 
concealment in the bed of an amorous matron, 
and of the torrent of " rattling and audacious 
eloquence" with which she repels the too 
just suspicions of her jealous lord. All this 
is merely comic, and a little coarse: — But 
then the poet chooses to make this shameless 
and abandoned woman address to her young 
gallant an epistle breathing the very spirit of 
warm, devoted, pure, and unalterable love — 
thus profaning the holiest language of the 
heart, and indirectly associating it with the 
most hateful and degrading sensuality. In 
like manner, the sublime and terrific descrip- 
tion of the Shipwreck is strangely and dis- 
gustingly broken by traits of low humour and 
buffoonery ; — and we pass immediately from 
the moans of an agonising father fainting over 
his famished son, to facetious stories of Juan's 
begging a paw of his father's dog — and re- 
fusing a slice of his tutor ! — as if it were a 
fine thing to be hard-hearted — and pity and 
43 



compassion were fit only to be laughed at. 
In the same spirit, the glorious Ode on the 
aspirations of Greece after Liberty, is instant- 
ly followed up by a strain of dull and cold- 
blooded ribaldry; — and we are hurried on 
from the distraction and death of Haidee to 
merry scenes of intrigue and masquerading 
in the seraglio. Thus all good feelings are 
excited only to accustom us to their speedy 
and complete extinction; and we are brought 
back, from their transient and theatrical ex- 
hibition, to the staple and substantial doctrine 
of the work — the non-existence of constancy 
in women or honour in men, and the folly of 
expecting to meet with any such virtues, or of 
cultivating them, for an undeserving world; 
— and all this mixed up with so much wit and 
cleverness, and knowledge of human nature, 
as to make it irresistibly pleasant and plausi- 
ble — while there is not only no antidote sup- 
plied, but every thing that might have operated 
in that way has been anticipated, and pre- 
sented already in as strong and engaging a 
form as possible — but under such associations 
as to rob it of all efficacy, or even turn it into 
an auxiliary of the poison. 

This is our sincere opinion of much of Lord 
Byron's most splendid poetry — a little exagge- 
rated perhaps in the expression, from a desire 
to make our exposition clear and impressive 
— but, in substance, we think merited and 
correct. We have already said, and we de- 
liberately repeat, that we have no notion that 
Lord Byron had any mischievous intention in 
these publications — and readily acquit him of 
any wish to corrupt the morals or impair the 
happiness of his readers. Such a wish, in- 
deed, is in itself altogether inconceivable; but 
it is our duty, nevertheless, to say, that much 
of what he has published appears to us to have 
this tendency — and that we are acquainted 
with no writings so well calculated to ex- 
tinguish in young minds all generous enthu- 
siasm and gentle affection — all respect for 
themselves, and all love for their kind — to 
make them practise and profess hardily what 
it teaches them to suspect in others — and 
actually to persuade them that it is wise and 
manly and knowing to laugh, not only at self- 
denial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambi- 
tion, and all warm and constant affection. 

How opposite to this is the system, or the 
temper, of the great author of Waverley — the 
only living individual to whom Lord Byron 
must submit to be ranked as inferior in genius 
— and still more deplorably inferior in all that 
makes genius either amiable in itself, or 
useful to society! With all his unrivalled 
power of invention and judgment, of pathos 
and pleasantry, the tenor of his sentiments 
is uniformly generous, indulgent, and good- 
humoured ; and so remote from the bitterness 
of misanthropy, that he never indulges in sar- 
casm, and scarcely, in any case, carries his 
merriment so far as derision. But the pecu- 
liarity by which he stands most broadly and 
proudly distinguished from Lord Byron is, 
that, beginning as he frequently does, with 
some ludicrous or satirical theme, he never 
fails to raise out of it some feelingg of a gener- 
2c2 



POETRY. 



ous oi gentle kind, and to end by exciting our 
tender pity, or deep respect, for those very 
individuals or classes of persons who seemed 
at first to be brought on the stage for our mere 
sport and amusement — thus making the ludi- 
crous itself subservient to the cause of be- 
nevolence — and inculcating, at every turn, 
and as the true end and result of all his trials 
and experiments, the love of our kind, and 
the duty and delight of a cordial and genuine 
sympathy with the joys and sorrows of every 
condition of men. It seems to be Lord Byron's 
way, on the contrary, never to excite a kind 
or a noble sentiment, without making haste to 
obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery 
or relentless abuse, and taking pains to show 
how well those passing fantasies may be re- 
conciled to a system of resolute misanthropy, 



or so managed as even to enhance its ■ merit*, 
or confirm its truth. With what different sen- 
sations, accordingly, do we read the works of 
those two great writers ! — With the one, we 
seem to share a gay and gorgeous banquet — 
with the other, a wild and dangerous intoxi- 
cation. Let Lord Byron bethink him of this 
contrast — and its causes and effects. Though 
he scorns the precepts, and defies the censure 
of ordinary men, he may yet be moved by the 
example of his only superior! — In the mean 
time, we have endeavoured to point out the 
canker that stains the splendid flowers of his 
poetry — or, rather, the serpent that lurks be- 
neath them. If it will not listen to the voice 
of the charmer, that brilliant garden, gay and 
glorious as it is, must be deserted, and its 
existence deplored, as a snare to the unwary. 



(3Ufltt«t, 1617.) 

Manfred ; a Dramatic Poem. By Lord Byron. 8vo. pp. 75. London: 1811. 



This is a very strange — not a very pleasing 
— but unquestionably a very powerful and 
most poetical production. The noble author, 
we find, still deals with that dark and over- 
awing Spirit, by whose aid he has so often 
subdued the minds of his readers, and in 
whose might he has wrought so many won- 
ders. In Manfred, we recognise at once the 
gloom and potency of that soul which burned 
and blasted and fed upon itself in Harold, and 
Conrad, and Lara — and which comes again in 
this piece, more in sorrow than in anger — 
more proud, perhaps, and more awful than 
ever — but with the fiercer traits of its misan- 
thropy subdued, as it were, and quenched in 
the gloom of a deeper despondency. Man- 
fred does not, like Conrad and Lara, wreak 
the anguish of his burning heart in the dan- 
gers and daring of desperate and predatory 
war — nor seek to drown bitter thoughts in the 
tumult of perpetual contention — nor yet, like 
Harold, does he sweep over the peopled scenes 
of the earth with high disdain and aversion, 
and make his survey of the business and 
pleasures and studies of man an occasion for 
taunts and sarcasms, and the food of an im- 
measurable spleen. He is fixed by the genius 
of the poet in the majestic solitudes of the 
central Alps — where, from his youth up, he 
has lived in proud but calm seclusion from 
the ways of men : conversing only with the 
magnificent forms and aspects of nature by 
which he is surrounded, and with the Spirits 
of the Elements over whom he has acquired 
dominion, by the secret and unhallowed stu- 
dies of Sorcery and Magic. He is averse 
indeed from mankind, and scorns the low and 
frivolous nature to which he belongs ; but he 
cherishes no animosity or hostility to that 
feeble race. Their concerns excite no inter- 
est — their pursuits no sympathy — their joys 
no envy. It is irksome and vexatious for him 
to be crossed by them in his melancholy mus- 



ings, — but he treats them with gentleness and 
pity ; and, except when stung to impatience 
by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and 
considerate of the comforts of all around him. 
This piece is properly entitled a Dramatic 
Poem — for it is merely poetical, and is not at 
all a drama or play in the modern acceptation 
of the term. It has no action ; no plot — and 
no characters; Manfred merely muses and 
suffers from the beginning to the end. His 
distresses are the same at the opening of the 
scene and at its closing — and the temper in 
which they are borne is the same. A hunter 
and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed 
introduced ; but they have no connection with 
the passions or sufferings on which the inter- 
est depends; and Manfred is substantially 
alone throughout the whole piece. He holds 
no communion but with the memory of the 
Being he had loved ; and the immortal Spirits 
whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, 
and their inability to relieve it. These un- 
earthly beings approach nearer -to the charac- 
ter of persons of the drama — but still they 
are but choral accompaniments to the per- 
formance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only 
actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate 
his character indeed — to render conceivable 
his feelings — is plainly the whole scope and 
design of the poem ; and the conception and 
execution are, in this respect, equally admir- 
able. It is a grand and terrific vision of a 
being invested with superhuman attributes, 
in order that he may be capable of more than 
human sufferings, and be sustained under 
them by more than human force and pride. 
To object to the improbability of the fiction 
is, we think, to mistake the end and aim of 
the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did 
not enter at all into his consideration — his 
object Mas, to produce effect — to exalt and 
dilate the character through whom he was to 
interest or appal us — and to raise our concep- 



LORD BYRON'S MANFRED. 



tion of it by all the helps that could be derived 
from the majesty of nature, or the dread of 
superstition. It is enough, therefore, if the 
situation in which he has placed him is con- 
ceivable — and if the supposition of its reality 
enhances our emotions and kindles our im- 
agination ; — for it is Manfred only that we are 
required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we 
can once conceive of him as a real existence, 
and enter into the depth and the height of his 
pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we 
please with the means that have been used to 
furnish us with this impression, or to enable 
us to attain to this conception. We may re- 
gard them but as types, or metaphors, or alle- 
gories : But he is the thing to be expressed ; 
and the feeling and the intellect, of which all 
these are but shadows. 

The events, such as they are, upon which 
the piece may be said to turn, have all taken 
place long before its opening, and are but 
dimly shadowed out in the casual communica- 
tions of the agonising being to whom they 
relate. Nobly born and trained in the castle 
of his ancestors, he had very soon sequestered 
himself from the society of men; and, after 
running through the common circle of human 
sciences, had dedicated himself to the worship 
of the wild magnificence of nature, and to 
those forbidden studies by which he had 
learned to command its presiding powers. — 
One companion, however, he had, in all his 
tasks and enjoyments — a female of kindred 
genius, taste, and capacity— lovely too beyond 
all loveliness ; but, as we gather, too nearly 
related to be lawfully beloved. The catas- 
trophe of their unhappy passion is insinuated 
in the darkest and most ambiguous terms — 
all that we make out is, that she died un- 
timely and by violence, on account of this 
fatal attachment — though not by the act of 
its object. He killed her, he says, not with 
his hand — but his heart ; and her blood was 
shed, though not by him ! From that hour, 
life is a burden to him, and memory a torture 
— and the extent of his power and knowledge 
serves only to show him the hopelessness and 
endlessness of his misery. 

The piece opens with his evocation of the 
Spirits of the -Elements, from whom he de- 
mands the boon of forgetfulness — and ques- 
tions them as to his own immortality. The 
scene is in his Gothic tower at midnight — and 
opens with a soliloquy that reveals at once 
the state of the speaker, and the genius of 
the author. 

" The lamp must be replenish' d — but even then 
It will not burn so long as I must watch ! 
Philosophy and science, and the springs 
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world, 
I have essayed, and in my mind there is 
A power to make these subject to itself — 
But they avail not : I have done men good, 
And I have met with good even among men— 
But this avail'd not : I have had my foes, 
And none have baffled, many fallen before me — 
But this avail'd not : — Good, or evil, life, 
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings, 
Have been to me as rain unto the sands, 
Since that all-nameless hour ! I have no dread, 
And feel the curse to have no natural fear. 



Nor flattering throb, that beats with hopes or 

wishes, 
Or lurking love of something on the earth. — 
Now to my task." — pp. 7, 8. 

When his evocation is completed, a star ia 
seen at the far end of a gallery, and celestial 
voices are heard reciting a great deal of poet.y, 
After they have answered that the gift of 
oblivion is not at their disposal, and intimated 
that death itself could not bestow it on him, 
they ask if he has any further demand to 
make of them. He answers, 

" No, none : yet stay ! — one moment, ere we 
I would behold ye face to face. I hear [part — 
Your voices, sweet and melancholy sounds 
As music on the waters ; and I see 
The steady aspect of a clear large star ; 
But nothing more. Approach me as ye are, 
Or one, or all, in your accustom'd forms. 

Spirit. We have no forms beyond the elements 
Of which we are the mind and principle : 
But choose a form — in that we will appear. 

Man. I have no choice ; there is no form on earth 
Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him 
Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect 
As unto him may seem most fining. — Come ! 

Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a 
beautiful female figure.) Behold ! 

31. Oh God ! if it be thus, and thou 
Art not a madness and a mockery, 
I yet might be most happy. — I will clasp thee. 
And we again will be — [The figure va?iishes. 

My heart is crush'd ! 
[Manfued falls se7iseless." — pp. 15, 16. 

The first scene of this extraordinary per- 
formance ends with a long poetical incanta- 
tion, sung by the invisible spirits over the 
senseless victim before them. The second 
shows him in the bright sunshine of morning, 
on the top of the Jungfrau mountain, medi- 
tating self-destruction — and uttering forth in 
solitude as usual the voice of his habitual 
despair, and those intermingled feelings of 
love and admiration for the grand and beauti- 
ful objects with which he is environed, that 
unconsciously win him back to a certain 
kindly sympathy with human enjoyments. 

" Mail. The spirits I have raised abandon me — 
The spells which I have studied baffle me — 
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me ; 
I lean no more on superhuman aid : 
It hath no power upon the past, and for 
The future, till the past be gulf 'd in darkness, 
It is not of my search. — My mother Earth ! 
And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Moun- 
Why are ye beautiful ? I cannot love ye. [tains. 
And thou, the bright eye of the universe, 
That openest over all, and unto all 
Art a delight — thou shin'st not on my heart. 
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge 
I stand, and on the torrent'^ brink beneath 
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs 
In dizziness of distance ; when a leap, 
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring 
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed 
To rest for ever — wherefore do I pause ? 

Ay, 

Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, 

[An eagle passe* 
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, 
Well may'st thou swoop so near me — I should be 
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets! thou art gone 
Where the eye cannot follow thee ; but thine ey« 
Yet piercest downward, onward, or above 
With a pervading vision. — Beautiful ! 
How beautiful is all this visible world '. 



332 



POKTRV. 



How glorious in its action and itself! 

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, 

Half dust, half deity, alike unfit 

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make 

A conflict of its elements, and breathe 

The breath of degradation and of pride, 

Contending with low wants and lofty will 

Till our mortality predominates, 

And men are — what they name not to themselves, 

And trust pot to each other. Hark ! the note, 

[The shepherd 1 $ pipe in the distance is heard. 
The natural music of the mountain reed — 
For here the patriarchal days are not 
A pastoral fable — pipes in the liberal air, 
Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd ; 
My soul would drink those echoes ! — Oh, that I were 
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, 
A living voice, a breathing harmony, 
A bodiless enjoyment — born and dying 
With the blest tone which made me !" — pp. 20 — 22. 

At this period of his soliloquy, he is de- 
scried by a Chamois hunter, who overhears 
its continuance. 

" To be thus— 
Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines, 
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless, 
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root, • 

Which but supplies a feeling to decay— 
And to be thus, eternally but thus, 
Having been otherwise ! 

Ye topling crags of ice ! 
Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down 
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! 
I hear ye momently above, beneath, 
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, 
And only fall on things which still would live ; 
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut 
And hamlet of the harmless villager. 
The mists boil up around the glaciers ! clouds 
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury, 
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell, 
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore, 
Heaped with the damn'd like pebbles — I am giddy!" 

pp. 23, 24. 

Just as he is about to spring from the cliff, 
he is seized by the hunter, who forces him 
away from the dangerous place in the midst 
of the rising tempest. In the second act, we 
find him in the cottage of this peasant, and in 
a still wilder state of disorder. His host 
offers him wine ) but, upon looking at the cup, 
he exclaims — 

" Away, away ! there's blood upon the brim ! 
Will it then never — never sink in the earth? 

C. Hun. What dost thou mean? thy senses 

wander from thee. 
Man. I say 'tis blood — my blood ! the pure warm 
stream 
Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours 
When we were in our youth, and had one heart, 
And loved each other — as we should not love ! — 
And this was shed: but still it rises up, 
Colouring the clouds that shut me out from heaven, 
Where thou art not — and I shall never be ! 

C. Hun. Man of strange words, and some half- 
maddening sin, &c. 
Man. Think'st thou existence doth depend on 
It doth ; but actions are our epochs: mine [time ? 
Have made my days and nights imperishable, 
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore, 
Innumerable atoms ; and one desert, 
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, 
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks, 
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness. 
C.Hun. Alas! he's mad — but yet I must not 

leave him. 
Man. I would I were — for then the things I see 
Would be but a distempered dream. 



C. Hun. What is it 

That thou dost see, or think thou look'st upon ? 
Man. Myself, and thee — a peasant of the Alps • 
, Thy humble virtues, hospitable home, 
And spirit patient, pious, proud and free ; 
Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts ; 
Thy days of health, and nights of sleep ; thy toils, 
By danger dignified, yet guiltless ; hopes 
Of cheerful old age and a quiet grave, 
With cross and garland over its green turf, 
And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph; 
This do I see — and then I look within — 
It matters not — my soul was scorch'd already !" 

pp. 27—29. 

The following scene is one of the most 
poetical and most sweetly w r ritten in the 
poem. There is a still and delicious witchery 
in the tranquillity and seclusion of the place, 
and the celestial beauty of the Being who 
reveals herself in the midst of these visible 
enchantments. In a deep valley among the 
mountains, Manfred appears alone before a 
lofty cataract, pealing in the quiet sunshine 
down the still and everlasting rocks; and 
says— 

" It is not noon — the sunbow's rays still arch 
The torrent with the many hues of heaven, 
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column 
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, 
And fling its lines of foaming light along, • 
And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, 
The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death, 
As told in the Apocalypse. No eyes 
But mine now drink this sight of loveliness ; 
I should be sole in this sweet solitude, 
And with the Spirit of the place divide 
The homage of these waters. — I will call her. 
[He takes some of the water into the palm of his 
hand, and flings it in the air, muttering the ad- 
juration. After a pause, the Witch of thb 
Alps rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of 
the torrent.] 
Man. Beautiful Spirit ! with thy hair of light, 
And dazzling eyes of glory ! in whose form 
The charms of Earth's least-mortal daughters grow 
To an unearthly stature, in an essence 
Of purer elements ; while the hues of youth, — 
Carnation'd like a sleeping infant's cheek, 
Rock'd by the beating of tier mother's heart, 
Or the rose tints, which summer's twilight leaves 
Upon the lofty glacier's virgin snow, 
The blush of earth embracing with her heaven, — 
Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame 
The beauties of the sunbow which bends o'er thee ! 
Beautiful Spirit ! in thy calm clear brow, 
Wherein is glass'd serenity of sour, 
Which of itself shows immortality, 
I read that thou wilt pardon to a Son 
Of Earth, whom the abstruser Powers permit 
At times to commune with them — if that he 
Avail him of his spells — to call thee thus, 
And gaze on thee a moment. 

Witch. Son of Earth! 

I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power! 
I know thee for a man of many thoughts, 
And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both, 
Fatal and fated in thy sufferings. 
I have expected this — what wouldst thou with me ? 
Man. To look upon thy beauiy !— nothing fur- 
ther."— pp. 31, 32. 

There is something exquisitely beautiful, to 
our taste, in all this passage ; and both the 
apparition and the dialogue are so managed, 
that the sense of their improbability is swal- 
lowed up in that of their beauty ; — and, with- 
out actually believing that such spirits exist 
or communicate themselves, we feel for the 
moment as if we stood in their presence. 



LORD BYRON'S MANFRED. 



331 



What fallows, though extremely powerful, 
and more laboured in the writing, has less 
charm for us. He tells his celestial auditor 
the brief story of his misfortune ; and when 
he mentions the death of the only being he 
nad ever loved, the beauteous Spirit breaks in 
with her superhuman pride. 

'* And for this — 
A being of the race thou dost desDise, 
The order which thine own would rise above, 
Mingling with us and ours, thou dost forego 
The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink' st back 

To recreant mortality Away! [hour — 

Man. Daughter of Air ! I tell thee, since that 
But words are breath ! — Look on me in my sleep, 
Or watch my watchings — Come and sit by me ! 
My solitude is solitude no more, 
But peopled with the Furies ! — I have gnash'd 
My teeth in darkness till returning morn, 
Then cursed myself till sunset ; — I have pray'd 
For madness as a blessing — 'tis denied me. 
I have affronted Death — but in ihe war 
Of elemeivs the waters shrunk from me, 
And fatal things pass'd harmless."-^pp. 36, 37. 

The third scene is the boldest in the exhi- 
bition of supernatural persons. The three 
Destinies and Nemesis meet, at midnight, on 
the top of the Alps, on their way to the hall 
of Arimanes, and sing strange ditties to the 
moon, of their mischiefs wrought among men. 
Nemesis being rather late, thus apologizes for 
keeping them waiting. 

" I was detain'd repairing shattered thrones, 
Marrying fools, restoring dynasties, 
Avenging men upon their enemies, 
And making them repent their own revenge ; 
Goading the wise to madness ; from the dull 
Shaping out oracles to rule the world 
Afresh; for they were waxing out of date, 
And mortals dared to ponder for themselves, 
To weigh kings in the balance, and to speak 
Of freedom, the forbidden fruit. — Away ! 
We have outstaid the hour — mount we our clouds !" 

p. 44. 

This we think is out of place at least, if we 
must not say out of character ; and though the 
author may tell us that human calamities are 
naturally subjects of derision to the Ministers 
of Vengeance, yet we cannot be persuaded 
that satirical and political allusions are at all 
compatible with the feelings and impressions 
which it was here his business to maintain. 
When the Fatal Sisters are again assembled 
before the throne of Arimanes, Manfred sud- 
denly appears among them, and refuses the 
prostrations which they require. The first 
Destiny thus loftily announces him. 

" Prince of the Powers invisible ! This man 

Is of no common order, as his port 

And presence here denote ; his sufferings 

Have been of an immortal nature, like 

Our own ; his knowledge and his powers and will, 

As far as is compatible with clay, 

Which clogs the etherial essence, have been such 

As clay hath seldom borne/ his aspirations 

Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth, 

And they have only taught him what we know — 

That knowledge is not happiness ; and science 

But an exchange of ignorance for that 

Which is another kind of ignorance^/ 

This is not all ; — the passions, attributes [being, 

Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor 

Nor breath, from the worm upwards, is exempt, 

Have pierced his heart ; and in their consequence 



Made him a thing, which I, who pity not, 
Yet pardon those who pity. He is mine, 
And thine, it may be — be it so, or not, 
No other Spirit in this region hath 
A soul like his — or power upon his soul." 

pp. 47, 48. 

At his desire, the ghost of his beloved As- 
tarte is then called up, and appears — but re- 
fuses to speak at the command of the Powers 
who have raised her, till Manfred breaks out 
into this passionate and agonising address. 

" Hear me, hear me — 
Astarte ! my beloved ! speak to me ! 
I have so much endured — so much endure — 
Look on me ' the grave hath not changed thee more 
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me 
Too much, as I loved thee : we were not made 
To torture thus each other, though it were 
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved. 
Say that thou loath'st me not — that I do bear 
This punishment for both — that thou wilt be 
One of the blessed — and that I shall die ! 
For hitherto all hateful things conspire 
To bind me in existence — in a life 
Which makes me shrink from immortality — 
A future like the past ! I cannot rest. 
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek : 
I feel but what thou art — and what I am ; 
And I would hear yet once, before I perish, 
The voice which was my music. — Speak to me! 
For I have call'd on thee in the still night, 
Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd 

boughs, 
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the 
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name, [caves 
Which answered me — many things answered me — 
Spirits and men — but thou wert silent still ! 
Yet speak to me! I have outwatch'd the stars, 
And gazed o'er heaven in vain in search of thee. 
Speak to me ! I have wandered o'er the earth 
And never found thy likeness. — Speak to me ! 
Look on the fiends around — they feel for me : 
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone. — 
Speak to me ! though it be in wrath ; — but say— 
I reck not what — but let me hear thee once— 
This once ! — once more ! 

Phantom of Astarte. Manfred ! 

Man. Say on, say on— 

I live but in the sound — it is thy voice ! [ills. 

Phan. Manfred ! To-morrow ends thine earthly 
Farewell ! 

Man. Yet one word more — am I forgiven ? 

Phan. Farewell ! 

Man. Say, shall we meet again T 

Phan. Farewell ! 

Man. One word for mercy ! Say, thou lovest me ! 

Phan. Manfred! 

[The Spirit of AsTAKTE disappears. 

Nem. She's gone, and will not be recalled." 

pp. 50—52. 

The last act, though in many passages very 
beautifully written, seems to us less powerful. 
It passes altogether in Manfred's castle, and 
is chiefly occupied in two long conversations 
between him and a holy abbot, who comes to 
exhort and absolve him, and whose counsel 
he repels with the most reverent gentleness, 
and but few bursts of dignity and pride. The 
following passages are full of poetry and 
feeling. 

" Ay — father ! T have had those earthly visions, 

And noble aspirations in my youth ; 

To make my own the mind of other men, 

The enlightener of nations ; and to rise 

T knew not whither — it might be to fall ; 

But fall, even as the mountain-cataract, 

Which having leapt from its more dazzling neigbi 

Even in the foaming strength of its abyss, 



334 



POETRY. 



(Which casls up misty columns that become 
Clouds raining from the re-ascended skies), 
Lies low but mighty still. — But this is past ! 
My thoughts mistook themselves. 

Ahbott. And why not live and act with other men ? 

Man. Because my nature was averse from life ; 
And yet not cruel ; for I would not make, 
But find a desolation : — like the wind, 
The red-hot breath of the most lone Simoom, 
Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er 
The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast, 
And revels o'er their wild and arid waves, 
And seeketh not, so that it is not sought, 
But being met is deadly ! Such hath been 
The course of my existence ; but there came 
Things in my path which are no more." — 

pp. 59, 60. 

There is also a fine address to the setting 
sun — aud a singular miscellaneous soliloquy, 
in which one of the author's Roman recol- 
lections is brought in, we must say somewhat 
unnaturally. 

" The stars are forth, the moon above the tops 
Of the snow-shining mountains. — Beautiful ! 
[ linger yet with Nature, for the night 
Hath been to me a more familiar face 
Than that of man ; and in her starry shade 
Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
[ learn'd the language of another world ! 
[ do remember me, that in my youth, 
When I was wandering — upon such a night 
I stood within the Colosseum's wall, 
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches 
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars 
Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
The watchdog bayed beyond the Tiber ; and 
More near, from out the Caesars' palace came 
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 
Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
Begun and died upon the gentle wind. 
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach 
Appear'd to skirt the horizon ; yet they stood 
Within a bowshot. — 

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon ! upon 
All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 
Which soften'd down the hoar austerity 
Of rugged desolation, and fill'd up, 
As 'twere, anew, the gaps of centuries ; 
Leaving that beautiful which still was so, 
And making that which was not, till the place 
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er 
With silent worship of the great of old !" — 

pp. 68, 69. 

In his dying hour he is beset with Demons, 
who pretend to claim him as their forfeit; — 
but he indignantly and victoriously disputes 
their claim, and asserts his freedom from 
their thraldom. 

" Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes, 
And greater criminals ? — Back to thy hell ! 
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel ; 
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know : 
What I have done is done ; I bear within 
A torture which could nothing gain from thine : 
The mind which is immortal makes itself 
Requital for its good or ill — derives 
No colour from the fleeting things without ; 
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy, 
Born from ihe knowledge of its own desert. 
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not 

tempt me : 
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey — 
But was my own destroyer, and will be 
My own hereafter. — Back, ye baffled fiends ! 
The hand of death is on me — but not yours ! 

[The Demons disappear." — pp. 74, 75. 

There are great faults, it must be admitted, 



in this poem ; — but it is undoubtedly a work 
of genius and originality. Its worst fault, 
perhaps, is, that it fatigues and overawes us 
by the uniformity of its terror and solemnity. 
Another is the painful and offensive nature of 
the circumstance on which its distress is ulti- 
mately founded. It all springs from the dis- 
appointment or fatal issue of an incestuous 
passion; and incest, according to our modern 
ideas — for it was otherwise in antiquity — is 
not a thing to be at all brought before the 
imagination. The lyrical songs of the Spirits 
are too long; and not all excellent. There 
is something of pedantry in them now and 
then ; and even Manfred deals in classical 
allusions a little too much. If we were to 
consider it as a proper drama, or even as a 
finished poem, we should be obliged to add, 
that it is far too indistinct and unsatisfactory. 
But this we take to be according to the design 
and conception of the author. He contem- 
plated but a dim and magnificent sketch of a 
subject which did not admit of a more accu- 
rate drawing, or more brilliant colouring. Its 
obscurity is a part of its grandeur ; — and the 
darkness that rests upon it, and the smoky 
distance in which it is lost, are all devices to 
increase its majesty, to stimulate our curi- 
osity, and to impress us with deeper awe. 

It is suggested, in an ingenious paper, in a 
late Number of the Edinburgh Magazine, 
that the general conception of this piece, and 
much of what is excellent in the manner of 
its execution, have been borrowed from " the 
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" of Marlowe; 
and a variety of passages are quoted, which 
the author considers as similar, and, in many 
respects, superior to others in the poem before 
us. We cannot agree in the general terms 
of this conclusion ; — but there is, no doubt, a 
certain resemblance, both in some of the 
topics that are suggested, and in the cast of 
the diction in which they are expressed. 
Thus, to induce Faustus to persist in his un- 
lawful studies, he is told that the Spirits of 
the Elements will serve him — 

11 Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, 
Shadowing more beauty in their ayrie browes 
Than have the white breasts of the Queene o 
Love.'' 

And again, when the amorous sorcerer com 
mands Helen of Troy to be revived, as hia 
paramour, he addresses her, on her first ap- 
pearance, in these rapturous lines — 

" Was this the face that launcht a thousand ships, 
And burn'd the toplesse towers of Ilium ? 
Sweet Helen ! make me immortal with a kiss ! 
Her lips sucke forth my soule ! — see where it flies 1 
Come, Helen, come, give me my soule againe ! 
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in that lip, 
And all is dross that is not Helena. 
O ! thou art fairer than the evening ayre, 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand starres ; 
More lovely than the monarch of the skyee 
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms !" 

The catastrophe, too, is bewailed in verses of 
great elegance and classical beauty. 

" Cut is the branch that might have growne full 
And burned is Apollo's laurel bough [straight, 

That sometime grew within this learned man. 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



33 



Faustus is gone ? — regard his hellish fall, 
Whose fiendful torture may exhort the wise, 
Only to wonder at unlawful things." 

But these, and many other smooth and 
fanciful verses in this curious old drama, 
prove nothing, we think, against the origi- 
nality of Manfred ; for there is nothing to be 
found there of the pride, the abstraction, and 
the heart-rooted misery in which that origi- 
nality consists. Faustus is a vulgar sorcerer, 
tempted to sell his soul to the Devil for the 
ordinary price of sensual pleasure, and earthly 
power and glory — and w T ho shrinks and shud- 
ders in agony when the forfeit comes to be 
exacted. The style, too. of Marlowe, though 
elegant and scholarlike, is weak and childish 
compared with the depth and force of much 
of what we have quoted from Lord Byron ; 
and the disgusting buffoonery and low farce 
of which his piece is principally made up, 



place it much more in contrast, than in any 
terms of comparison, with that of his noble 
successor. In the tone and pitch of the com- 
position, as well as in the character of the 
diction in the more solemn parts, the piece 
before us reminds us much more of the Pro- 
metheus of iEschylus, than of any more 
modern performance. The tremendous soli- 
tude of the principal person — the supernatural 
beings with whom alone he holds communion 
— the guilt — the firmness — the misery — are 
all points of resemblance, to which the 
grandeur of the poetic imagery only gives a 
more striking effect. The chief differences 
are, that the subject of the Greek poet was 
sanctified and exalted by the established be- 
lief of his country; and that his terrors are 
nowhere tempered with the sweetness which 
breathes from so many passages of his Eng- 
lish rival. 



(Jcnutarg, 1809.) 

Reliques of Robert Burns, consisting chiejly of Original Letters, Poems, and Critical Obser- 
vations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. Cromek. 8vo. pp. 450. 
London: 1808. 



Burns is certainly by far the greatest of our 
poetical prodigies — from Stephen Duck down 
to Thomas Dermody. They are forgotten 
already; or only remembered for derision. 
But the name of Burns, if we are not mis- 
taken, has not yet "gathered all its fame;" 
and will endure long after those circumstan- 
ces are forgotten which contributed to its first 
notoriety. So much indeed are we impressed 
with a sense of his merits, that we cannot 
help thinking it a derogation from them to 
consider him as a prodigy at all ; and are con- 
vinced that he will never be rightly estimated 
as a poet, till that vulgar wonder be entirely 
repressed which was raised on his having 
been a ploughman. It is -true, no doubt, that 
he was born in an humble station : and that 
much of his early life was devoted to severe 
labour, and to the society of his fellow-labour- 
ers. But he was not himself either unedu- 
cated or illiterate ; and was placed in a situa- 
tion more favourable, perhaps, to the develop- 
ment of great poetical talents, than any other 
which could have been assigned him. He 
was taught, at a very early age, to read and 
write ; and soon after acquired a competent 
knowledge of French, together with the ele- 
ments of Latin and Geometry. His taste for 
reading was encouraged by his parents and 
many of his associates: and, before he had 
ever composed a single stanza, he was not 
only familiar with many prose writers, but 
far more intimately acquainted with Pope, 
Shakespeare, and Thomson, than nine tenths 
of the youth that now leave our schools for 
the university. Those authors, indeed, with 
some old collections of songs, and the lives of 
Hannibal and of Sir William Wallace, were 
his habitual study from, the first days of his 



childhood ; and, co-operating with the solitude 
of his rural occupations, were sufficient to 
rouse his ardent and ambitious mind to the 
love and the practice of poetry. He had about 
as much scholarship, in short, we imagine, as 
Shakespeare ; and far better models to form 
his ear to harmony, and train his fancy to 
graceful invention. 

We ventured, on a former occasion, to say 
something of the effects of regular education, 
and of the general diffusion of literature, in 
repressing the vigour and originality of all 
kinds of mental exertion. That speculation 
w r as perhaps carried somewhat too far ; but 
if the paradox have proof any where, it is in 
its application to poetry. Among well edu- 
cated people, the standard writers of this 
description are at once so venerated and so 
familiar, that it is thought equally impossible 
to rival them, as to write verses without at- 
tempting it. If there be one degree of fame 
which excites emulation, there is another 
which leads to despair : Nor can we conceive 
any one less likely to be added to the short 
list of original poets, than a young man of fine 
fancy and delicate taste, who has acquired a 
high relish for poetry, by perusing the most 
celebrated writers, and conversing with the 
most intelligent judges. The head of such a 
person is filled, of course, with all the splendid 
passages of ancient and modern authors, and 
with the fine and fastidious remarks which 
have been made even on those passages. 
When he turns his eyes, therefore, on his 
own conceptions or designs, they can scarce- 
ly fail to appear rude and contemptible. He 
is perpetually haunted and depressed by the 
ideal presence of those great masters, and 
their exacting critics. He is aware to what 



336 



POETRY. 



comparisons his productions will be subjected 
among his own friends and associates; and 
recollects the derision with which so many 
rash adventurers have been chased back to 
their obscurity. Thus, the merit of his great 
predecessors chills, instead of encouraging his 
ardour ; and the illustrious names which have 
already reached to the summit of excellence, 
act like the tall and spreading trees of the 
forest, which overshadow and strangle the 
saplings which may have struck root in the 
soil below — and afford efficient shelter to 
nothing but creepers and parasites. 

There is, no doubt, in some few individuals, 
u that strong divinity of soul " — that decided 
and irresistible vocation to glory, which, in 
spite of all these obstructions, calls out, per- 
haps once or twice in a century, a bold and 
original poet from the herd of scholars and 
academical literati. But the natural tendency 
of their studies, and by far their most com- 
mon effect, is to repress originality, and dis- 
courage enterprise ; and either to change those 
whom nature meant for poets, into mere read- 
ers of poetry, or to bring them out in the form 
of witty parodists, or ingenious imitators. In- 
dependent of the reasons which have been 
already suggested, it. will perhaps be found, 
too, that necessity is the mother of invention, 
in this as well as in the more vulgar arts ; or, 
at least, that inventive genius will frequently 
slumber in inaction, where the preceding in- 
genuity has in part supplied the wants of the 
owner. A solitary and uninstructed man. 
with lively feelings and an inflammable imagi- 
nation, will often be irresistibly led to exer- 
cise those gifts, and to occupy and relieve his 
mind in poetical composition : But if his edu- 
cation, his reading, and his society supply 
him with an abundant store of images ana" 
emotions, he will probabiy think but little of 
those internal resources, and feed his mind 
contentedly Math what has been provided by 
the industry of others. 

To say nothing, therefore, of the distractions 
and the dissipation of mind that belong to the 
commerce of the world, nor of the cares of 
minute accuracy and high finishing which are 
imposed on the professed scholar, there seem 
to be deeper reasons for the separation of 
originality and accomplishment ; and for the 
partiality which has led poetry to choose 
almost all her prime favourites among the re- 
cluse and uninstructed. A youth of quick 
parts, in short, and creative fancy — with just 
so much reading as to guide his ambition, and 
roughhew his notions of excellence — if his lot 
be thrown in humble retirement, where he 
has no reputation to lose, and where he can 
easily hope to excel all that he sees around 
him, is much more likely, we think, to give 
himself up to poetry, and to train himself to 
habits of invention, than if he had been en- 
cumbered by the pretended helps of extended 
study and literary society. 

If these observations should fail to strike 
of themselves, they may perhaps derive ad- 
ditional weight from considering the very re- 
markable fact, that almost all the great poets 
of every country have appeared in an early 



stage of their history, and in a period com- 
paratively rude and unlettered. Homer wen! 
forth, like the morning star, before the dawn 
of literature in Greece, and almost all the 
great and sublime poets of modern Europe 
are already between two and three hundred 
years old. Since that time, although books 
and readers, and opportunities of reading, are 
multiplied a thousand fold, we have improved 
chiefly in point and terseness of expression, 
in the art of raillery, and in clearness and 
simplicity of thought. Force, richness, and 
variety of invention, are now at least as rare 
as ever. But the literature and refinement of 
the age does not exist at all for a rustic and 
illiterate individual; and, consequently, the 
present time is to him what the rude times 
of old were to the vigorous writers which 
adorned them. 

But though, for these and for other reasons, 
we can see no propriety in regarding the 
poetry of Burns chiefly as the wonderful work 
of a peasant, and thus admiring it much in 
the same way as if it had been written with 
his toes; yet there are peculiarities in his 
works which remind us of the lowness of his 
origin, and faults for which the defects of his 
education afford an obvious cause, if not a 
legitimate apology. In forming a correct es- 
timate of these works, it is necessary to take 
into account those peculiarities. 

The first is, the undiciplined harshness and 
acrimony of his invective. The great boast 
of polished life is the delicacy, and even the 
generosity of its hostility — that quality which 
is still the characteristic, as it furnishes the 
denomination, of a gentleman — that principle 
which forbids us to attack the defenceless, to 
strike the fallen, or to mangle the slain — and 
enjoins us, in forging the shafts of satire, to 
increase the polish exactly as we add to their 
keenness or their weight. For this, as well 
as for other things, we are indebted to chival- 
ry ; and of this Burns had none. His ingeni- 
ous and amiable biographer has spoken re- 
peatedly in praise of his talents for satire — 
we think, with a most unhappy partiality. 
His epigrams and lampoons appear to us, one 
and all, unworthy of him ; — offensive from 
their extreme coarseness and violence — and 
contemptible from their want of wit or bril- 
liancy. They seem to have been written, not 
out of playful malice or virtuous indignation, 
but out of fierce and ungovernable anger. His 
whole raillery consists in railing; and his 
satirical vein displays itself chiefly in calling 
names and in swearing. We say this mainly 
with a reference to his personalities. In many 
of his more general representations of life and 
manners, there is no doubt much that may be 
called satirical, mixed up with admirable hu- 
mour, and description of inimitable vivacity. 

There is a similar want of polish, or at least 
of respectfulness, in the general tone of his 
gallantry. He has written with more passion, 
perhaps, and more variety of natural feeling, 
on the subject of love, than any other poet 
whatever — but with a fervour that is some- 
times indelicate, and seldom accommodated 
to the timidity and "sweet austere com- 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



33T 



posure" of women of refinement. He has 
expressed admirably the feelings of an en- 
amoured peasant, who, however refined or 
eloquent he may be, always approaches his 
mistress on a footing of equality: but has 
never caught that tone of chivalrous gallantry 
which uniformly abases itself in the presence 
of the object of its devotion. Accordingly, 
instead of suing for a smile, or melting in a 
tear, his muse deals in nothing* but locked 
embraces and midnight rencontres; and, even 
in his complimentary effusions to ladies of 
the highest rank, is for straining them to the 
bosom of her impetuous votary. It is easy, 
accordingly, to see from his correspondence, 
that many of his female patronesses shrunk 
from the vehement familiarity of his admira- 
tion ; and there are even some traits in the 
volumes before us. from which we can gather, 
that he resented the shyness and estrange- 
ment to which those feelings gave rise, with 
at least as little chivalry as he had shown in 
producing- them. 

But the leading .vice in Burns' character, 
and the cardinal deformity, indeed, of all his 
productions, was his contempt, or affectation 
of contempt, for prudence, decency, and reg- 
ularity; and his admiration of thoughtless- 
ness, oddity, and vehement sensibility; — his 
belief, in short, in the dispensing power of 
genius and social feeling, in all matters of 
morality and common sense. This is the 
very slang of the worst German plays, and 
the lowest of our town-made novels; nor can 
any thing be more lamentable, than that it 
should have found a patron in such a man as 
Burns, and communicated to many of his pro- 
ductions a character of immorality, at once 
contemptible and hateful. It is but too true, 
that men of the highest genius have frequently 
been hurried by their passions into a violation 
of prudence and duty; and there is some- 
thing generous, at least, in the apology which 
their admirers may make for them, on the 
score of their keener feelings and habitual 
wzrnt of reflection. But this apology, which 
is quite unsatisfactory in the mouth of another, 
becomes an insult and an absurdity whenever 
it proceeds from their own. A man may say 
of his friend, that he is a noble-hearted fellow 
— too generous to be just, and with too much 
spirit to be always prudent and regular. But 
he cannot be allowed to say even this of him- 
self : and still less to represent himself as a 
hairbrained sentimental soul, constantly car- 
ried away by fine fancies and visions of love 
and philanthropy, and born to confound and 
despise the cold-blooded sons of prudence 
and sobriety. This apology, indeed, evidently 
destroys itself: For it shows that conduct to 
be the result of deliberate system, which it 
affects at the same time to justify as the fruit 
of mere thoughtlessness and casual impulse. 
Such protestations, therefore, will always be 
treated, as they deserve, not only with con- 
tempt, but with incredulity; and their mag- 
nanimous authors set down as determined 
profligates, who seek to disguise their selfish- 
ness under a name somewhat less revolting. 
That profligacy is almost always selfishness, 
43 



and that the excuse of impetuous feeling can 
hardly ever be justly pleaded for those who 
neglect the ordinary duties of life, must be 
apparent, we think, even to the least reflect- 
ing of those sons of fancy and song. It re- 
quires no habit of deep thinking, nor any thing 
more, indeed, than the information of an honest 
heart, to perceive that it is cruel and base to 
spend, in vain superfluities, that money which 
belongs of right to the pale industrious trades- 
man and his famishing infants; or that it is a 
vile prostitution of language, to talk of that 
man's generosity or goodness of heart, who 
sits raving about friendship and philanthropy 
in a tavern, w^hile his wife's heart is breaking 
at her cheerless fireside, and his children 
pining in solitary poverty. 

This pitiful cant of careless feeling and 
eccentric genius, accordingly, has never found 
much favour in the eyes of English sense and 
morality. The most signal effect which it 
ever produced, was on the muddy brains of 
some German youth, who are said to have 
left college in a body to rob on the highway ! 
because Schiller had represented the captain 
of a gang as so very noble a creature. — But 
in this country, we believe, a predilection for 
that honourable profession must have pre- 
ceded this admiration of the character. The 
style we have been speaking of, accordingly, 
is now the heroics only of the hulks and the 
house of correction; and has no chance, we 
suppose, of being greatly admired, except in 
the farewell speech of a young gentleman 
preparing for Botany Bay. 

It is humiliating to think how deeply Burns 
has fallen into this debasing error. He is per- 
petually making a parade of his thoughtless- 
ness, inflammability, and imprudence, and 
talking with much complacency and exulta- 
tion of the offence he has occasioned to the 
sober and correct part of mankind. This 
odious slang infects almost all his prose, and 
a very great proportion of his poetry; and is, 
we are persuaded, the chief, if not the only 
source of the disgust with which, in spite of 
his genius, we know that he is regarded by 
many very competent and liberal judges. His 
apology, too. we are willing to believe, is to 
be found in the original lowness of his situa- 
tion, and the slightness of his acquaintance 
with the world. With his talents and powers 
of observation, he could not have seen much 
of the beings who echoed this raving, without 
feeling for them that distrust and contempt 
which would have made him blush to think 
he had ever stretched over them the protect- 
ing shield of his genius. 

Akin to this most lamentable trait of vul- 
garity, and indeed in some measure arising 
out of it, is that perpetual boast of his own 
independence, which is obtruded upon the* 
readers of Burns in almost every page of his 
writings. The sentiment itself is noble, and 
it is often finely expressed ; — but a gentleman 
would only have expressed it when he was 
insulted or provoked; and would never have 
made it a spontaneous theme to those friend* 
in vrhose estimation he felt that his honour 
stood clear. It is mixed up, too,- in Bums 
2D 



POETRY. 



with too fierce a tone of defiance ; and indi- 
cates rather the pride of a sturdy peasant, 
than the calm and natural elevation of a 
generous mind. 

The last of the symptoms of rusticity which 
we think it necessary to notice in the works 
of this extraordinary man, is that frequent 
mistake of mere exaggeration and violence, 
for force and sublimity, which has defaced 
so much of his prose composition, and given 
an air of heaviness and labour to a good deal 
of his serious poetry. The truth is, that his 
forte was in humour and in pathos — or rather 
in tenderness of feeling; and that he has very 
seldom succeeded, either where mere wit 
and sprightliness, or where great energy* and 
weight of sentiment were requisite. He had 
evidently a very false and crude notion of 
what constituted strength of writing ; and in- 
stead of that simple and brief directness 
which stamps the character of vigour upon 
every syllable, has generally had recourse to 
a mere accumulation of hyperbolical expres- 
sions, which encumber the diction instead of 
exalting it, and show the determination to be 
impressive, without the power of executing 
it. This error also we are inclined to ascribe 
entirely to the defects of his education. The 
value of simplicity in the expression of pas- 
sion, is a lesson, we believe, of nature and of 
genius ; — but its importance in mere grave 
and impressive writing, is one of the latest 
discoveries of rhetorical experience. 

With the allowances and exceptions we 
have now stated, we think Burns entitled to 
(he rank of a great and original genius. He 
has in all his compositions great force of con- 
ception ; and great spirit and animation in its 
expression. He has taken a large range 
through the region of Fancy, and naturalized 
himself in almost all her climates. He has 
great humour — great powers of description — 
great pathos — and great discrimination of 
character. Almost every thing that he says 
has spirit and originality ; and every thing that 
he says well, is characterized by a charming 
facility, which gives a grace even to occa- 
sional rudeness, and communicates to the 
reader a delightful sympathy with the sponta- 
neous soaring and conscious inspiration of the 
poet. 

Considering the reception which these 
works have met with from the public, and the 
long period during which the greater part of 
them have been in their possession, it may 
appear superflous to say any thing as to their 
characteristic or peculiar merit. Though the 
ultimate judgment of the public, however, be 
always sound, or at least decisive as to its 
general result, it is not always very apparent 
upon what grounds it has proceeded ; nor in 
consequence of what, or in spite of what, it 
has been obtained. In Burns' works there is 
much to censure, as well as much to praise ; 
and as time has not yet separated his ore from 
its dross, it may be worth while to state, in a 
very general way, what we presume to antici- 
pate as the result of this separation. Without 
pretending to enter at all into the comparative 
merit of particular passages we may venture 



to lay it down as our opinion — that hispoetiy 
is far superior to his prose ; that his Scottish 
compositions are greatly to be preferred to his 
English ones ; and that his Songs will proba- 
bly outlive all his other productions. A very 
few remarks on each of these subjects will 
comprehend almost all that we have to say of 
the volumes now before us. 

The prose^ works of Burns consist a. most 
entirely of his letters. They bear, as wtll a-3 
his poetry, the seal and the impress of his 
genius; but they contain much more bad 
taste, and are written with far more apparent 
labour. His poetry was almost all written 
primarily from feeling, and only secondarily 
from ambition. His letters seem to have been 
nearly all composed as exercises, and for dis- 
play. There are few of them written with 
simplicity or plainness; and though natural 
enough as to the sentiment, they are generally 
very strained and elaborate in the expression. 
A ver)' great proportion of them, too, relate 
neither to facts nor feelings peculiarly con- 
nected with the author or his correspondent — 
but are made up of general declamation, 
moral reflections, and vague discussions — all 
evidently composed for the sake of effect, and 
frequently introduced with long complaints of 
having nothing to say, and of the necessity 
and difficulty of letter-writing. 

By far the best of those compositions, are 
such as we should consider as exceptions from 
this general character — such as contain some 
specific information as to himself, or are sug- 
gested by events or observations directly ap- 
plicable to his correspondent. One of the 
best, perhaps, is that addressed to Dr. Moore, 
containing an account of his early life, of 
which Dr. Currie has made such a judicious 
use in his Biography. It is written with great 
clearness and characteristic effect, and con- 
tains many touches of easy humour and natu- 
ral eloquence. We are struck, as we open 
the book accidentally, with the following 
original application of a classical image, by 
this unlettered rustic. Talking of the fii'st 
vague aspirations of his own gigantic mind, 
he says — we think very finely — " I had felt 
some early stirrings of ambition; but they 
were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclop 
round the walls of his cave!" Of his other 
letters, those addressed to Mrs. Dunlop are, 
in our opinion, by far the best. He appears, 
from first to last, to have stood somewhat in 
awe of this excellent lady ; and to have been 
no less sensible of her sound judgment and 
strict sense of propriety, than of her steady 
and generous partiality. The following pas- 
sage we think is striking and characteristic: — 

"I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I 
approve of set timej and seasons of more than ordi- 
nary acts of devo'ion, for breaking in on that habit- 
uated routine of life and thought which is so apt to 
reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even 
sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very 
little superior to mere machinery. 

" This day ; the first Sunday of May ; a breezy, 
bluc-skyed noon, some time about the beginning, 
and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the 
end of autumn ; — these, time out of mind, have 
been with me a kind of holiday. 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



M \ believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the 
Sped nor, * The Vision of Mirza;' a piece that 
struek my young fancy before I was capable of fix- 
ing an idea to a word of three syllables. ' On the 
5ih day of the moon, which, according to the custom 
of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having 
washed myself, and offered up my morning devo- 
tions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to 
pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.' 

" VV'e know nothing, or next to nothing, of the 
substance or structure of our souls, so cannot ac- 
count for those seeming caprices in them, that one 
Ehould bt particularly pleased with this thing, or 
struck with that, which, on minds of a different 
cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have 
some favourite flowers in spring ; among which are 
the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the 
wild brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary 
hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular 
delight. I never hear the loud, .solitary whistle of 
the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing 
cadence of a troop of grey plover in an autumnal 
morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, like 
the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my 
dear friend, to what can this be owing ? Are we a 
piece of machinery, which, like the Kolian harp, 
passive, takes the impression of the passing acci- 
dent ? Or do these workings argue something 
within us above the trodden clod?" — Vol. ii. pp. 
195—197. 

To this we may add the following passage, 
as a part, indeed, of the same picture : — 

"There is scarcely any earthly object gives me 
more — I do not know if I should call it pleasure — 
but something which exalts me, something which 
enraptures me — than to walk in the sheltered side 
of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter- 
day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the 
trees, and raving over the plain ! It is my best 
season for devotion : my mind is wrapt up in a kind 
of enthusiasm to Him, who, in the pompous lan- 
guage of the Hebrew bard, " walks on the wings 
of the wind." — Vol. ii. p. 11. 

The following is one of the best and most 
striking of a whole series of eloquent hypo- 
chondriasm. 

"After six weeks' confinement, I am beginning 
to walk across the room. They have been six hor- 
rible weeks; — anguish and low spirits made me 
unfit to read, write, or think. 

" I have a hundred times wished that one could 
resign life as an officer resigns a commission : for I 
would not take in any poor, ignorant wretch, by 
selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private ; and, 
God knows, a miserable soldier enough : now I 
march to the campaign, a starving cadet — a little 
more conspicuously wretched. 

" I am ashamed of all this ; for though I do want 

bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like 

some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or 

cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice." 

Vol. ii. pp. 127, 128. 

One of the most striking letters in the col- 
lection, and, to us, one of the most interest- 
ing, is the earliest of the whole series; being 
addressed to his father in 1781. six or seven 
years before his name had been heard of out. 
of his own family. The author was then a 
common flax-dresser, and his father a poor 
peasant; — yet there is not one trait of vul- 
garity, either in the thought or the expression ; 
but, on the contrary, a dignity and elevation 
of sentiment, which must have been con- 
sidered as of good omen in a youth of much 
higher condition. The letter is as follows: — 



" Honoured Sir, — I have purposely delayed wri- 
ting, in the hope that I should have the pleasure of 
seeing you on New-year's Day; but work comes 
so hard upon us, that I do not choose to be absent 
on that account, as well as for some other little 
reasons, which I shall tell you at meeting. My 
health is nearly the same as when you were here, 
only my sleep is a little sounder, and, on the whole, 
I am rather better than otherwise, though I mend 
by very slow degrees. The weakness of my nerves 
has so debilitated my mind, that I dare neither re- 
view past wants, nor look forward into futurity ; for 
the least anxiety or perturbation in my breast pro- 
duces most unhappy effects on my whole frame. 
Sometimes, indeed, when for an hour or two my 
spirits are a little lightened, I glimmer a little into 
futurity ; but my principal, and indeed my only 
pleasurable employment, is looking backwards and 
forwards, in a moral and religious way. I am quite 
transported at the thought, that ere long, perhaps 
very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the 
pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this 
weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of 
it; and, if I do not very much deceive myself, I 
could contentedly and gladly resign it. 

'The soul, uneasy, and confin'd at home 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.' 

"It is for this reason lam more pleased with 
the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the 7th chapter 
of the Revelations, than with any ten times as 
many verses in the whole Bible, and would not ex- 
change the noble enthusiasm with which they in- 
spire me for all that this word has to offer. As for 
this world, I despair of ever making a figure in it. 
I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the 
flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable 
of entering into such scenes. Indeed I am alto- 
gether unconcerned for the thoughts of this life. I 
foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await 
me; and I am in some measure prepared, and 
daily preparing to meet them. I have but just time 
and paper to return to you my grateful thanks for 
the lessons of virtue and piety you have given me ; 
which were too much neglected at the time of 
giving them, but which. I hope, have been remem- 
bered ere it is yet too late." — Vol. i. pp. 99 — 101. 

Before proceeding to take any particular 
notice of his poetical compositions, we must 
take leave to apprise our Southern readers, 
that all his best pieces are written in Scotch; 
and that it is impossible for them to form any 
adequate judgment of their merits, without a 
pretty long residence among those who still 
use. that language. To be able to translate 
the words, is but a small part of the know- 
ledge that is necessary. The whole genius 
and idiom of the language must be familiar; 
and the characters, and habits, and associa- 
tions of those who speak it. We beg leave 
too, in passing, to observe, that this Scotch is 
not to be considered as a provincial dialect — 
the vehicle only of rustic vulgarity and rude 
local humour. It is the language of a whole 
country — long an independent kingdom, and * 
still separate in laws, character, and manners. 
It is by no means peculiar to the vulgar ; .but 
is the common speech of the whole nation in 
early life — and, with many of its most ex- 
alted and accomplished individuals, through- 
out their whole existence ; and, though it be 
true that, in later times, it has been, in some 
measure, laid aside by the more ambitious 
and aspiring of the present generation, it is 
still recollected, even by them, as the familiar 
language of their childhood, and of those who 
were the earliest objects of their love and 



*40 



POETRY. 



vensration. It is connected, in their imagi- 
nation, not only with that olden time which 
is uniformly conc'eived as more pure, lofty 
and simple than the present, but also with all 
the soft and bright colours of remembered 
childhood and domestic affection. All its 
phrases conjure up images of schoolday inno- 
cence, and sports, and friendships which have 
no pattern in succeeding years. Add to all 
this, that it is the language of a great body 
of poetry, with which almost all Scotchmen 
are familiar ; and, in particular, of a great 
multitude of songs, written with more tender- 
ness, nature, and feeling, than any other lyric 
compositions that are extant — and we may 
perhaps be allowed to say, that the Scotch is, 
in reality, a highly poetical language ; and 
that it is an ignorant, as well as an illiberal 
prejudice, which would seek to confound it 
with the barbarous dialects of Yorkshire or 
Devon. In composing his Scottish poems, 
therefore, Burns did not merely make an in- 
stinctive and necessary use of the only dialect 
he could employ. The last letter which we 
have quoted, proves, that before he had penned 
a single couplet, he could write in the dialect 
of England with far greater purity and pro- 
priety than nine tenths of those who are called 
well educated in that country. He wrote in 
Scotch, because the writings which he most 
aspired to imitate were composed in that 
language ; and it is evident, from the varia- 
tions preserved by Dr. Currie, that he took 
much greater pains with the beauty and purity 
of his expressions in Scotch than in English ; 
and, every one who understands both, must 
admit, with infinitely better success. 

But though we have ventured to say thus 
much in praise of the Scottish poetry of Burns, 
we cannot presume to lay many specimens of 
it before our readers; and, in the few extracts 
we maybe tempted to make from the volumes 
before us, shall be guided more by a desire to 
exhibit what may be intelligible to all our 
•eaders, than by a feeling of what is in itself 
*f the highest excellence. 

We have said that Bums is almost equally 
distinguished for his tenderness and his hu- 
mour : — we might have added, for a faculty 
of combining them both in the same subject, 
not altogether without parallel in the older 
poets and ballad-makers, but altogether sin- 
gular, we think, among modern writers. The 
passages of pure humour are entirely Scot- 
tish—and untranslateable. They consist in 
•he mo.st picturesque representations of life 
and manners, enlivened, and even exalted by 
'traits of exquisite sagacity, and unexpected 
reflection. His tenderness is of two sorts : 
that which is combined with circumstances 
and characters of humble, and sometimes lu- 
dicrous simplicity; and that which is pro- 
duced by gloomy and distressful impressions 
acting on a mind of keen sensibility. The 
passages which belong to the former descrip- 
tion are, we think, the most exquisite and 
original, and, in our estimation, indicate the 
greatest and most amiable turn of genius; 
both as being accompanied by fine and feeling 
pictures of humble life, and as requiring that 



delicacy, as well as justness of conception ; by 
which alone the fastidiousness of an ordinary 
reader can be reconciled to such representa- 
tions. The exquisite description of "The 
Cotter's Saturday Night " affords, perhaps, the 
finest example of this sort of pathetic. Its 
whole beauty cannot, indeed, be discerned 
but by those whom experience has enabled 
to judge of the admirable fidelity and com- 
pleteness of the picture. But, independent 
altogether of national peculiarities, and even 
in spite of the obscurity of the language, we 
think it impossible to peruse the following 
stanzas without feeling the force of tender- 
ness and truth : — 

t l November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; 
The shortening winter-day is near a close; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; 

The blackening trains o' craws to their repose : 
The toil-worn Colter frae his labour goes, 
This night bis weekly moil is at an end, 
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the mom in ease and rest to spend, 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hame- 
ward bend. 

" At length his lonely cot appears in view, 
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
Th' expectant wee-things, toddling, stacher thro' 
To meet their Dad, wi' flicherin noise an' glee. 
His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily, 

His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wife's smile, 
The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 
Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 
An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. 

" Belyve the elder bairns come drapping in, 
At service out, amang the farmers roun' ; 
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin 

A canna errand to a neebor town : 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, 
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, 
Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, 
Or deposite her sair-won penny fee, 
To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be. 

" But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; 
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, 
Tells how a neebor lad came o'er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy her hame. 
The wily mother sees the conscious flame 

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek; 
With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, 
While Jenny haiflins is afraid to speak ; 
Weel pleas'd, the mother hears itsnae wild, worth- 
less rake. 

" Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben : 
A srappan youth ; he taks the mother's eye ; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en ; 

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. 

The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy. 

But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave ; 

The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can'spy 

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae 

grave; [the lave. 

Weel pleas'd to think her bairn's respected like 

" The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face, 
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ; 
The sire -turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 

The big ha 1 -Bible, ance his father's pride : 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 

His lyart hafTets wearing thin an' bare ; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 
He wales a portion with judicious care ; [air. 
And ' J.ct us worship God !' he says, with solemn 

"They chaunt their artless notes in simple guise ; 
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest 
aim," &c 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



841 



Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way ; 

Tlte youngling cottagers retire to rest: 
The parent pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request 
That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, 

And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, 
Wotild. in the way his wisdom sees the best, 

For them and for their little ones provide ; 
but chiefly, in their hearts, with grace divine pre- 
side." Vol. hi. pp. 174—181. 

The charm of the fine lines written on turn- 
ing up a mouse's nest with a plough, will also 
he found to consist in the simple tenderness 
of the delineation. 

*■' Thy wee bit bousie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the wins are strewin! 
An' naething, now, to big a new ane, 

O' foggage green ! 
An 1 bleak December's winds ensuin, 

Baith sneil and keen! 

*' Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, 
An' weary winter comin fast, 
An' cozie here beneath the blast, 

Thou thought to dwell, 
*TiIl crash ! the cruel coulter past 

Out thro' thy cell. 

" That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! 
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, 

But house or ha!d, 
To thole the winter's sleety dribble, 

An cranreuch cauld!" 

Vol. iii. pp. 147. 

The verses to a Mountain Daisy, though 
more elegant and picturesque, seem to derive 
their chief beauty from the same tone of sen- 
timent. 

14 Wee. modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, 
Thou's met me in an evil hour; 
For I maun crush amang the stoure 

Thy slender stem; 
To spare thee now is past my pow'r, 

Thou bonnie gem ! 

• ** Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, 

The bonnie Lark, companion meet! 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet! 

Wi' spreckl'd breast, 
When upward-springing, blythe to greet 
The purpling east. 

" Cauld blew the bitter-biting north 
Upon thy early, humble birth; 
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth 

Amid the storm, 
Scarce rear'd above the parent earth. 
Thy tender form. 

" There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share upiears thy bed, 

And low ihou lies !" 
Vol. iii. pp. 201, 202. 

There are many touches of the same kind 
in most of the popular and beautiful poems in 
this collection, especially in the Winter Night 
— the address to his old Mare — the address to 
the Devil, &c; — in all which, though the 
greater part of the piece be merely ludicrous 
and picturesque, there are traits of a delicate 
and tender feeling, indicating that unaffected 
softness of heart which is always so enchant- 
ing. In the humorous address to the Devil, 
which we have just mentioned, every Scottish 



reader must have felt the effect of this relent- 
ing nature in the following stanzas: — 

" Lang syne, in Eden's bonie yard, 
When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, 
An' all the soul of love they shar'd, 

The raptur'd hour, 
Sweet on the fragrant, flow'ry swaird, 

In shady bower: 

" Then you, ye auld, snic-drawing dog ! 
Ye came to Paradise incog, 
An' gied the infant warld a shog, 
'Maist ruin'd a. 

" But, fare you weel, auld Nichie-benJ 
O wad ye tak a thought an' men' ! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake — 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Ev'n for your sake !" 

Vol. iii. pp. 74 — 76. 

The finest examples, however, of this simple 
and unpretending tenderness is to be found in 
those songs which are likely to transmit the 
name of Bums to all future generations. He 
found this delightful trait in the old Scottish 
ballads which he took for his model, and upon 
which he has improved with a felicity and 
delicacy of imitation altogether unrivalled in. 
the history of literature. Sometimes it is the 
brief and simple pathos of the genuine old 
ballad ; as, 

" But I look to the West when I lie down to rest, 
That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be; 

For far in the West lives he I love best, 
The lad that is dear to my baby and me.'* 

Or, as in this other specimen — 

"Drumossie moor, Drumossie day ! 
A waefu' day it was to me ; 
For there I lost my father dear, 
My father dear, and brethren three. 

" Their winding sheet the bluidy clay, 

Their graves are growing green to see ; 
And by them lies the dearest lad 

That ever blest a woman's e'e ! 
Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord, 

A bluidy man I trow thou be ; 
For mony a heart thou hast made sair, 
That ne'er did wrong to thine or thee." 
Vol. iv. p. 337. 

Sometimes it is animated with airy narrative, 
and adorned with images of the utmost ele- 
gance and beauty. As a specimen taken at 
random, we insert the following stanzas : — 

" And ay she wrought her mammie's wark : 
And ay she sang sae merrilie : 
The hlythest bird upon the bush 
Had ne'er a lighter heart than she. 

<{ But hawks will rob the tender joys 
That bless the little lint white's nest ; 
And frost will blight the fairest flowers, 
And love will break the soundest rest. 

" Young Robie was the brawest lad, 
The flower and pride of a' the glen ; 
And he had owsen, sheep, and kye, 
And wanton naigies nine or ten. 

"He gaed wi' Jeanie to the tryste, 

He danc'd wi' Jeanie on the down; 
And lang ere wiiless Jeanie wist, 
Her heart was tint, her peace wasstown, 
2d2 



342 



POETRY. 



" As in the bosom o' the stream 

The moon-beam dwells at dewy e'en; 
So trembling, -pure, was infant love 
Within the breast o 1 bonie Jean ! 

Vol. iv. p. 80. 

Sometimes, again, it is plaintive and mourn- 
ful — in the same strain of unaffected sim- 
plicity. 

11 O stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay, 
Nor quit for me (he trembling spray ! 
A hapless lover couris thy lay, 
Thy soothing fond complaining. 

"Again, again that tender part 
That I may catch thy melting art ; 
For surely that would touch her heart, 
Wha kills me wi' disdaining. 

11 Say, was thy little mate unkind, 
And heard thee as the careless wind? 
Oh, nocht but love and sorrow join'd, 
Sic notes o' woe could vvauken. 

" Thou tells o' never-ending care; 
O' speechless grief, and dark despair ; 
For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair ! 
Or my poor heart is broken t" 

Vol. iv. pp. 226, 227. 

We add the following from Mr. Cromek's 
new volume ; as the original form of the very- 
popular song given at p. 325, of Dr. Currie's 
fourth volume : — 

" Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon, 
How can ye blume sae fair ; 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 
And T sae fu T o' care ! 

" Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird 
That sings upon the bough ; 
Thon minds me o' the happy days 
When my fause luve was true. 

" Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird 
That sings beside thy mate ; 
For sae I sat, and sae I sang, 
And wist na o' my fate. 

11 Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon, 
To see the woodbine twine, 
And ilka bird sang o' its love, 
And sae did I o' mine. 

" Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 
Frae aff its thorny tree, 
And my fanse luver staw the rose, 
But left the thorn wi' me." 

Vol. v. pp. 17, 18. 

Sometimes the rich imagery of the poet's 
fancy overshadows and almost overcomes the 
leading sentiment. 

" The merry ploughboy cheers his team, 
Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks, 
But life to me's a weary dream, 
A dream of ane that never wauks. 

'• The wanton coot the water skims, 

Amang the reeds the ducklings cry, 
The stately swan majestic swims, 
And every thing is blest but I. 

'* The sheep-herd steeks his faulding slap, 
And owre the moorlands whistles shrill; 
Wi' wild, unequal, wand'ring step 
I meet him on the dewy hill. 

" And when the lark, 'tween light and dark, 
Blythe waukens by the daisy's side, 
And mounts and sing« on flittering wings, 
A woe-worn ghaist I hameward glide." — 
Vol. hi. pp. 284, 285. 



The sensiDil.ity which is thus associated 
with simple imagery and gentle melancholy, 
is to us the most winning and attractive. But 
Burns has also expressed it w hen it is merely 
the instrument of torture — of keen remorse, 
and tender and agonising regret. There are 
some strong traits of the former feeling, in the 
poems entitled the Lament, Despondency, &c. ; 
when, looking back to the times 

" When love's luxurious pulse beat high," 

he bewails the consequences of his own ir- 
regularities. There is something cumbrous 
and inflated, however, in the diction of these 
pieces. We are infinitely more moved with 
his Elegy upon Highland Mary. Of this first 
love of the poet, we are indebted to Mr. 
Cromek for a brief, but very striking account, 
from the pen of the poet himself. In a note 
on an early song inscribed to this mistress, he 
had recorded in a manuscript book — 

"My Highland lassie was a ' warm-hearted, 
charming young creature as ever blessed a man 
with generous love. After a pretty long tract of the 
most ardent reriprocal attachment, we met, by ap- 
pointment, on the second Sunday of May, in a se- 
questered spot by the Banks of Ayr, where we 
spent the day in takinsr a farewell before she should 
embark for the West Highlands, to arrange matters 
among her friends for our projected change of life. 
At the close of Autumn following, she crossed the 
sea to meet me at Greenock : where she had scarce 
landed when she was seized with a malignant lever, 
which hurried my dear girl to the grave in a few 
days ! — before 1 could even hear of her illness." 
VoUv. pp. 237, 238. 

Mr. Cromek has added, in a note, the fol- 
lowing interesting particulars ; though without 
specifying the authority upon which he details 
them : — 

" This adieu was performed with all those simple 
and striking ceremonials which rustic sentiment has 
devised to prolong tender emotions and to inspire 
awe. The lovers stood on each side of a small 
purling brook ; they laved their hands in its limpid 
stream, and holding a Bible between them, pro- 
nounced their vows to be faithful to each other. 
They parted — never to meet again ! 

" The anniversary of Mary Campbell's death (for 
thai was her name) awakening in the sensitive mind 
of Burns the most lively emotion, he retired from 
his family, then residing on the farm of Ellisland, 
and wandered, solitary, on the banks of the Nilh, 
and about the farm yard, '~ "he extremes? agitation 
of mind, nearly the v;..^fe of the night : His agita- 
tion was so great, that he threw himself on the side 
of a corn stack, and there conceived his sublime and 
tender elegy — his address To Mary in Heaven." 
Vol. v. p. 238. 

The poem itself is as follows : — 

" Thou lingering star, with less'ning ray, 
That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usher'st in the day 
My Mary from my soul was torn I 

" O Mary ! dear departed shade * 

Where is ihy place of blissful rest? 
See'sf thou thy lover lowly laid? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend this breast t 

" That sacred hour can T forget, 

Can I forget the hallowed grove, 

Where by the winding Ayr we met, 

To live one day of parting love ! 

" Eternity will not efface 

Those records dear of transports past j 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



343 



Thy image at our last embrace ; 

Ah ! little thought we 'twas our last ! 

' Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shore, 

O'erhung wiih wild woods, thickening, green, 
The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, 
Twin'd amorous round the raptured scene. 

' The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, 
The birds sang love on every spray, 
Till too, too soon, the glowing west 
Proclaim'd the speed of winged day ! 

'* Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, 
And fondly broods wiih miser care ; 
Time but the impression stronger makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear. 

" My Mary, dear departed shade! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid? 

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?" 
Vol. i. pp. 125, 126. 

Of his pieces of humour, the tale of Tarn 
o 7 Shanter is probably the best : though there 
are traits of infinite merit in Scotch Drink, 
the Holy Fair, the Hallow E'en, and several 
of the songs ; in all of which, it is very re- 
markable, that he rises occasionally into a 
strain of beautiful description or lofty senti- 
ment, far above the pitch of his original con- 
ception. The poems of observation on life 
and characters, are the Twa Dogs and the 
various Epistles — all of which show very ex- 
traordinary sagacitj r and powers of expression. 
They are written, however, in so broad a dia- 
lect, that we dare not venture to quote any 
part of them. The only pieces that can be 
classed under the head of pure fiction, are 
the Two Bridges of Ayr, and the Vision. In 
the last, there are some vigorous and striking 
lines. We select the passage in which the 
Muse describes the early propensities of her 
favourite, rather as being more generally in- 
telligible, than as superior to the rest of the 
poem. 

" I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
Delighted with the dashing roar; 
Or when the North his fleecy store 

Drove ihrough the skj r , 
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar 

Struck thy young eye. 

" Or when the deep-green mantl'd earth 
Warm cherish'd ev'ry flow' ret' s birth, 
And joy and music pouring forth 

In ev'ry grove, 
I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth 

With boundless love. 

" When ripen'd fields, and azure skies, 
Call'd forth the reapers' rustling noise, 
I saw thee leave their ev'ning joys. 

And lonely stalk, 
To vent thy bosom's swelling rise 

In pensive walk. 

* ( When youthful love, warm, blushing, strong, 
Keen-shivering shot thy nerves along, 
Those accents grateful to thy tongue, 

Th' adored Name, 
I taught thee how to pour in song. 

To sooth thy flame. 

'■ I saw thy pulse's maddening play, 
Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way, 
Misled byTancy's meteor-ray, 

By Passion driven ; 
Out yet the light that led astray 

Was light from heaven !" 
Vol. iii. pp. 109, 110. 



There is another fragment, called also a 
Vision, which belongs to a higher order of 
poetry. If Burns had never written any thir.g 
else, the power of description, and the vigour 
of the whole composition, would have entitled 
him to the remembrance of posterity. 

" The winds were laid, the air was still; 
The stars they shot alang the sky ; 
The fox was howling on the hill, 
And the distant-echoing glens reply. 

" The stream adown its hazelly path, 
Was rushing by the ruin'd wa's, 
Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, 
Whase distant roaring swells an' fa's. 

" The cauld blue north was streaming forth 
Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din ; 
Athort the lift they start and shift, 
Like fortune's favours, tint as win ! 

" By heedless chance I turh'd mine eyes, 
And by the moon-beam, shook, to see 
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, 
Attir'd as minstrels wont to be. 

" Had I a statue been o' stane, 

His darin' look had daunted me ; 
And on his bonnet grav'd was plain, 
The sacred posy — Liberty ! 

" And frae his harp sic strains did flow, 

Might rous'd the slumbering dead to hear; 
But oh, it was a tale of woe, 
As ever met a Briton's ear ! 

" He sang wi' joy the former day, 

He weeping wail'd his latter times — 
But what he said, it wasnae play, 
I winna ventur'tin my rhymes." 

Vol. iv. 344—346. 

Some verses, written for a Hermitage, sound 
like the best parts of Grongar Hill.' The 
reader may take these few lines as a speci- 
men: — 

" As thy day grows warm and high, 
Lite's meridian flaming nigh, 
Dost thou spurn the humble vale? 
Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale ? 
Dangers, eagle-pinion'd, bold, 
Soar around each cliffy hold, 
While cheerful peace, with linnet song, 
Chants the lowly dells among." — Vol. iii. p. 299. 

There is a little copy of Verses upon a News- 
paper at p. 355, of Dr. Currie's fourth volume, 
written in the same condensed style, and 
only wanting translation into English to be 
worthy of Swift. 

The finest piece, of the strong and nervous 
sort, however, is undoubtedly the address of 
Robert Bruce to his army at Bannockburn, 
beginning, u Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace Bled. 
The Death Song, beginning, 

" Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth and ye 
skies. 
Now gay with the bright setting sun." 

is to us less pleasing. There are specimens, 
however, of such vigour and emphasis scat- 
tered through his whole works, as are sure 
to make themselves and their author remem- 
bered ; for instance, that noble description of 
a dying soldier. 

" Nae cauld, faint-hearted doublings teaze him : 
Death comes ! wi' fearless eye he sees him; 
Wi' bluidy hand a welcome gi'es liirn ; 
An' when he fa's, 



344 



POETRY. 



Hi'* latest draught o' breathin lea'es him 

In faint huzzas '."—Vol. iii. p. 27. 

The whole song of " For a' that/' is written 
with extraordinary spirit. The first stanza 
ends — 

" For rank is but the guinea stamp ; 
The man's the goud, for a' that." 

— All the songs, indeed, abound with traits of 
this kind. We select the following at random : 

" O woman, lovely woman, fair ! 
An angel form's faun to thy share ; 
'Twad been o'er meikle to've gi'en thee mair, 
1 mean an angel mind." — Vol. iv. p. 330. 

We dare not proceed further in specifying 
the merits of pieces which have been so long 
published. Before concluding upon this sub- 
ject, however, we must beg leave to express 
our dissent from the poet's amiable and judi- 
cious biographer, in what he says of the gene- 
ral harshness and rudeness of his versification. 
Dr. Carrie, we are afraid, was scarcely Scotch- 
man enough to comprehend the whole prosody 
of the verses to which he alluded. Most of 
the Scottish pieces are, in fact, much more 
carefully versified than the English ; and we 
appeal to our Southern readers, whether there 
be any want of harmony in the following 
etanza : — 

•' Wild beats my heart to trace your steps, 
Whose ancestors, in days of yore, 
Thro' hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps, 

Old Scotia's bloody lion bore: 
Even / who sing in rustic lore, 

Haply my sires have left their shed, 
And fac'd grim danger's loudest roar, 
Bold. following where your fathers led !" 

Vol. iii. p. 233. 

The following is not quite English ; but it 
is intelligible to all readers of English, and 
may satisfy them that the Scottish song-writer 
was not habitually negligent of his numbers: — 

M Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands 
reckon, [fume ; 

Where bright-beaming summers exalt the per- 
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, 
Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow 
broom. 
Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers, 
Where the blue bell and gowan lurk lowly un- 
seen : 
For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers, 
A-listening the linnet, aft wanders my Jean. 

" Tho' rich is the breeze in their gay sunny vallies, 
And cauld, Caledonia's blast on the wave ; 
Their sweet-scented woodlands that skirt the 
proud palace, [slave ! 

What are they ? The haunt o' the tyrant and 
The slave's spicy forests, and gold-bubbling 
fountains, 
The brave Caledonian views wi' disdain ; 
He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains, 
Save love's willing fetters, the chains o' his 
Jean."— Vol. iv. pp. 228, 229. 

If we have been able to inspire our readers 
with any portion of our own admiration for 
this extraordinary writer, they will readily 
forgive us for the irregularity of which we 
have beer, guilty, in introducing so long an 
account of his whole works, under colour of 
the additional volume of which we have pre- 
fixed the title to this article. The truth is ; 



however, that unless it be taken in connection 
with his other works, the present volume has 
little interest, and could not be made the sub- 
ject of any intelligible observations. It is 
made up of some additional letters, of mid- 
dling merit — of complete copies of others, 
of which Dr. Currie saw reason to publish 
only extracts — of a number of remarks, by 
Burns, on old Scottish songs — and, finally, of 
a few additional poems and songs, certainly 
not disgraceful to the author, but scarcely 
fitted to add to his reputation. The world, 
however, is indebted, we think, to Mr. 
Cromek's industry for this addition to so 
popular an author; — and the friends of the 
poet, we are sure, are indebted to his good 
taste, moderation, and delicacy, for having 
confined it to the pieces which are now 
printed. Burns wrote many rash— many 
violent, and many indecent things; of whicn 
we have no doubt many specimens must 
have fallen into the hands of so diligent a 
collector. He has, however, carefully sup- 
pressed every thing of this description ; and 
shown that tenderness for his author's mem- 
ory, which is the best proof of the venera- 
tion with which he regards his talents. We 
shall now see if there be any thing in the 
volume which deserves to be particularly 
noticed. 

The Preface is very amiable, and well 
written. Mr. Cromek speaks with becoming 
respect and affection of Dr. Currie, the learned 
biographer and first editor of the poet, and 
with great modesty of his own qualifications. 

" As an apology (he says) for any defects of my 
own that may appear iri this publication, f beg to 
observe that I am by profession an artist, and not an 
author. In the manner of laying them before the 
public, I honestly declare that I have done my 
best ; and I trust. I may fairly presume to hope, 
that the man who has contribted to extend the 
bounds of literature, by adding another genuine 
volume to the writings of Robert Burns, has some 
claim on the gratitude of his countrymen. On this 
occasion, I certainly feel something of that sublime 
and heart-swelling gratification, which he experi- 
ences who casts another stone on the cairn of a 
great and lamented chief." — Preface, pp. xi. xii. 

Of the Letters, which occupy nearly half 
the volume, we cannot, on the whole, express 
any more favourable opinion than that which 
we have already ventured to pronounce on 
the prose compositions of this author in gen- 
eral. Indeed they abound, rather more than 
those formerly published, in ravings about sen- 
sibility and imprudence — in common swear- 
ing, and in professions of love for whisky. 
By far the best, are those which are addressed 
to Miss Chalmers; and that chiefly because 
they seem to be written with less effort, and at 
the same time with more respect for his cor- 
respondent. The following was written at a 
most critical period of his life ; and the good 
feelings and good sense which it displays, 
only make us regret more deeply that they 
were not attended with greater firmness, 

"Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I 
married ' my Jean.' This was not in consequence 
of the attachment of romance perhaps ; but I had a 
long and much lov'd fellow-creature's happiness or 



RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS. 



34* 



misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle 
with so important a deposite. Nor have I any 
cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, 
modish manners, and fashionable mess, I am not 
sickened and disgusted with the multiform- curse 
of boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the 
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the sound- 
est constitution, and the kindest heart in the county ! 
Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I 
am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnele homme in 
the universe ; although she scarcely ever in her life, 
except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five 
minutes together on either prose or verse. — I must 
except also from this last, a certain late publication 
of Scots Poems, which she has perused very de- 
voutly, and all the ballads in the country, as she has 
(O the partial lover ! you will cry) the finest " wood- 
note wild " I ever heard. — I am the more particular 
in this lady's character, as I know she will henceforth 
have the honour of a share in your best wishes. 
She is still at Mauchlitie, as I am building my 
house: for this hovel that I shelter in while occa- 
sionally here, is pervious to every blast that blows, 
and every shower that falls; and I am only pre- 
served from being chilled to death, by being suffo- 
cated with smoke. I do not find my farm that 
pennyworth I was taught to expect ; but I believe, 
in time, it may be a saving bargain. You will be 
pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle eclat. 
and bind every day after my reapers. 

" To save me from that horrid situation of at any 
time going down, in a losing bargain of a farm, to 
misery, I have taken my excise instructions, and 
have my commission in my pocket for any emerg- 
ency of fortune! If I could set all before your 
view, whatever disrespect you, in common with the 
world, have for this business, I know you would 
approve of my idea." — Vol. v. pp. 74, 75. 

We may add the following for the sake of 
connection. 

"I know not how the word exciseman, or still 
more opprobrious, gauger, will sound in your ears. 
I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves 
would have felt very delicately on this subject; but 
a wife and children are things which have a won- 
derful power in blunting these kind of sensations. 
Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for 
widows and orphans, you will allow, is no bad set- 
tlement for a poet. For the ignominy of the pro- 
fession, I have the encouragement which I once 
heard a recruiting serjeant give to a numerous, if 
not a respectable audience, in the streets of Kilmar- 
nock — ' Gentlemen, for your further and better en- 
couragement, I can assure you that our regiment is 
the most blackguard corps under the crown, and 
consequently with us an honest fellow has the surest 
chance of preferment.' " — Vol. v. pp. 99, 100. 

It would have been as well if Mr. Cromek 
had left out the history of Mr. Hamilton's dis- 
sensions with his parish minister. — Burns' 
apology to a gentleman with whom he had a 
drunken squabble, — and the anecdote of his 
being used to ask for more liquor, when visit- 
ing in the country, under the pretext of forti- 
fying himself against the terrors of. a little 
wood he had to pass through in going home. 
The most interesting passages, indeed, in this 
part of the volume, are those for which we are 
indebted to Mr. Cromek himself. He informs 
us, for instance, in a note, 

" One of Burns' remarks, when he first came to 
Edinburgh, was. that between the Men of rustic 
life, and the polite world, he observed li'tle difftr- 
ence-^-that in the former, though unpolished by 
fashion, and unenlightened by science, he had found 
much observatior and much intelligence ; — but a 
44 



refined and accomplished Woman was a being al« 
most new to him, and of which he had formed but 
a very inadequate idea." — Vol. v. pp. 68, 69. 

He adds also, in another place, that "the 
poet, when questioned about his habits of 
composition, replied, — 'All my poetry is the 
effect of easy composition, but of laborious 
correction.'" It is pleasing to know those 
things — even if they were really as trifling as 
to a superficial observer they may probably 
appear. There is a very amiable letter from 
Mr. Murdoch, the poet's early preceptor, at 
p. Ill; and a very splendid one from Mr. 
Bloomfield, at p. 135. As nothing is more 
rare, among the minor poets, than a candid 
acknowledgment of their own inferiority, we 
think Mr. Bloomfield well entitled to have his 
magnanimity recorded. 

" The illustrious soul that has left amongst us the 
name of Burns, has often been lowered down to a 
comparison with me ; but the comparison exists 
more in circumstances than in essentials. That 
man stood up with the stamp of superior intellect 
on his brow ; a visible greatness : and great and 
patriotic subjects would only have called into action 
the powers of his mind, which lay inactive while he 
played calmly and exquisitely the pastoral pipe. 

" The letters to which I have alluded in my pre- 
face to the * Rural Tales,' were friendly warnings, 
pointed with immediate reference to the fate of 
that extraordinary man. ' Remember Burns,' has 
been the watchword of my friends. I do remember 
Burns; but I am not Burns! I have neither his 
fire to fan, or to quench ; nor his passions to control ! 
Where then is my merit, if I make a peaceful 
vovage on a smooth sea, and with no mutiny on 
board?"— Vol. v. pp. 135, 136. 

The observations on Scottish songs, which 
fill nearly one hundred and fifty pages, are, 
on the who'le, minute and trifling; though the 
exquisite justness of the poet's taste, and his 
fine relish of simplicity in this species of com- 
position, is no less remarkable here than in 
his correspondence with Mr. Thomson. Of 
all other kinds of poetry, he was so indulgent 
a judge, that he may almost be termed an in- 
discriminate admirer. We find, too, from 
these observations, that several songs and 
pieces of songs, which he printed as genuine 
antiques, were really of his own composition. 

The commonplace book, from which Dr. 
Currie had formerly selected all that he 
thought worth publication, is next given entire 
by Mr. Cromek. We were quite as well, we 
think, with the extracts; — at all events, there 
was no need for reprinting what had been 
given by Dr. Cnrrie ; a remark which is equally 
applicable to the letters of which we had for- 
merly extracts. 

Of the additional poems which form the 
concluding part of the volume, we have but 
little to say. We have little doubt of their au- 
thenticity; for, though the editor has omitted, 
in almost every instance, to specify the source 
from which they were derived, they certainly 
bear the stamp of the author's manner and 
genius. They are not, however, of his purest 
metal, nor marked with his finest die: several 
of them have. appeared in print already; and 
the songs are, as usual, the best. This little 
lamentation of a desolate damsel, :'b tender 
and pretty. 



M6 



POETRY. 



"My father put m« fraehis door', 

My friends they hae disown'd me a'; 
But I hae ane will tak my part, 
The bonnie lad that's far avva. 

*'. A pair o' gloves he gave to me, 

And silken snoods he gave me twa; 
And I will wear them for his sake, 
The bonnie lad that's far avva. 

" The weary winter soon will pass, 

And spring will cleed the birken-shaw ; 
And my sweet babie will be born, 
And he'll come hame that's far avva." 

Vol. v. pp. 432, 433. 

We now reluctantly dismiss this subject. — 
We scarcely hoped, when we began our critic- 
al labours, that an opportunity would ever 
occur of speaking of Burns as we wished to 
speak of him ; and therefore, we feel grate- 
ful to Mr. Cromek for giving us this opportu- 
nity. As we have no means of knowing, 
with precision, to what extent his writings are 
known and admired in the southern part of 
the kingdom, we have perhaps fallen into the 
error of quoting passages that are familiar to 
most of our readers, and dealing out praise 
which every one of them had previously 
awarded. We felt it impossible, however, to 
resist the temptation of transcribing a few of 
the passages which struck us the most, on 
turning over the volumes ; and reckon with 
confidence on the gratitude of those to whom 
they are new, — while we are not without 
hopes of being forgiven by those who have 
been used to admire them. 

We shall conclude with two general re- 
marks — the one national, the other critical. — 
The first is, that it is impossible to read the 
productions of Burns, along with his history, 
without forming a higher idea of the intelli- 
gence, taste, and accomplishments of our 
peasantry, than most of those in the higher 
ranks are disposed to entertain. Without 
meaning to deny that he himself was endow- 
ed with rare and extraordinary gifts of genius 
and fancy, it is evident, from the whole details 
of his history, as well as from the letters of 
his brother, and the testimony of Mr. Murdoch 
and others, to the character of his father, that 
the whole family, and many of their asso- 
ciates, who never emerged from the native 
obscurity of their condition, possessed talents, 
and taste, and intelligence, which are little 
suspected to lurk in those humble retreats. — 
His epistles to brother poets, in the rank 
of small farmers and shopkeepers in the ad- 
joining villages, — the existence of a book- 
society and debating-club among persons of 
that description, and many other incidental 
traits in his sketches of his youthful compan- 
ions, — all contribute to show, that not only 
good sense, and enlightened morality, but 
literature, and talents for speculation, are far 
more generally diffused in society than is 
commonly imagined; and that the delights 



and the benefits of those generous ana hu- 
manising pursuits, are by no means confined 
to those whom leisure and affluence have 
courted to their enjoyment. That much of 
this is peculiar to Scotland, and may be pro- 
perly referred to our excellent institutions for 
parochial education, and to the natural sobriety 
and prudence of our nation, may certainly be 
allowed : but we have no doubt that there is 
a good deal of the same principle in England. 
and that the actual intelligence of the lower 
orders will be found, there also, very far to 
exceed the ordinary estimates of their supe- 
riors. It is pleasing to know, that the sources 
of rational enjoymeut are so widely dissemi- 
nated ; and in a free country, it is comfortable 
to think, that so great a proportion of the 
people is able to appreciate the advantages 
of its condition, and fit to be relied on, in all 
emergencies where steadiness and intelli- 
gence may be required. 

Our other remark is of a more limited ap- 
plication ) and is addressed chiefly to the 
followers and patrons of that new school of 
poetry, against which we have thought it our 
duty to neglect no opportunity of testifying. 
Those gentlemen are outrageous for simplic- 
ity ; and we beg leave to recommend to them 
the simplicity of Bums. He has copied the 
spoken language of passion and affection, with 
infinitely more fidelity than they have ever 
done, on all occasions which properly admitted 
of such adaptation : But he has not rejected 
the helps of elevated language and habitual 
associations ; nor debased his composition by 
an affectation of babyish interjections, and 
all the puling expletives of an old nursery- 
maid's vocabulary. They may look long 
enough among his nervous and manly lines, 
before they find any "Good lacks ! ?7 — " Dear 
hearts !" — or "As a body may says," in them ; 
or any stuff about dancing daffodils and sister 
Emmelines. Let them think, with what in- 
finite contempt the powerful mind of Burns 
would have perused the story of Alice Fell 
and her duffle cloak, — of Andrew Jones and 
the half-crown, — or of Little Dan without 
breeches, and his thievish grandfather. Let 
them contrast their own fantastical personages 
of hysterical school-masters and sententious 
leechgatherers, with the authentic rustics of 
Burns's Cotters' Saturday Night, and his in- 
imitable songs ; and reflect on the different 
reception which those personifications have 
met with from the public. Though they will 
not be reclaimed from their puny affectations 
by the example of their learned predecessors, 
they may, perhaps, submit to be admonished 
by a self-taught and illiterate poet, who drew 
from Nature far more directly than they can 
do, and produced something so much liker 
the admired copies of the masters whom they 
have abjured. 



CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. 



M7 



(2lpril, 1809.) 

Gertrude of Wyomirg, a Pennsylvanian Tale ; and other Poems. By Thomas Campbell, authol 
of " The Pleasures of Hopef' fyc. 4to. pp. 136. London : Longman & Co. : 1809. 



We rejoice once more to see a polished and 
pathetic poem — in the old style of English 
pathos and poetry. This is of the pitch of 
the Castle of Indolence, and the finer parts of 
Spenser ; with more feeling, in many places, 
than the first and more condensation ana 
diligent finishing than the latter. If the true 
tone of nature be not everywhere maintained, 
it gives place, at least, to art only, and not to 
affectation — and, least of all, to affectation of 
singularity or rudeness. 

Beautiful as the greater part of this volume 
is, the public taste, we are afraid, has of late 
been too much accustomed to beauties of a 
more obtrusive and glaring kind, to be rally 
sensible of its merit. Without supposing that 
this taste has been in any great degree vitiated, 
or even imposed upon, by the babyism or the 
antiquarian ism which have lately been versi- 
fied for its improvement, we may be allowed 
to suspect, that it has been somewhat dazzled 
by the splendour, and bustle and variety of 
the most popular of our recent poems ; and 
that the more modest colouring of truth and 
nature may, at this moment, seem somewhat 
cold and feeble. We have endeavoured, on 
former occasions, to do justice to the force 
and originality of some of those brilliant pro- 
ductions, as well as to the genius (fitted for 
much higher things) of their authors — and 
have little doubt of being soon called upon 
for a renewed tribute of applause. But we 
cannot help saying, in the mean time, that 
the work before us belongs to a class which 
comes nearer to our conception of pure and 
perfect poetry. Such productions do not, 
indeed, strike so strong a blow as the vehe- 
ment effusions of our modern Trouveurs ; 
but they are calculated, we think, to please 
more deeply, and to call out more perma- 
nently, those trains of emotion, in which the 
delight of poetry will probably be found to 
consist. They may not be so loudly nor so 
universally applauded; but their fame will 
probably endure longer, and they will be 
oftener recalled to mingle with the reveries 
of solitary leisure, or the consolations of real 
sorrow. 

There is a sort of poetry, no doubt, as there 
is a sort of flowers, which can bear the broad 
sun and the ruffling winds of the world, — 
which thrive under the hands and eyes of in- 
discriminating multitudes, and please as much 
in hot and crowded saloons, as in their own 
sheltered repositories; but the finer and the 
purer sorts blossom only in the shade ; and 
never give out their sweets but to those who 
seek them amid the quiet and seclusion of 
the scenes which gave them birth. There 
are torrents and cascades which attract the 



admiration of tittering parties, and of which 
even the busy must turn aside to catch a 
transient glance : But " the haunted stream" 
steals through a still and a solitary landscape ; 
and its beauties are never revealed, but to 
him who strays, in calm contemplation, by its 
course, and follows its wanderings with un- 
distracted and unim patient admiration. There 
is a reason, too, for all this, which may be 
made more plain than by metaphors. 

The highest delight which poetry produces, 
does not arise from the mere passive percep- 
tion of the images or sentiments which it pre- 
sents to the mind ; but from the excitement 
which is given to its own internal activity, 
and the character w hich is impressed on the 
train of its spontaneous conceptions. Even 
the dullest reader generally sees more than 
is directly presented to him by the poet ; but 
a lover of poetry always sees infinitely more; 
and is often indebted to his author for little 
more than an impulse, or the key-note of a 
melody which his fancy makes out for itself. 
Thus, the effect of poetry, depends more on 
the f rv.it fulness of the impressions to which it 
gives rise, than on their own individual force 
or novelty; and the writers who possess the 
greatest powers of fascination, are not those 
who present us with the greatest number of 
lively images or lofty sentiments, but who 
most successfully impart their own impulse 
to the current of our thoughts and feelings, 
and give the colour of their brighter concep- 
tions to those which they excite in their 
readers. Now, upon a little consideration, it 
will probably appear, that the dazzling, and 
the busy and marvellous scenes which con- 
stitute the whole charm of some poems, are 
not so well calculated to produce this effect, 
as those more intelligible delineations which 
are borrowed from ordinary life, and coloured 
from familiar affections. The object is, to 
' awaken in our minds a train of kindred emo- 
tions, and to excite our imaginations to work 
out for themselves a tissue of pleasing or im- 
pressive conceptions. But it seems obvious. 
i that this is more likely to be accomplished 
| by surrounding us gradually with those ob- 
I jects, and involving us in those situations 
| with which we have long been accustomed 
to associate the feelings of the poet, — than by 
startling us with some tale of wonder, or at- 
tempting to engage our affections for per- 
sonages, of whose character and condition 
we are unable to form any distinct concep- 
tion. These, indeed, are more sure than the 
other to produce a momentary sensation, by 
the novelty and exaggeration \vith which they 
are commonly attended ; but their power is 
spent at the first impulse : they do not strike 



348 



POETRY. 



root and germinate in the mind, like the seeds 
of its native feelings ; nor propagate through- 
out the imagination that long series of delight- 
ful movements, which is only excited when 
the song of the poet is the echo of our familiar 
feelings. 

It appears to us, therefore, that by far the 
most powerful and enchanting poetry is that 
which depends for its effect upon the just 
representation of common feelings and com- 
mon situations; and not on the strangeness 
of its incidents, or the novelty or exotic splen- 
dour of its scenes and characters. The diffi- 
culty is, no doubt, to give the requisite force, 
elegance and dignity to these ordinary sub- 
jects, and to win a way for them to the heart, 
by that true and concise expression of natural 
emotion, which is among the rarest gifts of 
inspiration. To accomplish this, the poet 
must do much.; and the reader something. 
The one must practise enchantment, and the 
other submit to it. The one must purify his 
conceptions from all that is low or artificial ; 
and the other must lend himself gently to the 
impression, and refrain from disturbing it by 
any movement of worldly vanity, derision or 
hard heartedness. In an advanced state of 
society, the expression of simple emotion is 
so obstructed by ceremony, or so distorted by 
affectation, that though the sentiment itself 
be still familiar to the greater part of man- 
kind, the verbal representation of it is a task 
of the utmost difficulty. One set of writers, ac- 
cordingly, finding the whole language of men 
and women too sophisticated for this purpose, 
have been obliged to go to the nursery for 
a more suitable phraseology ; another has 
adopted the style of courtly Arcadians; and 
a third, that of mere Bedlamites. So much 
more difficult is it to express natural feelings. 
than to narrate battles, or describe prodigies ! 

But even when the poet has done his part, 
there are many causes which may obstruct 
his immediate popularity. In the first place, 
it requires a certain degree of sensibility to 
perceive his merit. There are thousands of 
people who can admire a florid description, 
or be amused with a wonderful story, to 
whom a pathetic poem is quite unintelligible. 
In the second place, it requires a certain de- 
gree of leisure and tranquillity in the reader. 
A picturesque stanza may be well enough 
relished while the reader is getting his hair 
combed ; but a scene of tenderness or emo- 
tion will not do, even for the corner of a 
crowded drawing-room. Finally, it requires 
a certain degree of courage to proclaim the 
merits of such a writer. Those who feel the 
most deeply, are most given to disguise their 
feelings; and derision is never so agonising 
as when it pounces on the wanderings of 
misguided sensibility. Considering the habits 
of the age in which we live, therefore, and 
the fashion, which, though not immutable, 
has for some time run steadily in an opposite 
direction, we should not be much surprised 
if a poem, whose chief merit consisted in its 
pathos, and in the softness and exquisite ten- 
derness of its representations of domestic life 
and romantic seclusion, should meet with 



less encouragement than it deserves. If the 
volume before us were the work of an un- 
known writer, indeed, we should feei no lit- 
tle apprehension about its success; but Mr. 
Campbell's name has power, we are per- 
suaded, to insure a very partial and a verj 
general attention to whatever it accompanies, 
and, we would fain hope, influence enough to 
reclaim the public taste to a juster standard 
of excellence. The success of his former 
work, indeed, goes far to remove our anxiety 
for the fortune of this. It contained, perhaps, 
more brilliant and bold passages than are to 
be found in the poem before us : But it was 
inferior, we think, in softness and beauty; 
and. being necessarily of a more desultory 
and didactic character, had far less pathos 
and interest than this very simple tale. Those 
who admired the Pleasures of Hope for the 
passages about Brama and Kosciusko, may 
perhaps be somewhat disappointed with the 
gentler tone of Gertrude ; but those who loved 
that charming work for its pictures of infancy 
and of maternal and connubial love, may read 
on here with the assurance of a still higher 
gratification. 

The story is of very little consequence in a 
poem of this description; and it is here, as 
we have just hinted, extremely short and 
simple. Albert, an English gentleman of 
high character and accomplishment, had emi- 
grated to Pennsylvania about the year 1740, 
and occupied himself, after his wife's death, 
in doing good to his neighbours, and in edu- 
cating his infant and only child, Gertrude. 
He had fixed himself in the pleasant township 
of Wyoming, on the banks of the Susquehanna ; 
a situation which at that time might have 
passed for an earthly paradise, with very little 
aid from poetical embellishment. The beauty 
and fertility of the country, — the simple and 
unlaborious plenty which reigned among the 
scattered inhabitants, — but, above all, the 
singular purity and innocence of their man- 
ners, and the tranquil and unenvious equality 
in which they passed their days, form alto- 
gether a scene, on which the eye of philan- 
thropy is never wearied with gazing, and to 
which, perhaps, no parallel can be found in 
the annals of the fallen world. The heart 
turns with delight from the feverish scenes 
of European history, to the sweet repose of 
this true Atlantis; but sinks to reflect, that 
though its reality may still be attested by 
surviving witnesses, no such spot is now left, 
on the whole face of the earth, as a refuge 
from corruption and misery ! 

The poem opens with a fine description of 
this enchanting retirement. One calm sum- 
mer morn, a friendly Indian arrives in his ca- 
noe, bringing with him a fair boy, who, with 
his mother, were the sole survivors of an 
English garrison which had been stormed by 
a hostile tribe. The dying mother had com 
mended her boy to the care of her^vild de- 
liverers; and their chief, in obedience to her 
solemn bequest, now delivers him into the 
hands of the most respected of the adjoining 
settlers. Albert recognises the unhappy or- 
phan as the son of a beloved friend; and 



CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. 



r?ars young H^nry Waldegrave as the happy 
playmate of Gertrude, and sharer with her in 
the joys of their romantic solitude, and the 
lessons of their venerable instructor. When 
he is scarcely entered upon manhood, Henry 
is sent for by his friends in England, and 
roams over Europe in search of improvement 
for eight or nine years, — while the quiet hours 
are sliding over the father and daughter in 
the unbroken tranquillity of their Pennsylva- 
nian retreat. At last, Henry, whose heart 
had found no resting place m all the world 
besides, returns in all the mature graces of 
manhood, and marries his beloved Gertrude. 
Then there is bliss beyond all that is blissful 
on earth, — and more feelingly described than 
mere genius can ever hope to describe any 
thing. But the war of emancipation begins; 
and the dream of love and enjoyment is 
broken by alarms and dismal forebodings. 
While they are sitting one evening enjoying 
those tranquil delights, now more endeared 
by the fears which gather around them, an 
aged Indian rushes into their habitation, and, 
after disclosing himself for Henry's ancient 
guide and preserver, informs them, that a 
hostile tribe which had exterminated his 
whole family, is on its march towards their 
devoted dwellings. With considerable diffi- 
culty they effect their escape to a fort at some 
distance in the woods ; and at sunrise. Ger- 
trude, and her father and husband, look from 
its battlements over the scene of desolation 
which the murderous Indians had already 
spread over the pleasant groves and gardens 
of Wyoming. While they are standing wrapt 
in this sad contemplation, an Indian marks- 
man fires a mortal shot from his ambush at 
Albert ; and as Gertrude clasps him in agony 
to her heart, another discharge lays her bleed- 
ing by his side ! She then takes farewell of 
her husband, in a speech more sweetly pa- 
thetic than any thing ever written in rhyme. 
Henry prostrates himself on her grave in 
convulsed and speechless agony; and his 
Indian deliverer, throwing his mantle over 
him, watches by him a while in gloomy si- 
lence; and at last addresses him in a sort of 
wild and energetic descant, exciting him, by 
his example, to be revenged, and to die ! The 
poem closes with ttiis vehement and impas- 
sioned exhortation. 

Before proceeding to lay any part of the 
poem itself before our readers, we should try 
to give them some idea of that delighful har- 
mony of colouring and of expression, which 
serves to unite every part of it for the pro- 
duction of one effect; and to make the de- 
scription, narrative, and reflections, conspire 
to breathe over the whole a certain air of 
pure and tender enchantment, which is not 
once dispelled, through the whole length of 
the poem, by the intrusion of any discordant 
impression. All that we can now do, how- 
ever, is to tell them that this was its effect 
upon our feelings; and to give them their 
chance of partaking in it, by a pretty copious 
selection of extracts. 

The descriptive stanzas in the beginning, 
which set out with an invocation to Wyoming^ 



though in some places a little obscure and 
overlaboured, are, to our taste, very soft and 
beautiful. 

" On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming! 
Although t he wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall 
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring 
Of what thy gentle people did befall, 
Yet thou wen once the loveliest land of all 
That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore. 
Sweet land ! may I thy lost delights recall, 
And paint thy Gertrude in her bowers of yore, 
Whose beauty was the love of Pennsylvania's 
shore ! 

" It was beneath thy skies that, but to prune 
His autumn fruits, or skim the light canoe, 
Perchance, along thy river calm, at noon, 
The happy shepherd swain had nought to do, 
From morn till evening's sweeter pastime grew ; 
Their timbrel, in the dance of forests brown 
When lovely maidens prankt in flowreis new ; 
And aye, those sunny mountains halfway down 
Would echo flagelet from some romantic town. 

" Then, where of Indian hills the daylight takes 
His leave, how might you the flamingo see 
Disporting like a meteor on the lakes — 
And playful squirrel on his nut-grown tree : 
And ev'ry sound of life was full of glee, 
From merry mock-bird's song, or hum of men; 
While heark'ning, fearing nought their revelry, 
The wild deer arch'd his neck from glades — and, 

then 
Unhunted, sought his woods and wilderness again. 

"And scarce had Wyoming of war or crime 
Heard but in transatlantic story rung," &c. 

pp. 5—7. 

♦The account of the German, Spanish. Scot- 
tish, and English settlers, and of the patri- 
archal harmony in which they were all united, 
is likewise given with great spirit and brevity^ 
as .well as the portrait of the venerable Albert, 
their own elected judge and adviser. A sud- 
den transition is then made to Gertrude. 

" Young, innocent ! on whose sweet forehead mild 

The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise, 

An inmate in the home of Albert smil'd, 

Or blest his noonday- walk — she was his only child ! 

44 The rose of England bloom'd on Gertrude'* 

cheek — 
What though these shades had seen her birth," &c. 

p. 11. 

After mentioning that she was left the only 
child of her mother, the author goes on in 
these sweet verses. 

14 A lov'd bequest ! and I may half impart, 

To them that feel the strong paternal tie, 

How like a new existence to his heart 

Uprose that living flower beneath his eye ! 

Dear as she was, from cherub infancy, 

From hours when she would round his garden play. 

To time when, as the rip'ning years went by, 

Her lovely mind could culture well repay, 

And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day, 

14 1 may not paint those thousand infant charms; 
(Unconscious fascination, undesign'd !) 
The orison repeated in his arms, 
For God to bless her sire and all mankind ! 
The book, the bosom on his knee reclin'd, 
Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con, 
(The playmate ere the teacher of her mind) , 
All uncompanion'd else her years had gone 
Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue sum 
mer shone. 

2E 



350 



POETRY. 






11 And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour, 
When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent, 
An Indian from his bark approach their bow'r," &c 

pp. 12, 13. 

This is the guide and preserver of young 
Henry Waldegrave ; who is somewhat fantas- 
tically described as appearing 

"Led by his du?ky guide, like Morning brought 
by Night." 

The Indian tells his story with great anima- 
tion — the storming and blowing up of the 
English fort — and the tardy arrival of his 
friendly and avenging warriors. They found 
all the soldiers slaughtered. 

" ' And from the tree we with her child unbound 
A lonely mother of the Christian land — 
Her lord — the captain of the British band — 
Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay ; 
Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand : 
Upon her child she sobb'd, and swoon'd away ; 
Or shriek' d unto the God to whom the Christians 
pray.— 

" ' Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls 
Of fever balm, and sweet sagamite; 
But she was journeying to the find of souls, 
And lifted up her dying head to pray 
That we should bid an antient friend convey 
Her orphan to his home of England's shore ; 
And take, she said, this token far away 
To one that will remember us of yore, 
When he beholds the ring that Waldegrave' s Julia 
wore. — ' " pp. 16, 17. 

Albert recognises the child of his murdered 
friend, with great emotion ; which the Indian 
witnesses with characteristic and picturesque 
composure. 

" Far differently the Mute Oneyda took 
His calumet of peace, and cup of joy ; 
As monumental bronze unchang'd his look: 
A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook : 
Train'd, from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier, 
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook 
impassive — fearing but the shame of fear — 
A stoic of the woods — a man without a tear. — " 

p. 20. 

This warrior, however, is not without high 
feelings and tender affections. 

" He scorn'd his own, who felt another's woe : 
And ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung, 
Or laced his mocasins, in act to go, 
A song of parting to the boy he sung, 
Who slept on Albert's couch, nor heard his friend- 
ly tongue. 

" ' Sleep, wearied one ! and in the dreaming land 

Should'st thou the spirit of thy mother greet, 

Oh ! say, to-morrow, that the white man's hand 

Hath pluck'd the thorns of sorrow from thy feet ; 

While I in lonely wilderness shall meet 

Thy little foot-prints— or by traces know 

The fountain, where at noon I thought it sweet 

To feed thee with the quarry of my bow, 

Vnd pour'd the lotus-horn, or slew the mountain roe. 

Adieu? sweet scion of the rising sun !' " &c. 

pp. 21, 22. 

The Second part opens with a fine descrip- 
tion of Albert's sequestered dwelling. It re- 
minds us of that enchanted landscape in which 
Thomson has embosomed his Castle of Indo- 
lence. We can make room only for the first 
stanza. 



" A valley from the river shore withdrawn 
Was Albert's home two quiet woods between, 
Whose lofty verdure overlooked his lawn ; 
And waters to their resting-place serene, 
Came, fresh'ning and reflecting all the scene : 
(A mirror in the depth of flowery shelves;) 
So sweet a spot of earth, you might (I ween) 
Have guess'd some congregation of the elves 
To sport by summer moons, had shap'd it for 
themselves." — p. 27. 

The effect of this seclusion on Gertrude is 
beautifully represented. 

" It seem'd as if those scenes sweet influence had 

On Gertrude's soul, and kindness like their own 

Inspir'd those eyes affectionate and glad. 

That seem'd to love whate'er they look'd upon ! 

Whether with Hebe's mirth her features shone, 

Or if a shade more pleasing them o'ercast, 

(As if for heav'nly musing meant alone ;) 

Yet so becomingly the expression past, 

That each succeeding look was lovelier than the last. 

V Nor guess I, was that Pennsylvanian home, 
With all its picturesque and balmy grace, 
And fields that were a luxury to roam, 
Lost on the soul that look'd from such a face ! 
Enthusiast of the woods ! when years apace 
Had bound thy lovely waist with woman's zone, 
The sunrise path, at morn, I see thee trace 
To hills with high magnolia overgrown ; 
And joy to breathe the eroves, romantic and 
alone."— pp. 29, 30. 

The morning scenery, too, is touched with 
a delicate and masterly hand. 

" While yet the wild deer trod in spangling dew, 
While boatman caroll'd to the fresh-blown air, 
And woods a horizontal shadow threw, _ 
And early fox appear'd in momentary view." 

p. 32. 

The reader is left rather too much in the 
dark as to Henry's departure for Europe ; — 
nor, indeed, are we apprised of his absence, 
till we come to the scene of his unexpected 
return. Gertrude was- used to spend the hot 
part of the day in reading in a lonely and 
rocky recess in those safe woods ; which is 
described with Mr. Campbell's usual felicity. 



Rocks sublime 



To human art a sportive semblance wore ; 
And yellow lichens colour'd all the clime, 
Like moonlisht battlements, and towers decayed 
by time. 

" But high, in amphitheatre above, 
His arms the everlasting aloes threw: 
Breath'd but an air of heav'n, and all the grove 
As if instinct with living spirit grew, 
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue ; 
And now suspended was the pleasing din, 
Now from a murmur faint it swell' d anew, 
Like the first note of organ heard within 
Cathedral aisles — ere yet its svmphony begin." 

p. 33. 

In this retreat, which is represented as so 
solitary, that except her own, 

" scarce an ear had heard 

The stock-dove plaining through its gloom profoand, 
Or winglet of the fairy humming bird, 
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round."— 

p. 34. 

— a stranger of lofty port and gentle manners 
surprises her, one morning, and is conducted 
to her father. They enter into conversation 
on the subject of his travels. 



CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. 



351 



11 And much they lov'd his fervid strain — 
While he each fair variety retrac'd 
Of dimes, and manners, o'er the eas'ern main. 
Now happy Swiizer's hiNs — romantic Spain — 
Gay lilied fields of France — or, more refin'd, 
The soft Ausonia's monumental reign ; 
Nor less each rural image he design'd, 
Than all the city's pomp and home of human kind. 

11 Anon some wilder portraiture he draws ! 
Of nature's savage glories he would speak — 
The loneliness of earlh that overawes !— 
Where, resting by some tomb of old cacique 
The lama-driver on Peruvians peak, 
Nor voice nor living moiion marks around ; 
But storks that to the boundless forest shriek ; 
Or wild-cane arch high flung o'er gulf profound, 
That fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado 
sound."— pp. 36, 37. 

Albert, at last, bethinks him of inquiring 
after his stray ward young Henry; and enter- 
tains his guest with a short summary of his 
history. 

" His face the wand'rer hid ; — but could not hide 
A tear, a smile, upon his cheek that dwell ! — ■ 
4 And speak, mysterious stranger !' (Gertrude cried) 
' It is ! — it is ! — I knew — I knew him well ! 
'Tis Waldecrave's self, of Waldegrave come to 
A burst of joy the father's lips declare ; [tell !' 

But Gertrude speechless on his bosom fell: 
At once his open arms embrae'd the pair ; 
Was never group more blest, in this wide world of 
care!" — p. 39 

The first overflowing of their joy and art- 
less love is represented with all the fine 
colours of truth and poetry ; but we cannot 
now make room for it. The Second Part ends 
with this stanza : — 

" Then would that home admit them — happier far 
Than grandeur's most magnificent saloon — 
While, here and there, a solitary star 
Flush'd in the dark'ning firmament of June; 
And silence brought the soul-felt hour full soon, 
Ineffable — which I may not pourtray ! 
For never did theHymenean moon 
A paradise of hearts more sacred sway, 
In all that slept beneath her soft voluptuous ray." — 

p. 43. 

The Last Part sets out with a soft but 
spirited sketch of their short-lived felicity. 

" Three little moons, how short ! amidst the grove, 
And pastoral savannas they consume ! 
While she, beside her buskin'd youth to rove, 
Delights, in fancifully wild costume, 
Her lovely brow to shade with Indian plume; 
And forth in hunter-seeming vest they fare; 
But not to chase the deer in forest gloom ! 
'Tis but the breath of heav'n — the blessed air — 
.And interchange of hearts, unknown, unseen to 
share. 

" What though the sportive dog oft round them note, 
Or fawn, or wild bird bursting on the wing-; 
Yet who, in love's own presence, would devote 
To death those gentle throats that wake the spring ? 
Or writhing from the brook its victim bring? 
No ! — nor let fear one little warbler rouse ; 
But, fed by Gertrude's hand, siill let them sing, 
Acquaintance of her path, amidst the boughs. ° 
That shade ev'n now her love, and witness'd first 
her vows." — pp. 48, 49. 

The transition to the melancholy part of the 
story is introduced with great tenderness and 

dignity. 

But mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth ? 
The torrent's srroothness ere it dash below ! 



And must I change my song ? and must I show, 
Sweet Wyoming ! the day, when thou wert doom'd, 
Guiltless, to mourn thy loveliest bow'rs laid low ! 
When, where of yesterday a garden bloom'd. 
Death overspread his pall, and black'ning ashea 
gloom'd? — 

" Sad was the year, by proud Oppression driv'n, 
When Transatlantic Liberiy arose ; 
Not in the 6unshine, and the smile of heav'n, 
But wrapt in whirlwinds, and begirt with woes: 
Amidst i he strife of fratricidal foes, 
Her birth star was the light of burning plains ; 
Her baptism is the weight of blood thai flows 
From kindred hearts— the blood of British veins ! — 
And famine tracks her steps, andpesiilentinl pains!" 

pp. 50, 51. 

Gertrude's alarm and dejection at the pros- 
pect of hostilities are well described : 

" O, meet not thou," she cries, "thy kindred foe ! 
But peaceful let us seek fair England's strand," &c. 

— as well as the arguments and generous 
sentiments by which her husband labours to 
reconcile her to a necessary evil. The noc- 
turnal irruption of the old Indian is given with 
great spirit : — Age and misery had so changed 
his appearance, that he was not at first recog- 
nised by any of the party. 

" ' And hast thou then forgot ' — he cried forlorn, 
And ey'd the group with half indignant air), 
' Oh ! hast thou, Christian chief, forgot the morn 
When I with thee the cup of peace did share? 
Then stately was this head, and dark this hair, 
That now is white as Appalachia's snow ! 
But, if the weight of fifteen years' despair, 
And age hath bow'd me, and the tort'ring foe, 
Bring me my Boy — and he will his deliverer 
know !' — 

"It was not long, with eyes and heart of flame, 
Ere Henry to his lov'd O'neyda flew: [came, 

' Bless thee, my guide !' — but, backward, as he 
The chief his old bewilder'd head withdrew, 
And grasp'd his arm, and look'd and look'd him 

through. 
'Twas strange — nor could the group a smile control, 
The long, the doubtful scrutiny to view : — 
At last delight o'er all his features stole, [soul. — 
' It is — my own !' he cried, and clasp'd him to his 

" ' Yes ! thou rccall'st my pride of years ; for then 
The bowstring of my spirit was not slack, [men, 
When, spite of woods, and floods, and ambush'd 
I bore thee like the quiver on my back, 
Fleet as the whirlwind hurries on the rack ; 
Nor foeman then, nor cougar's crouch I fear'd, 
For I was strong as mountain cataract ; 
And dost thou not remember how we cheer' d 
Upon the last hill-top, when white men's huts ap- 
pear'd?' "—pp. 54— 56. 

After warning them of the approach of their 
terrible foe, the conflagration is seen, and the 
whoops and scattering shot of the enemy heard 
at a distance. The motley militia of the 
neigbourhood flock to the defence of Albert : 
the effect of their shouts and music on the old 
Indian is fine and striking. 

"Rous'd by their warlike pomp, and mirth, and 
Old Outalissi woke his battle song, [cheer, 

And beating with his war-club cadence strong, 
Tells how his deep-stung indignation smarts," &c. 

p.61. 

Nor is the contrast of this savage enthusiasm 
with the venerable composure of Albert 'esa 
beautifully represented. 



352 



POETRY. 



" Calm, opposite the Christian Father rose, 
Pale on his venerable brow its rays 
Of martyr light the conflagration throws; 
One hand up >n his lovely child he lays, 
And one th' uncover* d crowd to silence sways ; 
While, though the battle flash is faster driv'n — 
Unaw'd, with eye unstartled by the blaze, 
He for his bleeding country prays to Heaven — 
Prays that the men of blood themselves may be 
forgiven." — p. 62. 

They then speed their night march to the 
distant fort, whose wedged ravelins and re- 
doubts 

" Wove like a diadem, its tracery round 
The lofty summit of that mountain green" — 

and look back from its lofty height on the 
desolated scenes around them. We will not 
separate, nor apologize for the length of the 
fine passage that follows; which alone, we 
think, might justify all we have said in praise 
of the poem. 

" A scene of death ! where fire3 beneath the sun, 
And blended arms, and white pavilions glow; 
And for the business of destruction done, 
Its requiem the war-horn seem'd to blow. 
There, sad spectatress of her country's woe ! 
The lovely Gertrude, safe from present harm, 
Had laid her cheek, and clasp' d her hands of snow 
On Waldegrave's shoulder, half within his arm 
Enclos'd, that felt her heart and hush'd its wild 
alarm ! 

" But short that contemplation ! sad and short 
The pause to bid each much-lov'd scene adieu ! 
Beneath the very shadow of the fort, [flew, 

Where friendly swords were drawn, and banners 
Ah ! who could deem that foot of Indian crew 
Was near? — Yet there, with lust of murd'rous 

deeds, 
Gleam'd like a basilisk, from woods in view, 
The ambush'd foeman's eye — his volley speeds! 
And Albert — Albert — falls! the dear old father 

bleeds ! 

11 And tranc'd in giddy horror Gertrude swoon'd ! 
Yet, while she clasps him lifeless to her zone, 
Say, burst they, borrow'd from her father's wound, 
Those drops ? — God ! the life-blood is her own ! 
And fait' ring, on her Waldegrave's bosom thrown — 
'Weep not, O Love!' — she cries, 'to see me 

bleed — 
Thee, Gertrude's sad survivor, thee alone — 
Heaven's peace commiserate ! for scarce I heed 
These wounds ! — Yet thee to leave is death, is 

death indeed. 

" ' Clasp me a little longer, on the brink 

Of fate ! while -I can feel thy dear caress; 

And, when this heart hath ceas'd to beat — oh! think, 

And let it mitigate thy woe's excess, 

That thou hast been to me all tenderness, 

And friend to more than human friendship just. 

Oh ! by that retrospect of happiness, 

And by the hopes of an immortal trust, [dust ! 

God shall assuage thy pangs — when I am laid in 

" ' Go, Henry, go not back, when I depart ! 

The scene thy bursting tears too deep will move, 

Where my dear father took thee to his heart, 

And Gertrude thought it ecstasy to rove 

With thee, as with an angel, through the grove 

Of peace — imagining her lot was cast 

In heav'n ! for ours was not like earthly love ! 

And must this parting be our very last ? [past. — 

No ! I shall love thee still, when death itself is 

u ' Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth — 
And thee, more lov'd than aught beneath the sun! 
Could I have hv'd to smile but on the birth 
Of one dear pledge ! — But shall there then be none, 



In future times — no gentle little one, 

To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me ! 

Yet seems it, ev'n while life's last pulses run, 

A sweetness in the cup of death to be, 

Lord of my bosom's love ! to die beholding thee !' 

"Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips', but still their 

bland 
And beautiful expression seem'd to melt 
With love that could not die ! and still his hand 
She presses to the heart no more that felt. 
Ah heart ! where once each fond affection dwelt, 
And features yet that spoke a soul more fair !" 

pp. 64—68. 

The funeral is hurried over with pathetic 
brevity; and the desolate and all-enduring 
Indian brought in again with peculiar beauty. 

"Touch'd by the music, and the melting scene, 
Was scarce one tearless eye amidst the crowd ; — 
Stern warriors, resting on their swords, were seen 
To veil their eyes, as pass'd each much-lov'd 

shroud — 
While woman's softer soul in woe dissolv'd aloud. 

" Then mournfully the parting bugle bid 
Its farewell o'er the grave of worth and truth. 
Prone to the dust, afflicted Waldegrave hid 
His face on earth ? — Him watch'd in gloomy ruth, 
His woodland guide ; but words had none to sooth 
The grief that knew not consolation's name ! 
Casting his Indian mantle o'er the youth, 
He watch'd beneath its folds, each burst that came 
Convulsive, ague-like, across his shuddering frame!" 

p. 69. 

After some time spent in this mute and 
awful pause, this stern and heart-struck com- 
forter breaks out into the following touching 
and energetic address, with which the poem 
closes, with great spirit and abruptness : — 

" ' And / could weep ;' — th' Oneyda chief 

His descant wildly thus began : ' 

' But that I may not stain with grief 

The death-song of my father's son ! 

Or bow his head in woe ; 

For by my wrongs, and by my wrath ! 

To-morrow Areouski's breath 

(That fires yon heaven with storms of death) 

Shall light us to the foe: 

And we shall share, my Christian boy ! 
. The foeman's blood, the avenger's joy !— 

" ' But thee, my flow'r ! whose breath was giv'n 
By milder genii o'er the deep, 
The spirits of the white man's heav'n 
Forbid not thee to weep ! — 
Nor will the Christian host, 
Nor will thy father's spirit grieve 
To see thee, on the battle's eve, 
Lamenting take a mournful leave 
Of her who lov'd thee most : 
She was the rainbow to thy sight ! 
Thy sun — thy heav'n — of lost delight ! — 

" ' To-morrow let us do or die ! 
But when the bolt of death is hurl'd, 
Ah ! whither then with thee to fly, 
Shall Outalissa roam the world ? 
Seek we thy once-lov'd home ? — 
The hand is gone that cropt its flowers ! 
Unheard their clock repeats its hours . — 
Cold is the hearth within their bow'rs ! — 
And should we thither roam, 
Its echoes, and its empty tread, 
Would sound like voices from the dead ! 

" ' But hark, the trump ! — to-morrow thou 
In glory's fires shalt dry thy tears: 
Ev'n from the land of shadows now 
My father's awful ghost appears, 
Amidst the clouds that round us roll ! 



CAMPBELL'S GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. 



m 



[ffi bids my sou! for battle thirst — 

lie bids me dry I lie lasi — :he first — 

The only tears thai ever burst — 

From « utalissi's soul ! — 

Be'-a'ise I may not s'ain with rrrief 

'J he deaih-song of an Indian chief!' " — pp. 70-73. 

It is needless, after these extracts, to en- 
large upon the beauties of this poem. They 
consist chiefly in the feeling and tenderness 
of the whole delineation, and the taste and 
delicacy with which all the subordinate parts 
are made to contribute to the general effect. 
Before dismissing it, however, we must say a 
little of its faults, which are sufficiently ob- 
vious and undeniable. In the first place, the 
narrative is extremely obscure and imperfect; 
and has greater blanks in it than could be 
tolerated even in lyric poetry. We hear ab- 
solutely nothing of Henry, from the day the 
Indian first brings him from the back country, 
till hs returns from Europe fifteen years there- 
after. It is likewise a great oversight in Mr. 
Campbell to separate his lovers, when only 
twelve years of age — a period at which it is 
utterly inconceivable that any permanent at- 
tachment could have been formed. The 
greatest fault, however, of the work, is the 
occasional constraint and obscurity of the dic- 
tion, proceeding apparently from too laborious 
an effort at emphasis or condensation. The 
metal seems in several places to have been 
eo much overworked, as to have lost not only 
its ductility, but its lustre: and, while there 
are passages which can scarcely be at all un- 
derstood after the most careful consideration, 
there are others which have an air so elaborate 
and artificial, as to destroy all appearance of 
nature in the sentiment. Our readers may 
have remarked something of this sort, in the 
first extracts with which we have presented 
them ; but there are specimens still more ex- 
ceptionable. In order to inform us that Albert 
had lost his wife, Mr. Campbell is pleased to 
say, that 



" Fare had reft his mutual heart ;' 



and in order to tell us something else — though 
what, we are utterly unable to conjecture — 
he concludes a stanza on the delights of mu- 
tual love, with these three lines : — 

" ' Roll on, ye days of raptur'd influence, shine ? 
Nor, blind with ecstasy's celestial fire, [pire.' " 
Shall love behold the spark of earth-born time ex- 

The whole twenty-second stanza of the first 
part is extremely incorrect ; and the three 
concluding lines are almost unintelligible. 

" • But where was I when Waldegrave was no 

more ? 
And thou didst pale thy gentle head extend, 
In woes, that ev'n the tribe of deserts was thy 

friend!'" 

If Mr. Campbell had duly considered the 
primary necessity of perspicuity — especially 
in compositions which aim only at pleasing— 
we are persuaded that he would never have 
left these and some other passages in so very 
questionable a state. There is still a good 
deal for him to do, indeed, in a new edition : 
and working — as he mu6t work — in the true 
45 



spirit and pattern of what is before him, wo 
hope he will yet be induced to make consider- 
able additions to a work, which will please 
those most who are most worthy to be pleased ; 
and always seem most beautiful to those who 
give it the greatest share of their attention. 

Of the smaller pieces which fill up the vol- 
ume, we have scarce left ourselves room to 
say any thing. The greater part of them have 
been printed before; and there are probably 
few readers of English poetry who are not al- 
ready familiar with the Lochiel and the Ho- 
hinlinden — the one by far the most spirited 
and poetical denunciation of coming woe, 
since the days of Cassandra; the other the 
only representation of a modern battle, which 
possesses either interest or sublimity. The 
song to Cl the Mariners of England," is also 
very generally known. It is a splendid in- 
stance of the most magnificent diction adapted 
to a familiar and even trivial metre. Nothing 
can be finer than the first and the last stanzas. 

" Ye mariners of England ! 
That guard our native seas ; 
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, 
The battle, and the breeze ! 
Your glorious standard launch again 
To match another foe ! 
And sweep through the deep," &c. — p. 101. 

" The meteor flag of England 
Shall yet terrific burn ; 
Till danger's troubled night depart, 
And the star of peace return. 
Then, then, ye ocean warriors ! 
Our song and feast shall flow 
To the fame of your name, 
When the storm has ceas'd to blow ; 
When the fierv fight is heard no more, 
And the storm has ceas'd to blow." — pp. 103, 101. 

" The Battle of the Baltic," though we think 
it has been printed before, is much less known . 
Though written in a strange, and we think an 
unfortunate metre, it has great force and 
grandeur, both of conception and expression — 
that sort of force and grandeur which results 
from the simple and concise expression of 
great events and natural emotions, altogether 
unassisted by any splendour or amplification 
of expression. The characteristic merit, in- 
deed, both of this piece and of Hohinlinden, 
is, that, by the forcible delineation of one or 
two great circumstances, they give a clear 
and most energetic representation of events 
as complicated as they are impressive— and 
thus impress the mind of the reader with all 
the terror and sublimity of the subject, while 
they rescue him from the fatigue and perplex- 
ity of its details. Nothing in our judgment 
can be more impressive than the following 
very short and simple description of the British 
fleet bearing op to close action : 

" As they drifted on their path, 
There was silence deep as death ! 
And the boldest held his breath 
For a time. — "—p. 109. 

The description of the battle itself (though it 
begins with a tremendous line) is in the same 
spirit of homely sublimity : and worth a thou- 
sand stanzas of thunderj shrieks, shouts, tri- 
dents, aud heroes. 

2x2 



354 



POETRY. 



" ' Hearts of oak,' our captains cried ! when 
From its adamantine lips [each gun 

Spread a death-shade round the ships] 
Like the hurricane eclipse 
Of the sun. — 

" Again ! again! again! 
And the havoc did not slack, 
Till a feebler cheer the Dane 
To our cheering sent us back ; — 
Their shots along the deep slowly boom : — 
Then cease ! — and all is wail, 
As they strike the shatter'd sail ; 
Or, in conflagration pale, 
Light the gloom. — " 

There are two little ballad pieces, published 
for the first time, in this collection, which 
have both very considerable merit, and afford 
a favourable specimen of Mr. Campbell's 
powers in this new line of exertion. The 
longest is the most beautiful ; but w T e give our 
readers the shortest, because we can give it 
entire. 

" O heard ye yon pibrach sound sad in the gale, 
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail? 
'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear; 
And her sire, and the people, are called to her bier. 

" Glenara came first with the mourners and shroud ; 
Her kinsmen they follow'd, but mourn'd not aloud : 
Their plaids all their bosoms were folded around : 
They march'd all in silence — they look'd on the 
ground. 

" In silence they reach'd over mountain and moor. 
To a heath, where the oak-tree grew lonely and 

hoar; 
Now here let us place the grey stone of her cairn : 
* Why speak ye no word V — said Glenara the stern. 

" ■ And tell me, I charge you ! ye clan of my spouse, 
Why fold you your mantles, why cloud ye your 

brows ?' 
So spake the rude chieftain : — no answer is made, 
But each mantle unfolding, a dagger display'd. 

" 'I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud,' 
Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and 

loud ; 
' And empty that shroud, and that coffin did seem ; 
Glenara ! Glenara ! now read me my dream !' 

*' O ! pale grew the cheek of that chieftain. I ween, 
When the shroud was unclos'd, and no lady was 
seen : 



When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in 

scorn, 
'Twas the youth who had lov'd the fair Ellen of 

Lorn : 

" * I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief, 
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief; 
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem ; 
Glenara ! Glenara ! now read me my dream !' " 

"In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground, 
And the desert reveal'd where his lady was found ; 
From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne, 
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn !" 

pp. 105—107. 

We close this volume, on the whole, with 
feelings of regret for its shortness, and of ad- 
miration for the genius of its author. There 
are but two noble sorts of poetry — the pathetic 
and the sublime ; and we think he has given 
very extraordinary proofs of his talents for 
both. There is something, too, we will ven- 
ture to add, in the style of many of his con- 
ceptions, which irresistibly impresses us with 
the conviction, that he can do much greater 
things than he has hitherto accomplished; 
and leads us to regard him, even yet, as a 
poet of still greater promise than performance. 
It seems to us, as if the natural force and 
boldness of his ideas were habitually checked 
by a certain fastidious timidity, and an anxi- 
ety about the minor graces of correct and 
chastened composition. Certain it is, at least, 
that his greatest and most lofty flights have 
been made in those smaller pieces, about 
which, it is natural to think, he must have 
felt least solicitude; and that he has suc- 
ceeded most splendidly where he must have 
been most free from the fear of failure. We 
wish any praises or exhortations of ours had 
the power to give him confidence in his own 
great talents ; and hope earnestly, that he will 
now meet with such encouragement, as may 
set him above all restraints that proceed from 
apprehension; and induce him to give free 
scope to that genius, of which we are per- 
suaded that the world has hitherto seen rather 
the arrace than the richness. 



( Janttara, 1825.) 

Theodric, a Domestic Tale: with otlier Poems. By Thomas Campbell. 12mo. pp. 150. 

London: 1824. 



If Mr. Campbell's poetry was of a kind 
that could be forgotten, his long fits of silence 
would put him fairly in the way of that mis- 
fortune. But, in truth, he is safe enough; — 
and has even acquired, by virtue of his ex- 
emplary laziness, an assurance and pledge of 
immortality which he could scarcely have 
obtained without it. A writer who is still 
fresh in the mind and favour of the public, 
after twenty years' intermission, may reason- 
ably expect to be remembered when 'death 
shall have finally sealed up the fountains of 
his inspiration ; imposed silence on the cavils 
of envious rivals, and enhanced the value of 



I those relics to which it excludes the possi- 
bility of any future addition. At all events, 

I he has better proof of the permanent interest 
the public take in his productions, than those 
ever can have who are more diligent in their 
multiplication, and keep themselves in the 
recollection of their great patron by more he- 

I quent intimations of their existence. The 
experiment, too, though not without its haz- 
ards, is advantageous in another respect : — for 
the re-appearance of such an author, after 
those long periods of occupation, is naturally 
hailed as a novelty — and he receives the 
double welcome, of a celebrated stranger, and 



CAMPBELL'S THEODitiC. 



355 



a remembered friend. There is, accordingly, 
no living poet, we believe, whose advertise- 
ment excites greater expectation than Mr. 
Campbell's: — and a new poem from him is 
waited for with even more eagerness (as it is 
certainly for a much longer time) than a new- 
novel from the author of Waverley. Like all 
other human felicitiss, however, this high ex- 
pectation and prepared homage has its draw- 
backs and its dangers. A popular author, as 
we have been led to remark on former occa- 
sions, has no rival so formidable as his former 
6elf — and no comparison to sustain half so 
dangerous as that which is always made be- 
tween the average merit of his new work, and 
the remembered beauties — for little else is 
ever remembered — of his old ones. 

How this comparison will result in the 
present instance, we do not presume to pre- 
dict with confidence — but we doubt whether 
it will be, at least in the beginning, altogether 
in favour of the volume before us. The 
poems of this author, indeed, are generally 
more admired the more they are studied, and 
rise in our estimation in proportion as they 
become familiar. Their novelty, therefore, is 
always rather an obstruction than a help to 
their popularity; — and it may well be ques- 
tioned, whether there be any thing in the 
novelties now before us that can rival in our 
affections the long-remembered beauties of 
the Pleasures of Hope — of Gertrude — of 
O'Connor's Child — the Song of Linden — The 
Mariners of England— »and the many other 
enchanting melodies that are ever present to 
the minds of all lovers of poetry. 

The leading piece in the present volume is 
an attempt at a very difficult kind of poetry ; 
and one in which the most complete success 
can hardly ever be so splendid and striking as 
to make amends for the difficulty. It is en- 
titled "a Domestic Story" — and it is so; — 
turning upon few incidents — embracing few 
characters — dealing in no marvels and no 
terrors — displaying no stormy passions. With- 
out complication of plot, in short, or hurry of 
action — with no atrocities to shudder at", or 
feats of noble daring to stir the spirits of the 
ambitious — it passes quietly on, through the 
shaded paths of private life, conversing with 
gentle natures and patient sufferings — and un- 
folding, with serene pity and sober triumph, 
the pangs which are fated at times to wring 
the breast of innocence and generosity, and 
the courage and comfort which generosity and 
innocence can never fail to bestow. The 
taste and the feeling which led to the selec- 
tion of such topics, could not but impress their 
character on the style in which they are 
treated. It is distinguished accordingly by a 
fine and tender finish, both of thought and of 
diction — by a chastened elegance of words 
and images — a mild dignity and tempered 
pathos in the sentiments, and a general tone 
of simplicity and directness in the conduct of 
the story, which, joined to its great brevity, 
tends at first perhaps to disguise both the 
richness and the force of the genius required 
for its production. But though not calculated 
to strike at once on the dull palled car cf an 



idle and occupied world, it is of all others 
pei haps the kind of poetry best fitted to win 
on our softer hours, and to sink deep into va 
cant bosoms — unlocking all the sources of 
fond recollection, and leading us gently on 
through the mazes of deep and" engrossing 
meditation — and thus ministering to a deeper 
enchantment and more lastmg delight than 
can ever be inspired by the more importunate 
strains of more ambitious authors. 

There are no doubt peculiar and perhaps 
insuperable difficulties in the management of 
themes so delicate, and requiring so fine and 
so restrained a hand — nor are we prepared to 
say that Mr. Campbell has on this occasion 
entirely escaped them. There are passages 
that are somewhat fade : — there are expres- 
sions that are trivial: — But the prevailing- 
character is sweetness and beauty; and it 
prevails over all that is opposed to it. The 
story, though abundantly simple, as our read- 
ers will immediately see, has two distinct 
compartments — one relating to the Swiss 
maiden, the other to the English wife. The 
former, with all its accompaniments, we think 
nearly perfect. It is full of tenderness, purity, 
and pity ; and finished with the most exquisite 
elegance, in few and simple touches. The 
other, which is the least considerable, has 
more decided blemishes. The diction is in 
many places too 'familiar, and the incidents 
too common — and the cause of distress has 
the double misfortune of being unpoetical in 
its nature, and improbable in its result. But 
the shortest way is to give our readers a slight 
account of the poem, with such specimens as 
may enable them to judge fairly of it for 
themselves. 

It opens, poetically, with the description 
of a fine scene in Switzerland, and of a rustic 
church-yard ; where the friend of the author 
points out to him the flowery grave of a 
maiden, who, though gentle and fair, had died 
of unrequited love : — and so they proceed, be- 
tween them, for the matter is left poetically 
obscure, to her history. Her fancy had been 
early captivated by the tales of heroic daring 
and chivalric pride, with which her country's 
annals abounded — and she disdained to give 
her love to any one who was not graced with 
the virtues and glories of those heroic times 
This exalted mood was unluckily fostered by 
her brother's youthful ardour in praise of the 
commander under whom he was serving 
abroad — by whom he was kindly tended when 
wounded, and whose picture he" brought back 
with him on his return to his paternal home, 
to renew, and seemingly to realize, the day- 
dreams of his romantic sister. This picture, 
and the stories her brother told of the noble 
Theodric. completed the poor girl's fascina- 
tion. Her heart was kindled by her fancy; 
and her love was already fixed on a being she 
had never seen ! In the mean time, Theodric, 
who had promised a visit to his young protege, 
passes over to England, and is betrothed to a 
lady of that country of infinite worth nr:d 
amiableness. He then repairs to Switzerland, 
where, after a little time, he discovers lie 
love of Julia, which he gently, but fi»mly n> 



356 



POETRY. 



bukes- returns to England, and is married. 
His wife has uncomfortable relations — quarrel- 
some, selfish, and envious ) and her peace is 
sometimes wounded by their dissensions and 
unkindness. War breaks out anew, too, in 
Theodric's country; and as he is meditating 
a journey to that quarter, he is surprised by a 
visit from Julians brother, who informs him, 
that, after a long struggle with her cherished 
love, her health had at last sunk under it, and 
that she now prayed only to see him once 
more before she died ! His wife generously 
urges him to comply with this piteous request. 
He does so ; and arrives, in the midst of wintry 
tempests, to see this pure victim of too warm 
an imagination expire, in smiles of speechless 
gratitude and love. While mourning over 
her. he is appalled by tidings of the dangerous 
illness of his beloved Constance — hurries to 
England — and finds her dead ! — her fate hav- 
ing been precipitated, if not occasioned, by 
the harsh and violent treatment she had met 
with from her heartless relations. The piece 
closes with a very touching letter she had left 
for her husband — and an account of its sooth- 
ing effects on his mind. 

This, we confess, is slight enough, in the 
way of fable and incident: But it is not in 
those things that the merit of such poems 
consists ) and what we have given is of course 
a mere naked outline, or argument rather, 
intended only to explain and connect our 
extracts. 

For these, we cannot possibly do better 
than begin with the beginning. 

" 'Twas sunset, and the Ranz des Vaches was sung, 
And lights were o'er th' Helvetian mountains flung, 
That gave the glacier tops their richest glow, 
And ting'd the lakes like molten gold below. 
Warmth flush'd the wonted regions of the storm, 
Where, Phcenix-like, you saw the eagle's form, 
That high in Heav'ns vermilion wheel'd and soar'd ! 
Woods nearer frown'd; and cataracts dash'd and 

roar'd, 
From heights brouzed by the bounding bouquetin ; 
Herds tinkling roam'd the long-drawn vales be- 
tween, [green. 
And hamlets glitter'd white, and gardens flourish' d 
'Twas transport to inhale the bright sweet air! 
The mountain-bee was revelling in its glare, 
And roving with his minstrelsy across 
The scented wild weeds, and enamell'd moss. 
Earth's features so harmoniously were link'd, 
She seem'd one great glad form, with life instinct, 
That felt Heav'n's ardent breath, and smil'd below 
Its flush of love with consentaneous glow. 
A Gothic church was near ; the spot around 
Was beautiful, ev'n though sepulchral ground ; 
For there nor yew nor cypress spread their gloom, 
But roses blossom'd by each rustic tomb. 
Amidst them one of spotless marble shone — 
A maiden's grave — and 'twas inscrib'd thereon, 
That young and lov'd she died whose dust was 

there : 
" ' Yes,' said my comrade, ' young she died, and 

fair! 
Grace form'd her, and the soul of gladness play'd 
Once in the blue eyes of that mountain-maid ! 
Her fingers witch'd the chords they passed along, 
And her lips seem'd to kiss the soul in song: 
Yet woo'd and worshipp'd as she was, till lew 
Aspir'd to hope, 'twas sadly, strangely true. 
That heart, the martyr ofits fondness burn'd 
And died of love that could not be return'd. 

44 ' Her father dwelt where yonder Castle shines 



O'er clust'ring trees and terrace-mantling vines. 
As gay as ever, the laburnum's pride [glide*- 

Waves o'er each walk where she was wont to 
And still the garden whence she «rac'd her brow, 
As lovely blooms, though trode by strangers now. 
How oft from yonder window o'er the lake, 
Her song, of wild Helvetian swell and shake, 
Has made the rudest fisher bend his ear, 
And rest enchanted on his oar to hear! 
Thus bright, accomplish'd, spirited, and bland, 
Well-born, and wealthy for that simple land, 
Why had no gallant native youth the art 
To win so warm — so exquisite a heart ? 
She, midst these rocks inspir'd with feeling strong 
By mountain-freedom — music — fancy — song, 
Herself descended from the brave in arms, 
And conscious of romance-inspirjng charms, 
Dreamt of Heroic beings; hoped to find 
Some extant spirit of chivalric kind ; 
And scorning wealth, look'd cold ev'n on the claim 
Of manly worth, that lack'd the wreath of Fame.' " 

pp. 3—7. 

We pass over the animated picture of the 
brother's campaigns, and of the fame of Theo- 
dric, and the affectionate gratitude of parents 
and sister for his care and praises of their 
noble boy. We must make room, however, 
for this beautiful sketch of his return. 

" In time, the stripling, vigorous and heal'd, 
Resum'd his barb and banner in the field, 
And bore himself right soldier-like, till now 
The third campaign had manlier bronz'd his brow ; 
When peace, though but a scanty pause for breath— 
A curtain-drop between the acts of death — 
A check in frantic war's unfinished game, 
Yet dearly bought, and direly welcome, came. 
The camp broke up, and Udolph left his chief 
As with a son's or younger brother's grief: 
But journeying home, how rapt his spirits rose! 
How light his footsteps crush'd St. Gothard's snows ! 
How dear seem'd ev'n the waste and wild Shreck- 

horn, 
Though wrapt in clouds, and frowning as in scorn, 
Upon a downward world of pastoral charms ; 
Where, by the very smell of dairy-farms, 
And fragrance from the mountain-herbage blown, 
Blindfold his native hills he could have known ! 

" His coming down yon lake — his boat in view 
Of windows where love's flutt'ring kerchief flew— 
The arms spread out for him — the tears that burst — 
('Twas Julia's, 'twas his sister's met him first :) 
Their pride to see war's medal at his breast, 
And all their rapture's greeting, may be guess'd." 

pp. 12, 13. 

At last the generous warrior appears in per- 
son among those innocent beings, to whom he 
had so long furnished the grand theme of dis- 
course and meditation. 

" The boy was half beside himself — the sire, 
All frankness, honour, and Helvetian fire, 
Of speedy parting would not hear him speak ; 
And tears bedew'd and brighten'd Julia's cheek. 

" Thus, loth to wound their hospitable pride, 
A month he promis'd with them to abide ; 
As blithe he trod the mountain-sward as they, 
And felt his joy make ev'n the young more gay 
How jocund was their breakfast parlour, fann'd 
By yon blue water's breath ! — their walks how 

bland! 
Fair Julia seem'd her brother's soften'd sprite — 
A gem reflecting Nature's purest light — 
And with her graceful wit there was inwrought 
A wildly sweet unworldliness of thought, 
That almost child-like to his kindness drew, 
And twain with Udolph in his friendship grew. 
Bur did his thoughts to love" one moment range? — 
No! he who had lov'd Constance could not change! 
Besides, till grief betray'd her undesign'd, 



CAMPBELL'S THEODRIC. 



357 



Th' unlikely thought could scarcely reach his mind, 
That eyes so young on years like his should beam 
TJuwoo'd devotion back for pure esteem." 

pp. 17, 18. 

Symptoms still more unequivocal, however, 
at last make explanations necessary • and he 
is obliged to disclose to her the secret of his 
love and engagement in England. The effects 
of this disclosure, and all the intermediate 
events, are described with the same grace 
and delicacy. But we pass at once to the 
close of poor Julia's pure-hearted romance. 

" That winter's eve how darkly Nature's brow 
Scowl'd on the scenes it lights so lovely now ! 
The tempest, raging o'er the realms of ice, 
Shook fragments from the rifted precipice ; 
And whilst their falling echoed to the wind, 
The wolf's long howl in dismal discord join'd, 
While white yon water's loam was rais'd in clouds 
That whirl'd like spirits wailing in their shrouds : 
Without was Nature's elemental din — 
And Beauty died, and Friendship wept within ! 

11 Sweet Julia, though her fate was finish'd half, 
Still knew him — smil'd on him with feeble laugh — 
And blest him, till she drew her latest sigh ! 

" But lo ! while Udolph's bursts of agony, 
And age's tremulous wailings, round him rose, 
What accents pierced him deeper yet than those ! 
'Twas tidings — by his English messenger 
Of Constance — brief and terrible they were," &c. 

pp. 35, 36. 

These must suffice as specimens of the 
Swiss part of the poem, which we have al- 
ready said we consider as on the whole the 
most perfect. The English portion is un- 
doubtedly liable to the imputation of being 
occupied with scenes too familiar, and events 
too trivial, to admit of the higher embellish- 
ments of poetry. The occasion of Theodric's 
first seeing Constance — in the streets of Lon- 
don on a night of public rejoicing — certainly 
trespasses on the borders of this wilful stoop- 
ing of the Muses' flight — though the scene 
itself is described with great force and beauty. 

" 'Twas a glorious sight ! 
At eve stupendous London, clad in light, 
Pour'd out triumphant multitudes to gaze ; 
STouth. age, wealth, penury, smiling in the blaze! 
Th' illumin'd atmosphere was warm and bland, 
A.nd Beauty's groups the fairest of the land, 
Conspicuous, as in some wide festive room, 
In open chariots pass'd, with pearl and plume. 
\midst them he remark'd a lovelier mien," &c. 

p. 15. 

The description of Constance herself, how- 
ever, is not liable to this, or to any other ob- 
jection. 

" And to know her well 

Prolong'd, exalted, bound, enchantment's spell ; 
For with affections warm, intense, refin'd, 
She mix'd such calm and holy strength of mind, 
That, like Heav'n's image in the smiling brook, 
Celestial peace was pictur'd in her look, 
^fers was the brow, in trials unperplex'd, 
That cheer'd the sad and tranquilliz'd the vex'd. 
She studied not the meanest to eclipse, 
And yet the wisest listen'd to her lips ; 
Ske sang not, knew not Music's magic skill, 
But yet her voice had tones that sway'd the will." 

p. 16. 
" To paint that being to a grov'ling mind 
Were like pourtraying pictures to the blind. 
'Twas needful ev'n infectiously to feel 
tier temper's fond, and firm, and gladsome zeal, 



To share existence with her, and to gain 
Sparks from her love's electrifying ch.nin, 
Of that pure pride, which, less'ning to her breast 
Life's ills, gave all its joys a treble zest, 
Before the mind completely understood 
That mighty truth — how happy are the good !" 

p. 25. 

All this, we think, is dignified enough for 
poetry of any description ; but we really can- 
not extend the same indulgence to the small 
tracassaries of this noble creature's unworthy 
relations — their peevish quarrels, and her 
painful attempts to reconcile them — her hus- 
band's grudges at her absence on those er- 
rands — their teazing visits to him — and his 
vexation at their false reports that she was to 
spend " yet a fortnight " away from him. We 
object equally to the substance and the dic- 
tion of the passages to which we now refer. 
There is something questionable even in the 
fatal indications by which, on approaching 
his home, he was first made aware of the 
calamity which had befallen him — though 
undoubtedly there is a terrible truth and im- 
pressive brevity in the passage. 

" Nor hope left utterly his breast, 
Till reaching home, terrific omen ! there 
The straw-laid street preluded his despair — 
The servant's look-^the table that reveal'd 
His letter sent to Constance last, still seal'd, 
Though speech and hearing left him, told too clear 
That he had now to suffer — not to fear !" — p. 37. 

We shall only add the pathetic letter in 
which this noble spirit sought, from her death- 
bed, to soothe the beloved husband she was 
leaving with so much reluctance. 

" ' Theodric ! this is destiny above 
Our power to baffle ! Bear it then, my love ! 
Your soul, I know, as firm is knit to mine 
As these clasp'd hands in blessing you now join : 
Shape not imagin'd horrors in my fate — 
Ev'n now my suff' rings are not very great ; 
And when your grief's first transports shall sub- 
T call upon your strength of soul and pride [side, 
To pay my memory, if 'tis worth the debt 
Love's glorifying tribute — not forlorn regret : 
I charge my name with power to conjure up 
Reflection's balmy, not its bitter cup. 
My pard'ning angel, at the gates of Heaven, 
Shall look not more regard than you have given 
To me: and our life's union has been clad 
In smiles of bliss as sweet as life e'er had. 
Shall gloom be from such bright remembrance castf 
Shall bitterness outflow from sweetness past ? 
No ! imaged in the sanctuary of your breast, 
There let me smile, amidst high thoughts at rest; 
And let contentment on your spirit shine, 
As if its peace were still a part. of mine : 
For if you war not proudly with your pain, 
For yoiul shall have worse than liv'd in vain. 
But I conjure your manliness to bear 
My loss with noble spirit — not despair: 
I ask you by our love to promise this ! 
And kiss these words, where I have left a kiss — 
The latest from my living lips for yours?' " 

pp. 39—41. 

The tone of this tender farewell must re- 
mind all our readers of the catastrophe of 
Gertrude ; and certainly exposes the author to 
the charge of some poverty of invention in 
the structure of his pathetic narratives — a 
charge from which we are not at this moment 
particularly solicitous to defend him. 

The minor poems which occupy the rest .*f 



i>58 



POETRY. 



the volume are of various character, and of 
course of unequal merit ; though all of them 
are marked by that exquisite melody of ver- 
sification, and general felicity of diction, 
which makes the mere recitation of their 
words a luxury to readers of taste, even when 
they pay but little attention to their sense. 
Most of them, we believe, have already ap- 
peared in occasional publications, though it is 
quite time that they should be collected and 
engrossed in a less perishable record. If 
they r are less brilliant, on the whole, than the 
most exquisite productions of the author's 
earlier days, they are generally marked, we 
think, by greater solemnity and depth of 
thought, a vein of deeper reflection, and more 
intense sympathy with human feelings, and, 
if possible, by a more resolute and entire de- 
votion to the cause of liberty. Mr. Campbell, 
we rejoice to say, is not among those poets 
whose hatred of oppression has been chilled 
by the lapse of years, or allayed by the sug- 
gestions of a base self-interest. He has held 
on his course through good and through bad 
report, unseduced, unterrified ; and is now 
found in his duty, testifying as fearlessly 
against the invaders of Spain, in the volume 
before us, as he did against the spoilers of 
Poland in the very first of his publications. It 
is a proud thing indeed for England, for poetry, 
and for mankind, that all the illustrious poets 
of the present day — Byron, Moore, Kogers, 
Campbell — are distinguished by their zeal for 
freedom, and their scorn for courtly adula- 
tion; while those who have deserted that 
manly and holy cause have, from that hour, 
felt their inspiration withdrawn, their harp- 
strings broken, and the fire quenched in their 
censers ! Even the Laureate, since his un- 
happy Vision of Judgment, has ceased to 
sing; and fallen into undutiful as well as 
ignoble silence, even on court festivals. As 
a specimen of the tone in which an unbought 
Muse can yet address herself to public 
themes, we subjoin a few stanzas of a noble 
ode to the Memory of the Spanish Patriots 
who died in resisting the late atrocious inva- 
sion. 

" Brave men who at the Trocadero fell 
Beside your cannons — conquer' d not, though slain ! 
There is a victory in dying well 
For Freedom — and ye have not died in vain ; 
For come what may, there shall be hearts in Spain 
To honour, ay, embrace your martyr'd lot. 
Cursing the Bigot's and the Bourbon's chain, 
And looking on your graves, though trophied not. 
As holier, hallow'd ground than priests could make 
the spot !" * 

" Yet laugh not in your carnival of crime 
Too proudly, ye oppressors ! — Spain was free ; 
Her soil has felt the foot-prints, and her clime 
Been winnow'd by the wings of Liberty ! 
And these, even parting, scatter as they flee 
Thoughts — influences, to live in hearts unborn, 
Opinions that shall wrench the prison-key 
From Persecution — show her mask off-torn. 
And tramp her bloated head beneath the foot of 
Scorn. 

*' Glory to them that die in this great cause ! 
Kines, Bigots, can inflict no brand of shame. 
Or shape of death, to shroud them from applause: — 
N"o ' — manglers of the martyr's earthly frame ! 



Your hangman finders cannot touch his fame. 
Still in your prostrate land there shall tie some 
Proud hearts, the shrines of Freedom's vestal flame. 
Long trains of ill may pass unheeded, dumb, 
But Vengeance is behind, and Justice is to come. ' 

pp. 73—81. 

Mr. Campbell's muse, however, is by no 
means habitually political; and the greater 
part of the pieces in this volume have a purely 
moral or poetical character. The exquisite 
stanzas to the Rainbow, we believe, are in 
every body's hands j but we cannot resist the 
temptation of transcribing the latter part of 
them. 

" When o'er the green undelug'd earth 
Heaven's covenant thou didst shine, 
How came the world's grey fathers forth 
To watch thy sacred sign ? 

14 And when its yellow lustre smil'd 

O'er mountains yet untrod. 

Each mother held aloft her child 

To bless the bow of God ! 

" Methinks, thy jubilee to keep, 
The first-made anthem rang, 
On earth deliver'd from the deep, 
And the first poet sang. 

*' Nor ever shall the Muse's eye 
Unraptur'd greet thy beam : 
Theme of primeval prophecy, 
Be still the poet's theme ! 

" The earth to thee her incense yields, 
The lark thy welcome sings, 
When glitt'ring in the freshen'd fields 
The snowy mushroom springs ! 

" How glorious is thy girdle cast 
O'er mountain, tower, and town, 
Or mirror'd in the ocean vast, 
A thousand fathoms down ! 

11 As fresh in yon horizon dark, 
As young thy beauties seem, 
As when the eagle from the ark 
First sported in thy beam. 

" For, faithful to its sacred page, 
Heaven still rebuilds thy span, 
Nor letsthy type grow pale with age 
That first spoke peace to man." 

pp. 52—55. 

The beautiful verses on Mr. Kemble's re- 
tirement from the stage afford a very re- 
markable illustration of the tendency of Mr. 
Campbell's genius to raise ordinary themes 
into occasions of pathetic poetry, and to invest 
trivial occurrences with the mantle of solemn 
thought. We add a few of the stanzas. 

" His was the spell o'er hearts 

Which only acting lends — 
The youngest of the sister Arts, 

Where all their beauty blends : 
For ill can Poetry express, 

Full many a tone of thought sublime, 
And Painting, mute and motionless, 

Steals but a glance of time. 
But by the mighty Actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come — 
Verse ceases to be airy thought, 

And Sculpture to be dumb." 

" High were the task — too high, 
Ye conscious bosoms here ! 
In words to paint your memory 
Of Kemble and of Lear ! 
But who forgets that white discrowned head, 
Those bursts of Reason's half-extinguish' d glare; 



SCOTT'S LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, 



359 



Those tenro upon Cordelia's bosom shed, 
In doubt more touching than deep air, 
If 'twas reality he felt ?" 

" And there was many an hour 

Of blended kindred fame, 
When Siddons's auxiliar power 

And sister magic came. 
Together at the Muse's side 

The tragic paragons had grown — 
They were the children oi her pride, 

'i he columns of her throne ! 
An i undivided favour ran 

From heart to heart in their applause, 
Save for the gallantry of man, 

In lovelier woman's cause." — pp. 64 — 67. 

We have great difficulty in resisting the 
temptation to go on : But in conscience we 
must stop here. We are ashamed, indeed, 
to think how considerable a proportion of this 
little volume we have already transferred into 
our extracts. Nor have we much to say of 
the poems we have not extracted. " The 
Ritter Bann" and "Reullura" are the two 
longest pieces, after Theodric — but we think 
not the most successful. Some of the songs 
are exquisite — and most of the occasional 
poems too good for occasions. 

The volume is very small — and it contains 
all that the distinguished author has written 
for many years. We regret this certainly : — 
but we do not presume to complain of it. 
The service of the Muses is a free service — 
and all that we receive from their votaries is 
a free gift, for which we are bound to them 
in gratitude — not a tribute, for the tardy 
rendering of which they are to be threatened 
or distrained. They stand to the public in 
the relation of benefactors, not of de_btors. 
They shower their largesses on unthankful 
heads* and disclaim the trammels of any 
sordid contract. They are not articled clerks, 
iti short, whom we are entitled to scold for 
their idleness, but the liberal donors of im- 
mortal possessions; for which they require 
only the easy quit-rent of our praise. If Mr. 
Campbell is lazy, therefore, he has a right to 
enjoy his laziness, unmolested by our impor- 
tunities. If, as we rather presume is the 



case, he prefer other employments to the 
feverish occupation of poetiy, he has a right 
surely to choose his employments — and is 
more likely to choose well, than the herd oi 
his officious advisers. For our own parts, 
we are ready at all times to hail his appear- 
ances with delight — but we wait for them 
with respect ancl patience ; and conceive that 
we have no title to accelerate them by our 
reproaches. 

Before concluding, we would wish also to 
protect him against another kind of injustice. 
Comparing the small bulk of his publications 
with the length of time that elapses between 
them, people are apt to wonder that so little 
has been produced after so long an incuba- 
tion, and that poems are not better which are 
the work of so many years — absurdly suppo- 
sing, that the ingenious author is actually 
labouring all the while at what he at last 
produces, and has been diligently at work 
during the whole interval in perfecting that 
which is at last discovered to fall short of 
perfection ! To those who know the habits 
of literary men. nothing however can be more 
ridiculous than this supposition. Your true 
drudges, with whom all that is intellectual 
moves most wretchedly slow, are the quickest 
and most regular with their publications ; 
while men of genius, whose thoughts play 
with the ease and rapidity of lightning, often 
seem tardy to the public, because there are 
long intervals between the flashes ! We are 
far from undervaluing that care and labour 
without which no finished performance can 
ever be produced by mortals ; and still farther 
from thinking it a reproach to any author, 
that he takes pains to render his works worthy 
of his fame. But when the slowness and the 
size of his publications are invidiously put 
together in order to depreciate their merits, 
or to raise a doubt as to the force of the ge- 
nius that produced them, we think it right to 
enter our caveat against a conclusion, which 
is as rash as it is ungenerous; and indicates 
a spirit rather of detraction than of reasonable 
judgment, 



(april, 1S05.) 

The Lay of the Last Minstrel : a Poem. By Walter Scott, Esq. 4to. pp. 318. 
Constable and Co. : London, Longman and Co. : 1805.* 



Edinburgh, 



We consider this poem as an attempt to 
transfer the refinements of modern poetry to 
the matter and the manner of the ancient 

* The Novels of Sir Walter Scott have, no 
doubt, cast his Poetry into the shade: And it is 
beyond question that they must always occupy the 
highest and most conspicuous place in that splendid 
trophy wh ch his genius has reared Jo his memory. 
Yet, when I recollect the vehement admiration it 
ones excited, I cannot part wiih the belief that 
thepe is much in his poetry also, which our age 
should not allow to be forgotten. And it is under 
this impression that I now venture to reprint ray 



metrical romance. The author, enamoured 
of the lofty visions of chivalry, and partial 
to the strains in which they were formerly 

contemporary notices of the two poems which I 
think produced the greatest effect at the time : the 
one as the first and most strikingly original of the 
whole series: the other as being on the whole 
the best ; and also as having led me to make some 
remarks, not only on the general character of the 
auhor's genius, but on the peculiar perils of 
very popular poetry — of which the time that has 
since elapsed has "afforded some curious illustra- 
tions. 



360 



POETRV. 



embodied, seems to have employed all the 
resources of his genius in endeavouring to 
recall them to the favour and admiration of 
the public ; and in adapting to the taste of 
modem readers a species of poetry which 
was once the delight of the courtly, but has 
long ceased to gladden any other eyes than 
those of the scholar and the antiquary. This 
is a romance, therefore, composed by a min- 
strel of the present day: or such a romance 
as we may suppose would have been written 
in modem times, if that style of composition 
had continued to be cultivated, and partaken 
consequently of the improvements which 
every branch of literature has received since 
the time of its desertion. 

Upon this supposition, it was evidently Mr. 
Scott's business to retain all that was good, 
and to reject all that was bad in the models 
upon which he was to form himself; adding, 
at the same time, all the interest and beauty 
which could possibly be assimilated to the 
manner and spirit of his originals. It was his 
duty, therefore, to reform the rambling, ob- 
scure, and interminable narratives of trie an- 
cient romancers — to moderate their digressions 
— to abridge or retrench their unmerciful or 
needless descriptions — and to expunge alto- 
gether those feeble and prosaic passages, the 
rude stupidity of which is so apt to excite the 
derision of a modern reader. At the same 
time, he was to rival, if he could, the force and 
vivacity of their minute and varied representa- 
tions — the characteristic simplicity of their 
pictures of manners — the energy and concise- 
ness with which they frequently describe 
great events — and the lively colouring and ac- 
curate drawing by which they give the effect 
of reality to every scene they undertake to 
delineate. In executing this arduous task, he 
was permitted to avail himself of all that 
variety of style and manner which had been 
sanctioned by the ancient practice ; and bound 
to embellish his performance with all the 
graces of diction and versification which could 
be reconciled to the simplicity and familiarity 
of the minstrel's song. 

With what success Mr. Scott's efforts have 
been attended in the execution of this adven- 
turous undertaking, our readers will be better 
able to judge in the sequel : but, in the mean 
time, we may safely venture to assert, that, he 
has produced a very beautiful and entertain- 
ing poem, in a style which may fairly be con- 
sidered as original ; and which will be allowed 
to afford satisfactory evidence of the genius 
of the author, even though he should not suc- 
ceed in converting the public to his own 
opinion as to the interest or dignity of the sub- 
ject. We are ourselves inclined indeed to 
suspect that his partiality for the strains of 
antiquity has imposed a little upon the sever- 
ity of his judgment, and impaired the beauty 
of the present imitation, by directing his at- 
tention rather to what was characteristic, than 
to what was unexceptionable in his originals. 
Though he has spared too many of their faults, 
however, he has certainly improved upon 
iheir beauties: and while we can scarcely 
horn regretting, that the feuds of Border chief- 



tains should have monopolised as much p< it- 
try as might have served to immortalise the 
whole baronage of the empire, we are the 
more inclined to admire the interest and mag- 
nificence v. hi ch he has contrived to communi- 
cate to a subject so unpiomising. 

Whatever may be thought of the conduct 
of the main story, the manner of introducing 
it must be allowed to be extremely poetical. 
An aged minstrel v\ ho had u harped to King 
Charles the Good," and learned to love his ait 
at a time when it was honoured by all that 
w r as distinguished in rank or in genius, having 
fallen into neglect and misery in the evil days 
of the usurpation, and the more frivolous gaie- 
ties or bitter contentions of the succeeding 
reigns, is represented as wandering about the 
Border in poverty and solitude, a few years 
after the Revolution. In this situation he is 
driven, by want and weariness, to seek shelter 
in the Border castle of the Duchess of Buc- 
cleuch and Monmouth; and being cheered by 
the hospitality of his reception, offers to sing 
"an ancient strain," relating to the old war- 
riors of her family ; and after some fruitless 
attempts to recall the long-forgotten melody, 
pours forth " The Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
in six cantos, very skilfully divided by some 
recurrence to his own situation, and some 
complimentary interruptions from his noble 
auditors. 

The construction of a fable seems by no 
means the forte of our modem poetical wri- 
ters ; and no great artifice, in that respect, was 
to be expected, perhaps, from an imitator of 
the ancient romancers. Mr. Scott, indeed, 
has himself insinuated, that he considered the 
story as an object of very subordinate im- 
portance ; and that he was less solicitous to 
deliver a regular narrative, than to connect 
such a series of incidents as might enable him 
to introduce the manners he had undertaken 
to delineate, and the imagery with which 
they were associated. Though the conception 
of the fable is, probably from these causes, 
exceedingly defective, it is proper to lay a 
short sketcn of it before our readers, both for 
the gratification of their curiosity, and to fa- 
cilitate the application of the remarks we may 
be afterwards tempted to offer. 

Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, the Lord of 
Branksome, was slain in a skirmish with the 
Cars, about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. He left a daughter of matchless beauty, 
an infant son, and a high-minded widow, who, 
though a very virtuous and devout person, was 
privately addicted to the study of Magic, in 
which she had been initiated by her father. 
Lord Cranstoun their neighbour was at feud 
with the whole clan of Scott; but had fallen 
desperately in love with the daughter, who 
returned his passion with equal sincerity and 
ardour, though withheld, by her duty to her 
mother, from uniting her destiny with his. 
The poem opens with a description of the war- 
like establishment of Branksome-hall ; and 
the first incident which occurs is a dialogue 
between the Spirits of the adjoining mountain 
and river, who, after consulting the stars, de- 
clare that no good fortune can ever bless the 



SCOTTS LAY OF THE EAST MINSTREL. 



3tiJ 



mansion a till pride be quelled, and love be 
free." The lady, whose forbidden studies 
had taught her to understand the language of 
*uch speakers, overhears this conversation ; 
and vows, if possible, to retain her purpose in 
spite of it. She calls a gallant knight of her 
train, therefore, and directs him to ride im- 
mediately to the abbey of Melrose, and there 
to ask, from the monk of St. Mary's aisle, the 
mighty book that was hid in the tomb of the 
wizard Michael Scott. The remainder of the 
first canto is occupied with the night journey 
of the warrior. When he delivers his mes- 
sage, the monk appears filled with consterna- 
tion and terror, but leads him at last through 
many galleries and chapels to the spot where 
the wizard was interred ; and, after some ac- 
count of his life and character, the warrior 
heaves up the tomb-stone, and is dazzled by 
the streaming splendour of an ever-burning 
lamp, which illuminates the sepulchre of the 
enchanter. With trembling hand he takes 
the book from the side of the deceased, and 
hurries home with it in his bosom. 

In the mean time, Lord Cranstoun and the 
lovely Margaret have met at dawn in the 
woods adjacent to the castle, and are repeat- 
ing their vows of true love, when they are 
startled by the approach of a horseman. The 
lady retreats ; and the lover advancing, finds 
it to be the messenger from Branksome, with 
whom, as an hereditary enemy, he thinks it 
necessary to enter immediately into combat. 
The poor knight, fatigued with his nocturnal 
adventures, is dismounted at the first shock, 
and falls desperately wounded to the ground; 
while Lord Cranstoun, relenting towards the 
kinsman of his beloved, directs his page to 
attend him to the castle, and gallops home 
before any alarm can be given. Lord Cran- 
stoun's page is something unearthly. It is a 
little misshapen dwarf, whom he found one 
day when he was hunting, in a solitary glen, 
and took home with him. It never speaks, 
except now and then to cry " Lost ! lost ! 
lost !" and is, on the whole, a hateful, mali- 
cious little urchin, with no one good quality 
but his unaccountable attachment and fidelity 
to his master. This personage, on approaching 
the wounded Borderer, d'scovers the mighty 
book in his bosom, which he finds some diffi- 
culty in opening, and has scarcely had time 
to read a single spell in it, when he is struck 
down by an invisible hand, and the clasps of 
the magic volume shut suddenly more closely 
than ever. This one spell, however, enables 
him to practice every kind of illusion. He 
lays the wounded knight on his horse, and 
leads him into the castle, while the warders 
see nothing but a wain of hay. He throws 
him down, unperceived, at the door of the 
lady's chamber, and turns to make good his 
retreat. In passing through the court, how- 
ever, he sees the young heir of Buccleuch at 
play, and, assuming the form of one of his 
companions, tempts him to go out with him 
to the woods, where, as soon as they pass a 
rivulet, he resumes his own shape, and bounds 
away. The bewildered child is met by two 
English archers, who make prize of him, and 
46 



carry him off, while the goblin page returns 
to the castle j where he personates ihe young 
baron, to the great annoyance of the whole 
inhabitants. 

The lady finds the wounded knight, and 
eagerly employs charms for his recovery, that 
she may learn the story of his disaster. The 
lovely Margaret, in the mean time, is sitting 
in her turret, gazing on the western star, and 
musing on the scenes of the morning, vhen 
she discovers the blazing beacons that an- 
nounce the approach of an English enemy. 
The alarm is immediately given, and bustling 
preparation made throughout the mansion for 
defence. The English force under the com- 
mand of the Lords Howard and Dacre speedily 
appears before the castle, leading with them 
the young Buccleuch ; and propose that the 
lady should either give up Sir William of 
Deloraine (who had been her messenger to 
Melrose), as having incurred the guilt of 
march treason, or receive an English garrison 
within her walls. She answers, with much 
spirit, that her kinsman will clear himself of 
the imputation of treason by single combat 
and that no foe shall ever get admittance into 
her fortress. The English Lords, being se- 
cretly apprised of the approach of powerful 
succours to the besieged, agree to the proposal 
of the combat; and stipulate that the boy 
shall be restored to liberty or detained in 
bondage, according to the issue of the battle. 
The lists are appointed for the ensuing day ; 
and a trace being proclaimed in the mean 
time, the opposite bands mingle in hospitality 
and friendship. 

Deloraine being wounded, was expected to 
appear by a champion ; and some contention 
arists for the honour of that substitution. — 
This, however, is speedily terminated by a 
person in the armour of the warrior himself, 
who encounters the English champion, slays 
him, and leads his captive young chieftain to 
the embraces of his mother. At this moment 
Deloraine himself appears, half-clothed and 
unarmed, to claim the combat which has been 
terminated in his absence ! and all flock 
around the stranger who had personated him 
so successfully. He unclasps his helmet ; 
and behold ! Lord Cranstoun of Teviotside ! 
The lady, overcome with gratitude, and the 
remembrance of the spirits' prophecy, con- 
sents to forego the feud, and to give the fair 
hand of Margaret to that of the enamoured 
Baron. The rites of betrothment are then 
celebrated with great magnificence ; and a 
splendid entertainment given to all the Eng- 
lish and Scottish chieftains whom the alarm 
had assembled at Branksome. Lord Cran- 
stoun's page plays several unlucky tricks 
during the festival, and breeds some dissen- 
sion among the warriors. To soothe their 
ireful mood, the minstrels are introduced, 
who recite three ballad pieces of considerable 
merit. Just as their songs are ended, a super 
natural darkness spreads itself through the 
hall ; a tremendous flash of lightning and peal 
of thunder ensue, which break just on the 
spot where the goblin page had been seated, 
who is heard to ( ry " Foun 1 ! found ! found 1" 
2F 



362 



POETRY. 



and is no more to be seen, when the darkness 
clears away. The whole party is chilled with 
terror at this extraordinary incident ; and 
Deloraine protests that he distinctly saw the 
figure of the ancient wizard Michael Scott in 
the middle of the lightning. The lady re- 
nounces for ever the unhallowed study of 
magic ; and all the chieftains, struck with 
awe and consternation, vow to make a p.l- 
gr image to Melrose, to implore rest and for- 
gi veness for the spirit of the departed sorcerer. 
With the description of this ceremony the 
minstrel closes ms w Lay." 

From this little sketch of the story, our 
readers will easily perceive, that, however 
well calculated it may be for the introduction 
of picturesque imagery, or the display of ex- 
traordinary incident, it has but little* preten- 
sion to the praise of a regular or roherent 
narrative. The magic of the lady, .he mid- 
night visit to Melrose, and the mighty book 
of the enchanter, which occupy nearly one- 
third of the whole poem, and engross the 
attention of the reader for a long time after 
the commencement of the narrative, are of 
no use whatsoever in the subsequent develop- 
ment of the fable, and do not contribute, in 
any degree, either to the production or ex- 
planation of the incidents that follow. The 
whole character and proceedings of the goblin 
page, in like manner, may be considered as 
merely episodical ; for though he is employed 
in some of the subordinate incidents, it is 
remarkable that no material part of the fable 
requires the intervention of supernatural 
agency. The young Buccleuch might have 
wandered into the wood, although he had not 
been decoyed by a goblin ; and the dame 
might have given her daughter to the deliverer 
of her son, although she had never listened 
to the prattlement of the river and mountain 
spirits. There is. besides all this, a great deal 
of gratuitous and digressive description, and 
the whole sixth canto may be said to be re- 
dundant. The story should naturally end 
with the union of the lovers ; and the account 
of the feast, and the minstrelsy that solem- 
nised their betrothment is a sort of epilogue, 
superadded after the catastrophe is complete. 

But though we feel it to be our duty to 
point out these obvious defects in the. struc- 
ture of the fable, we have no hesitation in 
conceding to the author, that the fable is but 
a secondary consideration in performances of 
this nature. A poem is intended to please by 
the images it suggests, and the feelings it 
inspires; and if it contain delightful images 
and affecting sentiments, our pleasure will not 
be materially impaired by some slight want 
of probability or coherence in the narrative 
by which they are connected. , The callida 
juvcfura of its members is a grace, no doubt, 
which ought always to be aimed at ; but the 
quality of the members themselves is a con- 
sideration of far higher importance; and that 
by which alone the success and character of 
the work must be ultimately decided. The 
adjustment of a fable may indicate the indus- 
try or the judgment of the writer; but the 
Genius of the poet can only be shown ip his 



management of its successive incidents. La 
these more essential particulars, Mr. Scott's 
merits, we think, are unequivocal. He writes 
throughout with the spirit and the force of a 
poet ; and though he occasionally discovers a 
little too much, perhaps, of the " brave neg- 
lect," and is frequently inattentive to the 
delicate propriety and scrupulous correctness 
of his diction, he compensates for those de- 
fects by the fire and animation of his whole 
composition, and the brilliant colouring and 
prominent features of the figures with which 
he has enlivened it. We shall now proceed 
to lay before our readers some of the passages 
which have made the greatest impression on 
our own minds ; subjoining, at the same time, 
such observations as they have most forcibly 
suggested. 

In the very first rank of poetical excellence, 
we are inclined to place the introductory and 
concluding lines of every canto ; in which the 
ancient strain is suspended, and the feelings 
and situation of the Minstrel himself de- 
scribed in the words of the author. The 
elegance and the beauty of this setting, if we 
may so call it, though entirely of modern 
workmanship, appears to us to be fully more 
worthy of admiration than the bolder relief 
of the antiques which it encloses ; and leads 
us to regret that the author should have wast- 
ed, in imitation and antiquarian researches, 
so much of those powers which seem fully- 
equal to the task of raising him an independent 
reputation. In confirmation of these remarks, 
we give a considerable part of the introduc- 
tion to the whole poem : — 

" The way was long, the wind was cold, 
The Minstrel was infirm and old ; 
His wither' d cheek, and tresses gray, 
Seem'd to have known a better day ; 
The harp, his sole remaining joy, 
Was carried by an orphan boy. 
The last of all ihe Bards was he, 
Who sung of Border chivalry ; 
For, well-a-day ! their date was fled, 
His tuneful brethren all were dead; 
And he, neglected and oppress'd, 
Wish'd to be with them, and at rest! 
No more, on prancing palfrey borne, 
He caroll'd, light as lark at morn ; 
No longer, courted and caress'd, 
High plac'd in hall, a welcome guest. 
He pour'd, to lord and lady gay, 
The unpremeditated lay ! 
Old /times were chang'd, old manners gone ! 
A stranger fill'd the Stuarts' throne; 
The bigots of the iron time 
Had call'd his harmless art a crime. 
A wand'ring harper, scorn'd and poor, 
He begg'd his bread from door to door; 
And tun'd, to please a peasant's ear. 
r l he harp, a King had lov'd to hear."— pp.3, 4. 

After describing his introduction to the 
presence of the Buchess, and his offer to 
entertain her with his music, the description 
proceeds : — 

" The humble boon was soon obtain'd; 
The aged Minstrel audience gain'd. 
But, when he reach'd the room of state, 
Where she. with all her ladies, sate, 
Perchance he wish'd his boon denied! 
For, when to tune his harp he tried, 
His trembling hand had lost the ease 



SCOTTS LAY OP THE LAST MINSTREL. 



36a 



Which marks security to please ; 
And scenes, long past, of joy and pain, 
Came wild'ring o'er his aged brain — 

M Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, 
And an uncertain warbling made — 
And oft he shook his hoary head. 
But when he caught the measure wild, 
The old man rais'd his face and emil'd ; 
And lighten'd up his faded eye, 
With all the poet's ecstasy ! 
In varying cadence, soft or strong, 
He swept the sounding chords along ; 
The present scene, the future lot, 
His toils, his wants, were all forgot; 
Cold diffidence, and age's frost, 
In the full tide of song were lost. 
Each blank, in faithless mem'ry void, 
The poet's glowing thought supplied ; 
And, while his harp responsive rung, 
'Twas thus the latest Minstrel sung." 

p. 6.-8. 

We add, chiefly on account of their brevity, 
the following lines, which immediately suc- 
ceed the description of the funeral rites of 
the English champion : — 

" The harp's wild notes, though hush'd the song, 
The mimic march of death prolong; 
Now seems it far, and now a-near, 
Now meets, and now eludes the ear ; 
Now seems some mountain's side to sweep, 
Now faintly dies in valley deep ; 
Seems now as if the Minstrel's wail, 
Now the sad requiem loads the gale ; 
Last, o'er the warrior's closing grave, 
Rings the full choir in choral stave." 

pp. 155, 156. 

The close of the poem is as follows : — 

4 Hush'd is the harp — the Minstrel gone. 
And did he wander forth alone 1 
Alone, in indigence and age, 
To linger out his pilgrimage ? 
No ! — close beneath proud Newark's tower, 
Arose the Minstrel's lowly bower ; 
A simple hut ; but there was seen 
The little garden hedg'd with green, 
The cheerful hearth and lattice clean. 
There, sheher'd wand'rers, by the blaze, 
Ofi heard the tale of other days; 
For much he lnv'd to ope his door, 
And give the aid he begg'd before. 
So pass'd the winter's day — but still, 
When summer smil'd on sweet Bowhill, 
And July's eve, with balmy breath, 
Wav'd the blue-bells on Newark's heath; 
And flourish'd, broad, Blackandro's oak, 
The aged Harper's soul awoke ! 
Then would he sing achievements high, 
And circumstance o' Chivalry; 
Till the rapt traveller would stay, 
Forgetful of the closing day ; 
And Yarrow, as he roll'd along, 
Bore burden to the Minstrel's song." 

pp. 193, 194. 

Besides these, which are altogether de- 
tached from the lyric effusions of the min- 
strel, some of the most interesting passages 
of the poem are those in which he drops the 
business of the story, to moralise, and apply 
to his own situation the images and reflec- 
tions it has suggested. After concluding one 
canto with an account of the warlike array 
prepared for the reception of the English in- 
vaders, he opens the succeeding One with the 
following beautiful verses: — 

" Sweet Teviot! by thy silver tide, 

The glaring bale-fires blaze no more ! 



No longer steel-clad warriors ride 
Along thy wild and willow'd shore ; 

Where'er thou wind'st, by dale or hill, 

All, all is peaceful, all is still, 

As if thy waves, since Time was born, 

Since first they roll'd their way to Tweed, 

Had only heard the shepherd's reed, 
Nor started at the bugle-horn ! 

" Unlike the tide of human time, 

Which, though it change in ceaseless flow 
Retains each grief, retains each crime, 

It's earliest course was doom'd to know ; 
And, darker as it downward bears, 
Is stain'd with past and present, tears ! 

Low as that tide has ebb'd with me, 
It still reflects to Mem'ry's eye 
The hour, myhrave, my only boy, 

Fell by the side of great Dundee. 
Why, when the volleying musket plav'd 
Against the bloody Highland blade, 
Why was not I beside him laid ! — 
Enough — he died the death of fame ; 
Enough — he died with conquering Grasme." 
pp. 93, 94. 

There are several other detached passages 
of equal beauty, which might be quoted in 
proof of the effect which is produced by this 
dramatic interference of the narrator : .but we 
hasten to lay before our readers some of the 
more characteristic parts of the performance. 

The ancient romance owes much of its 
interest to the lively picture which it affords 
of the times of chivalry, and of those usages, 
manners, and institutions which we have 
been accustomed to associate in our minds, 
with a certain combination of magnificence 
with simplicity, and ferocity with romantic 
honour. The representations contained in 
those performances, however, are for the 
most part too rude and naked to give com- 
plete satisfaction. The execution is always 
extremely unequal ; and though the writei 
sometimes touches upon the appropriate feel- 
ing with great effect and felicity, still this 
appears to be done more by accident than 
design ; and he wanders away immediately 
into all sorts of ludicrous or uninteresting de- 
tails, without any apparent consciousness of 
incongruity. These defects Mr. Scott has 
corrected with admirable address and judg- 
ment in the greater part of the work now 
before us ; and while he has exhibited a very 
striking and impressive, picture of the old 
feudal usages and institutions, he has shown 
still greater talent in engrafting upon those 
descriptions all the tender or magnanimous 
emotions to which the circumstances of the 
story naturally give rise. Without impairing 
the antique air of the whole piece, or violating 
the simplicity of the ballad style, he has con- 
trived in this way, to impart a much greater 
dignity, -and more powerful interest to his 
production, than could ever be attained by 
the unskilful and unsteady delineations of 
the old romancers. Nothing, we think, can 
afford a finer illustration of this remark, than 
the opening stanzas of the whole poem : they 
transport us at once into the days of knightly 
daring and feudal hostility ; at the same time 
that Fhey suggest, and in a very interesting 
way, all those softer sentiments which arise 

•t of some parts of the description. 



POETRY. 



' The feast was over in Branksome tower ; 
And the Ladye had gone to her secret bower ; 
Her bower, that was guarded by word and by 
Deadly to hear, and deadly to tell — [spell 

Jesu Maria, shield us well ! 
No living wight, save the Ladye alone, 
Had dar'd to cross the threshold stone. 

1 The tables were drawn, it was idlesse all ; 
Knight, and page, and household squire, 
Loiter' d through the lofty hall, 

Or crowded round the ample fire. 
The stag-hounds, weary with the chase, 

Lay stretch' d upon the rushy floor, 
And urg'd in dreams the forest race, 
From Teviot-stone to Eskdale-moor." 

pp.9, 10. 

After a very picturesque representation of 
the military establishment of this old baronial 
fortress, the minstrel proceeds, 

" Many a valiant knight is here ; 
But he, the Chieftain of them all, 
His sword hangs rusting on the wall, 

Beside his broken spear ! 
Bards long shall tell, 
How Lord Walter fell ! 
When startled burghers fled, afar, 
The furies of the Border war ; 
When the streets of high Dunedin 
Saw lances yleam, and falchions redden, 
And heard the slogan's deadly yell- 
Then the Chief of Branksome fell ! 

" Can piety the discord heal, 

Or staunch the death-feud's enmity ? 
Can Christian lore, can patriot zeal, 

Can love of blessed charity ? 
No! vainly to each holy shrine, 

In mutual pilgrimage, they drew ; 
Implor'd, in vain, the grace divine 

For chiefs, their own red falchions slew. 
While Cessford owns the rule of Car, 

While Ettrick boasts the line of Scott, 
The slaughter'd chiefs, the mortal jar, 
The havoc of the feudal war, 

Shall never, never be forgot ! 

,( In sorrow o'er Lord Walter's bier, 
The warlike foresters had bent ; 
And many a flower and many a tear, 

Old Teviot's maids and matron's lent : 
But, o'er her warrior's bloody bier, 
The Ladye dropp'd nor sigh nor tear! 
Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain, 

Had lock'd the source of softer woe; 
And burning pride, and high disdain, 

Forbade the rising tear to flow ; 
Until, amid his sorrowing clan, 

Her son lisp'd from the nurse's knee — 
* And, if I live to be a man, 

My father's death reveng'd shall be !' 
Then fast the mother's tears did seek 
To dew the infant's kindling cheek." — pp.12 — 15. 

There are not many passages in English 
poetry more impressive than some parts of 
this extract. As another illustration of the 
prodigious improvement which the style of the 
old romance is capable of receiving from a 
more liberal admixture of pathetic sentiments 
and gentle affections, we insert the following 
passage ; where the effect of the picture is 
finely assisted by the contrast of its two com- 
partments. 

" So pass'd the day — the ev'ning fell, 
'Twas near the time of curfew bell; 
The air was mild, the wind was calm, 
The stream was smooth, the dew was balm ; 
Ev'n the rude watchman, on the tower, 
linjoy'd and blessed the lovely hour. 



Far more fair Margaret lov'd and bless'd 

The hour of silence and of rest. 

«■ 

On the high turret, sitting lone, 
She wak'd at times the lute's soft tone ; 
Touch'd a wild note, and all between 
Thought of the bower of hawthorns green ; 
Her golden hair stream'd free from band, 
Her fair cheek rested on her hand, 
Her blue eye sought the west afar, 
For lovers love the western star. 

" Is yon the star o'er Penchryst-Pen, 
That rises slowly to her ken, 
And, spreading broad its wav'ring light, 
Shakes its loose tresses on the night ? 
Is yon red glare the western star ? — 
Ah! 'tis the beacon-blaze of war ! 
Scarce could she draw her tighten'd breath; 
For well she knew the fire of death ! 

" The warder view'd it blazing strong, 
• And blew his war-note loud and long, 

Till, at the high and haughty sound, 

Rock, wood, and river, rung around ; 

The blast alarm'd the festal hall. 

And startled forth the warriors all ; 

Far downward in the castle-yard, 

Full many a torch and cresset glar'd ; 

And helms and plumes, confusedly toss'd, 

Were in the blaze half seen, half lost; 

And spears in wild disorder shook, 

Like reeds beside a frozen brook. 

" The Seneschal, whose silver hair, 
Was redden'd by the torches' glare, 
Stood in the midst, with gesture proud, 
And i-sued forth his mandates loud — 
' On Penchryst glows a bale of fire, 
And three are kindling on Priesthaug-hswire 
&c— pp. 83—85. 

In these passages, the poetry of Mr. Scott is 
entitled to a decided preference over that of 
the earlier minstrels; not only from the 
greater consistency and condensation of hi3 
imagery, but from an intrinsic superiority in 
the nature of his materials. From the im- 
provement of taste, and the cultivation of the 
liner feelings of the heart, poetry acquires, in 
a refined age, many new and invaluable ele- 
ments, which are necessarily unknown in a 
period of greater simplicity. The description 
of external objects, however, is at all times 
equally inviting, and equally easy : and many 
of the pictures which have been left by the 
ancient romancers must be admitted to pos- 
sess, along with great diffuseness and home- 
liness of diction, an exactness and vivacity 
which cannot be easily exceeded. In this 
part of his undertaking, Mr. Scott therefore 
had fewer advantages: but we do not think 
that his success has been less remarkable. 
In the following description of Melrose, which 
introduces the second canto, the reader will 
observe how skilfully he calls in the aid of 
sentimental associations to heighten the effect 
of the picture which he presents to the eye: 

" If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight : 
For the gay beams of lightsome day 
Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray. 
When the broken arches are black in night, 
And each shafted oriel glimmers white ; 
When the cold light's uncertain shower 
Streams on the ruin'd central tower; 
When buttress and buttress, alternately, 
Seem fram'd of ebon and ivory ; 
When silver edges the imagery, 



SCOTT'S LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. 



365 



rind the scrolls that teach thee to live and die ; 

When distant Tweed is heard to rave, 

And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave ; 

Then go! — but go alone the while — 

Then view St. David's ruined pile ! 

And, home returning, soothly swear, 

Was never scene so sad and fair !" -pp. 35, 36. 

In the following passage he is less ambi- 
tious; and confines himself, as an ancient 
minstrel -would have done on the occasion, to 
a minute and picturesque representation of 
the visible object before him : — 

" When for the lists they sought the plain, 
The stately Ladye's silken rein 

Did noble Howard hold ; 
Unarmed by her side he walk'd, 
And much, in courteous phrase, they talk'd 

Of feats of arms of old. 
Costly his garb — his Flemish ruff 
Fell o'er his doublet shap'd of buff, 

With satin slash'd, and lin'd ; 
Tawny his boot, and gold his spur, 
His cloak was all of Poland fur, 

His hose with silver twin'd ; 
His Bilboa blade, by Marchmen felt, 
Hung in a broad and studded belt ; 
Hence, in rude phrase, the Bord'rers still 
Call'd noble Howard, Belted Will."— p. 141. 

The same scrupulous adherence to the style 
of the old romance, though greatly improved 
in point of brevity and selection, is discernible 
in the following animated description of the 
feast, which terminates the poem : — 

11 The spousal rites were ended soon ; 
'Twas now the merry hour of noon, 
And in the lofty-arched hall 
Was spread the gorgeous festival : 
Steward and squire, with heedful haste, 
Marshall'd the rank of every guest ; 
Pages, with ready blade, were there, 
The mighty meal to carve and share. 
O'er capon, heron-shew, and crane, 
And princely peacock's gilded train, 
And o'er the boar's head, garnish'd brave, 
And cygnet from St. Mary's wave ; 
O'er ptarmigan and venison, 
The priest had spoke his benison. 
Then rose the riot and the din, 
Above, beneath, without, within! 
For, from the lo f ty balcony, 
Rung trumpet, shalm, and psaltery; 
Their clanging bowls old warriors quaff 'd, 
Loudly they spoke, and loudly laugh'd ; 
Whisper'd young knights, in tone more mild, 
To ladies fair, and ladies smil'd. 
The hooded hawks, high perch'd on beam, 
The clamour join'd with whistling scream, 
And flapp'd their wings, and shook their bells, 
In concert with the staghound's yells. 
Round go the flasks of ruddy wine, 
From Bourdeaux, Orleans, or the Rhine ; 
Their tasks the busy sewers ply, 
And all is mirth and revelry." — pp. 166, 167. 

The following picture is sufficiently antique 
ui its conception, though the execution is evi- 
dently modern : — 

" Ten of them were sheath'd in steel, 
With belted sword, and spur on heel: 
They quitted not their harness bright, 
Neither by day, nor yet by night ; 

They lay down to rest 

With corslet laced, 
rillow'd on buckler cold and hard ; 

They carv'd at the meal 
fe. With gloves of steel, [met barr'd." 

ad they drank the red wine through the hel- 



The whole scene of the duel, or judicial 
combat, is conducted according to the strict 
ordinances of chivalry, and delineated with 
all the minuteness of an ancient romancer. 
The modern reader will probably find it rather 
tedious; all but the concluding stanzas, which 
are in a loftier measure. 

" 'Tis done, 'tis done ! that fatal blow 

lias stretch'd him on the bloody plain ; 
He strives to rise — Brave Musgrave, no ! 

Thence never shalt thou rise again ! 
He chokes in blood — some friendly hand 
Undo the visor's barred band, 
Unfix the gorget's iron clasp, 
And give him room for life to gasp ! — 
In vain, in vain — haste, holy friar, 
Haste, ere the sinner shall expire ! 
Of all his guilt let him be shriven, 
And smooth his path from earth to heaven ! 

" In haste the holy friar sped ; 
His naked foot was dyed with red, 

As through the lists he ran ; 
Unmindful of the shouts on high, 
That hail'd the conqueror's victory, 

He rais'd the dying man ; 
Loose wav'd his silver beard and hair, 
As o'er him he kneel'd down in prayer. 
And still the crucifix on high, 
He holds before his dark'ning eye, 
And still he bends an anxious ear, 
His falt'ring penitence to hear; 

Still props him from the bloody sod, 
Still, even when soul and body part, 
Pours ghostly comfort on his heart, 

And bids him trust in God ! 
Unheard he prays ; 'lis o'er, 'tis o'er ! 
Richard of Musgrave breathes no more.* 

p. 145—147. 

We have already made so many extracts 
from this poem, that we can now only afford 
to present our readers with one specimen of 
the songs which Mr. Scott has introduced in 
the mouths of the minstrels in the concluding 
canto. It is his object, in those pieces, to 
exemplify the different styles of ballad narra- 
tive which prevailed in this island at different 
periods, or in different conditions of society. 
The first is constructed upon the rude and 
simple model of the old Border ditties, and 
produces its effect by the direct and concise 
narrative of a tragical occurrence. The se- 
cond, sung by Fitztraver, the bard of the ac- 
complished Surrey, has more of the richness 
and polish of the Italian poetry, and is very 
beautifully written, in a stanza resembling 
that of Spenser. The third is intended to 
represent that wild style of composition which 
prevailed among the bards of the northern 
continent, somewhat softened and adorned 
by the minstrel's residence in the south. We 
prefer it, upon the whole, to either of the two 
former, and shall give it entire to our readers; 
who will probably be struck with the poetical 
effect of- the dramatic form into which it is 
thrown, and of the indirect description by 
which every thing is most expressively told, 
without one word of distinct narrative. 

" O listen, listen, ladies gay ! 

No haughty feat of arms I tell ; 
Soft is the note, and sad the lay, 
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle. 

M — Moor, moor the barge, ye gallant crew! 
And, gentle Ladye, deign to stay! 



S66 



POETRV 



Rest thee in Castle Ravensheuch, 
Nor tempt the siormy Irith to-day. 

' The blaek'ning wave is edg'd with white ; 
To inch* and rock the sea- mews fly ; 
The fishers have heard the VVaier-Spriie, * 
Whose screams forbode that wreck is nigh. 

1 Last night the gifted seer did view 

A wet shroud roll'd round Ladye gay : 
Then stay thee, fair, in Ravensheuch ; 
Why cross the gloomy frith to-day ?" 

— " 'Tis not because Lord Lind'say's heir 

To-night at Roslin leads the ball, 
But that my Ladye-mother there 
^ Sits lonely in her castle hail. 

' 'Tis not because the ring they ride, 
And Lind'say at the ring rides well! 
But that my sire ihe wine will chide, 
If 'tis not fill'd by Rosabelle." — 

* O'er Roslin all that dreary night 

A wondrous blaze was seen to gleam ; 
'Twas broader than the watch-fire light, 
And brighter than the bright moonbeam. 

" It glar'd on Roslin's castled rock, 

It redden'd all the copse-wood glen; 
'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak, 
And seen from cavern'd Hawthornden. 

• Seem'd all on fire that chapel proud, 

Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie ; 
Each Baron, for a sable shroud, 
Sheath'd in his iron panoply. 

•' Seem'd all on fire within, around, 
Both vanlied crypt and altar's pale; 
Shone every pillar foliage-bound, 
And glimmer'd all the dead-men's mail. 

" Blaz'd battlement and pinnet high, 

Blaz'd every rose-carv'd buttress fair — 
So still they blaze when fate is nigh 
The lordly line of high St. Clair! 

" There are twenty of Roslin's barons bold 
Lie buried within that proud chapelle; 
Each one the holv vault doth hold- 
But the sea holds lovely Rosabelle ! 

" And each St. Clair was buried there, 

With candle, with book, and with knell ; 
But the Kelpv rung, and the Mermaid sung 
The dirge of lovely Rosabelle '."—pp. 181-184. 

From the various extracts we have now 
given, our readers will be enabled to form a 
tolerably correct judgment of this poem; and 
if they are pleased with these portions of it 
which have now been exhibited, we may 
venture to assure them that they will not be 
disappointed by the perusal of the whole. 
The whole night-journey of Deloraine — the 
opening of the wizard's tomb — the march of 
the English battle — and the parley before 
the walls of the castle, are all executed with 
the same spirit and poetical energy, which 
we think is conspicuous in the specimens we 
have already extracted ; and a great variety 
of short passages occur in every part of the 
poem, which are still more striking and meri- 
torious, though it is impossible to detach 
them, without injury, in the form of a quota- 
lion. It is but fair to apprise the reader, on 
ihe other hand, that he will meet with very 
heavy passages, and with a variety of details 
which are not likely to interest any one but a 
Borderer or an antiquary. We like very well 



*Isle. 



to hear "of the Gallant Chief of Olterburne." 
or "the Dark Knight of Liddisdale," and feel 
the elevating power of great names, when 
we read of the tribes that mustered to the 
war, " beneath the crest of old Dunbar, and 
Hepburn's mingled banners." But we really 
cannot so far sympathise with the local par- 
tialities of the author, as to feel any glow of 
patriotism or ancient virtue in hearing of the 
Todrig or Johnston clans, or of Elliots, Arm- 
strongs, and Tinlinns; still less can we relish 
the introduction of Black John of Athelstane, 
Whitslade the Hawk, Arthur-jire-the-braes, Red 
Roland Forster, or any other of those wor- 
thies who 

" Sought the beeves that made their broth, 
In Scotland and in England both," 

into a poem which has any pretensions to 
seriousness or dignity. The ancient metrical 
romance might have admitted those homely 
personalities; but the present age will not 
endure them: And Mr. Scott must either 
sacrifice his Border prejudices, or offend all 
his readers in the other parts of the empire. 

There are many passages, as we have 
already insinuated, which have the general 
character of heaviness, such is the minstrel's 
account of his preceptor, and Deloraine's 
lamentation over the dead body of Mus- 
grave : But the goblin page is, in our opinion, 
the capital deformity of the poem. We have 
already said that the whole machinery is use- 
less : but the magic studies of the lady, and 
the rifled tomb of Michael Scott, give occa- 
sion to so much admirable poetry, that we 
can on no account consent to part with them. 
The page, on the other hand, is a perpetual 
burden to the poet, and to the reader : it is 
an undignified and improbable fiction, which 
excites neither terror, admiration, nor aston- 
ishment ; but needlessly debases the strain of 
the whole work, and excites at once our in- 
credulity and contempt. He is not a "tricksy 
spirit," like Ariel, with whom the imagina- 
tion is irresistibly enamoured ) nor a tiny 
monarch, like Oberon, disposing of the desti- 
nies of mortals : He rather appears to us to 
be an awkward sort of a mongrel between 
Puck and Caliban ; of a servile and brutal 
nature ; and limited in his powers to the in- 
dulgence of petty malignity, and ihe infliction 
of despicable injuries. Besides this objection 
to his character, his existence has no support 
from any general or established superstition. 
Fairies and devils, ghosts, angels, and witches, 
are creatures with whom we are all familiar, 
and who excite in all classes of mankind 
emotions with which we can easily be made 
to sympathise. But the story of Gilpin Hor- 
ner can never have been believed oat of the 
village where he is said to have made his 
appearance; and has no claims upon the cre- 
dulity of those who were not ( riginally of his 
acquaintance. There is nothing at ail inter- 
esting or elegant in the scenes of which he is 
the hero : and in reading those passages, we 
really could not help suspecting that they did 
not stand in the romance when the aged min- 
strel recited it to the royal Charles v 4^ 



SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



set 



mighty earls, but were inserted afterwards to 
suit the taste of the cottagers among whom 
he begged his bread on the Border. We en- 
treat Mr. Scott to inquire into the grounds of 
this suspicion ; and to take advantage of any- 
decent pretext he can lay hold of for purging 
" The Lay " of this ungraceful intruder. We 
would also move for a Quo Warranto against 
the spirits of the river and the mountain ; for 
though they are come of a very high lineage, 
we do not know what lawful business they 
could have at Branksome castle in the year 
1550. 

Of the diction of this poem we have but 
little to say. From the extracts we have 
already given, our readers will perceive that 
the versification is in the h : ghest degree ir- 
regular and capricious. The nature of the 
work entitled Mr. Scott to some licence in this 
respect, and he often employs it with a very 
pleasing effect ; but he has frequently ex- 
ceeded its just limits, and presented us with 
such combinations of metre, as must put the 
teeth of his readers, we think, into some 
jeopardy. He has, when he pleases, a very 
melodious and sonorous style of versification, 
but often composes with inexcusable negli- 
gence and rudeness. There is a great number 
of lines in which the verse can only be made 
out by running the words together in a very 
unusual manner ; and some appear to us to 
have no pretension to the name of verses at 
all. What apology, for instance, will Mr. 
Scott make for the last of these two lines ? — 

" For when in studious mood he pac'd 
St. Kentigern's ha/11." 
or for these 1 — 

" How the brave boy in future war, 
Should tame the unicorn'p pride." 



We have called the negligence which could 
leave such lines as these m a poem of this 
nature inexcusable; because it is perfectly 
evident, from the general strain of his com- 
position, that Mr. Scott has a very accurate 
ear for the harmony of versification, and that 
he composes with a facility which must lighten 
the labour of correction. There are some 
smaller faults in the diction which might have 
been as well corrected also : there is too much 
alliteration; and he reduplicates his words loo 
often. We have "never, never," several 
times; besides "'tis o'er, 'tis o'er" — "in 
vain, in vain" — "'tis done, 'tis done;" and 
several -other echoes as ungraceful. 

We will not be tempted to say any thing 
more of this poem. Although it does not 
contain any great display of what is properlv 
called invention, it indicates perhaps as much 
vigour and originality of poetical genius as any 
performance which has been lately offered to 
the public. The locality of the subject is 
likely to obstruct its popularity; and the au- 
thor, by confining himself in a great measure 
to the description of manners and personal 
adventures, has forfeited the attraction which 
might have been derived from the delineation 
of rural scenery. But he has manifested a 
degree of genius which cannot be overlooked, 
and given indication of talents that seem well 
worthy of being enlisted in the service of the 
epic muse. 

The notes, which contain a great treasure of 
Border history and antiquarian learning, are 
too long, we think, for the general reader. 
The form of the publication is also too ex- 
pensive ; and we hope soon to see a smaller 
edition, with an abridgement of the notes, 
for the use of the mere lovers of poetry. 












- 



(2Ugtt0t, 1810.) 

The Lady of the Lake: a Poem. By Walter Scott. Second Edition. 8vo. pp. 434: 1810. 



Mr. Scott, though living in an age unusu- 
ally prolific of original poetry, has manifestly 
outstripped all his competitors in the race of 
popularity; and stands already upon a height 
io which no other writer has attained in the 
memory of any one now alive. We doubt, 
indeed, whether any English poet ever had so 
many of his books sold, or so many of his 
verses read and admired by such a multitude 
of persons in so short a time. We are credibly 
informed that nearly thirty thousand copies 
of "The Lay" have been already disposed 
of in this country ; and that the demand for 
Marmion, and the poem now before us, has 
been still more considerable, — a circulation 
we believe, altogether without example, in 
the case of a bulky work, not addressed to 
the bigotry of the mere mob, either religious 
or political. 

A uopularity so universal ie a pretty sure 



proof of extraordinary merit, — a far surer one, 
we readily admit, than would be afforded by 
any praises of ours: and, therefore, though 
w r e pretend to be privileged, in ordinary cases, 
to foretell the ultimate reception of all claims 
on public admiration, our function may be 
thought to cease, where the event is already 
so certain and conspicuous. As it is a sore 
thing, however, to be deprived of our privi- 
leges on so important an occasion, we hope to 
be pardoned for insinuating, that, even in such 
a case, the office of the critic may not be al- 
together superfluous. Though the success of 
the author be decisive, and even likely to be 
permanent, it still may not be without its use 
to point out, in consequence of what, and in 
spite of what, he has succeeded ; nor alto- 
gether uninstructive to trace the precise limits 
of the connection which, even in this dull 
world, h disputably subsists between succeFi 



POETRY 



and desert, and to ascertain how far unex- 
ampled popularity does really imply unrival- 
led talent. 

As it is the object of poetry to give pleasure, 
it would seem to be a pretty sale conc'usion, 
that that poetry must be the best which gives 
.he greatest pleasure to the greatest number 
of persons. Yet we must pause a little, be- 
fore we give our assent to so plausible a pro- 
position. It would not be quite correct, we 
tear, to say that those are invariably the best 
judges who are most easily pleased. The 
great multitude, even of the reading world, 
must necessarily be uninstructed and inju- 
dicious; and will frequently be found, not 
only to derive pleasure from what is worthless 
in liner eyes, but to be quite insensible to 
those beauties which afford the most exquisite 
delight to more cultivated understandings. 
True pathos and sublimity will indeed charm 
every one : but, out of this lofty sphere, we 
are pretty well convinced, that the poetry 
which appears most perfect to a very refined 
taste, will not often turn out to be very popular 
poetry. 

This, indeed, is saying nothing more, than 
that the ordinary readers of poetry have not 
a very refined taste ; and that they are often 
insensible to many of its highest beauties, 
while they still more frequently mistake its 
imperfections for excellence. The fact, when 
stated in this simple way, commonly excites 
neither opposition nor surprise : and yet, if it 
be asked, why the taste of a few individuals, 
who do not perceive beauty where many 
others perceive it, should be exclusively dig- 
nified with the name of a good taste; or why 
poetry, which gives pleasure to a very great 
number of readers, should be thought inferior 
to that which pleases a much smaller num- 
ber, — the answer, perhaps, may not be quite 
so ready as might have been expected from 
the alacrity of our assent to the first propo- 
sition. That there is a good answer to be 
given, however, we entertain no doubt : and if 
that which we are about to offer should not 
appear very clear or satisfactory, we must 
submit to have it thought, that the fault is not 
altogether in the subject. 

In the first place, then, it should be remem- 
bered, that though the taste of very good 
judges is necessarily the taste of a few, it is 
implied, in their description, that they are per- 
sons eminently qualified, by natural sensi- 
bility, and long experience and reflection, to 
perceive all beauties that really exist, as well 
as to settle the relative value and importance 
of all the different sorts of beauty ; — they are 
in that very state, in short, to which all who 
are in any degree capable of tasting those re- 
fined pleasures would certainly arrive, if their 
sensibility were increased, and their experi- 
ence and reflection enlarged. It is difficult, 
therefore, in following out the ordinary analo- 
gies of language, to avoid considering them as 
in the right, and calling their taste the true 
and the just one ; when it appears that it is 
such as is uniformly produced by the cultiva- 
tion of those faculties upon which all our per- 
eptions of taste so obviously depend. 



It is to be considered also, that thougii d b*i 
the end of poetry to please, one of the partie* 
whose pleasure, and whose notions of excel- 
lence, will always be primarily consulted in 
its composition, is the poet himself: and as he 
must necessarily be more cultivated than the 
great body of his readers, the presumption is, 
that he will always belong, comparatively 
speaking, to the class of good judges, and en- 
deavour, consequently, to produce that sort of 
excellence which is likely to meet with their 
approbation. When authors, therefore, and 
those of whose suffrages authors are most 
ambitious, thus conspire to fix upon the same 
standard of what is good in taste and compo- 
sition, it is easy to see how it should come to 
bear this name in society, in preference to 
what might afford more pleasure to individuals 
of less influence. Besides all this, it is ob- 
vious that it must be infinitely more difficult 
to produce any thing conformable to this ex- 
alted standard, than merely to fall in with the 
current of popular taste. To attain the former 
object, it is necessary, for the most part, to 
understand thoroughly all the feelings and 
associations that are modified or created by 
cultivation : — To accomplish the latter, it will 
often be sufficient merely to have observed 
the course of familiar preferences. Success, 
however, is rare, in proportion as it is difficult; 
and it is needless to say, what a vast addition 
rarity makes to value, — or how exactly our 
admiration at success is proportioned to oul 
sense of the difficulty of the undertaking. 

Such seem to be the most general and im- 
mediate causes of the apparent paradox, of 
reckoning that which pleases the greatest 
number as inferior to that which pleases the 
few ; and such the leading grounds for fixing 
the standard of excellence, in a question of 
mere feeling and gratification, by a different 
rule than that of the quantity of gratification 
produced. With regard to some of the fine 
arts — for the distinction between popular and 
actual merit obtains in them all — there are no 
other reasons, perhaps, to be assigned; and, 
in Music for example, when we have said that 
it is the authority of those who are best quali- 
fied by natufe and study, and the difficulty 
and rarity of the attainment, that entitles cer- 
tain exquisite performances to rank higher 
than others that give far more general delight, 
we have probably said all that can be said in 
explanation of this mode of speaking and 
judging. In poetry, however, and in some 
other departments, this familiar, though some- 
what extraordinary rule of estimation, is justi- 
fied by other considerations. 

As it is the cultivation of natural and per- 
haps universal capacities, that produces that 
refined taste which takes away our pleasure 
in vulgar excellence, so, it is to be considered, 
that there is an universal tendency to the pro 
pagation of such a taste ; and that, in times 
tolerably favourable to human happiness, 
there is a continual progress and improvement 
in this, as in the other faculties of nations and 
large assemblages of men. The number of 
intelligent judges may therefore be regarded 
as perpetually on the increase. The inner 



SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



360 



circle, to which the poet delights chiefly to 

{)itch his voice, is perpetually enlarging; and, 
ooking to that great futurity to which his am- 
bition is constantly directed, it may be found, 
that the most refined style of composition to 
which he can attain, will be, at the last, the 
most extensively and permanently popular. 
This holds true, we think, with regard to all 
the productions of art that are open to the 
inspection of any considerable part of the 
community; but, with regard to poetry in 
particular, there is one circumstance to be at- 
tended to, that renders this conclusion pecu- 
liarly safe, and goes far indeed to reconcile 
the taste of the multitude with that of more 
cultivated judges. 

As it seems difficult to conceive that mere 
cultivation should either absolutely create or 
utterly destroy any natural capacity of enjoy- 
ment, it is not easy to suppose, that the qual- 
ities which delight the uninstructed should 
be substantially different from those which 
give pleasure to the enlightened. They may 
be arranged according to a different scale, — 
and certain shades and accompaniments may 
be more or less indispensable ; but the quali- 
ties in a poem that give most pleasure to the 
refined and fastidious critic, are in substance, 
we believe, the very same that delight the 
most injudicious of its admirers: — and the 
very wide difference which exists between 
their usual estimates, may be in a great de- 
gree accounted for, by considering, that the 
one judges absolutely, and the other relatively 
— that the one attends only to the intrinsic 
qualities of the work, while the other refers 
more immediately to the merit of the author. 
The most popular passages in popular poetry, 
are in fact, for the most part, very beautiful 
and striking; yet they are very often such 
passages as could never be ventured on by 
any writer who aimed at the praise of the 
judicious; and this, for the obvious reason, 
that they are trite and hackneyed, — that they 
have been repeated till they have lost all 
grace and propriety, — and, instead of exalting 
the imagination by the impression of original 
genius or creative fancy, only nauseate and 
offend, by the association of paltry plagiarism 
and impudent inanity. It is only, however, 
on those who have read and remembered the 
original passages, and their better imitations, 
that this effect is produced. To the ignorant 
and the careless, the twentieth imitation has 
all the charm of an original; and that which 
oppresses the more experienced reader w T ith 
weariness and disgust, rouses them with all 
the force and vivacity of novelty. It is not 
then, because the ornaments of popular poetry 
are deficient in intrinsic worth and beauty, 
that they are slighted by the critical reader, 
but because he at once recognises them to be 
stolen, and perceives that they are arranged 
without taste or congruity. In his indignation 
at the dishonesty, and his contempt for the 
poverty of the collector, he overlooks alto- 
gether the value of what he has collected, or 
remembers it only as an aggravation of his 
offence, — as converting larceny into sacrilege, 
and adding the guilt of profanation to the folly 
47 



of unsuitable finery. There are other features, 
no doubt, that distinguish the idols of vulgar 
admiration from the beautiful exemplars of 
pure taste; but this is so much the most char- 
acteristic and remarkable, that we know no 
way in which we could so shortly describe the 
poetry that pleases the multitude, and dis- 
pleases the select few, as by saying that it 
consisted of all the most known and most 
brilliant parts of the most celebrated authors, 
—of a splendid and unmeaning accumulation 
of those images and phrases which had long 
charmed every reader in the works of their 
original inventors. 

The justice of these remarks will probably 
be at once admitted by all who have attended 
to the history and effects of what may be 
called Poetical diction in general, or even of 
such particular phrases and epithets as have 
been indebted to their beauty for too great a 
notoriety. Our associations with all this class 
of expressions, which have become trite only 
in consequence of their intrinsic excellence, 
now suggest to us no ideas but those of 
schoolboy imbecility and childish affectation. 
We look upon them merely as the common, 
hired, and tawdry trappings of all who wish 
to put on, for the hour, the masquerade habit 
of poetry; and, instead of receiving from them 
any kind of delight or emotion, do not even 
distinguish or attend to the signification of 
the words of which they consist. The ear is 
so palled with their repetition, and so accus- 
tomed to meet with them as the habitual ex- 
pletives of the lowest class of versifiers, that 
they come at last to pass over it without ex- 
citing any sort of conception whatever, and 
are not even so much attended to as to expose 
their most gross incoherence or inconsistency 
to detection. It is of this quality that Swift 
has availed himself in so remarkable a man- 
ner, in his famous "Song by a person of 
quality," which consists entirely in a selection 
of some of the most trite and well-sounding 
phrases and epithets in the poetical lexicon 
of the time, strung together without any kind 
of meaning or consistency, and yet so dis- 
posed, as to have been perused, perhaps by 
one half of their readers, without any suspi- 
cion of the deception. Most of those phrases, 
however, which had thus become sickening, 
and almost insignificant, to the intelligent 
readers of poetry in the days of Queen Anne, 
are in themselves beautiful and expressive, 
and, no doubt, retain much of their native 
grace in those ears that have not been alien- 
ated by their repetition. 

But it is not merely from the use of much 
excellent diction, that a modern poet is thus 
debarred by the lavishness of his predecessors. 
There is a certain range of subjects and char- 
acters, and a certain manner and tone, which 
were probably, in their origin, as graceful and 
attractive, which have been proscribed by the 
same dread of imitation. It would be too 
long to enter, in this place, into any detailed 
examination of the peculiarities — originating 
chiefly m this source — which distinguish an- 
cient from modern poetry. It may be enough 
just to remark, that, as the elements of poet- 



370 



POETRY. 



ical emotion are necessarily limited, so it was 
natural for those who first sought to excite it, 
to avail themselves of those subjects, situa- 
tions, and images, that were most obviously 
calculated to produce that effect ; and to assist 
them by the use of all those aggravating cir- 
cumstances that most readily occurred as 
likely to heighten their operation. In this 
way, they may be said to have got possession 
of all the choice materials of their art; and, 
working without fear of comparisons, fell 
naturally into a free and graceful style of 
execution, at the same time that the profusion 
of their resources made them somewhat care- 
less and inexpert in their application. After- 
poets were in a very different situation. They 
could neither take the most natural and gene- 
ral topics of interest, nor treat them with the 
ease and indifference of those who had the 
whole store at their command — because this 
was precisely what had been already done by 
those who had gone before them : And they 
were therefore put upon various expedients 
for attaining their object, and yet preserving 
their claim to originality. Some of them ac- 
cordingly set themselves to observe and de- 
lineate both characters and external objects 
with greater minuteness and fidelity, — and 
others to analyse more carefully the mingling 
passions of the heart, and to feed and cherish 
a more limited train of emotion, through a 
longer and more artful succession of incidents, 
— while a third sort distorted both nature and 
passion, according to some fantastical theory 
of their own ; or took such a narrow corner 
of each, and dissected it with such curious 
and microscopic accuracy, that its original 
form was no longer discernible by the eyes 
of the uninstructed. In this way we think 
that modern poetry has both been enriched 
with more exquisite pictures, and deeper and 
more sustained strains of pathetic, than were 
known to the less elaborate artists of antiquity ; 
at the same time that it has been defaced 
with more affectation, and loaded with far 
more intricacy. But whether they failed or 
succeeded, — and whether they distinguished 
themselves from their predecessors by faults 
or by excellences, the later poets, we conceive, 
must be admitted to have almost always 
written in a more constrained and narrow 
manner than their originals, and to have de- 
parted farther from what was obvious, easy, 
and natural. Modem poetry, in this respect, 
may be compared, perhaps, without any great 
impropriety, to modern sculpture. It is greatly 
inferior to the ancient in freedom, grace, and 
simplicity ; but. in return, it frequently pos- 
sesses a more decided expression, and more 
fine finishing of less suitable embellishments. 
Whatever may be gained or lost, however, 
by this change of manner, it is obvious, that 
poetry must become less popular by means 
of it : For the most natural and obvious man- 
ner, is always the most taking ; — and what- 
ever costs the author much pains and labour, 
is usually found to require a corresponding 
effort on the part of the reader, — which all 
readers are not disposed to make. That they 
who seek to be original by means of affecta- 



tion, should revolt more by their affectation 
than they attract by their originaLty, is just 
and natural; but even the nobler devices that 
win the suffrages of the judicious by their in- 
trinsic beauty, as well as their novelty, are 
apt to repel the multitude, and to obstruct 
the popularity of some of the most exquisite 
productions of genius. The beautiful but mi- 
nute delineations of such admirable observers 
as Crabbe or Cowper, are apt to appear tedious 
to those who take little interest in their sub- 
jects, and have no concern about their art : — 
and the refined, deep, and sustained pathetic 
of Campbell, is still more apt to be mistaken 
for monotonv and languor by those who are 
either devoid of sensibility, or impatient of 
quiet reflection. The most popular style un- 
doubtedly is that which has. great variety and 
brilliancy, rather than exquisite finish in its 
images and descriptions ; and which touches 
lightly on many passions, without raising any 
so high as to transcend the comprehension of 
ordinary mortals — or dwelling on it so long as 
to exhaust their patience. 

Whether Mr. Scott holds the same opinion 
with us upon these matters, and has intention- 
ally conformed his practice to this theory, — or 
whether the peculiarities in his compositions 
have been produced merely by following out 
the natural bent of his genius, we do not pre- 
sume to determine : But, that he has actually 
made use of all our recipes for popularity, we 
think very evident : and conceive, that few 
things are more curious than the singular skill, 
or good fortune, with which he has reconciled 
his claims on the favour of the multitude, with 
his pretensions to more select admiration. 
Confident in the force and originality of his 
own genius, he has not been afraid to avail 
himself of common-places both of diction and 
of sentiment, whenever they appeared to be 
beautiful or impressive, — using them, how- 
ever, at all times, with the skill and spirit of 
an inventor; and, quite certain that he could 
not be mistaken for a plagiarist or imitator, he 
has made free use of that great treasury of 
characters, images, and expressions, which 
had been accumulated by the most celebrated 
of his predecessors, — at the same time that 
the rapidity of his transitions, the novelty of 
his combinations, and the spirit and variety 
of his own thoughts and inventions, show 
plainly that he was a borrower from any thing 
but poverty, and took only what he would 
have given, if he had been born in an earlier 
generation. The great secret of his popu- 
larity, however, and the leading characteristic 
of his poetry, appear to us to consist evidently 
in this, that he has made more use of common 
topics, images, and expressions, than any orig- 
inal poet of later times; and, at the same 
time, displayed more genius and originality 
than any recent author who has worked in 
the same materials. By the latter peculiarity. 
he has entitled himself to the admiration of 
every description of readers ; — by the former, 
he is recommended in an especial manner to 
the inexperienced — at the hazard of some little 
offence to the more cultivated and fastidious. 

In the choice of his subjects, for example, 



SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



371 



he does not attempt to interest merely by fine 
observation or pathetic sentiment, but takes 
ihe assistance of a story, and enlists the read- 
ers curiosity among his motives for attention. 
Then his characters are all selected from the 
most common dramatis persona of poetry; — 
kings, warriors, knights, outlaws, nuns, min- 
strels, secluded damsels, wizards, and true 
lovers. He never ventures to carry us into 
the cottage of the modern peasant, like Crabbe 
or Cowper: nor into the bosom of domestic 
privacy, like Campbell ; nor among creatures 
of the imagination, like Southey or Darwin. 
Such personages, we readily admit, are not in 
themselves so interesting or striking as those 
to whom Mr. Scott has devoted himself; but 
they are far less familiar in poetry — and are 
therefore more likely, perhaps, to engage the 
attention of those to whom poetry is familiar. 
In the management of the passions, again, Mr. 
Scott appears to us to have pursued the same 
popular, and comparatively easy course. He 
has raised all the most familiar and poetical 
emotions, by the most obvious aggravations, 
and in the most compendious and judicious 
ways. He has dazzled the reader with the 
splendour, aud even warmed him with the 
transient heat of various affections ; but he 
has nowhere fairly kindled him with enthu- 
siasm, or melted him into tenderness. Writ- 
ing for the world at large, he has wisely ab- 
stained from attempting to raise any passion 
to a height to which worldly people could not 
be transported ; and contented himself with 
giving his reader the chance of feeling, as a 
brave, kind, and affectionate gentleman must 
often feel in the ordinary course of his exist- 
ence, without trying to breathe into him either 
that lofty enthusiasm which disdains the or- 
dinary business and amusements of life, or 
that quiet and deep sensibility which unfits 
for most of its pursuits. With regard to dic- 
tion and imagery, too, it is quite obvious that 
Mr. Scott has not aimed at writing either in a 
very pure or a very consistent style. He 
6eems to have been anxious only to strike, 
and to be easily and universally understood; 
and, for this purpose, to have culled the most 
glittering and conspicuous expressions of the 
most popnlar authors, and to have interwoven 
them in splendid confusion with his own ner- 
vous diction and irregular versification. In- 
different whether he coins or borrows, and 
drawing with equal freedom on his memory 
and his imagination, he goes boldly forward, 
in full reliance on a never-failing abundance '; 
and dazzles, with his richness and variety, 
even those who are most apt to be offended 
with his glare and irregularity. There is 
nothing, in Mr. Scott, of the severe and ma- 
jestic style of Milton — or of the terse and 
fine composition of Pope — or of the elaborate 
elegance and melody of Campbell — or even 
of the flowing and redundant diction of 
Southey. — But there is a medley of bright 
images and glowing words, set carelessly and 
loosely together — a diction, tinged successive- 
ly with the careless richness of Shakespeare, 
the harshness and antique simplicity of the 
old romances, the homeliness of vulgar bal- 



lads and anecdotes, and the sentimental glitter 
of the most modern poetry, — passing from 
the borders of the ludicrous to those of the 
sublime — alternately minute and energetic — 
sometimes artificial, and frequently negligent 
— but always full of spirit and vivacity, — 
abounding in images that are striking, at first 
sight, to minds of every contexture — and 
never expressing a sentiment which it can 
cost the most ordinary reader any exertion to 
comprehend. 

Such seem to be the leading qualities that 
have contributed to Mr. Scott's popularity; 
and as some of them are obviously of a kind 
to diminish his merit in the eyes of more 
fastidious judges, it is but fair to complete 
this view of his peculiarities by a hasty no- 
tice of such of them as entitle him to unquali- 
fied admiration ; — and here it is impossible 
not to be struck with that vivifying spirit of 
strength and animation which pervades all 
the inequalities of his composition, and keeps 
constantly on the mind of the reader the im- 
pression of great power, spirit and intrepidity. 
There is nothing cold, creeping, or feeble, in 
all Mr. Scott's poetry; — no laborious littleness, 
or puling classical affectation. He has his fail- 
ures, indeed, like other people ; but he always 
attempts vigorously : And never fails in his im- 
mediate object, without accomplishing some- 
thing far beyond the reach of an ordinary 
writer. Even when he wanders from the 
paths of pure taste, he leaves behind him the 
footsteps of a powerful genius; and moulds 
the most humble of his materials into a form 
worthy of a nobler substance. Allied to this 
inherent vigour and animation, and in a great 
degree derived from it, is that air of facility 
and freedom which adds so peculiar a grace 
to most of Mr. Scott's compositions. There 
is certainly no living poet whose works seem 
to come from him with so much ease, or who 
so seldom appears to labour, even in the most 
burdensome parts of his performance. He 
seems, indeed, never to think either of him- 
self or his reader, but to be completely identi- 
fied and lost in the personages with whom he 
is occupied ; and the attention of the reader 
is consequently either transferred, unbroken, 
to their adventures, or, if it glance back for a 
moment to the author, it is only to think how 
much more might be done, by putting forth 
that strength at full, which has, without ef- 
fort, accomplished so many wonders. It is 
owing partly to these qualities, and partly to 
the great variety of his style, that Mr. Scott 
is much less frequently tedious than any other 
bulky poet with whom we are acquainted. 
His store of images is so copious, that he 
never dwells upon one long enough to pro- 
duce weariness in the reader; and, even 
where he deals in borrowed or in tawdry 
wares, the rapidity of his transitions, and the 
transient glance with which he is satisfied as 
to each, leave the critic no time to be offend- 
ed, and hurry him forward, along with the 
multitude, enchanted with the brilliancy of 
the exhibition. Thus, the very frequency of 
his deviations from pure taste, comes, in somo 
sort, to constitute their apology ; and the pro- 



S7* 



POETRY. 



fusion and variety of his faults to afford a new 
proof of his genius. 

These, we think, are the general character- 
istics of Mr. Scott's poetry. Among his minor 
peculiarities, we might notice his singular 
talent for description, and especially for the 
description of scenes abounding in motion or 
action of any kind. In this department, in- 
deed, we conceive him to be almost without 
a rival, either among modern or ancient poets; 
and the character and process of his descrip- 
tions are as extraordinary as their effect is 
astonishing. He places before the eyes of 
his leaders a more distinct and complete pic- 
ture, perhaps, than any other artist ever pre- 
sented by mere words; and yet he does not 
(like Crabbe) enumerate all the visible parts 
of the subjects with any degree of minute- 
ness, nor confine himself, by any means, to 
what is visible. The singular merit of his 
delineations, on the contrary, consists in this, 
that, with a few bold and abrupt strokes, he 
finishes a most spirited outline, — and then in- 
stantly kindles it by the sudden light and co- 
lour of some moral affection. There are none 
of his fine descriptions, accordingly, which do 
not derive a great part of their clearness and 
picturesque effect, as well as their interest, 
from the quantity of character and moral ex- 
pression which is thus blended with their de- 
tails, and which, so far from interrupting the 
conception of the external object, very power- 
fully stimulate the fancy of the reader to 
complete it ; and give a grace and a spirit to 
the whole representation, of which we do not 
know where to look for any other example. 

Another very striking peculiarity in Mr. 
Scott's poetry, is the air of freedom and na- 
ture which he has contrived to impart to most 
of his distinguished characters; and with 
which no poet more modern than Shakespeare 
has ventured to represent personages of such 
dignity. We do not allude here merely to the 
genuine familiarity and homeliness of many 
of his scenes and dialogues, but to that air of 
gaiety and playfulness in which persons of 
high rank seem, from time immemorial, to 
have thought it necessary to array, not their 
courtesy only, but their generosity and their 
hostility. This tone of good society, Mr. 
Scott has shed over his higher characters with 
great grace and effect ; and has, in this way, 
not only made his representations much more 
faithful and true to nature, but has very agree- 
ably relieved the monotony of that tragic so- 
lemnity which ordinary writers appear to think 
indispensable to the dignity of poetical heroes 
and heroines. We are not sure, however, 
whether he has not occasionally exceeded a 
little in the use of this ornament ; and given, 
now and then, too coquettish and trifling a tone 
to discussions of weight and moment. 

Mr. Scott has many other characteristic ex- 
cellences: — But we have already detained 
our readers too long with this imperfect sketch 
of his poetical character, and must proceed, 
without further delay, to give them some ac- 
count of the work which is now before us. 
Of this, upon the whole, we are inclined to 
Chink more highly than of either of his former 



publications. We are more sure, nowever, 
that it has fewer faults, than that it has greater 
beauties; and as its beauties bear a strong 
resemblance to those with which the public 
has already been made familiar in those cele • 
brated works, we should not be surprised if 
its popularity were less splendid and remark- 
able. For our own parts, however, we are of 
opinion, that it will be oftener read hereafter 
than either of them ; and, that, if it had ap- 
peared first in the series, their reception would 
have been less favourable than that which it 
has experienced. It is more polished in its 
diction, and more regular in its versification ; 
the story is con structed with infinitely more 
skill and address ; there is a greater propor- 
tion of pleasing and tender passages, with 
much less antiquarian detail ; and, upon the 
whole, a larger variety of characters, more 
artfully and judiciously contrasted. There is 
nothing so fine, perhaps, as the battle in Mar- 
mion — or so picturesque as some of the scat- 
tered sketches in the Lay ; but there is a 
richness and a spirit in the whole piece, which 
does not pervade either of these poems — a 
profusion of incident, and a shifting brilliancy 
of colouring, that reminds us of the witchery 
of Ariosto — and a constant elasticity, and oc- 
casional energy, which seem to belong more 
peculiarly to the author now before us. 

It may appear superfluous, perhaps, for us 
to present our readers with any analysis of a 
work, which is probably, by this time, in the 
hands of as many persons as are likely to see 
our account of it. As these, however, may 
not be the same persons, and as. without 
making some such abstract, we could not 
easily render the few remarks we have to 
offer intelligible, we shall take the liberty of 
beginning with a short summary of the fable. 

The first canto, which is entitled The Chase, 
begins with a pretty long description of a stag- 
hunt in the Highlands of Perthshire. As the 
chase lengthens, the sportsmen drop off; till 
at last the foremost huntsman is left alone ; 
and his horse, overcome with fatigue, stum- 
bles, and dies in a rocky valley. The ad- 
venturer pursues a little wild path, through a 
deep ravine ; and at last, climbing up a craggy 
eminence, discovers, by the light of the even- 
ing sun, Loch Katrine, with all its woody 
islands and rocky shores, spread out in glory 
before him. After gazing with admiration on 
this beautiful scene, which is described with 
greater spirit than accuracy, the huntsman 
winds his horn, in the hope of being heard 
by some of his attendants ; and sees, to his 
infinite surprise, a little skiff, guided by a 
lovely woman, glide from beneath the trees 
that overhang the water, and approach the 
shore at his feet. The lady calls to her father ; 
and, upon the stranger's approach, pushes her 
shallop from the shore in alarm. After hold- 
ing a short parley with him, however, from 
the water, she takes him into the boat, and 
carries him to a woody island; where she 
leads him into a sort of sylvan mansion, rude- 
ly constructed of trunks of trees, moss, and 
thatch, and hung round, within, with trophies 
of war, and of the chase. An elderly lady is 



SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



373 



introduced at supper ; and the stranger, after 
disclosing himself to be "James Fitz-James, 
the knight of Snowdoun," tries in vain to dis- 
cover the name and history of the ladies, 
whose manners discover them to be of high 
rank and quality. He then retires to 6leep, 
and is disturbed with distressful visions — 
rises and tranquillises himself, by looking out 
on the lovely moonlight landscape — says his 
prayers, and sleeps till the heathcock crows 
on the mountains behind him: — And thus 
closes the first canto. 

The second opens with a fine picture of the 
aged harper, Allan-bane, sitting on the island 
beach with the damsel, watching the skiff 
which carries the stranger back again to land. 
The minstrel sings a sweet song ; and a con- 
versation ensues, from which the reader gath- 
ers, that the lady is a daughter of the house 
of Douglas, and that her father, having been 
exiled by royal displeasure from the court, 
had been fain to accept of this asylum from 
Sir Roderick Dhu, a Highland chieftain, who 
had long been outlawed for deeds of blood, 
but still maintained his feudal sovereignty in 
the fastnesses of his native mountains. It 
appears also, that this dark chief is in love 
with his fair protegee ; but that her affections 
are engaged to Malcolm Graeme, a younger 
and more amiable mountaineer, the companion 
and guide of her father in his hunting excur- 
sions. As they are engaged in this discourse, 
the sound of distant music is heard on the 
lake ; and the barges of Sir Roderick are dis- 
covered, proceeding in triumph to the island. 
Her mother calls Ellen to go down with her 
to receive him ; but she, hearing her father's 
horn at that instant on the opposite shore, 
flies to meet him and Malcolm Graeme, who 
is received with cold and stately civility by 
the lord of the isle. After some time, Sir 
Roderick informs the Douglas, that his retreat 
has been discovered by the royal spies, and 
that he has great reason to believe that the 
King (James V.), who, under pretence of hunt- 
ing, had assembled a large force in the neigh- 
bourhood, was bent upon their destruction. 
He then proposes, somewhat impetuously, 
that they should unite their fortunes indis- 
6olubly by his marriage with Ellen, and rouse 
the whole Western Highlands to repress the 
invasion. The Douglas, with many expres- 
sions of gratitude, declines both the war and 
the alliance ; and, intimating that his daughter 
has repugnances which she cannot overcome, 
and that he, though ungratefully used by his 
sovereign, will never lift his arm against him, 
declares that he will retire to a cave in the 
neighbouring mountains, till the issue of the 
threat is seen. The strong heart of Roderick 
is wrung with agony at this rejection ; and, 
when Malcolm advances to offer his services, 
as Ellen rises to retire, he pushes him violent- 
ly back — and a scuffle ensues, of no very dig- 
nified character, which is with difficulty ap- 
peased by the giant arm of Douglas. Malcolm 
then withdraws in proud resentment; and, 
refusing to be indebted to the surly chief 
even for the use of his boat, plunges into the 
water, and swims over by moonlight to the 



mainland : — And, with the description of this 
feat, the second canto concludes. 

The third canto, which is entitled "The 
Gathering," opens with a long and rather 
tedious account of the ceremonies employed 
by Sir Roderick, in preparing for the Fum- 
moning or gathering of his clan. This is ac- 
complished by the consecration of a small 
wooden cross, which, with its points scorched 
and dipped in blood, is circulated with in- 
credible celerity through the whole territory 
of the chieftain. The eager fidelity with 
which this fatal signal is hurried on and 
obeyed, is represented with great spirit and 
felicity. A youth starts from the side of his 
father's coffin, to bear it forward ; and having 
run his stage, delivers it into the hands of a 
young bridegroom returning from church; 
who instantly binds his plaid around him, 
and rushes onward from his bride. In the 
mean time, Douglas and his daughter had 
taken refuge in the mountain cave ; and Sir 
Roderick, passing near their retreat in his 
way to the muster, hears Ellen's voice sing- 
ing her evening hymn to the Virgin. He does 
not obtrude on her devotions, but hurries to 
the place of rendezvous, where his clan re- 
ceive him with a shout of acclamation, and 
then couch on the bare heath for the night. — 
This terminates the third canto. 

The fourth begins with more incantations. 
Some absurd and disgusting ceremonies are 
gone through, by a wild hermit of the clan, 
with a view to ascertain the issue of the im- 
pending war; — and this oracular response is 
obtained — "that the party shall prevail which 
first sheds the blood of its adversary." We 
are then introduced to the minstrel and Ellen, 
whom he strives to comfort for the alarming 
disappearance of her father, by singing a long 
fairy ballad to her; and just as the song is 
ended, the knight of Snowdoun again appears 
before her, declares his love, and urges her 
to put herself under his protection. Ellen, 
alarmed, throws herself on his generosity — 
confesses her attachment to Graeme — and 
with difficulty prevails on him to seek his 
own safety by a speedy retreat from those 
dangerous confines. The gallant stranger at 
last complies; but, before he goes, presents 
her with a ring, which he says he had re- 
ceived from the hand of King James, with a 
promise to grant any boon that should be 
asked by the person producing it. As he is 
pursuing his way through the wild, his sus- 
picions are excited by the conduct of his 
guide, and confirmed by the musical warn- 
ings of a mad Woman, who sings to him about 
the toils that are set, and the knives that are 
whetted against him. "He then threatens his 
false guide, who discharges an arrow at him, 
which kills the maniac. The knight slays the 
murderer; and learning from the expiring 
victim that her brain had been turned by the 
cruelty of Sir Roderick, he vows vengeance 
on his head ; and proceeds with grief and ap- 
prehension along his dangerous way. When 
chilled with the midnight cold, and exhausted 
with want and fatigue, he suddenly comes 
upon a chief reposing by a lonely watch-fire ; 
2G 



374 



POETRY. 



and, though challenged in the name of Rod- 
erick Dhu, boldly avows himself his enemy. 
The clansman, however, disdains to take ad- 
vantage of a worn-out wanderer ; and pledges 
himself to escort him safe out of Sir Roderick's 
territory j after which, he tells him he must 
answer with his sword for the defiance he 
had uttered against the chieftain. The stran- 
ger accepts his courtesy upon those chivalrous 
terms ; and the warriors sup, and sleep to- 
gether on the plaid of the mountaineer. 

They rouse themselves by dawn, at the 
opening of the fifth canto, entitled "The 
Combat," and proceed towards the Lowland 
frontier ; the Highland warrior seeking, by 
the w r ay, at once to vindicate the character 
of Sir Roderick, and to justify the predatory 
habits of his clan. Fitz-James expresses 
freely his detestation of both ; and the dis- 
pute growing warm, he says, that never lover 
longed so to see the lady of his heart, as he 
to see before him this murderous chief and 
his myrmidons. "Have then thy wish!" 
answers his guide; and giving a loud whistle, 
a whole legion of armed men start up at 
once from their mountain ambush in the 
heath; while the chief turns proudly, and 
Bays, those are the warriors of Clan-Alpine — 
and "I am Roderick Dhu!" — The Lowland 
knight, though startled, repeats his defiance ; 
and Sir Roderick, respecting his valour, by a 
signal dismisses his men to their conceal- 
ment, and assures him anew of his safety 
till they pass his frontier. Arrived on this 
equal ground, the chief now demands satis- 
faction ; and forces the knight, w r ho tries all 
honourable means of avoiding the combat 
with so generous an adversarj T , to stand upon 
his defence. Roderick, after a tough combat, 
is laid wounded on the ground; and Fitz- 
James, sounding- his bugle, brings four squires 
to his side ; and after giving the w r ounded 
chief into their charge, gallops rapidly on 
towards Stirling. As he ascends the hill to the 
castle, he descries the giant form of Douglas 
approaching to the same place; and the 
reader is then told, that this generous lord 
had taken the resolution of delivering him- 
self up voluntarily, with a view to save Mal- 
colm Graeme, and if possible Sir Roderick 
also, from the impending danger. As he 
draws near to the castle, he sees the King 
and his train descending to grace the holyday 
sports of the commonalty, and resolves to 
mingle in them, and present himself to the 
eye of his alienated sovereign as victor in' 
those humbler contentions. He wins the 
prize accordingly, in archery, wrestling, and 
pitching the bar; and receives his reward 
from the hand of the prince ; who does not 
condescend to recognise his former favourite 
by one glance of affection. Roused at last 
by an insult from one of the royal grooms, he 
proclaims himself aloud ; is ordered into cus- 
tody by the King, and represses a tumult of 
the populace which is excited for his rescue. 
At this instant, a messenger arrives with 
tidings of an approaching battle between the 
clan of Roderick and the King's lieutenant, 
the Earl of Mar, and is ordered back to pre- 



vent the combat, by announcing that both 
Sir Roderick and Lord Douglas are in the 
hands of their sovereign. 

The sixth and last canto, entitled "-The 
Guard Room," opens with a very animated 
description of the motley mercenaries that 
formed the royal guard, as they appeared at 
early dawn, after a night of stem debauch. 
While they are quarrelling and singing, the 
sentinels introduce an old minstrel and a 
veiled maiden, who had been forwarded by 
Mar to the royal presence ; and Ellen, disclos*- 
ing her countenance, awes the ruffian soldiery, 
into respect and pity, by her grace and liber- 
ality. She is then conducted to a more seemly 
waiting-place, till the King should be visible ; 
and Allan-bane, asking to be taken to the 
prison of his captive lord, is led, by mistake, to 
the sick chamber of Roderick Dhu, who is 
dying of his wounds in a gloomy apartment of 
the castle. The high-souled chieftain inquires 
eagerly after the fortunes of his clan, the 
Douglas, and Ellen ; and, when he learns that 
a battle has been fought with a doubtful suc- 
cess, entreats the minstrel to sooth his parting 
spirit with a description of it, and with the 
victor song of his clan. Allan-bane com- 
plies; and the battle is told in very animated 
and irregular verse. When the vehement 
strain is closed, Roderick is found cold ; and 
Allan mourns him in a pathetic lament. In 
the mean time, Ellen hears the voice of 
Malcolm Graeme lamenting his captivity from 
an adjoining turret of the palace ; and, before 
she has recovered from her agitation, is start- 
led by the appearance of Fitz-James, who 
comes to inform her that the court is assem- 
bled, and the King at leisure to receive her 
suit. He conducts her trembling steps to the 
hall of presence, round which Ellen casts a 
timid and eager glance for the monarch ; But 
all the glittering figures are uncovered, and 
James Fitz-James alone wears his cap and 
plume in the brilliant assembly ! The truth 
immediately rushes on her imagination : — 
The knight of Snowdoun is the King of Scot- 
land ! and. struck with awe and terror, she 
falls speechless at his feet, clasping her hands, 
and pointing to the ring in breathless agita- 
tion. The prince raises her with eager kind- 
ness — declares aloud that her father is for- 
given, and restored to favour — and bids her 
ask a boon for some other person. The name 
of Graeme trembles on her lips; but she 
cannot trust herself to utter it, and begs the 
grace of Roderick Dhu. The king answers, 
that he would give his best earldom to restore 
him to life, and presses her to name some 
other boon. She blushes, and hesitates; and 
the king, in playful vengeance, condemns 
Malcolm Graeme to fetters — takes a chain of 
gold from his own neck, and throwing it ovei 
that of the young chief, puts the clasp into 
the hand of Ellen ! 

Such is the brief and naked outline of 
the story, which Mr. Scott has embellished 
with such exquisite imagery, and enlarged 
by so many characteristic incidents, as to 
have rendered it one of the most attractive 
poems in the language. That the storv, 



SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



375 



upon the whole, is well digested and happily- 
carried on, is evident from the hold it keeps 
of the reader's attention through every part 
of its progress. It has the fault, indeed, of 
all stories that turn upon an anagnorisis or 
recognition, that the curiosity which is ex- 
cited during the first reading is extinguished 
for ever when we arrive at the discovery. 
This, however, is an objection which may be 
made, in some degree, to almost every story 
of interest ; and we must say for Mr. Scott, 
that his secret is very discreetly kept, and 
most felicitously revealed. If we were to 
scrutinize the fable with malicious severity, 
we might also remark, that Malcolm Graeme 
has too insignificant a part assigned him, con- 
sidering the favour in which he is held both 
by Ellen and the author ; and that, in bring- 
ing out the shaded and imperfect character 
of Roderick Dhu, as a contrast to the purer 
virtue of his rival, Mr. Scott seems to have 
fallen into the common error, of making him 
more interesting than him whose virtues he 
was intended to set off, and converted the 
villain of the piece in some measure into its 
hero. A modern poet, however, may perhaps 
be pardoned for an error, of which Milton 
himself is thought not to have kept clear; 
and for which there seems so natural a cause, 
in the difference between poetical and amia- 
ble characters. There are several improba- 
bilities, too, in the story, which might disturb 
a scrupulous reader. Allowing that the king 
of Scotland might have twice disappeared for 
several days, without exciting any disturb- 
ance or alarm in his court, it is certainly rather 
extraordinary, that neither the Lady Margaret, 
nor old Allan-bane, nor any of the attendants 
at the isle, should have recognised his person ; 
and almost as wonderful, that he should have 
found any difficulty in discovering the family 
of his entertainers. There is something rather 
awkward, too, in the sort of blunder or mis- 
understanding (for it is no more) which gives 
occasion to Sir Roderick's Gathering and all 
its consequences; nor can any machinery be 
conceived more clumsy for effecting the de- 
liverance of a distressed hero, than the intro- 
troduction of a mad woman, who. without 
knowing or caring about the wanderer, warns 
him, by a song, to take care of the ambush 
that was set for him. The Maniacs of poetry 
have indeed had a prescriptive right to be 
musical, since the days of Ophelia down- 
wards ; but it is rather a rash extension of this 
privilege, to make them sing good sense, and 
to make sensible people be guided by them. 
Before taking leave of the fable, we must 
be permitted to express our disappointment 
and regret at finding the general cast of the 
characters and incidents so much akin to those 
of Mr. Scott's former publications. When we 
heard that the author of the Lay and of Mar- 
mion was employed upon a Highland story, 
we certainly expected to be introduced to a 
new creation ; and to bid farewell, for awhile, 
to the knights, squires, courtiers, and chivalry 
of the low country : — But here they are all 
upon us again, in their old characters, and 
nearly in their old costume. The same age — 



the same sovereign — the same manners — the 
same ranks of society — the same lone, both 
for courtesy and for defiance. Loch Katrine, 
indeed, i3 more picturesque than St. Mary's 
Loch : and Roderick Dhu and his clan have 
some features of novelty: — But the Douglas 
and the King are the leading personages ; and 
the whole interest of the story turns upon per- 
sons and events having precisely the same 
character and general aspect with those which 
gave their peculiar colour to the former poems. 
It is honourable to Mr. Scott's genius, no 
doubt, that he has been able to interest the 
public so deeply with this third presentment 
of the same chivalrous scenes; but we cannot 
help thinking, that both his glory and our grati- 
fication would have been greater, if he had 
changed his hand more completely, and ac- 
tually given us a true Celtic story, with all its 
drapery and accompaniments in a correspond- 
ing style of decoration. 

Such a subject, we are persuaded, has very- 
great capabilities, and only wants to be in- 
troduced to public notice by such a hand as 
Mr. Scott's, to make a still more powerful im- 
pression than he has already effected by the 
resurrection of the tales of romance. There 
are few persons, we believe, of any degree of 
poetical susceptibility, who have wandered 
among the secluded valleys of the Highlands, 
and contemplated the singular people by 
whom they are still tenanted — with their love 
of music and of song — their hardy and irregu- 
lar life, so unlike the unvarying toils of the 
Saxon mechanic — their devotion to their chiefs 
— their wild and lofty traditions — their na- 
tional enthusiasm — the melancholy grandeur 
of the scenes they inhabit — and the multi- 
plied superstitions which still linger among 
them, — without feeling, that there is no exist- 
ing people so well adapted for the purposes 
of poetry, or so capable of furnishing the oc- 
casions of new and striking inventions.* The 
great and continued popularity of Macpher- 
son's Ossian (though discredited as a memorial 
of antiquity, at least as much as is warranted 
by any evidence yet before the public), proves 
how very fascinating a fabric might be raised 
upon that foundation by a more powerful or 
judicious hand. That celebrated translation, 
though defaced with the most childish and 
offensive affectations, still charms with occa- 
sional gleams of a tenderness beyond all other 
tenderness, and a sublimity of a new charac- 
ter of dreariness and elevation ; and, though 
patched with pieces of the most barefaced pla- 
giarism, still maintains a tone of originality 
which has recommended it in every nation of 
the civilised world. The cultivated literati 
of England, indeed, are struck with the affec- 
tation and the plagiarism, and renounce the 
whole work as tawdry and factitious ; but the 
multitude at home, and almost all classes of 
readers abroad, to whom those defects are 
less perceptible, still continue to admire ; and 



* The Tartan fever excited in the South (and not 
yet eradicated) by the Highland scenes and charac- 
ters of Waverly, seems fully to justify this sugges- 
tion ; and makes it rather surprising that no other 
great writer has since repeated the experiment. 



376 



POETRY. 



few of our classical poets have so sure and 
regular a sale, both in our own and in other 
languages, as the singular collection to which 
we have just alluded. A great part of its 
charm, we think, consists in the novelty of 
its Celtic characters and scenery, and their 
singular aptitude for poetic combinations ; and 
therefore it is that we are persuaded, that if 
Mr. Scott's powerful and creative genius were 
to be turned in good earnest to such a subject, 
something might be produced still more im- 
pressive and original than even this age has 
yet witnessed. 

It is now time, however, that we should lay 
before our readers some of the passages in 
the present poem which appear to us most 
characteristic of the peculiar genius of the 
author; — and the first that strikes us, in turn- 
ing over the leaves, is the following fine de- 
scription of Sir Roderick's approach to the 
isle, as described by the aged minstrel, at the 
close of his conversation with Ellen. The 
moving picture — the effect of the sounds — 
and the wild character and strong and pecu- 
liar nationality of the whole procession, are 
given with inimitable spirit and power of ex- 
pression. 

" But hark, what sounds are these ? 

My dull ears catch no falt'ring breeze, 
No weeping birch nor aspen's wake ; 
Nor breath is dimpling in the lake ; 
Still is the canna's hoary beard. 
Yet, by my minstrel faith, I heard— 
And hark again ! some pipe of war 
Sends the bold pibroch from afar." — 

" Far up the lengthen'd lake were spied 
Four dark'ning specks upon the tide, 
That, slow, enlarging on the view, 
Four mann'd and masted barges grew. 
And bearing downwards from Glengyle, 
Steer'd full upon the lonely isle ; 
The point of Brianchoil they pass'd, 
And, to the windward as they cast, 
Against the sun they gave to shine 
The bold Sir Rod'rick's banner'd Pine ! 
Nearer and nearer as they bear, 
Spears, pikes, and axes flash in air. 
Now might you see the tartans brave, 
And plaids and plumage dance and wave ; 
Now see the bonnets sink and rise, 
As his tough oar the rower plies ; 
See flashing at each sturdy stroke 
The wave ascending into smoke ! 
See the proud pipers on the bow, 
And mark the gaudy streamers flow 
From their loud chanters down, and sweep, 
The furrow'd bosom of the deep, 
As, rushing through the lake amain, 
They plied the ancient Highland strain. 

•' Ever, as on they bore, more loud 
And louder rung the pibroch "proud. 
At first the sounds, by distance tame, 
Mellow'd along the waters came, 
And ling'ring long by cape and bay, 
Wail'd every harsher note away ; 
Then, bursting bolder on the ear, 
The clan's shrill Gath'ring they could hear ; 
Those thrilling sounds, that call the might 
Of old Clan-Alpine to the fight. 
Thick beat the rapid notes, as when 
The must'ring hundreds shake the glen, 
And, hurrying at the signal dread, 
The batter' d earth returns their tread ! 
Then prelude light, of livelier tone, 
Express* d their merry marching on, 



Ere peal of closing battle rose, 
With mingled outcry, shrieks, and blows ; 
And mimic din of stroke and ward, 
As broad-sword upon target jarr'd ; 
And groaning pause, ere yet again, 
Condens'd, the battle yell'd amain; 
The rapid charge, the rallying shout, 
Retreat borne headlong into rout, 
And bursts of triumph to declare 
Clan-Alpine's conquest — all were there! 
Nor ended thus the strain ; but slow, 
Sunk in a moan prolong'd and low. 
And chang'd the conquering clarion swel, 
For wild lament o'er those that fell. 

" The war-pipes ceas'd ; but lake and hill 
Were busy with their echoes still ; 
And, when they slept, a vocal strain 
Bade their hoarse chorus wake again, 
While loud an hundred clansmen raise 
Their voices in their Chieftain's praise. 
Each boatman, bending to his oar, 
With measur'd sweep the burthen bore, 
In such wild cadence, as the breeze 
Makes through December's leafless trees. 
The chorus first could Allan know, 
1 Rod'righ Vich Alpine, ho ! iero !' 
And near, and nearer as they row'd, 
Distinct the martial ditty flow'd. 

" Boat Song. 

11 Hail to the chief who in triumph advances ! 

Honour'd and bless'd be the ever-green Pine! 
Long may the Tree in his banner that glances, 

Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line !" — 

" Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain, 

Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade; 
When the whirlwind has stripp'd ev'ry leaf on ths 
mountain, 
The more shall Clan- Alpine exult in her shade. 
Moor'd in the rifted rock, 
Proof to the tempest's shock, 
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow ; _ 
Menteith and Breadalbane, then, 
Echo his praise agen, 
1 Rod'righ Vich Alpine dhu, ho ! ieroe !' 

11 Row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Highlands! 

Stretch to your oars, for the ever-green Pine ! 
O ! that the rose-bud that graces yon islands, 
Were wreath'd in a garland around him to twine ! 
O that some seedling gem, 
Worthy such noble stem, 
Honour'd and bless'd in their shadow might grow 
Loud should Clan-Alpine then 
Ring from her deepmost glen, 
' Rod'righ Vich Alpine dhu, ho ! ieroe V " 

pp. 65—71. 

The reader may take next the following 
general sketch of Loch Katrine : — 

" One burnish'd sheet of living gold, 
Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd; 
In all her length far winding lay, 
With promontory, creek, and bay, 
And islands that, empurpled bright, 
Floated amid the livelier light ; ~ 
And mountains, that like giants stand, 
To sentinel enchanted land. 
High on the south, huge Benvenue 
Down to the lake in masses threw 
Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd 
The fragments of an earlier world ! 
A wild'ring forest feather'd o'er 
His ruin'd sides and summit hoar ; 
While on the north, through middle air, 
Ben-an heav'd high his forehead bare."-pp. 18, 19. 

The next is a more minute view of the same 
scenery in a summer dawn — closed with a fine 
picture of its dark lord. 



SCOTT'S LAD! OF THE LAKE. 



377 



" The summer dawn's reflected hue 

To purple chang'd Loch Katrine blue ; 
m Mildly and soft the western breeze 
"Just kiss'd the lake, just stirrd the trees ; 

And the plcas'd lake, like maiden coy, 

Trembled but dimpled not for joy ! 

The mountain shadows on her breast 

Were neither broken nor at rest ; 

In bright uncertainty they lie, 

Like future joys to Fancy's eye ! 

The water lily to the liijht 

Her chalice rear'd of silver bright ; 

The doe awoke, and to the lawn, 

Begem m'd with dew-drops, led her fawn ; 

The grey mist left the mountain side, 

The torrent show'd its glistening pride ; 

Invisible in flecked sky, 

The lark sent down her revelry ; 

The black- bird and the speckled thrush 

Good-morrow gave from brake and bush ; 

In answer coo'd the cushat dove 

Her notes of peace, and rest, and love. 

" No thought of peace, no thought of rest, 
Assuag'd the storm in Rod' rick's breast. 
With sheathed broad-sword in his hand, 
Abrupt he pac'd the islet strand : 
The shrinking band stood oft aghast 
At the impatient glance he cast ; — 
Such glance the mountain eagle threw, 
As, from the cliffs of Ben-venue, 
She spread her dark sails on the wind, 
And, high in middle heaven reclin'd, 
With her broad shadow on the lake, 
Silenc'd the warblers of the brake." — pp. 98-100. 

The following description of the starting of 
M the fiery cross," bears more marks of labour 
than most of Mr. Scott's poetry, and borders, 
perhaps, upon straining and exaggeration; 
yet it shows great power. 

" Then Rod'rick, with impatient look, 
From Brian's hand the symbol took : 
' Speed, Malise, speed!' he said, and gave 
The crosslet to his henchman brave. 
' The mtfster-place be Lanric mead — 
Instant the time — speed, Malise, speed !' 
Like heath-bird, when the hawks pursue, 
The barge across Loch Katrine flew ; 
High stood the henchman on the prow ; 
So rapidly the bargemen row, 
The bubbles, where they launch'd the boat, 
Were all unbroken and afloat, 
Dancing in foam and ripple still, 
When it had near'd the mainland hill ! 
And from the silver beach's side 
Still was the prow three fathom wide, 
When lightly bounded to the land, 
The messenger of blood and brand. 
1 Speed, Malise, speed ! the dun deer's hide 
On fleeter foot was never tied. 
Speed, Malise, speed ! such cause of haste 
Thine active sinews never brac'd. 
Bend 'gainst the steepy hill thy breast, 
Burst down like torrent from its crest ; 
With short and springing footstep pass 
The trembling bog and false morass ; 
Across the brook Tike roe-buck bound, 
And thread the brake like questing hound ; 
The crag is high, the scaur is deep, 
Yet shrink not from the desperate leap ; 
Parch'd are thy burning lips and brow, 
Yet by the fountain pause not now ; 
Herald of battle, fate, and fear, 
Stretch onward in thy fleet career ! 
The wounded hind thou track'st not now, 
Pursu'st not maid through greenwood bough, 
Nor pliest thou now thy flying pace 
With rivals in the mountain race ; 
But danger, death, and warrior deed, 
Are in thy course — Speed, Malise, speed !' " 
pp. 112—114. 
4o 



The following reflections on an ancient field 
of battle afford' one of the most remarkable 
instances of false taste in all Mr. Scott's wri- 
tings. Yet the brevity and variety of the 
images serve well to show, as we have for- 
merly hinted, that even in his errors there are 
traces of a powerful genius. 

" a dreary glen, 

Where scatter'd lay the bones of men, 

In some forgotten battle slain, 

And bleach'd by drifting wind and rain. 

It might have tam*d a warrior's heart, 

To view such mockery of his art ! 

The knot-grass fetter'd there the hand, 

Which once could burst an iron band ; 

Beneath the broad and ample bone, 

That buckler'd heart to fear unknown, 

A feeble and a timorous guest, 

The field-fare fram'd her lowly nest! 

There the slow blind-worm left his slime 

On the fleet limbs lhatmock'd at time ; 

And there, too, lay the leader's skull, 

Siill wreath'd with chaplet flush'd and full, 

For heath-bell, with her purple bloom, 

Supplied the bonnet and the plume."-pp. 102, 103. 

Bat one of the most striking passages in 
the poem, certainly, is that in which Sir 
Roderick is represented as calling up his men 
suddenly from their ambush, when Fitz-Jamea 
expressed his impatience to meet, face to 
face, that murderous chieftain and his clan. 

" • Have, then, thy wish !' — He whistled shrill :, 
And he was answer'd from the hill ! 
Wild as the scream of the curlew, 
From crag to crag the signal flew. 
Instant, through copse and heath, arose 
Bonnets and spears and bended bows ! 
On right, on left, above, below, 
Sprung up at once the lurking foe ; 
From shingles grey their lances start. 
The bracken-bush sends forth the dart, 
The rushes and the willow-wand 
Are bristling into axe and brand, 
And ev'ry tuft of broom gives life 
To plaided warrior arm'd for strife. 
That whistle garrison'd the glen 
At once with full five hundred men . 
As if the yawning hill to heaven 
A subterranean host had given. 
Watching their leader's beck and will, 
All silent there they stood and still. 
Like the loose crags whose threat'ning roasft 
Lay tott'ririg o'er the hollow pass, 
As if an infant's touch could urge 
Their headlong passage down the verge, 
With step and weapon forward flung, 
Upon the mountain-side they hung. 
The mountaineer cast glance of pride 
Along Benledi's living side ; 
Then fix'd his eye and sable brow 
Full on Fitz- James — " How say'st thou now t 
These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true ; 
And, Saxon, — 1 am Roderick Dhu !" — 

11 Fitz- James was brave : — Though to his heart 
The life-blood thrill'd with sudden start, 
He mann'd himself with dauntless air, 
Return'd the Chief his haughty stare, 
His back against a rock he bore, 
And firmly plac'd his foot before : — 
1 Come one, come all ! this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I.' — 
Sir Roderick mark'd — and in his eyes 
Respect was mingled with surprise, 
And the stern joy which warriors feel 
In foeman worthy of their steel. 
Short space he stood — then wav'd his hand a 
Down sunk the disappearing band ! 
Each warrior vanish' d where he stood, 
2g2 



4 % S 



POETRY. 



In broom or bracken, heath or wood 

Sunk brand and s[*ear and bended bow, 

In osiers pale and copses low ; 

It seem'd as if their mother Earth 

Had swaliow'd up her warlike birth! 

The wind's last breath had toss'd in air, 

Pennon, and plaid, and plumage fair — 

The next but swept a lone hill-side, 

Where heath and fern were waving wide ; 

The sun's laa glance was glinted back, 

From spear and glaive, from targe and jack — 

The next, all unreflected, shone 

On bracken green, and cold grey stone." 

pp. 202—205. 

The following picture is of a very different 
character; but touched also with the hand of 
a true poet : — 

" Yet ere his onward way he took, 
The Stranger cast a ling'ring look, 
Where easily his eye might reach 
The Harper on the islet beach, 
Reclin'd against a blighted tree, 
As wasted, grey, and worn as he. 
To minstrel meditation given, 
His rev'rend brow was rais'd to heaven, 
As from the rising sun to claim 
A sparkle of inspiring flame. 
His hand, reclin'd upon the wire, 
Seem'd watching the awak'ning fire ; 
So still he sate, as those who wait 
Till judgment speak the doom of fate ; 
So still, as if no breeze might dare 
To lift one lock of hoary hair ; 
So still, as life itself were fled, 
In the last sound his harp had sped. 
Upon a rock with lichens wild, 
Beside him Ellen sate and smil'd," &c. 

pp. 50, 51. 

Though these extracts have already ex- 
tended this article beyond all reasonable 
bounds, we cannot omit Ellen's introduction 
to the court, and the transformation of Fitz- 
James into the King of Scotland. The un- 
known prince, it will be recollected, himself 
conducts her into the royal presence : — 

" With beating heart, and bosom wrung, 
As to a brother's arm she clung. 
Gently he dried the falling tear, 
And gently whisper'd hope and cheer; 
Her falt'ring steps half led, half staid, 
Through gallery fair and high arcade, 
Till, afhis touch, its wings of pride 
A portal arch unfolded wide. 

" Within 'twas brilliant all and light, 
A thronging scene of figures bright ; 
It glow'd on Ellen's dazzled sight, 
As when the setting sun has given 
Ten thousand hues to summer even, 
And, from their tissue fancy frames 
Aerial knights and fairy dames. 
Still by Fiiz-James her footing staid ; 
A few faint steps she forward made. 
Then slow her drooping head she rais'd, 
And fearful round the presence gaz'd ; 
For him she sought, who own'd this state, 
The dreaded prince, whose will was fate ! 
She gaz'd on many a princely port, 
Might well have rul'd a royal court ; 
On many a splendid garb she gaz'd— 
Then tr.rn'd bewilder'd and amaz'd, 
For all stood bare; and, in the room, 
Fitz-James alone wore cap and plume ! 
To him each lady's look was lent, 
On him each courtier's eye was bent ; 
Midst furs and silks and jewels sheen, 
He stood, in simple Lincoln green, 
The centre of the glitt'ring ring ! — 
And Snowdoun's Knight is Scotland's King ! 



" As wreath of snow on mountain breast, 
Slides from the rock that gave it rest, 
Poor Ellen glided from her stay, 
A nd at the Monarch's feet she lay ; 
No word her choking voice commands — 
She show'd the ring — she clasp'd her hands. 

! not a moment could he brook, 

The gen'rous prince, that suppliant look ! 
Gently he rais'd her — and the while 
Check'd with n glance the circle's smile ; 
Graceful, but grave, her brow he kiss'd, 
And bade her terrors be dismiss'd : — 

1 Yes, Fair ! the wand'ring poor Fitz-James 
The fealty of Scotland claims. 

To him thy woes, thy wishes, bring ; 
He will redeem his signet ring,' " &c 

pp. 281—284. 

We cannot resist adding the graceful wind 
ing up of the whole story : — 

" ■ Malcolm, come forth !' — And., and at the word 
Down kneel'd the Graeme to Scotland's Lord. 
' For thee, rash youth, no suppliant sues, 
From thee may Vengeance claim her dues, 
Who, nurtur'd underneath our smile, 
Has paid our care by treach'rous wile, 
And sought, amid thy faithful clan, 
A refuge for an outlaw'd man, 
Dishonouring thus thy loyal name. — 
Fetters and warder for the Graeme !' 
His chain of gold the King unstrung, 
The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung, 
Then gently drew the glitt'ring band ; 
And laid the clasp on Ellen's hand ! : ' — p. 288. 

There are no separate introductions to the 
cantos of this poem; but each of them be- 
gins w r ith one or two stanzas in the measure 
of Spenser, usually containing some reflec- 
tions connected with the subject about to be 
entered on ; and written, for the most part, 
with great tenderness and beauty. The fol- 
lowing, we think is among the most striking : — 

" Time rolls his ceaseless course ! The race of yore 

Who danc'd our infancy upon their knee, 
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store, 

Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea. 
How are they blotted from the things that be ! 

How few, all weak and wither'd of their force, 
Wait, on the verge of dark eternity, 

Like stranded wrecks — the tide returning hoarse, 
To sweep them from our sight ! Time rolls his 
ceaseless course ! 

"Yet live there still who can remember well, 
How, when a mountain chief his bugle blew," 
&c— pp. 97, 98. 

There is an invocation to the Harp of the 
North, prefixed to the poem ; and a farewell 
subjoined to it in the same measure, written 
and versified, it appears to us, with more than 
Mr. Scott's usual care. We give two of the 
three stanzas that compose the last :— 

"Harp of the North, farewell ! The hills grow 
dark, 

On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; 
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark ; 

The deer, half-seen, are to ihe covert wending. 
Resume thy wizard elm ! the fountain lending. 

And the wild breeze, thv wilder minstrelsy; 
Thy numbers sweet withNature's vespers blending, 

With distant echo from the fold and lea, 
And herd-boy's evening pipe, and hum of hous- 
ing bee. 

" Hark ! as my ling'ring footsteps slow retire, 
Some Spirit of the Air has wak'd thy string ! 

'Tis now a Seraph boid, with touch of fire ; 
'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. 






SCOTT'S LADY OF THE LAKE. 



379 



Receding now, the dying numbers ring 

Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell ! 
And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring 

A wand'ring witch-note of the distant spell— 
And now, 'tis silent all ! — Enchantress, fare thee 
well !"— pp. 289, 290. 
These passages, though taken with very- 
little selection, are favourable specimens, we 
think, on the whole, of the execution of the 
work before us. We had marked several of 
an opposite character; but, fortunately for 
Mr. Scott, we have already extracted so much, 
that we shall scarcely have room to take any 
notice of them; and must condense all our 
vituperation into a very insignificant compass. 
One or two things, however, we think it our 
duty to point out. Though great pains have 
evidently been taken with Brian the Hermit, 
we think his whole character a failure, and 
mere deformity — hurting the interest of the 
story by its- improbability, and rather heavy 
and disagreeable, than sublime or terrible in 
its details. The quarrel between Malcolm 
and Roderick, in the second canto, is also 
ungraceful and offensive. There is something 
foppish, and out of character, in Malcolm's 
rising to lead out Ellen from her own parlour; 
and the sort of wrestling match that takes 
place between the rival chieftains on the 
occasion is humiliating and indecorous. The 
greatest blemish in the poem, however, is the 
ribaldry and dull vulgarity which is put into 
the mouths of the soldiery in the guard-room. 
Mr. Scott has condescended to write a song 
for them, which will be read with pain, we 
are persuaded, even by his warmest admirers : 
and his whole genius, and even his power 
of versification, seems to desert him when he 
attempts to repeat their conversation. Here 
is some of the stuff which has dropped, in 
this inauspicious attempt, from the pen of one 
of the first poets of his age or country : — 

" ' Old dost thou wax, and wars grow sharp ; 
Thou now hast glee-maiden and harp, 
Get thee an ape, and trudge the land, 
The leader of a juggler band.' — 

" ' No, comrade ! — no such fortune mine. 
After the fight, these sought our line. 
That aged harper and the grirl ; 
And, having audience of the Earl, 
Mar bade I should purvey them steed, 
And bring them hitherward with speed. 
Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, 
For none shall do them shame or harm.' — 
' Hear ye his boast !' cried John of Brent, 
Ever to strife and jangling bent : 
' Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, 
And yet the jealous niggard grudge 
To pay the forester his fee ! 
I'll have my share, howe'er it be.' " 

pp. 250, 251. 

His Highland freebooters, indeed, do not 
use a much nobler style. For example : — 

" ' It is, because last evening-tide 
Brian an augury hath tried, 
Of that dread kind which must not be 
Unless in dread extremity, 
The Taghairm call'd ; by which, afar, 
Our sires foresaw the events of war. 
Duncragsan's milk-white bull they slew.'— 
' Ah ! well the gallant brute I knew ; 
The choicest of the prey we had, 
When swept our merry-men Gallangad. 
Sore did he cumber our retreat ; 



And kept our stoutest kernes in awe, 

Even at the pass of Beal 'maha.' " — pp.146, 147. 

Scarcely more tolerable are such expres- 
sions as — 

"For life is Hugh of Larbert lame ;" — 

Or that unhappv couplet, where the King 
himself is in such distress for a rhyme, as to 
be obliged to apply to one of the most obscure 
saints on the calendar. 

" 'Tis James of Douglas, by Saint Serle ; 
The uncle of the banish d Earl." 

We would object, too, to such an accumu- 
lation of strange words as occurs in these 
three lines : — 

" ' Fleet foot on the correi; 
Sage counsel i , Cumber; 
Red hand in the foray,'' " &c. 

Nor can we relish such babyish verses as 

" ' He will return : — dear lady, trust : — 
With joy, return. He will — he must.' " 

11 ' Nay, lovely Ellen ! Dearest ! nay.' " 

These, however, and several others that 
might be mentioned, are blemishes which 
may well be excused in a poem of more than 
five thousand lines, produced so soon after 
another still longer: and though they are 
blemishes which it is proper to notice, be- 
cause they are evidently of a kind that may 
be corrected, it would be absurd, as well as 
unfair, to give them any considerable weight 
in our general estimate of the work, or of the 
powers of the author. Of these, we have 
already spoken at sufficient length; and must 
now take an abrupt leave of Mr. Scott, by 
expressing our hope, and tolerably confident 
expectation, of soon meeting with him again. 
That he may injure his popularity by the 
mere profusion of his publications, is no doubt 
possible ; though many of the most celebrated 
poets have been among the most voluminous : 
but, that the public must gain by this libe- 
rality, does not seem to admit of any ques- 
tion. If our poetical treasures were increased 
by the publication of Marmion and the Lady 
of the Lake, notwithstanding the existence 
of great faults in both those works, it is evi- 
dent that we should be still richer if we pos- 
sessed fifty poems of the same merit ; and, 
therefore, it is for our interest, whatever it 
may be as to his, that their author's muse 
should continue as prolific as she has hitherto 
been. If Mr. Scott will only vary his sub- 
jects a little more, indeed, we think we might 
engage to insure his own reputation against 
any material injury from their rapid parturi- 
tion ; and, as we entertain very great doubts 
whether much greater pains would enable 
him to write much better poetry, we would 
rather have two beautiful poems, with the 
present quantum of faults — than one, with 
only one-tenth part less alloy. He will always 
be a poet, we fear, to whom the fastidious 
will make great objections; but he may 
easily find, in his popularity, a compensation 
for their scruples. He has the jury hollow in 
his favour ; and though the court may think 
that its directions have not been sufficiently 
attended to, it will not quarrel with the verdict. 



380 



POETRY. 



■Capril, 1808.) 

Poems. By the Reverend George Crabbe. 8vo. pp. 260. London, 1807.* 



We receive the proofs of Mr. Crabbe's 
poetical existence, which are contained in 
this volume, with the same sort of feeling 
that would be excited by tidings of an ancient 
friend, whom we no longer expected to hear 
of in this world. We rejoice in his resurrec- 
tion, botli for his sake and for our own : But 
we feel also a certain movement of self-con- 
demnation, for having been remiss in our in- 
quiries after him, and somewhat too negligent 
of the honours which ought, at any rate, to 
have been paid to his memory. 

It is now, we are afraid, upwards of twenty 
years since we were first struck with the vig- 
our, originality, and truth of description of 
"The Village;" and since, we regretted that 
an author, who could write so well, should 
have written so little. From that time to the 
present, we have heard little of Mr. Crabbe j 
and fear that he has been in a great measure 
lost sight of by the public, as well as by us. 
With a singular, and scarcely pardonable in- 
difference to fame, he has remained, during 
this long interval, in patient or indolent re- 
pose ; and, without making a single move- 
ment to maintain or advance the reputation 
he had acquired, has permitted others to 



* I have given a larger space to Crabbe in this 
republication than to any of his contemporary poets ; 
not merely because I think more highly of him 
than of most of them, but also because I fancy that 
he has had less justice done him. The nature of 
his subjects was not such as to attract either imita- 
tors or admirers, from among the ambitious or fan- 
ciful lovers of poetry ; or, consequently, to set him 
at the head of a School, or let him surround him- 
self with the zealots of a Sect : And it must also 
be admitted, that his claims to distinction depend 
fully as much on his great powers of observation, 
his skill in touching the deeper sympathies of our 
nature, and his power of inculcating, by their means, 
the most impressive lessons of humanity, as on any 
fine play of fancy, or grace and beauty in his de- 
lineations. I have great faith, however, in the in- 
trinsic worth and ultimate success of those more 
substantial attributes ; and have, accordingly, the 
strongest impression that the citations T have here 
given from Crabbe will strike more, and sink deeper 
into the minds of readers to whom they are new 
<.or by whom they may have been partially forgot- 
ten), than any I have been able to present from 
other writers. It probably is idle enough (as well 
as a little presumptuous) to suppose that a publica- 
tion like this will afford many opportunities of test- 
ing the truth of this prediction. But, as the ex- 
periment is to be made, there can be no harm in 
mentioning this as one of its objects. 

It is but candid, however, after all, to add, that 
my concern for Mr. Crabbe's reputation would 
scarcely have led me to devote near one hundred 
pages to the estimate of his poetical merits, had I 
not set some value on the speculations as to the 
elements of poetical excellence in general, and its 
moral bearings and affinities— for the introduction 
of which this estimate seemed to present an occa- 
sion, or apologv. 



usurp the attention which he was sure of 
commanding, and allowed himself to bo 
nearly forgotten by a public, which reckons 
upon being reminded of all the claims which 
the living have on its favour. His former 
publications, though of distinguished merit, 
were perhaps too small in volume to remain 
long the objects of general attention, and 
seem, by some accident, to have been jostled 
aside in the crowd of more clamorous com- 
petitors. 

Yet, though the name of Crabbe has not 
hitherto been very common in the mouths of 
our poetical critics, we believe there are few 
real lovers of poetry to whom some of his 
sentiments and descriptions are not secretly 
familiar. There is a truth and a force in many 
of his delineations of rustic life, which is cal- 
culated to sink deep into the memory } and, 
being confirmed by daily observation, they 
are recalled upon innumerable occasions — 
when the ideal pictures of more fanciful au- 
thors have lost all their interest. For our- 
selves at least, we profess to be indebted to 
Mr. Crabbe for many of these strong impres- 
sions ; and have known more than one of our 
unpoetical acquaintances, who declared they 
could never pass by a parish workhouse with- 
out thinking of the description of it they had 
read at school in the Poetical Extracts. The 
volume before us will renew, we trust, and 
extend many such impressions. It contains 
all the former productions of the author, with 
about double their bulk of new matter ; most 
of it in the same taste and manner of com- 
position with the former ; and some of a kind, 
of which we have had no previous example 
in this author. The whole, however, is of no 
ordinary merit, and will be found, we have 
little doubt, a sufficient warrant for Mr. Crabbe 
to take his place as one of the most original, 
nervous, and pathetic poets of the present 
century. 

His characteristic, certainly, is force, and 
truth of description, joined for the most part 
to great selection and condensation of expres- 
sion ; — that kind of strength and originality 
which we meet with in Cowper, and that sort 
of diction and versification which we admire 
in " The Deserted Village" of Goldsmith, or 
" The Vanity of Human Wishes" of Johnson. 
If he can be said to have imitated the manner 
of any author, it is Goldsmith, indeed, who 
has been the object of his imitation ; and yet 
his general train of thinking, and his views 
of society, are so extremely opposite, that, 
when "The Village" was first published, it 
was commonly considered as an antidote or 
an answer to the more captivating representa- 
tions of " The Deserted Village." Compared 
with this celebrated author, he will be found, 



CRABBE'S POEMS. 



381 



we think, to have more vigour and less deli- 
cacy ; and while he must be admitted to be 
inferior in the fine finish and uniform beauty 
of his composition, we cannot help considering 
him as superior, both in the variety and the 
truth of his pictures. Instead of that uniform 
tint of pensive tenderness which overspreads 
the whole poetry of Goldsmith, we find in Mr. 
Crabbe many gleams of gaiety and humour. 
Though his habitual views of life are more 
gloomy than those of his rival, his poetical 
temperament seems far more cheerful ; and 
when the occasions of sorrow and rebuke are 
gone by, he can collect himself for sarcastic 
pleasantry, or unbend in innocent playfulness. 
His diction, though generally pure and pow- 
erful, is sometimes harsh, and sometimes 
quaint ; and he has occasionally admitted a 
couplet or two in a state so unfinished, as to 
give a character of inelegance to the passages 
in which they occur. With a taste less dis- 
ciplined and less fastidious than that of Gold- 
smith, he has, in our apprehension, a keener 
eye for observation, and a readier hand for 
the delineation of what he has observed. 
There is less poetical keeping in his whole 
performance ; but the groups of which it con- 
sists are conceived, we think, with equal 
genius, and drawn with greater spirit as well 
as far greater fidelity. 

It is not quite fair, perhaps, thus to draw a 
detailed parallel between a living poet, and 
one whose reputation has been sealed by 
death, and by the immutable sentence of a 
surviving generation. Yet there are so few 
of his contemporaries to whom Mr. Crabbe 
bears any resemblance, that we can scarcely 
explain our opinion of his merit, without com- 
paring him to some of his predecessors. 
There is one set of writers, indeed, from 
whose works those of Mr. Crabbe might re- 
ceive all that elucidation which results from 
contrast, and from an entire opposition in all 
points of taste and opinion. We allude now 
to the Wordsworths, and the Southeys, and 
Coleridges, and all that ambitious fraternity, 
that, with good intentions and extraordinary 
talents, are labouring to bring back our poetry 
to the fantastical oddity and puling childish- 
ness of Withers, Quarles, or Marvel. These 
gentlemen write a great deal about rustic life, 
as well as Mr. Crabbe ; and they even agree 
with him in dwelling much on its discomforts ; 
but nothing can be more opposite than the 
views they take of the subject, or the manner 
in which they execute their representations of 
them. 

Mr. Crabbe exhibits the common people 
of England pretty much as they are, and as 
they must appear to every one who will take 
the trouble of examining into their condition ; 
at the same time that he renders his sketches 
in a very high degree interesting and beautiful 
— by selecting what is most fit for descrip- 
tion — by grouping them into such forms as 
must catch the attention or awake the mem- 
ory — and by scattering over the whole such 
traits of moral sensibility, of sarcasm, and of 
deep reflection, as every one must feel to be 
natural, and own to be powerful. The gentle- 



men of the new school, on the other hand, 
scarcely ever condescend to take their sub 
jects from any description of persons at a. 
known to the common inhabitants of th« 
world; but invent for themselves certain 
whimsical and unheard-of beings, to whom 
they impute some fantastical combination of 
feelings, and then labour to excite our sym- 
pathy for them, either by placing them in in- 
credible situations, or by some strained and 
exaggerated moralisation of a vague and tra- 
gical description. Mr. Crabbe, in short, shows 
us something which we have all seen, or may 
see, in real life ; and draws from it such feel- 
ings and such reflections as every human be- 
ing must acknowledge that it is calculated to 
excite. He delights us by the truth, and vivid 
and picturesque beauty of his representations, 
and by the force and pathos of the sensations 
with which we feel that they are connected. 
Mr. Wordsworth and his associates, on the 
other hand, introduce us to beings whose ex- 
istence was not previously suspected by the 
acutest observers of nature; and excite an 
interest for them— where they do excite any 
interest — more by an eloquent and refined 
analysis of their own capricious feelings, than 
by any obvious or intelligible ground of sym- 
pathy in their situation. 

Those who are acquainted with the Lyrical 
Ballads, or the more recent publications of 
Mr. Wordsworth, will scarcely deny the jus- 
tice of this representation; but in order to 
vindicate it to such as do not enjoy that ad- 
vantage, we must beg leave to make a few 
hasty references to the former, and by far the 
least exceptionable of those productions. 

A village schoolmaster, for instance, is a 
pretty common poetical character. Goldsmith 
has drawn him inimitably; so has Shenstone, 
with the slight change of sex; and Mr. Crabbe, 
in two passages, has followed their footsteps. 
Now, Mr. Wordsworth has a village school- 
master also — a personage who makes no small 
figure in three or four of his poems. But by 
what traits is this worthy old gentleman de- 
lineated by the new poet 1 No pedantry — no 
innocent vanity of learning — no mixture of 
indulgence with the pride of power, and of 
poverty with the consciousness of rare ac 
quirements. Every feature which belongs to 
the situation, or marks the character in com- 
mon apprehension, is scornfully discarded by 
Mr. Wordsworth; who represents his grey- 
haired rustic pedagogue as a sort of half crazy, 
sentimental person, overrun with fine feel- 
ings, constitutional merriment, and a most 
humorous melancholy. Here are the two 
stanzas in which this consistent and intelli- 
gible character is pourtrayed. The diction if 
at least as new as the conception. 

" The sighs which* Matthew heav'd were sighs 
Of one tir'd out with/wra and madness ; 
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes 
Were tears of light — the oil of gladness. 

" Yet sometimes, when the secret cup 

Of still and serious thought went round 
He seem'd as if he drank it up, 

He felt with spirit so profound. 
Thou soul of God's best earthly mould" &c 



382 



POETRY. 



A frail damsel again is a character common 
enough in all poems ) and one upon which 
many fine and pathetic lines have been ex- 
pended. Mr. Wordsworth has written more 
than three hundred on the subject : but, in- 
stead of new images of tenderness, or deli- 
cate representation of intelligible feelings, he 
has contrived to tell us nothing whatever of 
the unfortunate fair one, but that her name is 
Martha Ray ; and that she goes up to the top 
of a hill, in a red cloak, and cries " misery ! 5J 
All the rest of the poem is filled with a de- 
scription of an old thorn and a pond, and of 
the silly stories which the neighbouring old 
women told about them. 

The sports of childhood, and the untimely 
death of promising youth, is also a common 
topic of poetry. Mr. Wordsworth has made 
some blank verse about it; bat, instead of 
the delightful and picturesque sketches with 
which so many authors of moderate talents 
have presented us on this inviting subject, all 
that he is pleased to communicate of his rustic 
child, is, that he used to amuse himself with 
shouting to the owls, and hearing them an- 
swer. To make amends for this brevity, the 
process of his mimicry is most accurately de- 
scribed. 

" With fingers interwoven, both hands 

Press'd closely palm to palm, and to his mouth 
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, 
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, 
That they might answer him."— 

This is all we hear of him ; and for the 
sake of this one accomplishment, we are told, 
that the author has frequently stood mute, and 
gazed on his grave for half an hour together ! 

Love, and the fantasies of lovers, have af- 
forded an ample theme to poets of all ages. 
Mr. Wordsworth, however, has thought fit to 
compose a piece, illustrating this copious sub- 
ject by one single thought. A lover trots 
away to see his mistress one fine evening, 
gazing all the way on the moon ; when he 
comes to her door, 

" O mercy ! to myself I cried, 
If Lucy should be dead!" 

And there the poem ends ! 

Now, we leave it to any reader of common 
candour and discernment to say, whether 
these representations of character and senti- 
ment are drawn from that eternal and uni- 
versal standard of truth and nature, which 
every one is knowing enough to recognise, 
and no one great enough to depart from with 
impunity; or whether they" are not formed, 
as we have ventured to allege, upon certain 
fantastic and affected peculiarities in the 
mind or fancy of the author, into which it is 
most improbable that many of his readers 
will enter, and which cannot, in some cases, 
be comprehended without much effort and 
explanation. Instead of multiplying instances 
of these wide and wilful aberrations from or- 
dinary nature, it may be more satisfactory to 
produce the author's own admission of the 
narrowness of the plan upon which he writes, 
end of the very extraordinary circumstances 
which he himself sometimes thinks it neces- 



sary for his readers to keep in view, 'f ihey 
would wish to understand the beauty or pre* 
priety of his delineations. 

A pathetic tale of guilt or superstition may 
be told, we are apt to fancy, by the poet him- 
self, in his general character of poet, with full 
as much effect as by any other person. An 
old nurse, at any rate, or a monk or parish 
clerk, is always at hand to give grace to such 
a narration. None of these, however, would 
satisfy Mr. Wordsworth. He has written a 
long poem of this sort, in which he thinks it 
indispensably necessary to apprise the reader, 
that he has endeavoured to represent the 
language and sentiments of a particular char- 
acter — of which character, he adds, "the 
reader will have a general notion, if he has 
ever known a man, a captain of a small trading 
vessel, for example, who being past the middle 
age of life, has retired upon an annuity, or 
small independent income, to some village or 
country, of which he was not a native, or in 
which he had not been accustomed to live !" 

Now, we must be permitted to doubt, 
whether, among all the readers of Mr. Words- 
worth (few or many), there is a single indi- 
vidual who has had the happiness of knowing 
a person of this very peculiar description : or 
who is capable of forming any sort of con- 
jecture of the particular disposition and turn 
of thinking which such a combination of at- 
tributes would be apt to produce. To us, we 
will confess, the annonce appears as ludicrous 
and absurd as it would be in the author of an 
ode or an epic to say, " Of this piece the 
reader will necessarily form a very erroneous 
judgment, unless he is apprised, that it was 
written by a pale man in a green coat — sitting 
cross-legged on an oaken stool — with a scratch 
on his nose, and a spelling dictionary on the 
table."* 



* Some of our readers may have a curiosity to 
know in what manner this old annuitant captain 
does actually express himself in the village of his 
adoption. For their gratification, we annex the two 
first stanzas of his story ; in which, with all the at- 
tention we have been able to bestow, we have been 
utterly unable to detect any traits that can be sup- 
posed to characterise either a seaman, an annuitant, 
or a stranger in a country town. It is a style, on 
the contrary, which we should ascribe, without 
hesitation, to a certain poetical fraternity in tho 
West of England ; and which, we verily believe, 
never was, and never will be, used by any*one out 
of that fraternity. 

" There is a thorn — it looks so old, 

In truth you'd find it hard to say, 
How it could ever have been young! 

It looks so old and grey. 
Not higher than a two-years' child, ' 

It sfa?ids erect; this aged thorn ! 
No leaves it has, no thorny points ; 
It is a mass of knotted joints : 

A wretched thing forlorn, 
It stands erect ; and like a stone, 
With lichens it is overgrown. 

"Like rock or sto7ic, it is o'ergrown 
With lichens; — to the very top ; 

And hung with heavy tufts of moss 
A melancholy crop. 

Up from the earth these mosses creep, 
And tlris poor thorn, they clasp it round 



CRABBE'S POEMS. 



From these childish and absurd affecta- 
tions, we turn with pleasure to the manly 
tense and correct picturing of Mr. Crabbe ; 
and, after being dazzled and made giddy 
with the elaborate raptures and obscure origi- 
nalities of these new artists, it is refreshing to 
meet again with the spirit and nature of our 
old masters, in the nervous pages of the 
author now before us. 

The poem that stands first in the volume, 
is that to which we have already alluded as 
having been first given to the public upwards 
of twenty years ago. It is so old, and has of 
late been so scarce, that it is probably new 
to many of our readers. We shall venture, 
therefore, to give a few extracts from it as a 
specimen of Mr. Crabbe's original style of 
composition. We have already hinted at the 
description of the Parish Workhouse, and in- 
sert it as an example of no common poetry : — 

11 Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, 
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door ; 
There, where the putrid vapours flagging play, 
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day ; 
There children dwell who know no parents' care ; 
Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there ; 
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, 
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed ; 
Dejected widows wiih unheeded tears, 
And crippled age with more than childhood-fears ; 
The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they ! 
The moping idiot and the madman gay. 

" Here, too, the sick their final doom receive, 
Here brought amid the scenes of grief, to grieve ; 
Where the loud groans from some sad chamber 
Mixt with the clamours of the crowd below, [flow, 

" Say ye, opprest by some fantastic woes, 
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; 
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, 
To name the nameless ever-new disease ; 
How would ye bear in real pain to lie, 
Despis'd, neglected, left alone to die? 
How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, 
Where all that's wretched paves the way for death ? 

" Such is that room which one rude beam divides, 
And naked rafters form the sloping sides ; 
Where the vile bands that bind the tha.'ch are seen, 
And lath and mud are all that lie betv/een ; 
Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patch'd, gives 
To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day : [way 
Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'ersprcad, 
The drooping wretch reclines his languid head ; 
For him no hand the cordial cup applies," &c. 

pp. 12—14. 

The consequential apothecary, who gives 
an impatient attendance in these abodes of 
misery, 4s admirably described ; but we pass 
to the last scene : — 

" Now to the church behold the mourners come, 
Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb ; 
The village children now their games suspend, 
To see the bier that bears their ancient friend ; 
For he was one in all their idle sport, 
And like a monarch rul'd their li'tle court; 
The pliant bow he form'd, the flying ball, 
The bat, the wicket, were his labours all ; 
Him now they follow to his grave, and stand, 

So close, you'd say that they were bent, 
With plain and manifest intent ! 

To drag it to the ground ; 
And all had join'd in one endeavour, 
To bury this poor thorn for ever." 

And this it seems, is Nature, and Pathos, and 
Poetry i 



Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand ; 
While bending low, their eager eyes explore 
The mingled relics of the parish poor ! 
The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round, 
Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound ; 
The busy priest, detain'd by weightier care, 
Defers his duty till the day of prayer ; 
And waiting long, the crowd retire distrest, 
To think a poor man's bones should lie urnblest." 

pp. 16, 17. 

The scope of the poem is to show, that the 
villagers of real life have no resemblance to 
the villagers of poetry; that poverty, in sober 
truth, is very uncomfortable ; and vice by no 
means confined to the opulent. The following 
passage is powerfully, and finely written : — 

" Or will you deem them amply paid in health, 
Labour's fair child, that languishes with wealth ? 
Go then ! and see them rising wiih the sun, 
Through a long course of daily toil to run ; 
See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat, 
When the knees tremble and the temples beat ; 
Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er 
The labour past, and toils to come explore ; 
Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, 
When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew. 

" There may you see the youth of slender frame 
Contend wiih weakness, weariness, and shame ; 
Yet urg'd along, and proudly loath to yield, 
He strives to join his fellows of the field ; 
Till long-contending nature droops at last; 
Declining health rejects his poor repast ! 
His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees, 
And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. 

" Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell, 
Though the head droops not, that the heart is well ; 
Or will you praise that homely, healthy fare, 
Plenteous and plain, that happy peasants share ? 
Oh ! trifle not with wants you cannot feel ! 
Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal ; 
Homely not wholesome — plain not plenteous — such 
As you who praise would never deign to touch! 

" Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, 
Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet 
Go ! if the peaceful cot your praises share, [please ; 
Go look within, and ask if peace be there : 
If peace be his — that drooping, weary sire, 
Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire ! 
Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand 
Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand." 

pp. 8— 10. 

We shall only give one other extract from 
this poem ; and we select the following fine 
description of that peculiar sort of barrenness 
which prevails along the sandy and thinly 
inhabited shores of the Channel : — 

" Lo ! where the heath, with with'ring brake grown 
o'er, [poor ; 

Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring 
From thence a length of burning sand appears. 
Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears ; 
There thistles stretch their prickly arms af^r, 
And to the ragged infant threaten war ; 
There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil, 
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil : 
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, 
The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; 
O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, 
And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade ; 
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, 
And a sad splendour vainly shines around." 

pp. 5, 6. 

The next poem, and the longest in the 
volume, is now presented for the first time to 
the public. It is dedicated, like the former, 
to the delineation of rural life and characters, 



384 



POETRY. 



and is entitled, "The Village Register j" arid, 
upon a very simple but singular plan, is divi- 
ded into three parts, viz. Baptisms, Marriages, 
and Burials. After an introductory and gen- 
eral view of village manners, the reverend 
author proceeds to present his readers with 
an account of all the remarkable baptisms, 
marriages, and funerals, that appear on his 
register for the preceding year ; with a sketch 
of the character and behaviour of the respect- 
ive parties, and such reflections and exhorta- 
tions as are suggested by the subject. The 
poem consists, therefore, of a series of por- 
traits taken from the middling and lower 
ranks of rustic life, and delineated on occa- 
sions at once more common and more inter- 
esting, than any other that could well be 
imagined. They are selected, we think, with 
great judgment, and drawn with inimitable 
accuracy and strength of colouring. They 
are finished with much more minuteness and 
detail, indeed, than the more general pictures 
in " The Village ;" and, on this account, may 
appear occasionally deficient in comprehen- 
sion, or in dignity. They are. no doubt, exe- 
cuted in some instances witn too much of 
a Chinese accuracy; and enter into details 
which many readers -may pronounce tedious 
and unnecessary. Yet there is a justness 
and force in the representation which is 
entitled to something more than indulgence ; 
and though several of the groups are com- 
posed of low and disagreeable subjects, still, 
we think that some allowance is to be made 
for the author's plan of giving a full and exact 
view of village life, which could not possibly 
be accomplished without including those baser 
varieties. He aims at an important moral 
effect by this exhibition; and must not be 
defrauded either of that, or of the praise which 
is due to the coarser efforts of his pen, out of 
deference to the sickly delicacy of his more 
fastidious readers. We admit, however, that 
there is more carelessness, as well as more 
ijuaintness in this poem than in the other ; 
and that he has now and then apparently 
heaped up circumstances rather to gratify 
his own taste for detail and accumulation, 
than to give any additional effect to his de- 
scription. With this general observation, we 
beg the reader's attention to the following 
abstract and citations. - 

The poem begins with a general view, first 
of the industrious and contented villager, and 
then of the profligate and disorderly. The 
first compartment is not so striking as the last. 
Mr. Crabbe, it seems, has a set of smugglers 
among his flock, who inhabit what is called 
the Street in his village. There is nothing 
comparable to the following description, but 
some of the prose sketches of Mandeville : — 

" Here, in cabal, a disputatious crew 
Each evening meet ; the sot, the cheat, the shrew ; 
Riots are nightly heard — the curse, the cries 
Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies : 
Boys in their first stol'n rags, to steal begin, 
And girls, who know not sex, are skill'd in gin ! 
Snarers and smugglers here their gains divide, 
Ensnaring females here their victims hide ; 
And here is one, the Sibyl of the Row, 
Who knows all secrets, or affects to know.— 



" See ! on the floor, what frowzy patches rest ! 
What nauseous fragments on yon tractur'd chest f 
What downy-dust beneath yon window*seat ! 
And round these posts that serve this bed for feet • 
This bed where all those tatter'd garments lie, 
Worn by each sex, and now perforce thrown by. 

" See ! as we gaze, an infant lifts its head, 
Left by neglect, and burrow'd in that bed ; 
The mother-gossip has the love supprest, 
An infant's cry once waken'd in her breast," &c 

" Here are no wheels for either wool or flax, 
But packs of cards — made up of sundry packs ; 
Here are no books, but ballads on the wall, 
Are some abusive, and indecent all ; 
Pistols are here, unpair'd ; with nets and hooks, 
Of every kind, for rivers, ponds, and brooks ; 
An ample flask that nightly rovers fili, 
With recent poison from the Dutchman's still; 
A box of tools with wires of various size, 
Frocks, wigs, and hats, for night or day disguise, 
And bludgeons stout to gain or guard a prize. — 

" Here his poor bird, th' inhuman cocker bring 
Arms his hard heel, and clips his golden wings ; 
With spicy food th' impatient spirit feeds, 
And shouts and curses as the battle bleeds : 
Struck through the brain, depriv'd of both his eyes, 
The vanquish' d bird must combat till he dies ! 
Must faintly peck at his victorious foe, 
And reel and stagger at each feeble blow ; 
When fall'n, the savage grasps his dabbled plumes, 
His blood-stain'd arms, for other deaths assumes ; 
And damns- the craven-fowl, that lost his stake, 
And only bled and perish'd for his sake !" 

pp. 40—44. 

Mr. Crabbe now opens his chronicle; and 
the first babe that appears on the list is a 
natural child of the miller's daughter. This 
damsel fell in love with a sailor; but her 
father refused his consent, and no priest 
would unite them without it. The poor girl 
yielded to her passion ; and her lover went to 
sea, to seek a portion for his bride : — 

" Then came the days of shame, the grievous night, 
The varying look, the wand'ring appetite ; 
The joy assum'd, while sorrow dimm'd the eyes, 
The fore'd sad smiles that follow'd sudden sighs, 
And every art, long us'd, but us'd in vain, 
To hide thy progress, Nature, and thy pain. 

"■ Day after day were past in grief and pain, 
Week after week, nor came the youth again ; 
Her boy was born : — No lads nor lasses came 
To grace the rite or give the child a name ; 
Nor grave conceited nurse, of office proud, 
Bore the young Christian, roaring through the 
In a small chamber was my office done, [crowd ; 
Where blinks, through paper'd panes, the setting 

sun ; 
Where noisy sparrows, perch'don penthouse near, 
Chirp tuneless joy, and mock the frequent tear." — 

" Throughout the lanes, she glides at evening's 
There softly lulls her infant to repose ; [close, 

Then sits and gazes, but with viewless look, 
As gilds the moon the rimpling of the brook ; 
Then sings her vespers, but in voice so low, 
She hears their murmurs as the waters flow ; 
And she too murmurs, and begins to find 
The solemn wand'rings of a wounded mind ! 

pp. 47—49. 

We pass the rest of the Baptisms; and 
proceed to the more interesting chapter of 
Marriages. The first pair here is an old snug 
bachelor, who, in the first days of dotage, 
had married his maid-servant. The reverend 
Mr. Crabbe is very facetious on this match ; 
and not very scrupulously delicate. 

The following picture, though liable in part 
to the same objection, is perfect, we think, in 
that style of drawing : — 



CRABBE'S POEMS. 



38., 



" Next al our aliar stood a luckless pair, 
Brought by strong passions — and a warrant — there ; 
By long rent cloak, hung loosely, strove the bride, 
From ev'ry eye, what ail perceiv'd to hide; 
While the boy-bridegroom, shuffling in his pace, 
Now hid awhile, and then expos'd his face ; 
As shame alternately wi;h anger strove 
The brain, conius'd with muddy ale, to move! 
In hns f e and stamm'ring he perform'd his part, 
And look'd the rage that rankled in his heart. 
Low spake the lass, and lisp'd and minc'd the 

while ; 
Look'd on the lad, and faintly try'd to smile ; 
With soft'nened speech and humbled tone she 
To stir the embers of departed love ; [strove 

While he a tyrant, frowning walk'd before, 
Felt the poor purse, and sought the public door; 
She sadly following in submission went, 
And saw the final shilling foully spent ! 
Then to her father's hut the pair withdrew, 
And bade to love and comfort long adieu !" 

pp. 74, 75. 

The next bridal is that of Phoebe Dawson, 
the most innocent and beautiful of all the 
village maidens. We give the following 
pretty description of her courtship : — 

" Now, through the lane, up hill, and cross the 
(Seen but by few, and blushing to be seen — (green, 
Dejected, thoughtful, anxious and afraid,) 
Led by the lover, walk'd the silent maid: 
Slow through the meadows rov'd they, many a mile, 
Toy'd by each bank, and trifled at each stile ; 
Where, as he painted every blissful view, 
And highly colour' d what he strongly drew, 
The pensive damsel, prone to tender fears, 
Dimm'd the fair prospect with prophetic tears." 

pp. 76, 77. 

This is the taking side of the picture : At 
the end of two years, here is the reverse. 
Nothing can be more touching, we think, than 
the quiet suffering and solitary hysterics of 
this ill-fated young woman : — 

" Lo ! now with red rent cloak and bonnet black, 
And torn green gown, loose hanging at her back, 
One who an infant in her arms sustains, 
And seems, with patience, striving with her pains ; 
Pinch'd are her looks, as one who pines for bread. 
Whose cares are growing, and whose hopes are fled ! 
Pale her parch'd lips, her heavy eyes sunk low, 
And tears unnotic'd from their channels flow ; 
Serene her manner, till some sudden pain 
Frets the meek soul, and then she's calm again ! — 
Her broken pitcher to the pool she takes, 
And every step with cautious terror makes ; 
For not alone that infant in her arms, 
But nearer cause, maternal fear, alarms ! 
With water burden'd, then she picks her way, 
Slowly and cautious, in the clinging clay; 
Till in mid-green she trusts a place unsound, 
And deeply plunges in th' adhesive ground ; 
From whence her slender foot with pain she 

takes," &c. 
" And now her path, but not her peace, she gains, 
Safe from her task, but shiv'ring with her pains; — 
Her home she reaches, open leaves the door, 
And placing first her infant on the floor, 
She bares her bosom to the wind, and sits, 
And sobbing struggles with the rising fits ! 
In vain ! — they come — she feels th' inflaming grief, 
That shuts the swelling bosom from relief; 
That speaks in feeble cries a soul distrest, 
Or the sad laugh that cannot be represt ; 
The neighbour-matron leaves her wheel, and flies 
With all the aid her poverty supplies ; 
Unfee'd, the calls of nature she obeys, 
Nor led by profit, nor allur'd by praise ; 
And waiting long, till these contentions cease, 
Sue speaks of comfort, and departs in peace." 

pp. 77, 78. 
49 



The ardent lover, it seems, turned out a 
brutal husband : — 

" If present, railing, till he saw her pain'd ; 
If absent, spending what their labours gain'd*: 
Till that fair form in want and sickness pin'd. 
And hope and comfort fled that gentle mind." 

p. 79. 

It may add to the interest which some 
readers will take in this simple story, to be 
told, that it was the last piece of poetry that 
was read to Mr. Fox during his fatal illness: 
and that he examined and made some flatter- 
ing remarks on the manuscript of it a few 
days before his death. 

We are obliged to pass over the rest of the 
Marriages, though some of them are extreme- 
ly characteristic and beautiful, and to proceed 
to the Burials. Here we have a great variety 
of portraits, — the old drunken innkeeper — 
the bustling farmers wife — the infant — and 
next the lady of the manor. The following 
description of her deserted mansion is strik- 
ing, and in the good old taste of Pope and 
Dryden : — 



" Forsaken stood the hall, 



Worms ate the floors, the tap'stry fled the wall ; 
No fire the kitchen's cheerless grate display'd ; 
No cheerful light the long-clos'd sash convey'd; 
The crawling worm that turns a summer fly, 
Here spun his shroud and laid him up to die 
The winter-death; — upon the bed of state, 
The bat, shrill-shrieking, woo'd hisflick'ring mate: 
To empty rooms, the curious came no more, 
From empty cellars, turn'd the angry poor, 
And surly beggars curs'd the ever-bolted door. 
To one small room the steward found his way, 
Where tenants follow'd, to complain and pay." 

pp. 104, 105. 

The old maid follows next to the shades of 
mortality. The description of her house, fur- 
niture, and person, is admirable, and affords 
a fine specimen of Mr. Crabbe's most minute 
finishing ; but it is too long for extracting. We 
rather present our readers with a part of the 
character of Isaac Ashford : — 

"Next to these ladies, but in nought, allied, 
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died. 
Noble he was — contemning all things mean, 
His truth unquestion'd, and his soul serene : 
Of no man's presence Isaac felt afraid : 
At no man's question Isaac look'd dismay'd: 
Shame knew him not, he dreaded no disgrace," &c, 
" Were others joyful, he look'd smiling on, 
And gave allowance where he needed none ; 
Yet far was he from stoic-pride remov'd ; 
He felt, with many, and he warmly lov'd : 
I mark'd his action, when his infant died, 
And an old neighbour for offence was tried ; 
The still tears, stealing down that furrow'd cheek, 
Spoke pity, plainer than the tongue can speak," &c. 

pp. Ill, 112 

The rest of the character is drawn with 
equal spirit : but we can only make room for 
the author's final commemoration of him. 

" I feel his absence in the hours of prayer, 
And view his seat, and sigh for Isaac there ! 
I see, no more, those white locks thinly spread, 
Round the bald polish of that honour'd head ; 
No more that awful glance on playful wight, 
Compell'd to kneel and tremble at the sigh' ; 
To fold his fingers all in dread the while, 
Till Mr. Ashford soften' d to a smile ! 
2H 



386 



POETRY. 



No more that meek, that suppliant look in prayer, 
Nor that pure faith, that gave it force — are there : — 
But he is blest ; and I lament no more, 
A wise good man contented to be poor." — p. 114. 

We then bury the village midwife, super- 
ceded in her old age by a volatile doctor; 
then a surly rustic misanthrope ; and last of 
all, the reverend author's ancient sexton, 
whose chronicle of his various pastors is given 
rather at too great length. The poem ends 
with a simple recapitulation. 

We think this the most important of the 
new pieces in the volume; and have ex- 
tended our account of it so much, that we can 
afford to say but little of the others. "The 
Library" and " The Newspaper" are republi- 
cations. They are written with a good deal 
of terseness, sarcasm, and beauty ; but the 
subjects are not very interesting, and they will 
rather be approved, we think, than admired 
or delighted in . We are not much taken either 
with " The Birth of Flattery." With many 
nervous lines and ingenious allusions, it has 
something of the languor which seems insep- 
arable from an allegory which exceeds the 
length of an epigram. 

" Sir Eustace Grey" is quite unlike any of 
the preceding compositions. It is written in 
a sort of. lyric measure ; and is intended to 
represent the perturbed fancies of the most 
terrible insanity settling by degrees into a 
sort of devotional enthusiasm. The opening 
stanza, spoken by a visiter in the madhouse, 
is very striking. 

" I'll see no more ! — the heart is torn 
By views of woe we cannot heal ; 

Long shall I see these things forlorn, 
And oft again their griefs shall feel, 
As each upon the mind shall steal ; 

That wan projector's mystic style, 
That lumpish idiot leering by, 

That peevish idler's ceaseless wile, 

And that poor maiden s half form? d smile, 

While struggling for the full-drawn sigh ! 
I'll know no more!" — p. 217. 

There is great force, both of language and 
conception, in the wild narrative Sir Eustace 
gives of his frenzy; though we are not sure 
whether there is not something too elaborate, 
and too much worked up, in the picture. We 
give only one image, which we think is orig- 
inal. He supposed himself hurried along by 
two tormenting demons. 

" Through lands we fled, o'er seas we flew, 
And halted on a boundless plain ; 
Where nothing fed, nor breath'd. nor grew, 
But silence rul'd the still domain. 

*' Upon that boundless plain, below, 

The setting sun's last rays were shed, 
And gave a mild and sober glow, 

Where all were still, asleep, or dead ; 
Vast ruins in the midst were spread, 

Pillars and pediments sublime, 
Where the grey moss had form'd a bed, 

And cloth'd the crumbling spoils of Time. 

11 There was I fix'd, I know not how, 
Condemn'd for untold years to stay; 
Yet years were not ; — one dreadful now, 

Endur'd no change of night or day ; 
The same mild evening's sleeping ray 



Shone softly-solemn and serene, 
And all that time I gaz'd away, 

The setting sun's sad rays were seen." 

p. 22S. 

"The Hall of Justice," or the story of the 
Gipsy Convict, is another experiment of Mr. 
Crabbe's. It is very nervous — very shocking 
— and very powerfully represented. The 
woman is accused of stealing, and tells her 
story in impetuous and lofty language. 

" My crime ! this cick'ning child to feed, 
I seiz'd the food your witness saw; 
I knew your laws forbade the deed, 
But yielded \o a stronger law !" — 

" But I have grief's of other kind, 

Troubles and sorrows more severe ; 
Give me to ease my tortur'd mind, 
Lend to my woes a patient ear; 
And let me — if I may not find 
A friend to help — find one to hear. 

"My mother dead, my father lost, 
I wander'd with a vagrant crew; 

A common care, a common cost, 

Their sorrows and their sins I knew ; 

With them on want and error forc'd, 
Like them, I base and guilty grew ! 

" So through the land I wand'ring went, 
And little found of grief or joy ; 
But lost my bosom's sweet content, 
When first I lov'd the gypsy boy. 

11 A sturdy youth he was and tall, 

His looks would all his soul declare, 

His piercing eyes were deep and small, 

And strongly curl'd his raven hair. 

" Yes, Aaron had each manly charm, 

All in the May of youthful pride; 

He scarcely fear'd his father's arm, 

And every other arm defied. — 
Oft when they grew in anger warm, 

(Whom will not love and power divide ?) 
1 rose, their wrathful souls to calm, 
Not yet in sinful combat tried." 

pp. 240—242. 

The father felon falls in love with the be- 
trothed of his son, whom he despatches on 
some distant errand. The consummation of 
his horrid passion is told in these powerful 
stanzas : — 

" The night was dark, the lanes were deep, 
And one by one they took their way; 
He bade me lay me down and sleep ! 
I only wept, and wish'd for day. 

Accursed be the love he bore — 
Accursed was the force lie us'd — 

So let him of his God implore 

For mercy ! — and be so refused /" — p. 243. 

It is painful to follow the story out. The 
son returns, and privately murders his father; 
and then marries his widow ! The profligate 
barbarity of the life led by those outcasts is 
forcibly expressed by the simple narrative of 
the lines that follow : — 

" I brought a lovely daughter forth, 
His father's child, in Aaron's bed ! 
He took her from me in his wrath, 

1 Where is my child ?' — ' Thy child is dead.* 

" 'Twas false ! We wander'd far and wide, 
Through town and country, field and fen, 
Till Aaron fighting, fell and died, 
And I became a wife again." — p. 248. 

We have not room to give the sequel of this 
dreadful ballad. It certainly is not pleasing 



CRABBE'S BOROUGH. 



387 



reading; but it is written with very unusual 
power of language, and shows Mr. Crabbe to 
have great mastery over the tragic passions of 
pity and horror. The volume closes with some 
verses of no great value in praise of Women. 
We part with regret from Mr. Crabbe; but 
we hope to meet with him again. If his muse, 
to be sure, is prolific only once in twenty-four 
years, we can scarcely expect to live long 



enough to pass judgment on her future pro- 
geny : But we trust, that a larger portion of 
public favour than has hitherto been dealt to 
him will encourage him to greater efforts ; and 
that he will soon appear again among the 
worthy supporters of the old poetical estab- 
lishment, and come in time to surpass the 
revolution' 
of metal. 



(April, 1810.) 

The Borough : a Poem? in Twenty-four Letters. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL. B. 
8vo. pp. 344. London: 1810. 



We are very glad to meet with Mr. Crabbe 
so soon again ; and particularly glad to find, that 
his early return has been occasioned, in part, 
by the encouragement he received on his last 
appearance. This late spring of public favour, 
we hope, he will yet live to see ripen into ma- 
ture fame. We scarcely know any poet who 
deserves it better; and are quite certain there 
is none who is more secure of keeping with 
posterity whatever he may win from his con- 
temporaries. 

The present poem is precisely of the char- 
acter of The Village and The Parish Register. 
It has the same peculiarities, and the same 
faults and beauties; though a severe critic 
might perhaps add, that its peculiarities are 
more obtrusive, its faults greater, and its beau- 
ties less. However that be, both faults and 
beauties are so plainly produced by the pe- 
culiarity, that it may be worth while, before 
giving any more particular account of it, to try 
if we can ascertain in what that consists. 

And here we shall very speedily discover, 
that Mr. Crabbe is distinguished from all other 
poets, both by the choice of his subjects, and 
by his manner of treating them. All his per- 
sons are taken from the lower ranks of life ; 
and all his scenery from the most ordinary 
and familiar objects of nature or art. His 
characters and incidents, too, are as common 
as the elements out of which they are com- 
pounded are humble; and not only has he 
nothing prodigious or astonishing in any of 
his representations, but he has not even at- 
tempted to impart any of the ordinary colours 
of poetry to those vulgar materials. He has 
no moralising swains or sentimental trades- 
men ; and scarcely ever seeks to charm us by 
the artless graces or lowly virtues of his per- 
sonages. On the contrary, he has represented 
his villagers and humble burghers as alto- 
gether as dissipated, and more dishonest and 
discontented, than the profligates of higher 
life; and, instead of conducting us through 
blooming groves and pastoral meadows, has 
led us along filthy lanes and crowded wharfs, 
to hospitals, alms-houses, and gin-shops. In 
some of these delineations, he may be con-' 
sidered as the Satirist of low life — an occupa- 
tion sufficiently arduous, and, in a great -de- 
gree, new and original in our language. But 



by far the greater part of his poetry is of a 
different and a higher character; and aims 
at moving or delighting us by lively, touch- 
ing, and finely contrasted representations of 
the dispositions, sufferings, and occupations 
of those ordinary persons who form the far 
greater part of our fellow-creatures. This, 
too, he has sought to effect, merely by placing 
before us the clearest, most brief, and most 
striking sketches of their external condition — 
the most sagacious and unexpected strokes 
of character — and the truest and most pathetic 
pictures of natural feeling and common suffer- 
ing. By the mere force of his art, and the 
novelty of his style, he forces us to attend 
to objects that are usually neglected, and to 
enter into feelings from which we are in gene- 
ral but too eager to escape ; — and then trusts 
to nature for the effect of the representation. 

It is obvious, at first sight, that this is not a 
task for an ordinary hand ; and that many in- 
genious writers, who make a very good figure 
with battles, nymphs, and moonlight land- 
scapes, would find themselves quite helpless, 
if set down among streets, harbours, and 
taverns. The difficulty of such subjects, in. 
short, is sufficiently visible — and some of 
the causes of that difficulty: But they have 
their advantages also; — and of these, and 
their hazards, it seems natural to say a few 
words, before entering more minutely into the 
merits of the work before us. 

The first great advantage of such familial 
subjects is. that every one is necessarily wel J 
acquainted with the originals; and is there- 
fore sure to feel all that pleasure, from a 
faithful representation of them, which results 
from the perception of a perfect and success- 
ful imitation. In the kindred art of painting. 
we find that this single consideration has been 
sufficient to stamp a very high value upon 
accurate and lively delineations of objects, in 
themselves uninteresting, and even disagree- 
able; and no very inconsiderable part of the 
pleasure which may be derived from Mr 
Crabbe's poetry may probably be referred ta 
its mere truth and fidelity; and to the brevity 
and clearness with which he sets before hia 
readers, objects and characters with which 
they have been all their days familiar. 

In his happier passages, ho\vever ; he has a 



388 



POETRY. 



higher merit, and imparts a far higher grati- 
fication . The chief delight of poetry consists, 
not so much in what it directly supplies to 
the imagination, as in what it enables it to 
supply to itself; — not in warming the heart 
by its passing brightness, but in kindling its 
own latent stores of light and heat ; — not in 
hurrying the fancy along by a foreign and ac- 
cidental impulse, but in setting it agoing, by 
touching its internal springs and principles of 
activity. Now, this highest and most delight- 
ful effect can only be produced by the poet's 
striking a note to which the heart and the affec- 
tions naturally vibrate in unison ; — by rousing 
one of a large family of kindred impressions; — 
by dropping the rich seed of his fancy upon the 
fertile and sheltered places of the imagination. 
But it is evident, that the emotions connected 
with common and familiar objects — with ob- 
jects which fill every man's memory, and are 
necessarily associated with all that he has 
ever really felt or fancied, are of all others 
the most likely to answer this description, and 
to produce, where they can be raised to a suf- 
ficient height, this great effect in its utmost 
perfection . It is for this reason that the images 
and affections that belong to our universal na- 
ture, are always, if tolerably represented, in- 
finitely more captivating, in spite of their 
apparent commonness and simplicity, than 
those that are peculiar to certain situations, 
however they may come recommended by 
novelty or grandeur. The familiar feeling of 
maternal tenderness and anxiety, which is 
every day before our eyes, even in the brute 
creation — and the enchantment of youthful 
love, which is nearly the same in all charac- 
ters, ranks, and situations — still contribute far 
more to the beauty and interest of poetry than 
all the misfortunes of princes, the jealousies of 
heroes, and the feats of giants, magicians, or 
ladies in armour. Every one can enter into 
the former set of feelings; and but a few 
into the latter. The one calls up a thousand 
familiar and long-remembered emotions — 
which are answered and reflected on every 
side by the kindred impressions which ex- 
perience or observation have traced upon 
every memory: while the other lights up but 
a transient and unfruitful blaze, and passes 
away without perpetuating itself in any kin- 
dred and native sensation. 

Now, the delineation of all that concerns 
the lower and most numerous classes of so- 
ciety, is, in this respect, on a footing with the 
pictures of our primary affections — that their 
originals are necessarily familiar to all men, 
and are inseparably associated with their own 
most interesting impressions. Whatever may 
be our own condition, we all live surrounded 
with the poor, from infancy to age ; — we hear 
daily of their sufferings and misfortunes; — 
and their toils, their crimes, or their pastimes, 
are our hourly spectacle. Many diligent 
readers of poetry know little, by their own 
experience, of palaces, castles, or camps ; and 
still less of tyrants, warriors, and banditti ; — 
but every one understands about cottages, 
streets, and villages; and conceives, pretty 
correctly, the character and condition of sail- 



ors, ploughmen, and artificers. If the poet 
can contrive, therefore, to create a sufficient 
interest in subjects like these, they will infal- 
libly sink deeper into the mind, and be more 
prolific of kindred trains of emotion, than sub- 
jects of greater dignity. Nor is the difficulty 
of exciting such an interest by any means so 
great as is generally imagined. For it is 
common human nature, and common human 
feelings, after all, that form the true source 
of interest in poetry of every description ; — 
and the splendour and the marvels by which 
it is sometimes surrounded, serve no other 
purpose than to fix our attention on those 
workings of the heart, and those energies of 
the understanding, which alone command all 
the genuine sympathies of human beings — . 
and which may be found as abundantly in the 
breasts of cottagers as of kings. Wherever 
there are human beings, therefore, with feel- 
ings and characters to be represented, our at- 
tention may be fixed by the art of the poet — 
by his judicious selection of circumstances — 
by the force and vivacity of his style, and the 
clearness and brevity of his representations. 

In point of fact, we are all touched more 
deeply, as well as more frequently, in real 
life, with the sufferings of peasants than of 
princes; and sympathise much oftener, and 
more heartily, with the successes of the poor, 
than of the rich and distinguished. The oc- 
casions of such feelings are indeed so many, 
arid so common, that they do not often leave 
any very permanent traces behind them, but 
pass away, and are effaced by the very rapidity 
of their succession. The business and the 
cares, and the pride of the world, obstruct the 
development of the emotions to which they 
would naturally give rise ; and press so close 
and thick upon the mind, as to shut it, at most 
seasons, against the reflections that are per- 
petually seeking for admission. When we 
have leisure, however, to look quietly into our 
hearts, we shall find in them an infinite mul- 
titude of little fragments of sympathy with 
our brethren in humble life — abortive move- 
ments of compassion, and embryos of kindness 
and concern, which had once fairly begun to 
live and germinate within them, though with- 
ered and broken off by the selfish bustle and 
fever of our daily occupations. Now, all these 
may be revived and carried on to maturity by 
the art of the poet ; — and, therefore, a power- 
ful effort to interest us in the feelings of the 
humble and obscure, will usually call forth 
more deep, more numerous, and more perma- 
nent emotions, than can ever be excited by 
the fate of princesses and heroes. Indepen- 
dent of the circumstances to which we have 
already alluded, there are causes which make 
us at all times more ready to enter into the 
feelings of the humble, than of the exalted 
part of our species. Our sympathy with their 
enjoyments is enhanced by a certain mixture 
of pity for their general condition, which, by 
purifying it from that taint of envy which al- 
most always adheres to our admiration of the 
great, renders it more welcome and satisfac- 
tory to our bosoms ; while our concern for theii 
sufferings is at once softened and endeared to 



CRABBED BOROUGH. 



389 



us. by the recollection of our own exemption 
from them, and by the feeling, that we fre- 
quently have it in our power to relieve them. 
From these, and from other causes, it ap- 
pears to us to be certain, that where subjects, 
taken from humble life, can be made suffi- 
ciently interesting to overcome the distaste 
and the prejudices with which the usages of 
polished society too generally lead us to re- 
gard them, the interest which they excite will 
commonly be more profound and more lasting 
than any that can be raised upon loftier 
themes ; and the poet of the Village and the 
Borough be oftener, and longer read, than the 
poet of the Court or the Camp. The most 
popular passages of Shakespeare and Cowper, 
we think, are of this description: and there is 
much, both in the volume before us, and in 
Mr. Crabbe's former publications, to which 
we might now venture to refer, as proofs of 
the same doctrine. When such representa- 
tions have once made an impression on the 
imagination, they are remembered daily, and 
for ever. We can neither look around, nor 
within us, without being reminded of their 
truth and their importance; and, while the 
more brilliant effusions of romantic fancy are 
recalled only at long intervals, and in rare 
situations, we feel that we cannot walk a step 
from our own doors, nor cast a glance back on 
our departed years, without being indebted to 
the poet of vulgar life for some striking image 



were always before us, but — till he taught us 
how to improve them — were almost always 
allowed to escape. 

Such, we conceive, are some of the advan- 
tages of the subjects which Mr. Crabbe has 
in a great measure introduced into modern 
poetry; — and such the grounds upon which 
we venture to predict the durability of the 
reputation which he is in the course of ac- 
quiring. That they have their disadvantages 
also, is obvious; and it is no less obvious, that 
it is to these we must ascribe the greater part 
of the faults and deformities with which this 
author is fairly chargeable. The two great 
errors into which he has fallen, are — that he ertej 
has described many things not worth describ- J-"*^ 
ing ; — and that he has frequently excited dis- 
gust, instead of pity or indignation, in the 
breasts of his readers. These faults are ob- 
vious — and, we believe, are popularly laid to 
his charge : Yet there is, in so far as we have 
observed, a degree of misconception as to the 
true grounds and limits of the charge, which 
we think it worth while to take this opportu- 
nity of correcting. 

The poet of humble life must describe a 
great deal — and must even describe, minutely, 
many things which possess in themselves no 
beauty or grandeur. The reader's fancy must 
be awaked — and the power of his own pencil 
displayed: — a distinct locality and imaginary 
reality must be given to his characters and 
agents: and the ground colour of their com- 
mon condition must be laid in, before his pe- 
culiar and selected groups can be presented 
with any effect or advantage. In the same 
way, he must study characters with a minute 



and anatomical precision ; and must make 
both himself and his readers familiar with the 
ordinary traits and general family features of 
ihe beings among whom they are to move, be- 
fore they can either understand, or take much 
interest in the individuals who are to engross 
their attention. Thus far, there is no excess 
or unnecessary minuteness. But this faculty 
of observation, and this power of description, 
hold out great temptations to go further. 
There is a pride and a delight in the exercise 
of all peculiar power; and the poet, who has 
learned to describe external objects exqui- 
sitely, with a view to heighten the effect of 
his moral designs, and to draw characters 
with accuracy, to help forward the interest or 
the pathos of the picture, will be in great dan- 
ger of describing scenes, and drawing char- 
acters, for no other purpose, but to indulge his 
taste, and to display his talents. It cannot be 
denied, we think, that Mr. Crabbe has, on 
many occasions, yielded to this temptation. 
He is led away, every now and then, by his 
lively conception of external objects, and by 
his nice and sagacious observation of human 
character; and wantons and luxuriates in de- 
scriptions and moral portrait painting, while 
his readers are left to wonder to what end so 
much industry has been exerted. 

His chief fault, however, is his frequent 
lapse into disgusting representations; and 
this, we will confess, is an error for which we 



find it far more difficult either to account or 
to apologise. We are not, however, of the 
opinion which we have often heard stated, 
that he has represented human nature under 
too unfavourable an aspect ; or that ihe dis- 
taste which his poetry sometimes produces, 
is owing merely to the painful nature of the 
scenes and subjects with which it abounds. 
On the contrary, we think he has given a just- 
er, as well as a more striking picture, of the 
true character and situation of the lower or- 
ders of this country, than any other writer, 
whether in verse or in prose; and that he has 
made no more use of painful emotions than 
was necessary to the production of a pathetic 
effect. 

All powerful and pathetic poetry, it is ob- 
vious, abounds in images of distress. The 
delight which it bestows partakes strongly of 
pain ; and, by a 6ort of contradiction, which 
has long engaged the attention of the reflect- 
ing, the compositions that attract us most 
powerfully, and detain us the longest, are 
those that produce in lis most of the effects of 
actual suffering and wretchedness. The so- 
lution of this paradox is to be found, we think, 
in the simple fact, that pain is a far stronger 
sensation than pleasure, in human existence; 
and that the cardinal virtue of all things that 
are intended to delight the mind, is to produce 
a strong sensation. Life itself appears to con- 
sist in sensation ; and the universal passion 
of all beings that have life, seems to be. that 
they should be made intensely conscious of 
it, by a succession of powerful and engrossing 
emotions. All the mere gratifications or natu- 
ral pleasures that are in the power even of the 
most fortunate, are quite insufficient to fill this 
2h2 



390 



POETRY. 



vast ;raving for sensation : And accordingly, 
Ave see every day, that a more violent stimu- 
lus is sought for by those who have attained 
the vulgar heights of life, in the pains and 
dangers of war — the agonies of gaming — or 
the feverish toils of ambition. To those who 
have tasted of those potent cups, where the 
bitter, however, so obviously predominates, 
the security, the comforts, and what are call- 
ed the enjoyments of common life, are intol- 
erably insipid and disgusting. Nay, we think- 
we have observed, that even those who, with- 
out any effort or exertion, have experienced 
unusual misery, frequently appear, in like 
"nanner, to acquire a sort of taste or craving 
)r it; and come to look on the tranquillity of 
dinary life with a kind of indifference not 
nmingled with contempt. It is certain, at 
east, that they dwell with most apparent satis- 
iction on the memory of those days, which 
axe been marked by the deepest and most 
agonising sorrows; and derive a certain de- 
light from the recollections of those over- 
whelming sensations which once occasioned 
so fierce a throb in the languishing pulse of 
their existence. 

If any thing of this kind, however, can be 
traced in real life — if the passion for emotion 
be so strong as to carry us, not in imagination, 
but in reality, over the rough edge of present 
pain — it will not be difficult to explain, why it 
should be so attractive in the copies and fic- 
tions of poetry. There, as in real life, the 
great demand is for emotion ; while the pain 
with which it may be attended, can scarcely, 
by any possibility, exceed the limits of en- 
durance. The recollection, that it is but a 
copy and a fiction, is quite sufficient to keep it 
down to a moderate temperature, and to make 
it weleome as the sign or the harbinger of that 
agitation of which the soul is avaricious. It 
is not, then, from any peculiar quality in pain- 
ful emotions that they become capable of 
affording the delight which attends them in 
tragic or pathetic poetry — but merely from the 
circumstance of their being more intense and 
powerful than any other emotions of which 
the mind is susceptible. If it was the consti- 
tution of our nature to feel joy as keenly, or to 
sympathise with it as heartily as we do with 
sorrow, we have no doubt that no other sensa- 
tion would ever be intentionally excited by 
the artists that minister to delight. But the 
fact is. that the pleasures of which we are ca- 
pable are slight and feeble compared with the 
pains that we may endure ; and that, feeble 
as they are, the sympathy which they excite 
falls much more short of the original emotion. 
When the object, therefore, is to obtain sen- 
sation, there can be no doubt to which of the 
two fountains we should repair ; and if there 
be but few pains in real life which are not, in 
some measure, endeared to us by the emo- 
tions with which they are attended, we may 
be pretty sure, that the more distress we in- 
troduce into poetry, the more we shall rivet 
the attention and attract the admiration of the 
reader. 

There is but one exception to this rule — 
and it brings us back from the apology of Mr. 



Crabbe, to his condemnation. Every form of 
distress, whether it proceed from passion or 
from fortune, and whether it fall upon vice or 
virtue, adds to the interest and the charm of 
poetry — except only that -which is connected 
with ideas of Disgust — the least taint of which 
disenchants the whole scene, and puts an end 
both to delight and sympathy. But what is 
it, it may be asked, that is the proper object 
of disgust? and what is the precise descrip- 
tion of things which we think Mr. Crabbe so 
inexcusable for admitting'? It is not easy to 
define a term at once so simple and so signifi- 
cant; but it may not be without its use, to 
indicate, in a general way, our conception of 
its true force and comprehension. 

It is needless, we suppose, to explain what 
are the objects of disgust in physical or exter- 
nal existences. These are sufficiently plain and 
unequivocal ; and it is universally admitted, 
that all mention of them must be carefully ex- 
cluded from every poetical description. With 
regard, again, to human character, action, and 
feeling, we should be inclined to term every 
thing disgusting, which represented misery, 
without making any appeal to our love, res- 
pect, or admiration. If the suffering person 
be amiable", the delightful feeling of love and 
affection tempers the pain which the contem- 
plation of suffering has a tendency to excite, 
and enhances it into the stronger, and there- 
fore more attractive, sensation of pity. If 
there be great power or energy, however, 
united to guilt or wretchedness, the mixture 
of admiration exalts the emotion into some- 
thing that is sublime and pleasing : and even 
in cases of mean and atrocious, but efficient 
guilt, our sympathy with the victims upon 
whom it ispractised, and our active indignation 
and desire of vengeance, reconcile us to the 
humiliating display, and make a compound 
that, upon the whole, isproductive of pleasure. 

The only sufferers, then, upon w horn we 
cannot bear to look, are those that excite pain 
by their wretchedness, while they are too de- 
praved to be the objects of affection, and too 
weak and insignificant to be the causes of 
misery to others, or, consequently, of indigna- 
tion to the spectators. Such are the depraved, 
abject, diseased, and neglected poor — crea- 
tures in whom every thing amiable or res- 
pectable has been extinguished by sordid pas- 
sions or brutal debauchery; — who have no 
means of doinc the mischief of which they 
are capable — whom every one despises, and 
no one can either love or fear. On the char- 
acters, the miseries, and the vices of such 
beings, we look with disgust merely: and, 
though it may perhaps serve some moral pur- 
pose, occasionally to set before us this humi- 
liating spectacle of human nature sunk to 
utter worthlessness and insignificance, it is 
altogether in vain to think of exciting either 
pity or horror, by the truest and most forcible 
representations of their sufferings or their 
enormities. They have no hold upon any of 
the feelings that lead us to take an interest in 
our fellow-creatures; — we turn away from 
them, therefore, w T ith loathing and dispassion- 
ate aversion ; — we feel our imaginations pol 



CRABBE'S BOROUGH. 



391 



luted by the intrusion of any images con- 
nected with them; and are offended and 
-disgusted when we are forced to look closely 
upon those festering heaps of moral filth and 
corruption. 

It is with concern we add, that we know no 
writer who has sinned so deeply in this re- 
spect as Mr. Crabbe — who has so often pre- 
sented us with spectacles which it is purely 
painful and degrading to contemplate, and 
bestowed such powers of conception and ex- 
pression in giving us distinct ideas of what 
we must ever abhor to remember. If Mr. 
Crabbe had been a person of ordinary talents. 
we might have accounted for his error, in 
some degree, by supposing, that his frequent 
success in treating of subjects which had been 
usually rejected by other poets, had at length 
led him to disregard, altogether, the common 
impressions of mankind as to what was allow- 
able and what inadmissible in poetry ; and to 
reckon the unalterable laws by which nature 
has regulated our sympathies, among the 
prejudices by which they were shackled and 
impaired. It is difficult, however, to conceive 
how a writer of his quick and exact observa- 
tion should have failed to perceive, that there 
is not a single instance of a serious interest 
being excited by an object of disgust: and 
that Shakespeare himself, who has ventured 
every thing, has never ventured to shock our 
feelings with the crimes or the sufferings of 
beings absolutely without power or principle. 
Independent of universal practice, too, it is 
still more difficult to conceive how he should 
have overlooked the reason on which this 
practice is founded ; for though it be gener- 
ally true, that poetical representations of suf- 
fering and of guilt produce emotion, and con- 
sequently delight, yet it certainly did not 
require the penetration of Mr. Crabbe to dis- 
cover, that there is a degree of depravity 
which counteracts our sympathy with suffer- 
ing, and a degree of insignificance which ex- 
tinguishes our interest in guilt. We abstain 
from giving any extracts in support of this 
accusation ; but those who have perused the 
volume before us, will have already recol- 
lected the story of Frederic Thompson, of 
Abel Keene, of Blaney, of Ben bow, and a 
good part of those of Grimes and Ellen Orford 
— besides many shorter passages. It is now 
time, however, to give the reader a more 
particular account of the work which contains 
them. 

The Borough of Mr. Crabbe, then, is a 
detailed and minute account of an ancient 
English sea-port town, of the middling order; 
containing a series of pictures of its scenery, 
and of the different classes and occupations 
of its inhabitants. It is thrown into the form 
of letters, though without any attempt at the 
epistolary character ; and treats of the vicar 
and curate — the sectaries — the attornies — the 
apothecaries ; and the inns, clubs, and stroll- 
ing-players, that make a figure in the place : 
—but more particularly of the poor, and their 
characters ami treatment ; and of almshouses, 
prisons, and schools. There is, of course, no 
unity or method, in the poem — which consists 



altogether of a succession of unconnected 
descriptions, and is still more miscellaneous 
in reality, than would be conjectured from the 
titles of its twenty-four separate compart- 
ments. As it does not admit of analysis, 
therefore, or even of a much more particular 
description, we can only give our readers a 
just idea of its execution, by extracting a 
few of the passages that appear to us most 
characteristic in each of the many styles it 
exhibits. 

One of the first that strikes us, is the 
following very touching and beautiful picture 
of innocent love, misfortune and resignation — 
all of them taking a tinge of additional sweet- 
ness and tenderness from the humble con- 
dition of the parties; and thus affording a 
striking illustration of the remarks we have 
ventured to make on the advantages of such 
subjects. The passage occurs in the second 
letter, where the author has been surveying, 
with a glance half pensive and half sarcasti- 
cal, the monuments erected in the churchyard. 
He then proceeds : — 

" Yes ! there are real Mourners — I have seen 
A fair sad Girl, miid. suffering, and serene; 
Attention (through the day) her duties ciaim'd, 
And to he useful as resign'd she aim'd ; 
Neatly she dress'd, nor vainly seem'd t' expect 
Pity for grief, or pardon for neglect ; 
But when her wearied Parents sunk to sleep, 
She sought this place to meditate and weep; 
Then to her mind was all the past display'd, 
That faithful Memory brings to Sorrow's aid : 
For then she thought on one regretted Youth, 
Her tender trust, and his unquestion'd truth; 
Tn ev'ry place she wander'd, where they'd been, 
And sadly-sacred held the parting-scene 
Where last for sea he took his leave ; — that place 
With double interest would she nightly trace," &c 

" Happy he sail'd ; and great the care she took, 
That he should softly sleep, and smartly look ; 
White was his better linen, and his check 
Was made more trim than any on the deck; 
And every comfort Men at Sea can know, 
Was hers to buy, to make, and to bestow: 
For he to Greenland sail'd, and much she told, 
How he should guard against the climate's cold ; 
Yet saw not danger; dangers he'd withstood, 
Nor could she trace the Fever in his blood : 
His Messmates smil'd at flushings in his cheek, 
And he too smil'd. but seldom would he speak ; 
For now he found the danger, felt the pain, 
With grievous symp'oms he could not explain. 

" He call'd his friend, and prefac'd with a sigh 
A Lover's message — ' Thomas ! I must die ! 
Would I could see my Sally ! and could rest 
My throbbing temples on her faithful breast, 
And gazing go! — if not, this trifle take, 
And say till death, I wore it for her sake : 
Yes ! I must die ! blow on, sweet breeze, blow on ! 
Give me one look, before my life be gone, 
Oh ! give me that ! and let me not despair — 
One last fond look ! — and now repeat the prayer.' 

" He had his wish; had more ; I will not paint 
The Lover's meeting : she beheld him faint — 
With tender fears, she took a nearer view, 
Her terrors doubling as her hopes withdrew ; 
He tried to smile, and, half succeeding, said, 
' Yes ! I must die ; — and hope for ever fled ! 

"Still long she nurs'd him; tender thoughta 
meantime « 

Were in'erchang'd, and hopes and views sublime. 
To her he came to die ; and every day 
She took some portion of the dread away ! 
With him she pray'd, to him his Bible read, 
Sooth'd the faint heart, and held the aching head: 



392 



POETRY. 



She came with smiles the hour of pain to cheer ; 
Apart she sigh'd ; alone, she shed the tear ; 
Then, as if breaking from a cloud, she gave 
Fresh light, and gilt the prospect of the grave. 

" One day he lighter seem'd, and ihey forgot 
The care, the dread, the anguish of their lot; 
They spoke wilh cheerfulness, and seem'd to think, 
Yet said not so — ' perhaps he will not sink.' 
A sudden brightness in his look appear'd,— 
A sudden vigour in his voice was heard ; 
She had been reading in the Book of Prayer, 
And led him forth, and plac'd him in his chair; 
Lively he seem'd, and spoke of all he knew, 
The friendly many, and the favourite few; 
Nor one that day did he to mind recall, 
But she has treasur'd, and she loves them all ; 
When in her way she meets them, they appear 
Peculiar people — death has made them dear! 
He nam'd his friend, but then his hand she prest, 
And fondly whisper'd, ' Thou must go to rest.' 
4 I go !' he said ; but, as he spoke, she found 
His hand more cold, and flutt'ring was the sound ; 
Then gaz'd affrighten'd ; but she caught at last 
A dying look of love — and all was past ! — 

44 She plac'd a decent stone his grave above, 
Neatly engrav'd — an offering of her Love ; 
For that she wrought, for that forsook her bed, 
Awake alike to duty and the dead ; 
She would have griev'd, had friends presum'd to 

spare 
The least assistance — 'twas her proper care. 

44 Here will she come, and on the grave will sit, 
Folding her arms, in long abstracted fit ; 
But if observer pass, will take her round, 
And careless seem, for she would not be found ; 
Then come again, and thus her hour employ, 
While visions please her, and while woes destroy." 

pp. 23—27. 

There is a passage in the same tone, in the 
letter on Prisons. It describes the dream of 
a felon under sentence of death ) and though 
the exquisite accuracy and beauty of the 
landscape painting are such as must have 
recommended it to notice in poetry of any 
order, it seems to us to derive an uspeakable 
charm from the lowly simplicity and humble 
content of the characters — at least we can- 
not conceive any walk of ladies and gentlemen 
that should furnish out so sweet a picture as 
terminates the following extract. It is only 
doing Mr. Crabbe justice to present along 
with it a part of the dark foreground which 
he has drawn, in the waking existence of the 
poor dreamer. 

" When first I came 
Within his view, I fancied there was shame, 
I judg'd Resentment ; 1 mistook the air — 
These fainter passions live not with Despair ; 
Or but exist and die : — Hope, Fear and Love, 
Joy, Doubt, and Hate, may other spirits move, 
But tDuch not his, who every waking hour 
Has one fix'd dread, and always feels its power. 
He takes his tasteless food ; and, when 'tis done, 
Counts up his meals, now lessen'd by that one ; 
For Expectation is on Time intent, 
Whether he brings us Joy or Punishment. 

44 Yes! e'en in sleep th' impressions all remain; 
He hears the sentence, and he feels the chain ; 
He seems the place for that sad act to see, 
And dreams the very thirst, which then will be ! 
A priest attends — it seems the one he knew 
Jn his best days, beneath whose care he grew. 

44 At this his terrors take a sudden flight — 
He sees his native village with delight ; 
The house, the chamber, where he once array'd 
His youthful person : where he knelt and pray'd : 
Then too the comforts he enjoy'd at home, 
The days of joy ; the joys themselves are come ; — 



The hours of innocence ;— the timid look 
Of hi3 lov'd maid, when first her hand he took 
And told his hope ; her trembling joy appears, 
Her forc'd reserve, and his retreating fears. 

41 Yes! all are with him now, and all the while 
Life's early prospects and his Fanny smile : 
Then come his sister and his village friend, 
And he will now the sweetest moments spend 
Life has to yield : — No ! never will he find 
Again on earth such pleasure in his mind, [among. 
He goes through shrubby walks these friend* 
Love in their looks and pleasure on the tongue. 
Pierc'd by no crime, and urg'd by no desire 
For more than true and honest hearts require, 
They feel the calm delight, and thus proceed 
Through the green lane, — then linger in the mead,— 
Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom, 
And pluck the blossom where the wild-bees hum ; 
Then through the broomy bound with ease they 

pass, 
And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, 
Where dwarfish flowers among the gorse arespread, 
And the lamb bronzes by the linnet's bed! [way 

Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their 
O'er its rough bridge — and there behold the bay !— 
The ocean smiling to the fervid sun — 
The waves that faintly fall and slowly run — 
The ships at distance, and the boats at hand : 
And now they walk upon the sea-side sand, 
Counting the number, and what kind they be, 
Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea : 
Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold 
The glitt'ring waters on the shingles roli'd : 
The timid girls, half dreading their design, 
Dip the small foot in the retarded brine, 
And search for crimson weeds, which spreading 
Or lie like pictures on the sand below ; [flow, 

With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun 
Through the small waves so softly shines upon ; 
And those live lucid jellies which the eye 
Delights to trace as they swim glitt'ring by : 
Pearl-shells and rubied star-fish they admire, 
And will arrange above the parlour fire — 
Tokens of bliss!"— pp. 323—326. 

If these extracts do not make the reader 
feel how deep and peculiar an interest may 
be excited by humble subjects, we should 
almost despair of bringing him over to oar 
opinion, even by Mr. Crabbe's inimitable de- 
scription and pathetic pleading for the parish 
poor. The subject is one of those, which to 
many will appear repulsive, and, to some 
fastidious natures perhaps, disgusting. Yet, 
if the most admirable painting of external 
objects — the most minute and thorough know- 
ledge of human character — and that warm 
glow of active and rational benevolence which 
lends a guiding light to observation, and an 
enchanting colour to eloquence, can entitle a 
poet to praise, as they do entitle him to more 
substantial rewards, we are persuaded that 
the following passage will not be speedily 



44 Your plan I love not : — with a number you 
Have plac'd your poor, your pitiable few ; 
There, in one house, for all their lives to be, 
The pauper-palace, which they hate to see ! 
That giant building, that high bounding wall, 
Those bare-worn walks, that lofty thimd'ringhall • 
That large loud clock, which tolls each dreaded 

hour, 
Those gates and locks, and all those signs of power : 
It is a prison, with a milder name, 
Which few inhabit without dread or shame." — 

44 Alas ! their sorrows in their bosoms dwell, 
They've much to suffer, but have nought to tell 
They have no evil in the place to state, 
And c are not 3ay, it is the house they hate ; 



CRABBE'S BOROUGH. 



393 



Tluy own there's granted all such place can give, 
But live repining, — for 'tis there they live! [see, 

; ' Grandsires are there, who now no more must 
No more must nurse upon the trembling knee, 
The lost lov'd daughter's infant progeny ! 
Like death's dread mansion, this allows not place 
For joyful meetings of a kindred race. 

*' Is not the mairon there, to whom the son 
Was wont at each declining day to run ; 
He (when his toil was over) gave delight, 
By lifting up the latch, and one 4 Good night?' 
Yes. she is here ; but nightly to her door 
The son, still lab'ring, can return no more. 

" Widows are here, who in their huts were left, 
Of husbands, children, plenty, ease, bereft; 
Yet all that grief within the humble shed 
Was soften'd, soften'd in the humbled bed: 
But here, in all its force, remains the grief, 
And not one solt'ning object for relief. 

" Who can, when here, the social neighbour 
Who learn ihe story current in the street ? [meet ? 
Who to the long-known intimate impart 
Facts they have learn'd, or feelings of the heart ? — 
They talk, indeed; but who can choose a friend, 
Or seek companions, at their journey's end ?" — 

" What, if no grievous fears their live3 annoy, 
Is it not worse, no prospects to enjoy ? 
'Tis cheerless living in such bounded view, 
With nothing dreadful, but with nothing new; 
Nothing to bring them joy, to make them weep — 
The day itself is, like the night, asleep; 
Or on the sameness, if a break be made, 
'Tis by some pauper to his grave convey'd ; 
By smuggled news from neighb'ring village told, 
News never true, or truth a twelvemonth old! 
By some new inmate doom'd with them to dwell, 
Or justice come to see that all goes well ; 
Or change of room, or hour of leave to crawl 
On the black footway winding with the wall, 
'Till the stern bell forbids, or master's sterner call. 

" Here the good pauper, loosing all the praise 
By worthy deeds acquir'd in better days, 
Breathes a few months; then, to his chamber led, 
Expires — while strangers prattle round his bed." — 

pp. 241—244. 

These we take to be specimens of Mr. 
Crabbe's best style ; — but he has great variety ; 
— and some readers may be better pleased 
with his satirical vein — which is both copious 
and original. The Vicar is an admirable 
sketch of what must be very difficult to draw ; 
— a good, easy man, with no character at all. 
His little, humble vanity; — his constant care 
to offend no one; — his mawkish and feeble 
gallantry — indolent good nature, and love of 
gossipping and trifling — are all very exactly, 
and very pleasingly delineated. 

To the character of Blaney, we have already 
objected, as offensive, from its extreme and 
impotent depravity. The first part of his 
history, however, is sketched with a masterly 
hand; and affords a good specimen of that 
sententious and antithetical manner by which 
Mr. Crabbe sometimes reminds us of the style 
and versification of Pope. 

" Blaney, a wealthy heir at twenty-one, 
At twenty-five was ruin'd and undone : 
These years with grievous crimes we need not load, 
He found his ruin in the common road ; 
Gam'd without skill, without inquiry bought, 
Lent without love, and borrow'd without thought. 
But, gay and handsome, he had soon the dower 
Of a kind wealthy widow in his power; 
Ther he aspir'd to loftier flights of vice ! 
To singing harlots of enormous price: 
And took a jockey in his gig to buy 
An horse, so valued, that a duke was shy: 
50 



To gain the plaudits of the knowing few, 
Gamblers and grooms, what wouid not Blaney 
do?"— 
" Cruel he was not. — If he left his wife, 
He left her to her own pursuits in life ; 
Deaf to reports, to all expenses blind, 
Profuse, not just — and careless but not kind." 

pp. 193, 194. 

Clelia is another worthless character, drawn 
with infinite spirit, and a thorough knowledge 
of human nature. She began life as a spright- 
ly, talking, flirting girl, who passed for a wit 
and a beauty in the half-bred circles of the 
borough; and who, in laying herself out to 
entrap a youth of better condition, unfortu- 
nately fell a victim to his superior art, and 
forfeited her place in society. She then be- 
came the smart mistress of a dashing attor- 
ney — then tried to teach a school — lived as 
the favourite of an innkeeper — let lodgings — 
wrote novels — set up a toyshop — and, finally, 
was admitted into the almshouse. There is 
nothing very interesting perhaps in such a 
story ; but the details of it show the wonderful 
accuracy of the author's observation of char- 
acter; and give it, and many of his other 
pieces, a value of the same kind that some 
pictures are thought to derive from the truth 
and minuteness of the anatomy which they 
display. There is something original, too, 
and well conceived, in the tenacity with which 
he represents this frivolous person, as ad- 
hering to her paltry characteristics, under 
every change of circumstances. The con- 
cluding view is as follows. 

" Now friendless, sick, and old, and wantingbread, 
The first-born tears of fallen pride were shed- 
True, bitter tears; and yet that wounded pride, 
Among the poor, for poor distinctions sigh'd ! 
Though now her tales were to her audience fit ; 
Though loud her tones, and vulgar grown her wit ; 
Though now her dress — (but let me not explain 
The piteous patchwork of the needy vain, 
The fliriish form to coarse materials lent, 
And one poor robe through fifty fashions sent); 
Though all within was sad, without was mean- 
Still 'twas her wish, her comfort to be seen: 
She would to plays on lowest terms resort, 
Where once her box was to the beaux a court ; 
And, strange delight ! to that same house, where 
Join'd in the dance, all gaiety and glee, [she 

Now with the menials crowding to the wall, 
She'd see, not share, the pleasures of the ball, 
And with degraded vanity unfold, 
How she too triumph'd in the years of old." 

pp. 209, 210. 

The graphic powers of Mr. Crabbe, indeed, 
are too frequently wasted on unworthy sub- 
jects. There is not, perhaps, in all English 
poetry a more complete and highly finished 
piece of painting, than the following descrip- 
tion of a vast old boarded room or warehouse, 
which was let out, it seems, in the borough, 
as a kind of undivided lodging, for beggars 
and vagabonds of every description. No Dutch 
painter ever presented an interior more dis- 
tinctly to the eye; or ever gave half such a 
group to the imagination. 

" That window view ! — oil'd paper and old glass 
Stain the strong rays, which, though impeded, pas», 
And give a dusty warmth to that huge room, 
The conquer'd sunshine's melancholy gloom; 



POETRY. 



When all those western rays, without so bright, 
Within become a ghastly glimm'ring light, 
As pale and faint upon the floor they fall, 
Or feebly gleam on the opposing wall: 
That floor, once oak, now piec'd with fir unplan'd, 
Or, where not piec'd, in places bor'd and stain'd ; 
That wall once whiten'd, now an odious sight, 
Stain'd with all hues, except its ancient white. 

" Where'er the floor allows an even space, 
Chalking and marks of various games have place ; 
Boys, without foresight, pleas'd in halters swing! 
On a fix'd hook men cast a flying ring ; 
While gin and snuff their female neighbours share, 
And the black beverage in the fractur'd ware. 
- " On swinging shelf are things incongruous stor'd; 
Scraps of their food — the cards and cribbage board — 
With pipes and pouches ; while on peg below, 
Hang a lost member's fiddle and its bow : 
That still reminds them how he'd dance and play, 
Ere sent untimely to the Convict's Bay ! 

" Here by a curtain, by a blanket there, 
Are various beds conceal'd, but none with care; 
Where some by day and some by night, as best 
Suit their employments, seek uncertain rest; 
The drowsy children at their pleasure creep 
To the known crib, and there securely 6leep. 

*' Each end contains a grate, and these beside 
Are hung utensils for their boil'd and fry'd— 
All us'd at any hour, by night, by day, 
As suit the purse, the person, or the prey. 

" Above the fire, the mantel-shelf contains 
Of china-ware some poor unmatch'd remains; 
There many a tea-cup's gaudy fragment stands, 
All plac'd by Vanity's unwearied hands ; 
For here she lives, e'en here she looks about, 
To find small some consoling objects out. 

" High hung at either end, and next the wall, 
Two ancient mirrors show the forms of all." 

pp. 249—251. 

The following picture of a calm sea fog is 
by the same powerful hand : — 

" When all you see through densest fog is seen; 
When you can hear the fishers near at hand 
Distinctly speak, yet see not where they stand ; 
Or sometimes them and not their boat discern, 
Or half- conceal'd some figure at the stern ; 
Boys who, on shore, to sea the pebble cast, 
Will hear it strike against the viewless mast ; 
While the stern boatman growls his fierce disdain, 
At whom he knows not, whom he threats in vain. 
" 'Tis pleasant then to view the nets float past, 
Net after net till you have seen the last; 
And as you wait iill all beyond you slip, 
A boat comes gliding from an anchor'd ship, 
Breaking the silence with the dipping oar, 
And their own tones, as labouring for the shore ; 
Those measur'd tones with which the scene agree, 
And give a sadness to serenity. — pp. 123, 124. 

We add one other sketch of a similar char- 
acter, which though it be introduced as the 
haunt and accompaniment of a desponding 
spirit, is yet chiefly remarkable for the singu- 
lar clearness and accuracy with which it 
represents the dull scenery of a common tide 
river. The author is speaking of a solitary 
and abandoned fisherman, who was com- 
pelled — 

" At the same times the same dull views to see, 
The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree ; 
The water only, when the tides were high, 
When low, the mud haif-covered and half-dry; 
The sun-burn'd tar that blisters on the planks, 
And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks : 
Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float, 
As the tide rolls by the impeded boat. 

" W 7 hen tides were neap, and, in the sultry day, 
Through the fall bounding mud-banks made their 
Which on each side rose swelling, and below [way. 



The dark warm flood ran silently and slow ; 
There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hido 
There hang his head, and view the lazy tide 
In its hot slimy channel slowly glide; 
Where the small eels that left the deeper way 
For the warm shore, within the shallows play, 
Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud, 
Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood ; — 
Here dull and hopeless he'd lie down and trace 
How sidelong crabs had scrawPd their crooked race; 
Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry 
Of fishing Gull or clanging Golden Eye." 

pp. 305, 306. 

Under the head of Amusements, we have a 
spirited account of the danger and escape of 
a party of pleasure, who landed, in a fine 
evening, on a low sandy island, which was 
covered with the tide at high water, and were 
left upon it by the drifting away of their boat. 

" On the bright sand they trode with nimble feet, 
Dry shelly sand that made the summer seat : 
The wond'ring mews flew flutt'ring o T er their head, 
And waves ran softly up their shining bed. "-p. 127. 

While engaged in their sports, they discover 
their boat floating at a distance ; and are struck 
with instant terror. 

m Alas ! no shout the distant land can reach, 
Nor eye behold them from the foggy beach ; 
Again they join in one loud powerful cry, 
Then cease, and eager listen for reply. 
None came — the rising wind blew sadly by. 
They shout once more, and then they turn aside, 
To see how quickly flow'd the coming tide : 
Between each cry they find the waters steal 
On their strange prison, and new horrors feel ; 
Foot after foot on the contracted ground 
The billows fall, and dreadful is the sound ! 
Less and yet less the sinking isle became, 
And there was wailing, weeping, wrath, and blame; 
Had one been there, with spirit strong and high, 
Who could observe, as he prepar'd to die, 
He might have seen of hearts the varving kind, 
And trac'd the movement of each different mind: 
He might have seen, that not the gentle maid 
Was more than stern and haughty man afraid," &c. 
" Now rose the water through the less'ning sand, 
And they seem'd sinking while they yet could stand! 
The sun went down, they look'd from side to side, 
Nor aught except the gath'ring sea descry'd ; 
Dark and more dark, more wet, more cold it grew, 
And the most lively bade to hope adieu ; 
Children, by love, then lifted from the seas, 
Felt not the waters at the parent's knees, 
But wept aloud ; the wmd increas'd the sound, 
And the cold billows as they broke around. 

But hark ! an oar, 

That sound of bliss ! comes dashing to their shore : 
Still, still the water rises, ' Haste !' they cry, 
1 Oh ! hurry, seamen, in delay we die!' 
(Seamen were these who in their ship perceiv'd 
The drifted boat, and thus her crew reliev'd.) 
And now the keel just cuts the cover'd sand, 
Now to the gunwale stretches every hand ; 
With trembling pleasure all confus'd embark, 
And kiss the tackling of their welcome ark ; 
While the most giddy, as they reach the shore, 
Think of their danger, and their God adore." 

pp. 127—130. 

In the letter on Education, there are some 
fine descriptions of boarding-schools for both 
sexes, and of the irksome and useless restraints 
which they impose on the bounding spirits 
and open affections of early youth. This is 
followed by some excellent remarks on the 
ennui which so often falls to the lot of the 
learned — or that description at least of the 



CRABBES BOROUGH. 



395 



learned that are bred in English univer- 
sities. But we have no longer left room for 
any considerable extracts ; though we should 
have wished to lay before our readers some 
part of the picture of the secretaries — the de- 
scription of the inns — the strolling players — 
and the clubs. The poor man's club, which 
partakes of the nature of a friendly society, 
is described with that good-hearted indulgence 
which marks all Mr. Crabbe's writings. 

" The printed rules he guards in painted frame, 
And shows his children where to read his name." 

We have now alluded, we believe, to what 
is best and most striking in this poem ; and, 
though we do not mean to quote any part of 
what we consider as less successful, we must 
say, that there are large portions of it which 
appear to us considerably inferior to most of 
the author's former productions. The letter 
on the Election, we look on as a complete 
failure — or at least as containing scarcely any 
thing of what it ought to have contained. — 
The letters on Law and Physic, too, are tedi- 
ous ; and the general heads of Trades, Amuse- 
ments, and Hospital Government, by no means 
amusing. The Parish Clerk, too, we find dull, 
and without effect ; and have already given 
our opinion of Peter Grimes, Abel Keene. and 
Benbow. We are struck, also, with several 
omissions in the picture of a maritime borough. 
Mr. Crabbe might have made a great deal of 
a press-gang ; and, at all events, should have 
given us some wounded veteran sailors, and 
some voyagers with tales of wonder from 
foreign lands. 

The style of this poem is distinguished, 
like all Mr. Crabbe's other performances, by 
great force and compression of diction — a sort 
of sententious brevity, once thought essential 
to poetical composition, but of which he is 
now the only living example. But though this 
is almost an unvarying characteristic of his 
style, it appears to us that there is great 
variety, and even some degree of unsteadi- 
ness and inconsistency in the tone of his ex- 
pression and versification. His taste seems 
scarcely to be sufficiently fixed and settled as 
to these essential particulars ; and, along with 
a certain quaint, broken, and harsh manner 
of his own, we think we can trace very fre- 
quent imitations of poets of the most opposite 
character. The following antithetical and 
half-punning lines of Pope, for instance : — 

" Sleepless himself, to give his readers sleep ;" 

and — 

" Whose trifling pleases, and whom trifles please ; — 

have evidently been copied by Mr. Crabbe in 
the following, and many others : — 

" And in the restless ocean, seek for rest." 

" Denying her who taught thee to deny." 

" Scraping they liv'd, but not a scrap they gave." 

" Bound for a friend, whom honour could not bind." 

" Among the poor, for poor distinctions sigh'd." 

In the same way, the common, nicely bal- 
anced line of two members, which is so char- 
acteristic of the same author, has obviously 



been the model of our author in the follow 

ing :— 

" That woe could wish, or vanity devise." 
11 Sick without pity, sorrowing without hope." 
" Gloom to the night, and pressure to the chain"— 
and a great multitude of others. 

On the other hand, he appears to us to be 
frequently misled by Darwin into a sort of 
mock-heroic magnificence, upon ordinary oc- 
casions. The poet of the Garden, for instance, 
makes his nymphs 

" Present the fragrant quintessence of tea." 

And the poet of the Dock-yards makes his 
carpenters 

"Spread the warm pungence of o'erboiling tar." 

Mr. Crabbe, indeed, does not scruple, on 
some occasions, to adopt the mock-heroic in 
good earnest. When the landlord of the 
Griffin becomes bankrupt, he says — 
" The insolvent Griffin struck her wings sublime," 

and introduces a very serious lamentation 
over the learned poverty of the curate, with 
this most misplaced piece of buffoonery : — 

" Oh ! had he learn'd to make the wig he wears !" 

One of his letters, too, begins with this 
wretched quibble — 

" From Law to Physic stepping at our ease, 
We find a way to finish — by Degrees." 

There are many imitations of the peculiar 
rhythm of Goldsmith and Campbell, too, as 
our readers must have observed in some of 
our longer specimens; — but these, though 
they do not always make a very harmonious 
combination, are better, at all events, than 
the tame heaviness and vulgarity of such 
verses as the following : — 



As soon 



Could he have thought gold issued from the moon." 

"A seaman's body — tliere'll be more to-night." 

" Those who will not to any guide submit, 
Nor find one creed to their conceptions fit — 
True hidepevdenls: while they Calvin hate, 
They heed as little what Socinians siate." — p. 54. 

" Here pits of crag, wiih spongy, plashy base, 
To some enrich th' unculiivated space," &c. &c. 

Of the suddeii, narsh turns, and broken con- 
ciseness which we think peculiar to himself, 
the reader may take the following speci- 
mens : — 

" Has your wife's brother, or your uncle's son, 
Done aught amiss ; or is he thought t' have 
done ?" 

" Stepping from post to post he rpach'd the chair y 
And there he now reposes : — that's the Mayor !" 

He has a sort of jingle, too, which we think 
is of his own invention ; — for instance, 

" For forms and feasts that sundry times have past, 
And formal feasts that will for ever last." 

" We term it free and easy; and yet we 
Find it no easy matter to be free." 

We had more remarks to make upon the 
taste and diction of this author ; and bad noted 
several other little blemishes, which we meant 



396 



POETRY. 



lo have pointed out for his correction : but we 
have no longer room for such minute criticism 
-from which, indeed, neither the author nor 
the reader would be likely to derive any great 
benefit. We take our leave of Mr. Crabbe, 
therefore, by expressing our hopes that, since 
i* is proved that he can write fast, he will not 
allow his powers to languish for want of exer- 
c ise ; and that we shall soon see him again 
lepaying the public approbation, by entitling 
himself to a still larger share of it. An author 
generally knows his own forte so much better 
than any of his j^aders, that it is commonly 
a very foolish ^td of presumption to offer 
any advice as to the direction of his efforts ; 
but we own we have a very strong desire to 
see Mr. Crabbe apply his great powers to the 
construction of some interesting and connected 
story. He has great talents for narration ; and 
that unrivalled gift in the delineation of char- 
acter, which is now used only for the creation 
of detached portraits, might be turned to ad- 



mirable account in maintaining the mtcres!, 
and enhancing the probability, of an extendea 
train of adventures. At present, it is impos- 
sible not to regret, that so much genius should 
be wasted in making us perfectly acquainted 
with individuals, of whom we are to know 
nothing but the characters. In such a poem, 
however. Mr. Crabbe must entirely lay aside 
the sarcastic and jocose style to which he has 
rather too great a propensity ; but which we 
know, from what he has done in Sir Eustace 
Grey, that he can, when he pleases, entirely 
relinquish. That very powerful and original 
performance, indeed, ihe chief fault of which 
is, to be set too thick with images — to be too 
strong and undiluted, in short, for the diges- 
tion of common readers — makes us regret, 
that its author should ever have stopped to be 
trifling and ingenious — or condescended to 
tickle the imaginations of his readers, instead 
of touching the higher passions of their na- 
ture. 



(tfo»*mb«r, 1812.) 

Tales. By the Reverend George Crabbe. 8vo. pp. 398. London : 1812. 



We are very thankful to Mr. Crabbe for 
these Tales; as we must always be for any 
thing that comes from his hands. But they 
are not exactly the tales which we wanted. 
We did not, however, wish him to write an 
Epic — as he seems from his preface to have 
imagined. We are perfectly satisfied with 
the length of the pieces he has given us ; and 
delighted with their number and variety. In 
these respects the volume is exactly as we 
could have wished it. But we should have 
liked a little more of the deep and tragical 
passions ; of those passions which exalt and 
overwhelm the soul — to whose stormy seat 
the modern muses can so rarely raise their 
flight — and which he has wielded with such 
terrific force in his Sir Eustace Grey, and the 
Gipsy Woman. What we wanted, in short, 
were tales something in the style of those 
two singular compositions — with less jocu- 
larity than prevails in the rest of his writings 
— rather more incidents — and rather fewer 
details. 

The pieces before us are not of this descrip- 
tion ; — they are mere supplementary chapters 
to " The Borough." or "The Parish Register." 
The same tone — the same subjects — the same 
style, measure, and versification ; — the same 
finished and minute delineation of things 
ordinary and common — generally very en- 
gaging when employed upon external objects, 
but often fatiguing when directed merely to 
insignificant characters and habits; — the same 
strange mixture too of feelings that tear the 
heart and darken the imagination, with starts 
of low humour and patches of ludicrous ima- 
gery ; — the same kindly sympathy with the 
humble and innocent pleasures of the poor 
and inelegant, and the same indulgence for 



their venial offences, contrasted with a strong 
sense of their frequent depravity, and too 
constant a recollection of the sufferings it pro- 
duces; — and, finally, the same honours paid 
lo the delicate affections and ennobling pas- 
sions of humble life, with the same generous 
testimony to their frequent existence ; mixed 
up as before, with a reprobation sufficiently 
rigid, and a ridicule sufficiently severe, of 
their excesses and affectations. 

If we were required to make a comparative 
estimate of the merits of the present publica- 
tion, or to point out the shades of difference 
by which it is distinguished from those that 
have gone before it, we should say that there 
are a greater number of instances on which 
he has combined the natural language and 
manners of humble life with the energy of 
true passion, and the beauty of generous 
affection; — in which he has traced out the 
course of those rich and lovely veins in the 
rude and unpolished masses that lie at the 
bottom of society ; — and unfolded, in the mid- 
dling orders of the people, the workings of 
those finer feelings, and the stirrings of those 
loftier emotions which the partiality of other 
poets had attributed, almost exclusively, to 
actors on a higher scene. 

We hope, too, that this more amiable and 
consoling view of human nature will have 
the effect of rendering Mr. Crabbe still more 
popular than we know that he already is, 
among that great body of the people, from 
among whom almost all his subjects are taken, 
and for whose use his lessons are chiefly in 
tended : and we saj this, not only on account 
of the moral benefit which we think they 
may derive from them, but because we are 
persuaded that they will derive more pleasure 



CRABBE'S TALES. 



397 



fiom them than readers of any other descrip- 
tion. Those who do not belong to that rank 
of society with which this powerful writer is 
chiefly conversant in his poetry, or who have 
not at least gone much among them, and at- 
tended diligently to their characters and occu- 
pations, can neither be half aware of the 
exquisite fidelity of his delineations, nor feel 
in their full force the better part of the emo- 
tions which he has suggested. Vehement 
passion indeed is of all ranks and conditions ; 
and its language and external indications 
nearly the same in all. Like highly rectified 
spirit, it blazes and inflames with equal force 
and brightness, from whatever materials it is 
extracted. But all the softer and kindlier 
affections, all the social anxieties that mix 
with our daily hopes, and endear our homes, 
and colour our existence, wear a different 
livery, and are written in a different character 
in almost every great caste or division of 
society ; and the heart is warmed, and the 
spirit touched by their delineation, exactly in 
the proportion in which we are familiar with 
the types by which they are represented. — 
When Burns, in his better days, walked out 
in a fine summer morning with Dugald Stew- 
art, and the latter observed to him what a 
beauty the scattered cottages, with their white 
walls and curling smoke shining in the silent 
sun, imparted to the landscape, the present 
poet answered, that he felt that beauty ten 
times more strongly than his companion could 
do ; and that it was necessary to be a cottager 
to know what pure and tranquil pleasures 
often nestled below those lowly roofs, or to 
read, in their external appearance, the signs 
of so many heartfelt and long-remembered 
enjoyments. In the same way, the humble 
and patient hopes — the depressing embarrass- 
ments — the little mortifications — the slender 
triumphs, and strange temptations which arise 
in middling life, and are the theme of. Mr. 
Crabbe's finest and most touching represen- 
tations — can only be guessed at by those who 
glitter in the higher walks of existence ; while 
they must raise many a tumultuous throb and 
many a fond recollection in the breasts of 
those to whom they reflect so truly the image 
of their own estate, and reveal so clearly the 
secrets of their habitual sensations. 

We cannot help thinking, therefore, that 
though such writings as are now before us 
must give great pleasure to all persons of taste 
and sensibility, they will give by far the great- 
est pleasure to those whose condition is least 
remote from that of the beings with whom 
Ihey are occupied. But we think also, that 
it was wise and meritorious in Mr. Crabbe to 
occupy himself with such beings. In this 
country, there probably are not less than 
three hundred thousand persons who read for 
amusement or instruction, among the mid- 
dling classes* of society. In the higher 



* By the middling classes, we mean almost all 
those who are below the sphere of what is called 
fashionable or public life, and who do not aim at 
distinction or notoriety beyond the circle of their 
equals in fortune and situation. 



classes, there are not as many as thirty 
thousand. It is easy to see therefore which 
a poet should choose to please, for his own 
glory and emolument, and which he should 
wish to delight and amend, out of mere 
philanthropy. The fact too we believe is, 
that a great part of the larger body are to the 
full as well educated and as high-minded as 
the smaller ; and, though their taste may not 
be so correct and fastidious, we are persuaded 
that their sensibility is greater. The mis- 
fortune is, to be sure, that they are extremely 
apt to affect the taste of tbjfe superiors, and 
to counterfeit even that absurd disdain of 
which they are themselves (he objects ; and 
that poets have generally thought it safest to 
invest their interesting characters with all 
the trappings of splendid fortune and high 
station, chiefly because those who know least 
about such matters think it unworthy to sym- 
pathise in the adventures of those who are 
without them ! For our own parts, however, 
we are quite positive, not only that persons 
in middling life would naturally be most 
touched with the emotions that belong to 
their own condition, but that those emotions 
are in themselves the most powerful, and 
consequently the best fitted for poetical or 
pathetic representation. Even with regard 
to the heroic and ambitious passions, as the 
vista is longer which leads from humble 
privacy to the natural objects of such pas- 
sions ; so, the career is likely to be more im- 
petuous, and its outset more marked by strik- 
ing and contrasted emotions : — and as to all 
the more tender and less turbulent affections, 
upon which the beauty of the pathetic is 
altogether dependant, we apprehend it to be 
quite manifest, that their proper soil and 
nidus is the privacy and simplicity of humble 
life; — that their very elements are dissipated 
by the variety of objects that move for ever 
in the world of fashion ; and their essence 
tainted by the cares and vanities that are 
diffused in the atmosphere of that lofty region. 
But we are wandering into a long disserta- 
tion, instead of making our readers acquainted 
with the book before us. The most satisfac- 
tory thing we can do, we believe, is to give 
them a plain account of its contents, with 
such quotations and remarks as may occur to 
us as we proceed. 

The volume contains twenty-one tales ; — ■ 
the first of which is called " The Dumb Ora- 
tors." This is not one of the most engaging ; 
and is not judiciously placed at the portal, to 
tempt hesitating readers to,go forward. The 
second, however, entitled "The Parting 
Hour," is of a far higher character, and 
contains some passages of great beauty and 
pathos. The story is simply that of a youth 
and a maiden in humble life, who had loved 
each other from their childhood, but were too 
poor to marry. The youth goes to the West 
Indies to push his fortune: but is captured 
by the Spaniards and carried to Mexico, 
where, in the course of time, though still 
sighing for his first love, he marries a Span- 
ish girl, and lives twenty years with her and 
his children — he is then impressed, and car* 
21 



398 



POETRY. 



ried round the world for twenty years 
longer; and is at last moved by an irre- 
sistible impulse, when old and shattered and 
lonely, to seek his native town, and the 
scene of his youthful vows. He comes and 
finds his Judith like himself in a state of 
widowhood, but still brooding, like himself, 
over the memory of their early love. She 
had waited twelve anxious years without 
tidings of him, and then married : and now 
when all passion, and fuel for passion, is 
extinguished within them, the memory of 
their young attachment endears them to each 
other, and theylRll cling together in sad and 
subdued affection, to the exclusion of all the 
rest of the world. The history of the growth 
and maturity of their innocent love is beauti- 
fully given : but we pass on to the scene of 
their parting. 

" All things prepar'd, on the expected day 
Was seen the vessel anchor'd in the hay. 
From her would seampn in ihe evening come, 
To take ih' advent 1 rous Allen from his home ; 
With his own friends the final day he pass'd, 
And every painful hour, except the last. 
The grieving Father urg'd the cheerful glass, 
To make the moments with less sorrow pass; 
Intent the Mother look'd upon her son, 
And wish'd th' assent withdrawn, the deed undone ; 
The younger Sister, as he took his way, 
Hung on his coat, and begg'd for more delay ; 
But his own Judith call'd him to the shore, 
Whom he must meet — for they might meet no 

more ! — 
And there he found her — fai'hful, mournful, true, 
Weeping and wailing for a last adieu ! 
The ebbing tide had left the sand, and there 
Mov'd with slow steps the melancholy pair: 
Sweet were the painful moments — but how sweet, 
And without pain, when they again should meet !" 

p. 29. 

The sad and long-delayed return of this 
ardent adventurer is described in a tone of 
genuine pathos, and in some places with such 
truth and force of colouring, as to outdo the 
efforts of the first dramatic representation. 

" But when return'd the Youth ? — the Youth no 
Return'd exulting to his native shore ! [more 

But forty years were past; and then there came 
A worn-out man, w th wither'd limbs and lame ! 
Yes ! old and griev'd, and trembling with decay, 
Was Allen landing in his native bay : 
In an autumnal eve he left the beach, 
In such an eve he chanc'd the port to reach: 
He was alone ; he press'd the very place 
Of the sad parting, of the last embrace : 
There stood his parents, there retir'd the Maid, 
So fond, so tender, and so much afraid ; 
And on that spot, through many a year, his mind 
Turn'd mournful back, half sinking, half resign'd. 

" No one was present ; of its crew bereft, 
A single boat was in the billows left ; 
Sent from some anchor'd vessel in the bay, 
At the returning tide to sail away: 
O'er the black stern the moonlight softly play'd, 
The loosen'd foresail flapping in the shade 
All silent else on shore ; but from the town 
A drowsy peal of distant bells came down: 
From the tall houses, here and there, a light 
Serv'd some confus'd remembrance to excite : 
'There,' he observ'd, and new emotions felt, 
' Was my first home— and yonder Judith dwelt,' &c. 
A swarthy matron he beheld, and thought 
She might unfold the very truths he sought ; 
Confus'd and trembling he the dame address'd : 



' The Booths ! yet live they ?' pausing and op 

press'd: 
Then spake again : — ' Is there no ancient man, 
David his name ? — assist me, if you can. — 
Flemings there were ! — and Judith! doth she live f 
The woman gaz'd, nor could an answer give; 
Yet wond'ring stood, and all were silent by, 
Feeling a strange and solemn sympathy." 

pp 31, 32. 

The meeting of the lovers is briefly told. 

" But now a Widow, in a village near, 
Chanc'd of the melancholy man to hear: 
Old as she was, to Judith's bosom came 
Some strong emotions at the well-known name ; 
He was her much-lov'd Allen ! she had stay'd 
Ten troubled years, a sad afflicted maid," &c. 

_ " The once-fond Lovers met : Nor grief nor age. 
Sickness or pain, their hearts could disengage : 
Each had immediate confidence ; a friend 
Both now beheld, on whom they might depend : 
4 Now is there one to whom I can express 
My nature's weakness, and my soul's distress.' " 

There is something sweet and touching, 
and in a higher vein of poetry, in the story 
which he tells to Judith of all his adventures, 
and of those other ties, of which it still wrings 
her bosom to hear him speak. — We can afford 
but one little extract. 

" There, hopeless ever to escape the land, 
He to a Spanish maiden gave his hand ; 
In cottage shelter d from the blaze of day, 
He saw his happy infants round him play; 
Where summer shadows, made by lofty trees, 
Wav'd o'er his seat, and sooth'd his reveries; 
E'en then he thought of England, nor could sigh, 
But his fond Isabel demanded ' Why ?' 
Griev'd by the story, she the sigh repaid, 
And wept in pity for the English Maid." 

pp. 35, 36. 

The close is extremely beautiful, and leaves 
upon the mind just that impression of sadness 
which is both salutary and delightful, because 
it is akin to pity, and mingled with admira- 
tion and esteem. 

" Thus silent, musing through the day, he sees 
His children sporting by those lofty trees, 
Their mother singing in the shady scene, 
Where the fresh springs burst o'er the lively green; 
So strong his eager fancy, he affrights 
The faithful widow by its pow'rful flights ; 
For what disturbs him he aloud will tell, 
And cry — ' 'Tis she, my wife ! my Isabel /' — 
* Where are my children ?' — jM<i<7^grieves to hear 
How the soul works in sorrows so severe ; — 
Watch'd by her care, in sleep, his spirit takes 
Its flight, and watchful finds her when he wakes. 

" 'Tis now her office; her attention see! 
While her friend sleeps beneath that shading tree, 
Careful, she guards him from the glowing heat, 
And pensive muses at her A lien's feet. [scenes 

"And where is he? Ah! doubtless in those 
Of his best days, amid the vivid greens, 
Fresh with unnumber'd rills, where ev'ry gale 
Breathes the rich fragrance of the neighb'ringvale; 
Smiles not his wife? — and listens as there comes 
The night-bird's music from the thick'ning glooms ? 
And as he sits with all these treasures nigh, 
Gleams not with fairy-light the phosphor fly, 
When like a sparkling gem it wheels illumin'd by * 
This is the joy that now so plainly speaks 
In the warm transient flushing of his cheeks ; 
For he is list'ning to the fancied noise 
Of his own children, eager in their joys! — 
All this he feels ; a dream's delusive bliss 
Gives the expression, and the glow like this. 
And now his Judith lays her knitting by, 



CRABBE'S TALES. 



399 



These strong emotions in her friend to spy ; 

For she can fully of their nature deem 

But see! he breaks the long protracted dieme, 
And wakes and cries — ' My God ! 'twas but a 



dream !' 



-pp.39, 40. 



and is of a coarser texture than that we have 
jusl been considering — though full of acute 
observation, and graphic delineation of ordi- 
nary characters. The hero is not a farmer 
turned gentleman, but a gentleman turned 
farmer — a conceited, active, talking, domi- 
neering sort of person — who plants and eats 
and drinks with great vigour — keeps a mis- 
tress, and speaks with audacious scorn of the 
tyranny of wives, and the impositions of 
priests, lawyers, and physicians. Being but 
a shallow fellow however at bottom, his con- 
fidence in his opinions declines gradually as 
his health decays; and, being seized with 
some maladies in his stomach, he ends with 
marrying his mistress, and submitting to be 
triply governed by three of her confederates ; 
in the respective characters of a quack doctor, 
a methodist preacher, and a projecting land 
steward . We cannot afford any extracts from 
this performance. 

The next, which, is called "Procrastina- 
tion," has something of the character of the 
"Parting Hour;" but more painful, and less 
refined. It is founded like it on the story of 
a betrothed youth and maiden, whose mar- 
riage is prevented by their poverty ; and this 
youth, too, goes to pursue his fortune at sea; 
while the damsel awaits his return, with an 
old female relation at home. He is crossed 
with many disasters, and is not heard of for 
many years. In the mean time, the virgin 
gradually imbibes her aunt's paltry love for 
wealth and finery ; and when she comes, after 
long sordid expectation, to inherit her hoards, 
feels that those new tastes have supplanted 
every warmer emotion in her bosom; and, 
secretly hoping never more to see her youth- 
ful lover, gives herself up to comfortable gos- 
siping and formal ostentatious devotion. At 
last, when she is set in her fine parlour, with 
her china and toys, and prayer-books around 
her, the impatient man bursts into her pres- 
ence, and reclaims her vows ! She answers 
coldly, that she has now done with the world, 
and only studies how to prepare to die ! and 
exhorts him to betake himself to the same 
needful meditations. We shall give the con- 
clusion of the scene in the author's own words. 
The faithful and indignant lover replies: — 

11 Heav'n's spouse thou art not : nor can I believe 
That God accepts her, who will Man deceive : 
True I am shatter'd, I have service seen, 
And service done, and have in trouble been ; 
My cheek (it shames me not) has lost its red, 
And the brown buff is o'er my features spread ; 
Perchance my speech is rude ; for I among 
Th' untam'd have been, in temper and in tongue; 
But speak my fate ! For these my sorrows past, 
Time lost, youth fled, hope wearied, and at last 
This doubt of thee — a childish thing to tell, 
But certain truth — my very throat they swell ; 
They stop the breath, and but for shame could I 
Give way to weakness, and with passion cry ; 
These are unmanly struggles, but I feel 
This hour must end them, and perhaps will heal." — 



•" Here Dinah sigh'd as if afraid to speak— 
And then repeated — ' They were frail and weak ; 
His soul she lov'd ; and hop'd he had the grace 
To fix his thoughts upon a better place.' " 

pp. 72,73. 

Nothing can be more forcible or true to na- 
ture, than the description of the effect of thin 
cold-blooded cant on the warm and unsuspect- 
ing nature of her disappointed suitor. 

" She ceased : — With steady glance, as if to see 

The very root of this hypocrisy, — 

He her small fingers moulded in his hard 

And bronz'd broad hand ; then told her his regard, 

His best respect were gone, but Love had still 

Hold in his heart, and govern'd yet the will — 

Or he would curse her! — Saying this, he threw 

The hand in scorn away, and bade adieu 

To every ling' ring hope, with every care in view. 

" In health declining as in mind distress'd, 
To some in power his troubles he confess'd, 
And shares a parish-gift. At prayers he sees 
The pious Dinah dropp'd upon her knees ; 
Thence as she walks the street with stately air, 
As chance directs, oft meet the parted pair ! 
When he, with thickset coat of Badge-man's blue, 
Moves near her shaded silk of changeful hue ; 
When his thin locks of grey approach her braid 
(A costly purchase made in beauty's aid); 
When his frank air, and his unstudied pace, 
Are seen with her soft manner, air, and grace, 
And his plain artless look wiih her sharp meaning 
It might some wonder in a stranger move, [face ; 
How these together could have talk'd of love !" 

pp. 73, 74. 

" The Patron," which is next in order, is 
also very good ; and contains specimens of 
very various excellence The story is that 
of a young man of humble birth, who shows 
an early genius for poetry; and having been, 
with some inconvenience to his parents, pro- 
vided with a frugal, but regular education, is 
at last taken notice of by a nobleman in the 
neighbourhood, who promises to promote him 
in the church, and invites him to pass an au- 
tumn with him at his seat in the country. 
Here the youth, in spite of the admirable ad- 
monitions of his father, is gradually overcome 
by a taste for elegant enjoyments, and allows 
himself to fall in love w.th the enchanting 
sister of his protector. When the family 
leave him with indifference to return to town, 
he feels the first pang of humiliation and dis- 
appointment ; and afterwards, when he finds 
that all his noble friend's fine promises end 
in obtaining for him a poor drudging place in 
the Customs, he pines and pines till he falls 
into insanity ; and recovers, only to die pre 
maturely in the arms of his disappointed pa 
rents. We cannot make room for the history 
of the Poet's progress — the father's warnings 
— or the blandishments of the careless syren 
by whom he was enchanted — though all are 
excellent. We give however the scene of the 
breaking up of that enchantment ; — a descrip- 
tion which cannot fail to strike, if it had no 
other merit, from its mere truth and accuracy. 

" Cold grew the foggy morn ; the day was brief ; 
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf; 
The dew dwelt ever on the herb ; the woods 
Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty shower* 

the floods ; 
All green was vanish'd, save of pine and yew, 
That still display'd their melancholy hue ; 



POETRY. 



Save the green holly with its berries red, 

And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread. 

" To public views my Lord must soon attend ; 
And soon the Ladies — would they leave their friend? 
The time was fix'd — approach' d — was near — was 

come ! 
The trying time that fill'd his soul with gloom ; 
Thoughtful our Poet in the morning rose, 
And cried, " One hour my fortune will disclose.' 

" The morning meal was past ; and all around 
The mansion rang with each discordant sound ; 
Haste was in every foot, and every look 
The travelers' joy for London-journey spoke : 
Not so our Youth ; whose feelings at the noise 
Of preparation had no touch of joys ; 
He pensive stood, and saw each carriage drawn, 
With lackies mounted, ready on the lawn : 
The Ladies came ; and John in terror threw 
One painful glance, and then his eyes withdrew ; 
Not with such speed, but he in other eyes 
With anguish read — ' I pity, but despise — 
Unhappy boy ! presumptuous scribbler! — you, 
To dream such dreams — be sober, and adieu !' " 

pp. 93, 94. 

"The Frank Courtship/' which is the next 
in order, is rather in the merry vein; and con- 
tains even less than Mr. Crabbe's usual mod- 
erate allowance of incident. The whole of 
the story is, that the daughter of a rigid 
Quaker, having been educated from home, 
conceives a slight prejudice against the un- 
gallant manners of the sect, and is prepared 
to be very contemptuous and uncomplying 
when her father proposes a sober youth of the 
persuasion for a husband; — but is so much 
struck with the beauty of his person, and the 
cheerful reasonableness of his deportment at 
their first interview, that she instantly yields 
her consent. There is an excellent descrip- 
tion of the father and the unbending elders of 
his tribe ; and some fine traits of natural co- 
quetry. 

" The Widow's Tale" is also rather of the 
facetious order. It contains the history of a 
farmer's daughter, who comes home from her 
boarding-school a great deal too fine to tolerate 
the gross habits, or submit to the filthy drud- 
gery of her father's house ; but is induced, by 
the warning history and sensible exhortations 
of a neighbouring widow, in whom she ex- 
pected to find a sentimental companion, to 
reconcile herself to all those abominations, 
and marry a jolly young farmer in the neigh- 
bourhood. The account of her horrors, on 
first coming down, is in Mr. Crabbe's best 
style of Dutch painting — a little coarse, and 
needlessly minute — but perfectly true, and 
marvellously coloured. 

" Us'd to spare meals, dispos'd in manner pure, 
Her father's kitchen she could ill endure ; 
Where by the steaming beef he hungry sat, 
And laid at once a pound upon his plate ; 
Hot from the field, her eager brothers seiz'd 
An equal part, and hunger's rage appea3'd; — 
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood, 
Fill'd with huge balls of farinaceous food ; 
With bacon, mass saline, where never lean 
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen; 
When from a single horn the party drew 
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new ; 
She could not breathe ; but, with a heavy sigh, 
Rein'd the fair neck, and shut the offended eye ; 
She mine'd the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, 
And wonder'd much to gee the creatures dine." 

pp. 128, 129. 



"The Lover's Journey" is a pretty fancy \ 
and very well executed — at least as to the 
descriptions it contains. — A lover takes a long 
ride to see his mistress ; and passing, in full 
hope and joy, through a barren and fenny 
country, finds beauty in every thing. Being 
put out of humour, however, by missing tlte 
lady at the end of this stage, he proceeds 
through a lovely landscape, and finds every 
thing ugly and disagreeable. At last he meets 
his fair one — is reconciled — and returns along 
with her ; when the landscape presents neither 
beauty nor deformity ; and excites no emotion 
whatever in a mind engrossed with more 
lively sensations. There is nothing in this 
volume, or perhaps in any part of Mr. Crabbe's 
writings, more exquisite than some of the de- 
scriptions in this story. The following, though 
by no means the best, is too characteristic of 
the author to be omitted : — 

" First o'er a barren heath beside the coast 
Orlando rode, and joy began to boast. [bloom, 

" 'This neat low gorse,' said he, 'with golden 
Delights each sense, is beauty, is perfume ; 
And this gay ling, with all its purple flowers, 
A man at leisure might admire for hours ; 
This green-fring'd cup- moss has a scarlet tip, 
That yields to nothing but my Laura's lip ; 
And then how fine this herbage ! men may say 
A heath is barren ; nothing is so gay.' 

" Onward he went, and fiercer grew the heat, 
Dust rose in clouds beneath the horse's feet; 
For now he pass'd through lanes of burning sand, 
Bounds to thin crops or yet uncultur'd land ; 
Where the dark poppy flourish'd on the dry 
And sterile soil, and mock'd the thin-set rye. 

" The Lover rode as hasty lovers ride, 
And reach'd a common pasture wild and wide ; 
Small black-legg'd sheep devour with hunger keen 
The meager herbage ; fleshless, lank and lean : 
He saw some scatter' d hovels ; turf was pil'd 
In square brown stacks ; a prospect bleak and wild ! 
A mill, indeed, was in the centre found, 
With short sear herbage withering all around ; 
A smith's black shed oppos'd a wright's long shop, 
And join'd an inn where humble travellers stop." 

pp. 176, 177. 

The features of the fine country are less 
perfectly drawn : But what, indeed, could be 
made of the vulgar fine country of Englan 1 
If Mr. Crabbe had had the good fortune to 
live among our Highland hills, and lakes, and 
upland woods — our living floods sweeping- 
through forests of pine — our lonely vales and 
rough copse-covered cliffs ; what a delicious 
picture would his unrivalled powers have ena- 
bled him to give to the world ! — But we have 
no right to complain, while we have such pic- 
tures as this of a group of Gipsies. It is evi- 
dently finished con amove ; and does appear to 
us to be absolutely perfect, both in its moral 
and its physical expression. 

" Again the country was enclos'd ; a wide 
And sandy road has banks on either side ; 
Where, lo ! a hollow on the left appear'd, 
And there a Gipsy-tribe their tent had rear'd ; 
'Twas open spread, to catch the morning sun, 
And they had now their early meal begun, 
When two brown Boys just left their grassy seat, 
The early Trav'ller with their pray'rs to greet : 
While yet Orlando held his pence in hand, 
He saw their sister on her duty stand ; 
Some twelve years old, demure, affected, sly, 
Prepar'd the force of early powers to try : 



CRABBE'S TALES. 



401 



Sudden a look of languor he descries, 
And well-feign'd apprehension in her eyes; 
Train'd, but yet savage, in her speaking face, 
He mark'd the features of her vagrant race ; 
When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd 
The vice implanted in her youthful breast! 
Within, the Father, who from fences nigh 
Had brought the fuel for the fire's supply, [by : 
Watch'd now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected 
On ragged rug. just borrow'd from the bed, 
And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed, 
In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd, 
Reclin'd the Wife, an infant at her breast ; 
In her wild face some touch of grace remain'd, 
Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain'd ; 
Her blood-shot eyes on her unheeding mate [state, 
Were wrathful turn'd, and seem'd her wants to 
Cursing his tardy aid — her Mother there 
With Gipsy-state engross'd the only chair; 
Solemn and dull her look: with such she stands, 
And reads the Milk-maid's fortune, in her hands, 
Tracing the lines of life ; assum'd through years, 
Each feature now the steady falsehood wears; 
With hard and savage eye she views the food, 
And grudging pinches their intruding brood ! 
Last in the group, the worn-out Grandsire sits 
Neglected, lost, and living but bv fits ; 
Useless, despis'd, his worthless labours done, 
And half protected by the vicious Son, 
Who half supports him ! He with heavy glance, 
Views the young ruffians who around him dance ; 
And, by the sadness in his face, appears 
To trace the progress of their future years; 
Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit, 
Must wildly wander each unpractis'd cheat; 
What shame and grief, what punishment and pain, 
Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain — 
Ere they like him approach their latter end, 
Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend !" 

pp. 180—182. 

The next story, which is entitled " Edward 
Shore," also contains many passages of ex- 
quisite beauty. The hero is a young man of 
aspiring genius and enthusiastic temper, with 
an ardent love of virtue, but no settled prin- 
ciples either of conduct or opinion. He first 
conceives an attachment for an amiable girl, 
who is captivated with his conversation ; — 
but being too poor to marry, soon comes to 
spend more of his time in the family of an el- 
derly sceptic (though we really see no object 
in giving him that character) of his acquaint- 
ance, who had recently married a young wife, 
and placed unbounded confidence in her vir- 
tue, and the honour of his friend. In a mo- 
ment of temptation, they abuse this confi- 
dence. The husband renounces him with dig- 
nified composure; and he falls at once from 
the romantic pride of his virtue. He then 
seeks the company of the dissipated and gay ; 
and ruins his health and fortune, without re- 
gaining his tranquillity. When in gaol, and 
miserable, he is relieved by an unknown hand ; 
and traces the benefaction to the friend whose 
former kindness he had so ill repaid. This 
humiliation falls upon his proud spirit and 
shattered nerves with an overwhelming force; 
and his reason fails beneath it. He is for 
some lime a raving maniac ; and then falls 
into a state of gay and compassion able im- 
becility, which is described with inimitable 
beauty in the close of this story. We can 
afford but a few extracts. The nature of the 
reductions which led to his first fatal lapse 
are well intimated in the following short pas 
*age :— 

51 



" Then as the Friend repos'd, the younger Pair 
Sat down to cards, and play'd beside his chair ; 
Till he awaking, to his books applied. 
Or heard the music of th' obedient bride : 
If mild th' evening, in the fields they stray'd, 
And their own flock with partial eye survey'd ; 
But oft the Husband, to indulgence prone, 
Resum'd his book, and bade them walk alone. 

11 This was obey'd; and oft when this was done 
They calmly gaz'd on the declining sun ; 
In silence saw the glowing landscape fade, 
Or, sitting, sang beneath the arbour's shade : 
Till rose the moon, and on each youthful face, 
Shed a soft beauty, and a dangerous grace." 

pp. 193, 199. 

The ultimate downfall of this lofty mind, 
with its agonising gleams of transitory recol- 
lection, form a picture, than which we do not 
know if the whole range of our poetry, rich as 
it is in representations of disordered intellect, 
furnishes any thing more touching, or delin- 
eated with more truth and delicacy. 

" Harmless at length th' unhappy man was found, 
The spirit settled, but the reason drovvn'd ; 
And all the dreadful tempest died away, 
To the dull stillness of the misty day ! 

" And now his freedom he attain'd — if free 
The lost to reason, truth and hope, can be; 
The playful children of the place he meets ; 
Playful with them he rambles through the streets; 
In all they need, his stronger arm he lends, 
And his lost mind to these approving friends. 

" That gentle Maid, whom once the Youth had 
Is now with mild religious pity mov'd ; [lov'd, 

Kindly she chides his boyish flights, while he 
Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be ; 
And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes 
Explore her looks, he listens to her sigh3 ; 
Charm'dby her voice, th' harmonious sounds invade 
His clouded mind, and for a time persuade : 
Like a pleas'd Infant, who has newly caught 
From the maternal glance, a gleam of thought ; 
He stands enrapt, the half-known voice to hear, 
And starts, half-conscious, at the falling tear! 

"Rarely from town, nor then unwatch'd, he goes, 
In darker mood, as if to hide his woes ; 
But soon returning, with impatience seeks [speaks ; 
His youthful friends, and shouts, and sings, and 
Speaks a wild speech, with action all as wild — 
The children's leader, and himself a child ; 
He spins their top, or at their bidding, bends 
His back, while o'er it leap his laughing friends ; 
Simple and weak, he acts the boy once morp, « 

And heedless children call him Silly Shore." 

pp. 206, 207. 

"Squire Thomas" is not nearly so interest- 
ing. This is the history of a mean domineer- 
ing spirit, who, having secured the succession 
of a rich relation by assiduous flattery, looks 
about for some obsequious and yielding fair 
one, from whom he may exact homage in his 
turn. He thinks he has found such a one in 
a lowly damsel in his neighbourhood, and 
marries her without much premeditation; — 
when he discovers, to his consternation, not 
only that she has the spirit of a virago, but 
that she and her family have decoyed him 
into the match, to revenge, or indemnify 
themselves for his having run away with the 
whole inheritance of their common relative. 
She hopes to bully him into a separate main 
tenance — but his avarice refuses to buy his 
peace at such a price ; and they continue to 
live together, on a very successful system of 
mutual tormenting. 

"Jesse and Colin " pleases us much better, 
2i 2 



POETRY. 



Jesse is the orphan of a poor clergyman, who 
goes, upon her father's death, to live with a 
rich old lady who had been his friend; and 
Colin is a young farmer, whose father had 
speculated away an handsome property ; and 
who, though living in a good degree by his 
own labour, yet wished the damsel (whohalf 
wished it also) to remain and share his hum- 
ble lot. The rich lady proves to be suspicious, 
overbearing, and selfish ; and sets Jesse upon 
the ignoble duty of acting the spy and informer 
over the other dependents of her household ; 
on the delineation of whose characters Mr. 
Crabbe has lavished a prodigious po\Ver of 
observation and correct description : — But this 
not suiting her pure and ingenuous mind, she 
buddenly leaves the splendid mansion, and 
returns to her native village, where Colin and 
his mother soon persuade her to form one of 
their happy family. There is a great deal 
of good-heartedness in this tale, and a kind 
of moral beauty, which has lent more than 
usual elegance to the simple pictures it pre- 
sents. We are tempted to extract a good part 
of the denouement. 

" The pensive Colin in his garden stray'd, 
But felt not then the beauties he displayed ; 
There many a pleasant object met his view, 
A rising wood of oaks behind it grew ; 
A stream ran by it, and the village -green 
And public road were from the garden seen ; 
Save where the pine and larch the bound'ry made, 
And on the rose beds threw a soft'ning shade. 

" The Mother saf beside the garden-door, 
Dress'd as in times ere she and hers were poor; 
The broad-lac'd cap was known in ancient days, 
When Madam's dress compell'd the village praise: 
And still she look'd as in the times of old ; 
Ere his last farm the erring husband sold ; 
While yet the Mansion stood m decent state, 
And paupers waited at the well-known gate. 

" ' Alas ! my Son !' the Mother cried, ' and why 
That silent grief and oft-repeated sigh? 
Fain would I think that Jesse still may come 
To share the comforts of our rustic home : 
She surely lov'd thee ; I have seen the maid, 
When thou hast kindly brought the Vicar aid — 
When thou hast eas'd his bosom of its pain, 
Oh ! I have seen her — she will come again.' 
• " The Matron ceas'd ; and Colin stood the while 
Silent, but striving for a grateful smile ; 
He then replied — ' Ah ! sure had Jesse stay'd, 
And shar'd the comforts of our sylvan shade,' &c. 

" Sighing he spake — but hark! he hears th' ap- 
proach 
Of rattling wheels ! and lo ! the evening-coach ; 
Once more the movement of the horses' feet 
Makes the fond heart with strong emotion beat: 
Faint were his hopes, but ever had the sight 
Drawn him to gaze beside his gate at night ; 
And when with rapid wheels it hurried by, 
He griev'd his parent with a hopeless sigh ; [sum 
And could the blessing have been bought — what 
Had he not offer'd, to have Jesse come ? 
She came ! — he saw her bending from the door, 
Her face, her smile, and he beheld no more ; 
Lost in his joy ! The mother lent her aid 
T' assist and to detain the willing Maid ; 
Who thought her late, her present home to make, 
Sure of a welcome for the Vicar's sake ; 
But the erood parent was so pleas'd. so kind, 
So pressing Colin, she so much inclin'd. 
That night advanc'd ; and then so long detain'd 
No wishes to depart she felt, or feign'd ; [main'd. 
Yet long in doubt she stood, and then perforce re- 

*' In the mild evening, in the scene around, 
The Maid, now free, peculiar beauties found ; 



Blended with village-tones, the evening gjd« 
Gave the sweet night-bird's warblings to the vale; 
The youth embolden'd, yet abash'd, now told 
His fondest wish, nor found the Maiden cold," &c 

pp. 240, 241. 

"The Straggles of Conscience," though visi- 
bly laboured, and, we should suspect, aTavov.r- 
ite with the author, pleases us less than any 
tale in the volume. It is a long account of a 
low base fellow, who rises by mean and dis- 
honourable arts to a sort of opulence ; and, 
without ever committing any flagrant crime', 
sullies his mind with all sorts of selfish, heart- 
less, and unworthy acts, till he becomes a prey 
to a kind of languid and loathsome remorse/ 

l: The Squire and the Priest "'we do not like 
much better. A free living and free think- 
ing squire had been galled by the public re- 
bukes of his unrelenting pastor, and breeds 
up a dependent relation of his own to succeed 
to his charge. The youth drinks and jokes 
with his patron to his heart's content, during 
the progress of his education; — but just as 
the old censor dies, falls into the society of 
Saints, becomes a rigid and intolerant Method- 
ist, and converts half the parish, to the infi- 
nite rage of his patron, and his own ultimate 
affliction. 

"The Confidant" is more interesting; 
though not altogether pleasing. A fair one 
makes a slip at the early age of fifteen, which 
is concealed from every one but her mother, 
and a sentimental friend, from whom she 
could conceal nothing. Her after life is pure 
and exemplary; and at twenty-five she is 
married lo a w r orthy man, with whom she 
lives in perfect innocence and concord for 
many happy years. At last, the confidant of 
her childhood, whose lot has been less pros- 
perous, starts up and importunes her for 
money — not forgetting to hint at the fatal se- 
cret of which she is the depository. After 
agonising and plundering her for years, she 
at last comes and settles herself in her house, 
and embitters her whole existence by her self- 
ish threats and ungenerous extortions. The 
husband, who had been greatly disturbed at 
the change in his wife's temper and spirits, 
at last accidentally overhears enough to put 
him in possession of the fact ; and resolving 
to forgive a fault so long past, and so well re- 
paired, takes occasion to intimate his know- 
ledge of it, and his disdain of the false confi- 
dant, in an ingenious apologue — which, how- 
ever is plain enough to drive the pestilent 
visiter from his house, and to restore peace 
and confidence to the bosom of his grateful 
wife. 

u Resentment " is one of the pieces in which 
Mr. Crabbe has exercised his extraordinary 
powers of giving pain — though not gratuitous- 
ly in this instance, nor without inculcating a 
strong lesson of forgiveness and compassion. 
A middle-aged meVchant marries a lady of 
good fortune, and persuades her to make it 
all over to him when he is on the eve of bank- 
ruptcy. He is reduced to utter beggary; and 
his wife bitterly and deeply resenting the 
wrong he had done her, renounces all con- 
nection with him, and endures her own re- 



CRABBE'S TALES. 



403 



veises with magnanimity. At last a distant 
relation leaves her his fortune ; and she re- 
turns to the enjoyment of moderate wealth, 
and the exercise of charity — to all but her 
miserable husband. Broken by age and dis- 
ease, he now begs the waste sand from the 
stone-cutters, and sells it on an ass through the 
streets : — 

" And from each trifling gift 

Made shift to live — and wretched was the shift." 

The unrelenting wife descries him creep- 
ing through the wet at this miserable em- 
ployment ; but still withholds all relief; in 
spite of the touching entreaties of her com- 
passionate handmaid, whose nature is as kind 
and yielding as that of her mistress is hard 
and inflexible. Of all the pictures of mendi- 
cant poverty that have ever been brought for- 
ward in prose or verse — in charity sermons or 
seditious harangues — we know of none half so 
moving or complete — so powerful and so true 
— as is contained in the following passages: — 

" A dreadful winter came ; each day severe, 
Misty when mild, and icy-cold when clear; 
And still the humble dealer took his load, 
Returning slow, and shivering on the road: 
The Lady, still relentless, saw him come, 
And said, — ' I wonder, has the Wretch a home!' 
1 A hut ! a hovel !' — ' Then his fate appears 
To suit his crime.' — 'Yes, Lady, not his years; — 
No ! nor his sufferings — nor that form decay'd.' — 
' The snow,' quoth Susan, ' falls upon his bed — 
It blows beside the thatch — it melts upon his 

head.' — 
' 'Tis weakness, child, for grieving guilt to feel.' 
4 Yes, but he never sees a wholesome meal ; 
Through his bare dress appears his shrivePd skin, 
And ill he fares without, and worse within : 
With that weak body, lame, diseas'd and slow, 
What cold, pain, peril, must the suffrer know! — 
Oh ! how those flakes of snow their entrance win 
Through the poor rags, and keep the frost within ! 
His very heart seems frozen as he goes, 
Leading that starv'd companion of his woes : 
He tried to pray — his lips, I saw them move, 
And he so turn'd his piteous looks above ; 
But the fierce wind the willing heart opposed, 
And, ere he spoke, the lips in mis'ry clos'd ! 
When reach' d his home, to what a cheerless fire 
And chilling bed will those cold limbs retire ! 
Yet ragged, wretched as it is, that bed 
Takes half the space of his contracted shed; 
I saw the thorns beside the narrow grate, 
With straw collected in a putrid state : 
There will he, kneeling, strive the fire to raise, 
And that will warm him rather than the blaze; 
The sullen, smoky blaze, that cannot last 
One moment after his attempt is past: 
And I so warmly and so purely laid, 
To sink to rest ! — indeed, I am afraid !' " 

pp. 320—322. 

The Lady at last is moved, by this pleading 
pity, to send him a little relief; but has no 
6ooner dismissed her delighted messenger, 
than she repents of her weakness, and begins 
to harden her heart again by the recollection 
of his misconduct. 

" Thus fix'd. she hoard not her Attendant glide 
With soft slow step — till, standing by "her side, 
The trembling Servant gasp'd for breath, and shed 
Relieving tears, then uttered — ' He is dead !' 

" ' Dead !' said the startled Lady. ' Yes, he fell 
Close at the door where he was wont to dwell. 
There his sole friend, the Ass, was standing by, 
Half dead himself, to see his Master die.' " 

pp. 324, 325. 



'•'The Convert" is rather dull — though it 
teaches a lesson that may be useful in these 
fanatic times. John Dighton was bred a 
blackguard;' and we have here a most lively 
and complete description of the items that go 
to the composition of that miscellaneous char- 
acter; but being sore reduced by a long fever, 
falls into the hands of the Methodists, and be- 
comes an exemplary convert. He is then set 
up by the congregation in a small stationers 
shop ; and, as he begins to thrive in business, 
adds worldly literature to the evangelical 
tracts which composed his original slock in 
trade. This scandalises the brethren ; and 
John, having no principles or knowledge, falls 
out with the sect, and can never settle in the 
creed of any other; and so lives perplexed 
and discontented — and dies in agitation and 
terror. 

"The Brothers" restores us again to human 
sympathies. The characters, though humble, 
are admirably drawn, and the baser of them, 
we fear, the most strikingly natural. An 
open-hearted generous sailor had a poor, 
sneaking, cunning, selfish brother, to whom he 
remitted all his prize-money, and gave all the 
arrears of his pay — receiving, in return, vehe- 
ment professions of gratitude, and false pro- 
testations of regard. At last, the sailor is dis- 
abled in action, and discharged; just as his 
heartless brother has secured a small office 
by sycophancy, and made a prudent marriage 
with a congenial temper. He seeks the shelter 
of his brother's house as freely as he would 
have given it; and does not at first perceive 
the coldness of his reception. — But mortifica- 
tions grow upon him day by day. His grog 
is expensive, and his pipe makes the wife 
sick ; then his voice is so loud, and his man- 
ners so rough, that her friends cannot visit her 
if he appears at table ! So he is banished by 
degrees to a garret : where he falls sick, and 
has no consolation but in the kindness of one 
of his nephews, a little boy, who administers 
to his comforts, and listens to his stories with 
a delighted attention. This too, however, is 
at last interdicted by his hard-hearted parents ; 
and the boy is obliged to steal privately to 
his disconsolate uncle. One day his father 
catches him at his door ; and, after beating 
him back, proceeds to deliver a severe rebuke 
to his brother for encouraging the child in 
disobedience — when he finds the unconscious 
culprit released by death from his despicable 
insults and reproaches ! The great art of the 
story consists in the plausible excuses with 
which the ungrateful brother always contrives 
to cover his wickedness. This cannot be ex- 
emplified in an extract; but we shall give a 
few lines as a specimen. 

" Cold as he grew, still Isaac strove to show, 
By well-feign'd care, that cold he could not grow ; 
And when he saw his Brother look distress'd, 
He strove some petty comforts to suggest; 
On his Wife solely their neglect to lay, 
And then t' excuse it as a woman's way ; 
He too was chidden when her rules he broke, 
And then she sicken'd at the scent of smoke ! [find 

" George, though in doubt, was still consol'd to 
His Brother wishing to be reckon'd kind : 
That Isaac seem'd concern'd by hb distress. 



404 



POETRY. 



Gave to his injur'd feelings some redress ; 
But none he found dispos'd to lend an ear 
To stones, all were once intent to hear ! 
Except his Nephew, seated on his knee, 
lie found no creature car'd ahout the sea ; ("boy, 
But George indeed — for George they'd call'd the 
When his good uncle was their hoast and joy — 
Would listen long, and would contend with sleep, 
To hear the woes and wonders of the deep; 
Till the fond mother cried — ' That man will teach 
The foolish hoy his loud and boisterous speech.' 
So judg'd the Father — and the boy was taught 
To shun the Uncle, whom his love had sought." 

pp. 368, 369. 

" At length he sicken'd, and this duteous Child 
Watch'd o'er his sickness, and his pains beguil'd ; 
The Mother bade him from the loft refrain, 
But, though with caution, yet he went again; 
And now his tales the sailor feebly told, 
His heart was heavy, and his limbs were cold ! 
The tender boy came often to entreat 
His good kind friend would of his presents eat: 
Purloin'd or purchased, for he saw, with shame, 
The food untouch'd that to his Uncle came ; 
Who, sick in body and in mind, receiv'd 
The Boy's indulgence, gratified and griev'd! 

" Once in a week the Father came to say, 
' George, are you ill V — and hurried him away ; 
Yet to his wife would on their duties dwell, 
And often cry, ' Do use my brother well ;' 
And something kind, no question, Isaac meant, 
And took vast credit for the vague intent. 

"But, truly kind, the gentle Boy essay'd 
To cheer his Uncle, firm, although afraid ; 
But now the Father caught him at the door, 

And, swearing yes, the Man in Office swore, 

And cried, ' Away ! — How ! Brother, I'm surpris'd, 
That one so old can be so ill advis'd,' " &c. 

pp. 370—371. 

After the catastrophe, he endures deserved 
remorse and anguish. 

" He takes his Son, and bids the boy unfold 

All the good Uncle of his feelings told, 

All he lamented — and the ready tear 

Falls as he listens, sooth'd, and griev'd to hear. 

" ■ Did he not curse me, child ?' — 'He never curs'd, 

But could not breathe, and said his heart would 

burst :' — [pray ; 

' And so will mine V — ' Then, Father, you must 

My Uncle said it took his pains away.' " — p. 374. 

The last tale in the volume, entitled, "The 
Learned Boy," is not the most interesting in 
the collection ; though it is not in the least like 
what its title would lead us to expect. It is 
the history of a poor, weakly, paltry lad, who 
is sent up from the country to be a clerk in 
town ; and learns by slow degrees to affect 
freethinking, and to practise dissipation. Upon 
the tidings of which happy conversion his 
father, a worthy old farmer, orders him down 
again to the country, where he harrows up 
the soul of his pious grandmother by his in- 
fidel prating — and his father reforms him at 
once by burning his idle books, and treating 
him with a vigorous course of horsewhipping. 
There is some humour in this tale; — and a 

freat deal of nature and art, especially in the 
elineation of this slender clerk's gradual 
corruption — and in the constant and constitu- 
tional predominance of weakness and folly, 
in all his vice and virtue — his piety and pro- 
fan eness. 

We have thus gone through the better part 
of this volume with a degree of minuteness 
for which we are not sure that even our poet- 



ical readers will all be disposed to iAanic us. 
But considering Mr. Crabbe as, upon the 
whole, the most original writer who has ever 
come before us ; and being at the same time 
of opinion, that his writings are destined to a 
still more extensive popularity than they have 
yet obtained, we could not resist the tempta- 
tion of contributing our little aid to the fulfil- 
ment of that destiny. It is chiefly for the 
same reason that we have directed our re- 
marks rather to the moral than the literary 
qualities of his works ; — to his genius at least, 
rather than his taste — and to his thoughts 
rather than his figures of speech. By far the 
most remarkable thing in his writings, is the 
prodigious mass of original observations and 
reflections they every where exhibit; and that 
extraordinary power of conceiving and repre- 
senting an imaginary object, whether physical 
or intellectual, with such a rich and complete 
accompaniment of circumstances and details, 
as few ordinary observers either perceive or 
remember in realities ; a power which, though 
often greatly misapplied, must for ever entitle 
him to the very first rank among descriptive 
poets ; and, when directed to worthy objects, 
to a rank inferior to none in the highest de- 
partments of poetry. 

In such an author, the attributes of style 
and versification may fairly be considered as 
secondary; — and yet, if we were to go mi- 
nutely into them, they would afford room for 
a still longer chapter than that which we are 
now concluding. He cannot be said to be 
uniformly, or even generally, an elegant writer^ 
His style is not dignified — and neither very 
pure nor very easy. Its characters are force, 
precision, and familiarity; — now and then 
obscure — sometimes vulgar, and sometimes 
quaint. With a great deal of tenderness, and 
occasional fits of the sublime of despair and 
agony, there is a want of habitual fire, and of 
a tone of enthusiasm in the general tenor of 
his writings. He seems to recollect rather 
than invent; and frequently brings forward 
his statements more in the temper of a cau- 
tious and conscientious witness, than of a fer- 
vent orator or impassioned spectator. His 
similes are almost all elaborate and ingenious, 
and rather seem to be furnished from the ef- 
forts of a fanciful mind, than to be exhaled 
by the spontaneous ferment of a heated im- 
agination. His versification again is frequently 
harsh and heavy, and his diction flat and 
prosaic ; — both seeming to be altogether neg- 
lected in his zeal for the accuracy and com- 
plete rendering of his conceptions. Thesr> 
defects too are infinitely greater in his recent 
than in his early compositions. "The Vil- 
lage" is written, upon the whole, in a flowing 
and sonorous strain of versification ; and "Sir 
Eustace Grey," though a late publication, is 
in general remarkably rich and melodious. 
It is chiefly in his narratives and curious de- 
scriptions that these faults of diction and 
measure are conspicuous. Where he is warm- 
ed by his subject, and becomes fairly indig- 
nant or pathetic, his language is often very 
sweet and beautiful. He has no fixed system 
or manner of versification ; but mixes several 



CRABBES TALES OF THE HALL. 



405 



▼ery opposite 6tyles, as it were by accident, 
and not in general very judiciously ; — what is 
peculiar to himself is not good, and strikes us 
as being both abrupt and affected, 



It is no great matter. If he will only write a 
few more Tales of the kind we have suggested 
at the beginning of this article, we shall en- 
gage for it that he shall have our praises — and 



He may profit, if he pleases, by these hints i those of more fastidious critics — whatever be 
— and, if he pleases, he may laugh at them. | the qualities of his style or versification. 



(Sttlg, 1819.) 

Tales of the Hall. By the Reverend George Crabbe. 2 vols. 8vo. pp.670. London: 1819. 



Mr. Crabbe is the greatest mannerist, per- 
haps, of all our living poets ; and it is rather 
unfortunate that the most prominent features 
of his mannerism are not the most pleasing. 
The homely, quaint, and prosaic style — the 
flat, and often broken and jingling versification 
— the eternal full-lengths of low and worth- 
less characters — with their accustomed gar- 
nishings of sly jokes and familiar moralising — 
are all on the surface of his writings; arid are 
almost unavoidably the things by which we 
are first reminded of him, when we take up 
any of his new productions. Yet they are not 
the things that truly constitute his peculiar 
manner; or give that character by which he 
will, and ought to be, remembered with future 
generations. It is plain enough, indeed, that 
these are things that will make nobody re- 
membered — and can never, therefore, be re- 
ally characteristic of some of the most original 
and powerful poetry that the world has ever 
seen. 

Mr. C, accordingly, has other gifts; and 
those not less peculiar or less strongly marked 
than the blemishes with which they are con- 
trasted ; an unrivalled and almost magical 
power of observation, resulting in descriptions 
so true to nature as to strike us rather as 
transcripts than imitations — an anatomy of 
character and feeling not less exquisite and 
searching — an occasional touch of matchless 
tenderness — and a deep and dreadful pathetic, 
interspersed by fits, and strangely interwoven 
with the most minute and humble of his de- 
tails. Add to all this the sure and profound 
sagacity of the remarks with which he every 
now and then startles us in the midst of very 
unambitious discussions ; — and the weight and 
terseness of the maxims which he drops, like 
oracular responses, on occasions that give no 
promise of such a revelation ; — and last, though 
not least, that sweet and seldom sounded 
chord of Lyrical inspiration, the lightest touch 
of which instantly charms away all harshness 
from his numbers, and all lowness from his 
themes — and at once exalts him to a level 
with the most energetic and inventive poets 
of his age. 

These, we think, are the true characteristics 
of the genius of this great writer; and it is in 
their mixture with the oddities and defects to 
which we have already alluded, that the pe- 
culiarity of his manner seems to us substan- 
tially to consist. The ingredients may all of 
them be found, we suppose, in other writers ; 



but their combination — in such proportions at 
least as occur in this instance — may safely be 
pronounced to be original. 

Extraordinary, however, as this combination 
must appear, it does not seem very difficult 
to conceive in what way it may have arisen ; 
and, so far from regarding it as a proof of sin- 
gular humorousness, caprice, or affectation 
in the individual, we are rather inclined to 
hold that something approaching to it must be 
the natural result of a long habit of observa- 
tion in a man of genius, possessed of that 
temper and disposition which is the usual ac- 
companiment sf such a habit ; and that the 
same strangely compounded and apparently- 
incongruous assemblage of themes and senti- 
ments would be frequently produced under 
such circumstances — if authors had oftener 
the courage to write from their own impres- 
sions, and had less fear of the laugh or won- 
der of the more shallow and barren part of 
their readers. 

A great talent for observation, and a delight 
in the exercise of it — the power and the practice 
of dissecting and disentangling that subtle and 
complicated tissue, of habit, and self-love, and 
affection, which constitute human character — 
seems to us, in all cases, to imply a contem- 
plative, rather than an active disposition. It 
can only exist, indeed, where there is a good 
deal of social sympathy; for, without this, the 
occupation could excite no interest, and afford 
no satisfaction — but only such a measure and 
sort of sympathy as is gratified by being a 
spectator, and not an actor on the great theatre 
of life — and leads its possessor rather to look 
with eagerness on the feats and the fortunes 
of others, than to take a share for himself in 
the game that is played before him. Some 
stirring and vigorous spirits there are, no 
j doubt, in which this taste and talent is com- 
bined with a more thorough and effective 
i sympathy ; and leads to the study of men : s 
j characters by an actual and hearty partici- 
pation in their various passions and pursuits; 
—though it is to be remarked, that when such 
persons embody their observations in writing. 
they will generally be found to exhibit their 
characters in action, rather than to describe 
them in the abstract ; and to let their various 
personages disclose themselves and their pe- 
culiarities, as it were spontaneously, and with- 
out help or preparation, in their ordinary 
conduct and speech — of all which we have a 
very splendid and striking example in the 



406 



POETRY. 



Tales of My Landlord/ and the other pieces 
of that extraordinary writer. In the common 
case, however, a great observer, we believe, 
will be found, pretty certainly, to be a person 
of a shy and retiring temper — who does not 
mingle enough with the people he surveys, to 
be heated with their passions, or infected with 
their delusions — and who has usually been 
led, indeed, to take up the office of a looker 
on, from some little infirmity of nerves, or 
weakness of spirits, which has unfitted him 
from playing a more active part on the busy 
scene of existence. 

Now, it is very obvious, we think, that this 
contemplative turn, and this alienation from 
the vulgar pursuits of mankind, must in the 
first place, produce a great contempt for most 
of those pursuits, and the objects they seek 
to obtain — a levelling of the factitious distinc- 
tions which human pride and vanity have es- 
tablished in the world, and a mingled scorn 
and compassion for the lofty pretensions under 
which men so often disguise the nothingness 
of their chosen occupations. When the many- 
coloured scene of life, w T ith all its petty agi- 
tations, its shifting pomps, and perishable 
passions, is surveyed by one who does not 
mix in its business, it is impossible that it 
should not appear a very pitiable and almost 
ridiculous affair ; or that the heart should not 
echo back the brief and emphatic exclama- 
tion of the mighty dramatist — 

■■ " Life's a poor player, 
Who frets and struts his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more !" — 

Or the more sarcastic amplification of it, in 
the words of our great moral poet — 

" Behold the Child, by Nature's kindly law, 
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickl'd with a straw ! 
Some livelier plaything gives our Youth delight, 
A little louder, but as empty quite : 
Scarfs, garters, gold our riper years engage ; 
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of Age ! 
Pleas'd with this bauble still as that before, 
Till tir'd we sleep — and Life's poor play is o'er!" 

This is the more solemn view of the sub- 
ject : — But the first fruits of observation are 
most commonly found to issue in Satire — the 
unmasking the vain pretenders to wisdom, 
and worth, and happiness, with whom society 
is infested, and holding up to the derision of 
mankind those meannesses of the great, those 
miseries of the fortunate, and those 

" Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise," 

which the eye of a dispassionate observer so 
quickly detects under the glittering exterior 
by which they would fain be disguised — and 
which bring pretty much to a level the intel- 
lect, and morals, and enjoyments, of the great 
mas3 of mankind. 

This misanthropic end has unquestionably 
been by far the most common result of a habit 
of observation ; and that in which its effects 
have most generally terminated: — Yet we 
cannot bring ourselves to think that it is their 
just or natural termination. Something, no 
doubt, will depend on the temper of the indi- 
vidual, and the proportions in which the gall 
and the milk of human kindness have been 



originally mingled in his composition. — Vet 
satirists, we think, have not in general been 
ill-natured persons — and we are inclined ra- 
ther to ascribe this limited and uncharitable 
application of their powers of observation to 
their love of fame and popularity. — which are 
well known to be best secured by successful 
ridicule or invective — or, quite as probably, 
indeed, to the narrowness and insufficiency 
of the observations themselves, and the im- 
perfection of their talents for their due con- 
duct and extension. It is certain, at least, we 
think, that the satirist makes use but of half 
the discoveries of the observer; and teaches 
but half — and the worser half — of the lessons 
which may be deduced from his occupation. 
He puts down, indeed, the proud pretensions 
of the great and arrogant, and levels the vain 
distinctions which human ambition has es- 
tablished among the brethren of mankind ; — 
he 

* ; Bares the mean heart that lurks beneath a Star," 

— and destroys the illusions which would 
limit our sympathy to the forward and figur- 
ing persons of this world — the favourites of 
fame and fortune. But the true result of ob- 
servation should be, not so much to cast down 
the proud, as to raise up the lowly: — not so 
much to diminish our sympathy with the 
powerful and renowned, as to extend it to all, 
who, in humbler conditions, have the same, 
or still higher claims on our esteem or affec- 
tion. — It is not surely the natural consequence 
of learning to judge truly of the characters of 
men, that we should despise or be indifferent 
about them all ; — and, though we have learned 
to see through the false glare Avhich plays 
round the envied summits of existence, and 
to know how little dignity, or happiness, or 
worth, or wisdom, may sometimes belong to 
the possessors of power, and fortune, and 
learning and renown, — it does not follow, by 
any means, that we should look upon the 
whole of human life as a mere deceit and 
imposture, or think the concerns of our species 
fit subjects only for scorn and derision. Our 
promptitude to admire and to envy will indeed 
be corrected, our enthusiasm abated, and our 
distrust of appearances increased; — but the 
sympathies and affections of our nature will 
continue, and be better directed — our Jove of 
our kind will not be diminished — and our in- 
dulgence for their faults and follies, if we read 
our lesson aright, will be signally strengthen- 
ed and confirmed. The true and proper effect, 
therefore, of a habit of observation, and a 
thorough and penetrating knowledge of human 
character, will be, not to extinguish our sym- 
pathy, but to extend it — to turn, no doubt, 
many a throb of admiration, and many a sigh 
of love into a smile of derision or of pity ; 
but at the same time to reveal much that 
commands our homage and excites our affec- 
tion, in those humble and unexplored regions 
of the heart and understanding, which never 
engage the attention of the incurious, — and to 
bring the whole family of mankind nearer to 
a level, by finding out latent merits as well aa 
latent defects in all its members, and com- 



CRABBE'S TALES OF THE HALL. 



ao: 



pensating the flaws that are detected in the 
boasted ornaments of life, by bringing to light 
the richness and the lustre that sleep in the 
mines beneath its surface. 

We are afraid some of our readers may not 
at once perceive the application of these pro- 
found remarks to the subject immediately be- 
fore us. But there are others, we doubt not, 
who do not need to be told that they are 
intended to explain how Mr. Crabbe, and other 
persons with the same gift of observation, 
should so often busy themselves with what 
may be considered as low and vulgar charac- 
ters; and, declining all dealings with heroes 
and heroic topics, should not only venture to 
seek for an interest in the concerns of ordinary 
mortals, but actually intersperse small pieces 
of ridicule with their undignified pathos, and 
endeavour to make their readers look on their 
books with the same mingled feelings of com- 
passion and amusement, with which — unnat- 
ural as it may appear to the readers of poetry 
— they, and all judicious observers, actually 
look upon human life and human nature. — 
This, we are persuaded, is the true key to the 
greater part of the peculiarities of the author 
before us ; and though we have disserted 
upon it a little longer than was necessary, we 
really think it may enable our readers to com- 
prehend him, and our remarks on him, some- 
thing better than they could have done with- 
out it. 

There is, as everybody must have felt, a 
strange mixture of satire and sympathy in 
all his productions — a great kindliness and 
compassion for the errors and sufferings of 
our poor human nature, but a strong distrust 
of its heroic virtues and high pretensions. 
His heart is always open to pity, and all the 
milder emotions — but there is little aspiration 
after the grand and sublime of character, nor 
very much encouragement for raptures and 
ecstasies of any description. These, he seems 
to think, are things rather too fine for the said 
poor human nature : and that, in our low and 
erring condition, it is a little ridiculous to pre- 
tend, either to very exalted and immaculate 
virtue, or very pure and exquisite happiness. 
He not only never meddles, therefore, with 
the delicate distresses and noble fires of the 
heroes and heroines of tragic and epic fable, 
but may generally be detected indulging in a 
lurking sneer at the pomp and vanity of all 
such superfine imaginations — and turning 
from them, to draw men in their true postures 
and dimensions, and with all the imperfec- 
tions that actually belong to their condition : — 
the prosperous and happy overshadowed with 
passing clouds of ennui, and disturbed with 
little flaws of bad humour and discontent — 
the great and wise beset at times with strange 
weaknesses and meannesses and paltry vexa- 
tions — and even the most virtuous and en- 
lightened falling far below the standard of 
poetical perfection — and stooping every now 
and then to paltry jealousies and prejudices — 
or sinking into shabby sensualities — or medi- 
tating on their own excellence and import- 
ance, with a ludicrous and lamentable anxiety. 
This is one side of the picture ; and charac- 



terises sufficiently the satirical vein of our 
author: But the other is the most extensive 
and important. In rejecting the vulgar sources 
of interest in poetical narratives, and reducing 
his ideal persons to the standard of reality, 
Mr. C. does by no means seek to extinguish 
the sparks of human sympathy within us. or 
to throw any damp on the curiosity with \\ hich 
we naturally explore the characters of each 
other. On the contrary, he has afforded new 
and more wholesome food for all those pio- 
pensities — and, by placing before us those 
details which our pride or fastidiousness is so 
apt to overlook, has disclosed, in all their 
truth and simplicity, the native and unadul- 
terated workings of those affections which are 
at the bottom of all social interest, and are 
really rendered less touching by the exagge- 
rations of more ambitious artists — while he 
exhibits, with admirable force and endless 
variety, all those combinations of passions and 
opinions, and all that cross-play of selfishness 
and vanity, and indolence and ambition, and 
habit and reason, which make up the intel- 
lectual character of individuals, and present 
to every one an instructive picture of his 
neighbour or himself. Seeing, by the per- 
fection of his art, the master passions in theii 
springs, and the high capacities in their rudi 
ments — and having acquired the gift of tracing 
all the propensities and marking tendencies 
of our plastic nature, in their first slight indi- 
cations, or even from the aspect of the dis 
guises they so often assume, he does not 
need, in order to draw out his characters in 
all their life and distinctness, the vulgar de- 
monstration of those striking and decided 
actions by which their maturity is proclaimed 
even to the careless and inattentive ; — but 
delights to point out to his readers, the seeds 
or tender filaments of those talents and feel- 
ings which wait only for occasion and oppor- 
tunity to burst out and astonish the world — 
and to accustom them to trace, in characters 
and actions apparently of the most ordinary 
description, the self-same attributes that, un- 
der other circumstances, would attract uni- 
versal attention, and furnish themes for the 
most popular and impassioned descriptions. 

That he should not be guided in the choice 
of his subject by any regard to the rank or 
condition which his persons hold in society, 
may easily be imagined ; and, with a view to 
the ends he aims at, might readily be for- 
given. But we fear that his passion for ob- 
servation, and the delight he takes in tracing 
out and analyzing all the little traits that in- 
dicate character, and all the little circum- 
stances that influence it, have sometimes led 
him to be careless about his selection of the 
instances in which it was to be exhibited, or 
at least to select them upon principles very 
different from those which give them an in- 
terest in the eyes of ordinary readers. For 
the purpose of mere anatomy, beauty of form 
or complexion are things quite indifferent ; 
and the physiologist, who examines plants 
only to study their internal structure, and to 
make himself master of the contrivances by 
which their various functions are performed, 



408 



POETRY. 



pays no legard to the brilliancy of their hues, 
1he sweetness of their odours, or the graces 
of their form. Those who come to him for 
the sole purpose of acquiring knowledge may 
participate perhaps in this indifference ; but 
the world at large will wonder at them — and 
he will engage fewer pupils to listen to his 
instructions, than if he had condescended in 
some degree to consult their predilections in 
the beginning. It is the same case, we think, 
in many respects, with Mr. Crabbe. Relying 
for the interest he is to produce, on the curi- 
ous expositions he is to make of the elements 
of human character, or at least finding his 
own chief gratification in those subtle inves- 
tigations, he seems to- care very little upon 
•what particular individuals he pitches for the 
purpose of these demonstrations. Almost 
every human mind ; he seems to think, may 
serve to display that fine and mysterious 
mechanism which it is his delight to explore 
md explain: — and almost every condition, 
and every history of life, afford occasions to 
show how it maybe put into action, and pass 
through its various combinations. It seems, 
therefore, almost as if he had caught up the 
first dozen or two of persons that came across 
him in the ordinary walks of life, — and then 
fitting in his little window in their breasts, 
and applying his tests and instruments of ob- 
servation, had set himself about such a minute 
and curious scrutiny of their whole habits, 
history, adventures, and dispositions, as he 
thought must ultimately create not only a 
familiarity, but an interest, which the first 
aspect of the subject was far enough from 
leading any one to expect. That he suc- 
ceeds more frequently than could have been 
anticipated, we are very willing to allow. 
But we cannot help feeling, also, that a little 
more pains bestowed in the selection of his 
characters, w 7 ould have made his power of 
observation and description tell with tenfold 
effect; and that, in spite of the exquisite 
truth of his delineations, and the fineness of 
the perceptions by which he was enabled to 
make them, it is impossible to take any con- 
siderable interest in many of his personages, 
or to avoid feeling some degree of fatigue at 
the minute and patient exposition that is 
made of all that belongs to them. 

These remarks are a little too general, we 
believe — and are not introduced with strict 
propriety at the head of our fourth article on 
Mr. Crabbe's productions. They have drawn 
out, however, to such a length, that we can 
afford to say but little of the work imme- 
diately before us. It is marked with all the 
characteristics that we have noticed, either 
now or formerly, as distinctive of his poetry. 
On the whole, however, it has certainly fewer 
of the grosser faults — and fewer too, perhaps, 
of the more exquisite passages which occur 
in his former publications. There is nothing 
at least that has struck us. in going over these 
volumes, as equal in elegance to Phoebe Daw- 
son in the Register, or in pathetic effect to the 
Convict's Dream, or Edward Shore, or the 
Parting Hour, or the Sailor dying beside his 
Sweetheart. On the other hand, there is far 



less that is horrible, and nothing that can be 
said to be absolutely disgusting; and the pic- 
ture which is afforded of society and human 
nature is, on the whole, much less painfiii 
and degrading. There is both less misery 
and less guilt ; and, while the same searching 
and unsparing glance is sent into all the dark 
caverns of the breast, and the truth brought 
forth with the same stern impartiality, the 
result is more comfortable and cheering. The 
greater part of the characters are rather more 
elevated in station, and milder and more 
amiable in disposition ; while the accidents 
of life are more mercifully managed, and for- 
tunate circumstances more liberally allowed. 
It is rather remarkable, too, that Mr. Crabbe 
seems to become more amorous as he grows 
older, — the interest of almost all the stories 
in his collection turning on the tender pas- 
sion — and many of them on its most romantic 
varieties. 

The plan of the work, — for it has rather 
more of plan and unity than any of the for- 
mer, — is abundantly simple. Two brothers, 
both past middle age, meet together for the 
first time since their infancy, in the Hall of 
their native parish, which the elder and richer 
had purchased as a place of retirement for 
his declining age — and there tell each other 
their own history, and then that of their guests, 
neighbours, and acquaintances. The senior 
is much the richer, and a bachelor — having 
been a little distasted with the sex by the ■ 
unlucky result of an early and very extrava- 
gant passion. He is, moreover, rather too 
reserved and sarcastic, and somewhat Tory- 
ish, though with an excellent heart and a 
powerful understanding. The younger is very 
sensible also, but more open, social, and talk- 
ative — a happy husband and father, with a 
tendency to Whiggism, and some notion of 
reform — and a disposition to think well both 
of men and women. The visit lasts two or 
three weeks in autumn ; and the Tales, which 
make up the volume, are told in the after 
dinner tete a tet.es that take place in that time 
between the worthy brothers over their bottle. 
The married man, however, wearies at length 
for his wife and children ; and his brother lets 
him go, with more coldness than he had ex- 
pected. He goes with him, however, a stage 
on the way ; and, inviting him to turn aside a 
little to look at a new purchase he had made 
of a sweet farm with a neat mansion, he finds 
his wife and children comfortably settled 
there, and all dressed out and ready to re- 
ceive them ! and speedily discovers that he 
is, by his brother's bounty, the proprietor of 
a fair domain within a morning's ride of the 
Hall — where they may discuss politics, and 
tell tales any afternoon they think proper. 

Though their own stories and descriptions 
are not, in our opinion, the best in the work, 
it is but fair to introduce these narrative bro- 
thers and their Hall a little more particularly 
to our readers. The history of the elder and 
more austere is not particularly probable — 
nor very interesting ; but it affords many pas- 
sages extremely characteristic of the author. 
He was a spoiled child, and grew up into a 



CKABBE'S TALES OF THE HALL. 



409 



youth of a romantic and contemplative turn — 
dreaming, in his father's rural abode, of di- 
vine nymphs and damsels all passion and 
purity. One day he had the good luck to 
rescue a fair lady from a cow, and fell des- 
perately in love : — Though he never got to 
speech of his charmer, who departed from 
the place where she was on a visit, and 
eluded the eager search with which he pur- 
sued her, in town and country, for many a 
long year : For this foolish and poetical pas- 
sion settled down on his spirits; and neither 
time nor company, nor the business of a Lon- 
don banker, could effect a diversion. At last, 
at the end of ten or twelve years — for the fit 
lasted that unreasonable time — being then an 
upper clerk in his uncle's bank, he stumbled 
upon his Dulcinea in a very unexpected way 
— and a way that no one but Mr. Crabbe 
would either have thought of — or thought of 
describing in verse. In short, he finds her 
established as the chere amie of another re- 
spectable banker ! and after the first shock is 
over, sets about considering how he may re- 
claim her. The poor Perdita professes peni- 
tence ; and he offers to assist and support her 
if she will abandon her evil courses. The 
following passage is fraught with a deep and 
a melancholy knowledge of character and of 
human nature. 

" She vow'd — she tried ! — Alas ! she did not know 
How deeply roo'ed evil habits grow! 
She felt the truth upon her spirits press, 
But wanted ease, indulgence, show, excess; 
Voluptuous banquets ; pleasures — not refin'd, 
But such as soothe to sleep th' opposing mind — 
She look'd for idle vice, the time to kill, 
And subtle, strong apologies for ill ; 
And thus her yielding, unresisting soul, 
Sank, and let sin confuse her and control : 
Pleasures that brought disgust yet brought relief, 
And minds she hated help'd to war with grief." 

Vol. i. p. 163. 

As her health fails, however, her relapses 
become less frequent ; and at last she dies, 
grateful and resigned. Her awakened lover 
is stunned by the blow — takes seriously to 
business — and is in danger of becoming ava- 
ricious ; when a severe illness rouses him to 
higher thoughts, and he takes his name out 
of the firm, and, being turned of sixty, seeks 
a place of retirement. 

" He chose his native village, and the hill 

fie climb'd a- boy had its attraction still ; 

With that small brook beneath, where he would 

And stooping fill the hollow of his hand, [stand, 

To quench th impatient thirst — then stop awhile 

To see the sun upon the waters smile. 

In that sweet weariness, when, long denied, 

We drink and view the fountain that supplied 

The sparkling bliss — and feel, if not express, 

Our perfect ease, in that sweet weariness. 

" The oaks yet flourish'd in that fertile ground, 
Where still the church with lofty tower was found ; 
And still that Hall, a first, a favourite view," &c. 

" The Hall of Binning ! his delight ahoy, 
That gave his fancy in her flight employ ; 
Here, from his father's modest home, he gaz'd, 
Its grandeur charm'd him. and its height amaz'd: — 
Now, young no more, retir'd to views well known, 
He finds thai object of his awe his own ; 
The Hall at Binning ! — how he loves the gloom 
52 



That sun-excluding window gives the room ; 
Those broad brown stairs on which he loves to 

tread ; 
Those beams within ; without, that length of lead, 
On which the names of wanton boys appear, 
Who died old men, and left memorials here, 
Carvings of feet and hands, and knots and flowers, 
The fruits of busy minds in idle hours." 

Vol. i. pp. 4—6. 

So much for Squire George — unless any 
reader should care to know, as Mr. Crabbe 
has kindly told, that — " The Gentleman was 
tall," and, moreover, "Looked old when fol- 
lowed, but alert when met." Of Captain 
Richard, the story is more varied and ram- 
bling. He was rather neglected in his youth; 
and passed his time, when a boy, very much, 
as we cannot help supposing, Mr. Crabbe 
must have passed his own. He ran wild in 
the neighbourhood of a seaport, and found 
occupation enough in its precincts. 

" Where crowds assembled I was sure to run, 
Hear what was said, and muse on what was done ; 
Attentive list'ning in the moving scene, 
And often wond'ring what the men could mean. 

" To me the wives of seamen lov'd to tell 
What storms endanger'd men esteem'd so well ; 
What wondrous things in foreign parts they saw, 
Lands without bounds, and people without law. 

" No ships were wreck'd upon that fatal beach, 
But I could give the luckless tale of each ; 
Eager I look'd, till I beheld a face 
Of one dispos'd to paint their dismal case ; 
Who gave the sad survivors' doleful tale, 
From the first brushing of the mighty gale 
Until they struck ! and, suffering in their fate, 
I long'd the more they should its horrors state ; 
While some, the fond of pity, would enjoy 
The earnest sorrows of the feeling boy. 

" There were fond girls, who took me to their side, 
To tell the story how their lovers died ! 
They prais'd my tender heart, and bade me prove 
Both kind and constant when I came to love !" 

Once he saw a boat upset j and still recol- 
lects enough to give this spirited sketch of the 
scene. 

"Then were those piercing shrieks, that frantic 
All hurried ! all in tumult and affright ! ' [flight, 
A gathering crowd from different streets drew 

near, 
All ask, all answer — none attend, none hear ! 

" O ! how impatient on the sands we tread, 
And the winds roaring, and the women led ! 
They know not who in either boat is gone, 
But think the father, husband, lover, one. 

" And who is she apart ! She dares not come 
To join the crowd, yet cannot rest at home : 
With what strong interest looks she at the waves, 
Meeting and clashing o'er the seamen's graves ! 
'Tis a poor girl betroth'd — a few hours more, 
And he will lie a corpse upon the shore ! 
One wretched hour had pass'd before we knew 
Whom they had sav'd ! Alas ! they were but two! 
An orphan'd lad and widow'd man — no more ! 
And they unnoticed stood upon the shore, 
With scarce a friend to greet them — widows view'd 
This man and boy, and then their cries renew'd." 

He also pries into the haunts of the 6mug- 
glers, and makes friends with the shepherds 
on the downs in summer ; and then he be- 
comes intimate with an old sailor's wife, to 
whom he reads sermons, and histories, and 
2K 



410 



POETRY. 



jost books, and hymns, and indelicate bal- 
lads ! The character of ihis woman is one 
of the many examples of talent and labour 
misapplied. It is very powerfully, and, we 
doubt not, very truly drawn — but it will 
attract few readers. Yet the story she is at 
last brought to tell of her daughter will com- 
mand a more general interest. 

" Ruth— I may tell, too oft had she been told ! — 
Was tall and fair, and comely to behold, 
Gentle and simple ; in her naiive place 
Not one compared with her in form or face ; 
She was not merry, but she gave our hearth 
A cheerful spirit that was more than mirth. 

" There was a sailor boy, and people said 
He was. as man, a likeness of the maid ; 
'But not in this — for he was ever glad, 
While Ruth was apprehensive, mild, -and sad." — 

They are betrothed — and something more 
than betrothed — when, on the eve of their 
wedding-day, the youth is carried relent- 
lessly off by a press-gang; and soon after 
is slain in battle ! — and a preaching weaver 
then woos, with nauseous perversions of 
scripture, the loathing and widowed bride. 
This picture, too, is strongly drawn; — but 
we hasten to a scene of far more power as 
well as pathos. Her father urges her to wed 
the missioned suitor; and she agrees to give 
her answer on Sunday. 

" She left her infant on the Sunday morn, 

A creature doom'd to shame ! in sorrow born. 

She came not home to share our humble meal, — 

Her father thinking what his child would feel 

From his hard sentence ! — Still she came not home. 

The night grew dark, and yet she was not come ! 

The east-wind roar'd, the sea return'd the sound, 

And the rain fell as if the world were drown'd : 

There were no lights without, and my good man, 

To kindness frighten'd. with a groan began 

To talk of Ruih, and pray ! and then he took 

The Bible down, and read the holy book ; 

For he had learning : and when that was done 

We sat in silence — whither could we run, 

We said — and then rush'd frighten'd from the door, 

For we could bear our own conceit no more : 

We call'd on neighbours — there she had not been ; 

We met some wanderers — ours they had not seen ; 

We hurried o'er the beach, both north and south, 

Then join'd. and wander'd to our haven's mouth : 

Where rush'd the falling waters wildly out, 

I scarcely heard the <_ r ood man's fearful ghout, 

Who saw a something on the billow ride, 

And — Heaven have merry on our sins! he cried, 

It is my child ! — and to the present hour 

So he believes — and spirits have the power ! 

" And she was gone ! the waters wide and deep 
Roli'd o'er her bodv as she lay asleep ! 
She heard no more the angry waves and wind, 
She heard no more the threat'ning of mankind ; 
Wrapt in dark weeds, the refuse of the storm, 
To the hard rock was borne her comely form ! 

"But O! what storm was in that mind! what 

strife, 
That could compel her to lay down her life ! 
For she was seen within the sea to wade, 
By one at distance, when she first had pray'd; 
Then to a rock within the hither shoal, 
Softly, and with a fearful step, she stole; 
Then, when she gain'd it, on the top she stood 
A moment still — and dropt into the flood ! 
The man cried loudly, but he cried in vain, — 
fthe heard not then— she never heard again !" — 



Richard afterwards tells how he left thfl 
sea and entered the army, and fought and 
marched in the Peninsula ; and how he came 
home and fell in love with a parson's daugh- 
ter, and courted and married her ; — and he 
tells it all very prettily, — and, moreover, that 
he is very happy, and very fond of his wife 
and children. Bat we must now take the 
Adelphi out of doors; and let them intro- 
duce some of their acquaintances. Among 
the first to whom we are presented are two 
sisters, still in the bloom of life, who had 
been cheated out of a handsome independ- 
ence by the cunning of a speculating banker, 
and deserted by their lovers in consequence 
of this calamity. Their characters are drawn 
with infinite skill and minuteness, and their 
whole story told with great feeling and 
beauty; — but it is difficult to make extracts. 

The prudent suitor of the milder and 
more serious sister, sneaks pitifully away 
when their fortune changes. The bolder 
lover of the more elate and gay, seeks to take 
a baser advantage. 

" Then made he that attempt, in which to fail 
Is shameful, — still more shameful to prevail. 
Then was there lightning in that eye that shed 
Its beams upon him, — and his frenzy fled ; 
Abject and trembling at her feet he laid, 
Despis'd and scorn'd by the indignant maid, 
Whose spirits in their agitation rose, 
Him, and her own weak pity, to oppose: 
As liquid silver in the tube mounts high, 
Then shakes and settles as the storm goes by !" — 

The effects of this double trial on their 
different tempers are also very finely de- 
scribed. The gentler Lucy is the most re- 
signed and magnanimous, The more aspi- 
ring Jane suffers far keener anguish and 
fiercer impatience ; and the task of soothing 
and cheering her devolves on her generous 
sister. Her fancy, too, is at times a little 
touched by her afflictions — and she writes 
wild and melancholy verses. The wander- 
ings of her reason are represented in a very 
affecting manner ; — but we rather choose to 
quote the following verses, which appear to 
us to be eminently beautiful, and makes us 
regret that Mr. Crabbe should have indulged 
us so seldom with those higher lyrical effu- 
sions. 

" Let me not have this gloomy view, 

About my room, around my bed ! 
But morning roses, wet with dew, 

To cool my burning brows instead. 
Like flow'rs that once in Eden grew, 

Let them their fragrant spirits shed, 
And every day the sweets renew, 

Till I, a fading flower, am dead! 

" I'll have my grave beneath a hill, 

Where only Lucy's self shall know; 
Where runs the pure pellucid rill 

Upon its gravelly bed below ; 
There violets on the borders blow, 

And insects their soft light display, 
Till as the morning sunbeams glow, 

The cold phosphoric fires decay. 

" There will the lark, the lamb, in sport, 
In air, on earth, securely play, 
And Lucy to my grave resort, 
As innocent, but not so gay. 



CRABBE'S TALES OF THE HALL. 



411 



' ! take me from a world I hale, 
Men cruel, selfish, sensual, cold ; 
And, in some pure and blessed state, 

Let me my sister minds behold : 
From gross and sordid views refm'd, 

Our heaven of spotless love to share, 
For only generous souls design'd, 
And not a Man to meet us there." 

Vol. l. pp. 212—215. 

K The Preceptor Husband " is exceedingly 
well managed — but is rather too facetious for 
our present mood. The old bachelor, who 
had been five times on the brink of matri- 
mony, is mixed up of sorrow and mirth ; — 
but we cannot make room for any extracts, 
except the following inimitable description 
of the first coming on of old age, — though 
we feel assured, somehow, that this mali- 
cious observer has mistaken the date of these 
ugly symptoms ; and brought them into view 
nine or ten, or, at all events, six or seven years 
too early, 

" Six years had pass'd, and forty ere the six, 
When Time began to play his usual tricks ! 
The locks once comely in a virgin's sight, [white ; 
Locks of pure brown, display'd th' encroaching 
The blood once fervid now to cool began, 
And Time's strong pressure to subdue the man : 
I rode or walk'd as I was wont before, 
But now the bounding spirit was no more ; 
A moderate pace would now my body heat, 
A walk of moderate length, distress my feet. 
I show'd my stranger-guest those hills sublime, 
But said, ' the view is poor, we need not climb !' 
At a friend's mansion I began to dread 
The cold neat parlour, and the gay glazed bed ; 
At home I felt a more decided taste, 
And must have all things in my order placed ; 
I ceas'd to hunt ; my horses pleased me less, 
My dinner more ! I learn'd to play at chess; 
I took my dog and gun, but saw the brute 
Was disappointed that I did not shoot; 
My morning walks I now could bear to lose, 
And bless'd the shower that gave me not to choose : 
In fact, I felt a lanorour stealing on ; 
The active arm, the agile hand were gone ; 
Small daily actions into habits grew, 
And new dislike to forms and fashions new; 
I lov'd my trees in order to dispose, 
I number'd peaches, look'd how stocks arose, 
Told the same story oft — in short, began to prose." 
Vol. i. pp. 260, 261. 

"The Maid's Story" is rather long — though 
it has many passages that must be favourites 
with Mr. Crabbe's admirers. "Sir Owen 
Dale " is too long also ; but it is one of the best 
in the collection, and must not be discussed 
so shortly. Sir Owen, a proud, handsome 
man, is left a widower at forty-three, and is 
soon after jilted by a young lady of twenty; 
who. after amusing herself by encouraging his 
assiduities, at last meets his long-expected 
declaration with a very innocent surprise at 
finding her familiarity with "such an old 
friend hi her father's " so strangely miscon- 
strued : The knight, of course, is furious ; — 
and, to revenge himself, looks out for a hand- 
some young nephew, whom he engages to lay 
siege to her, and, after having won her affec- 
tions, to leave her, — as he had been left. The 
lad rashly engages in the adventure ; but soon 
finds his pretended passion turning into a real 
one — and entreats his uncle, on whom he is 
iependent. to release him from the unworthy 



part of his vow. Sir Owen, still mad for ven- 
geance, rages at the proposal; and, to confirm 
his relentless purpose, makes a visit to one, 
who had better cause, and had formerly ex- 
pressed equal thirst for revenge. This was 
one of the higher class of his tenantry — an in- 
telligent, manly, good-humoured farmer, who 
had married the vicar's pretty niece, and lived 
in great comfort and comparative elegance, 
till an idle youth seduced her from his arms, 
and left him in rage and misery. It is here 
that the interesting part of the story begins; 
and few things can be more powerful or strik- 
ing than the scenes that ensue. Sir Owen 
inquires whether he had found the objects of 
his just indignation. He at first evades the 
question ; but at length opens his heart, and 
tells him all. We can afford to give but a 
small part of the dialogue. 

" ' Twice the year came round — 
Years hateful now — ere I my victims found : 
But I did find them, in the dungeon's gloom 
Of a small garret — a precarious home ; 
The roof, unceil'd in patches, gave the snow 
Entrance within, and there were heaps below ; 
I pass'd a narrow region dark and cold, 
The strait of stairs to that infectious hold ; 
And, when I enter'd, misery met my view 
In every shape she wears, in every hue, 
And the bleak icy blast across the dungeon flew. 
There frown'd the ruin'd walls that once were white 
There gleam'd the panes that once admitted light, 
There lay unsavory scraps of wretched food ; 
And there a measure, void of fuel, stood. 
But who shall, part by part, describe the state 
Of these, thus follow'd by relentless fate ? 
All, too, in winter, when the icy air 
Breathed its black venom on the guilty pair. 

" ' And could you know the miseries they endur'd, 
The poor, uncertain pittance they procur'd ; 
When, laid aside the needle and the pen, 
Their sickness won the neighbours of their den, 
Poor as they are, and they are passing poor, 
To lend some aid to those who needed more ! 
Then, too, an ague with the winter came, 
And in this state — that wife I cannot name ! 
Brought forth a famish'd child of suffering and of 
shame ! 

" ' This had you known, and traced them to this 
Where all was desolate, defiled, unclean, [scene, 
A tireless room, and, where a fire had place, 
The blast loud howling down the empty space, 
You must have felt a part of the distress, 
Forgot your wrongs, and made their suffering less ! 

" ' In that vile garret — which I cannot paint — 
The sight was loathsome, and the smell was faint J 
And there that wife, — whom I had lov'd so well, 
And thought so happy ! was condemn'd to dwell ; 
The gay, the grateful wife, whom I was glad 
To see in dress beyond our station clad, 
And to behold among our neighbours, fine, 
More than perhaps became a wife of mine : 
And now among her neighbours to explore, 
And see her poorest of the very poor ! 
There she reclin'd unmov'd, her bosom bare 
To her companion's unimpassion'd stare, 
And my wild wonder: — Seat of virtue ! chaste 
As lovely once ! O ! how wert thou disgrac'd ! 
Upon that breast, by sordid rags defil'd, 
Lay the wan features of a famish'd child ;-— 
That sin-born babe in utter misery laid, 
Too feebly wretched even to cry for aid ; 
The ragged sheeting, o'er her person drawn 
Serv'd tor the dress that hunger placed in pawn. 

" ' At the bed's feet the man reclin'd his fram« * 
Their chairs had perish'd to support the flanra 



412 



POETRY. 



That warm'd his agued limbs; and, sad to see, 
That shook him fiercely as he gaz'd on me, &c. 

1 ' She had not food, nor aught a mother needs, 
Who for another life, and dearer, feeds: 
I saw her speechless ; on her wither'd breast 
The wither'd child extended, but not prest, 
Who sought, with moving lip and feeble cry, 
Vain instinct ! for the fount without supply. 

" ' Sure it was all a grievous, odious scene, 
Where all was dismal, melancholy, mean, 
Foul with compell'd neglect, unwholesome, and 

unclean ; 
That arm — that eye — the cold, the sunken cheek — 
Spoke all ! — Sir Owen — fiercely miseries speak !' 

" ' And you reliev'd ?' 

11 ' If hell's seducing crew 
Had seen that sight, they must have pitied too.' 

" ' Revenge was thine — thou hadst the power — the 

right ; 
To give it up was Heav'n's own act to slight.* 

11 ' Tell me not, Sir, of rights, and wrongs, or 

powers ! 
I felt it written — Vengeance is not ours !' — 

" ' Then did you freely from your soul forgive ?' — 

" * Sure as T hope before my Judge to live, 

Sure as I trust his mercy to receive, 

Sure as his word I honour and believe, 

Sure as the Saviour died upon the tree 

For all who sin—for that dear wretch, and me — 

Whom, never more on earth, will I forsake — or see!' 

" Sir Owen softly to his bed adjourn'd ! 
Sir Owen quickly to his home return'd ; 
And all the way he meditating dwelt 
On what this man in his affliction felt ; 
How he, resenting first, forbore, forgave ; 
His passion's lord, and not his anger's slave." 

Vol. ii. pp. 36—46. 

We always quote too much of Mr. Crabbe: 
— perhaps because the pattern of his arabesque 
is so large, that there is no getting a fair speci- 
men of it without taking in a good space. 
But we must take w T arning this time, and for- 
bear — or at least pick out but a few little 
morsels as we pass hastily along. One of the 
best managed of all the tales is that entitled 
" Delay has Danger ;" — which contains a very 
full, true, and particular account of the way 
in which a weakish, but well meaning young 
man, engaged on his own suit to a very amia- 
ble girl, may be seduced, during her unlucky 
absence, to entangle himself with a far in- 
ferior person, whose chief seduction is her 
apparent humility and devotion to him. 
- We cannot give any part of the long and 
finely converging details by which the catas- 
trophe is brought about : But we are tempted 
to venture on the catastrophe itself, for the 
sake chiefly of the right English, melancholy, 
autumnal landscape, with which it con- 
cludes: — 

" In that weak moment, when disdain and pride, 
And fear and fondness, drew the man aside, 
In that weak moment — ' Wilt thou,' he began, 

I Be mine ?' and joy o'er all her features ran ; 

I I will!' she softly whisper'd ; but the roar 
Of cannon would not strike his spirit more! 
Ev'n as his lips the lawless contract seal'd 

He felt that conscience lost her seven-fold shield, 
And honour fled ; but still he spoke of love ; 
And al! was joy in the consenting dove ! 



" That evening all in fond discourse was spent ; 
Till the sad lover to his chamber went, [pent ! 

To think on what had past, — to grieve and to re- 
Early he rose, and look'd with many a sigh 
On the red light that fill'd the eastern sky ; 
Oft had he stood before, alert and gay, 
To hail the "lories of the new-born day : 
But now dejected, languid, listless, low, 
He saw the wind upon the water blow, 
And the cold stream curl'd onward, as the gale 
From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale; 
On the right side the youth a wood survey'd, 
With all its dark intensity of shade ; 
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move, 
In this, the pause of nature and of love ; 
When now the young are rear'd, and when the old, 
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold. 
Far to the left he saw the huts of men, 
Half hid in mist, that hung upon the fen ; 
Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, 
Took their short flights, and twitter' d on the lea ; 
And near, the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, 
And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun ! 
All these were sad in nature ; or they took 
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, 
And of his mind — he ponder'd for a while, 
Then met his Fanny with a borrow'd smile." 

Vol. ii. pp. 84, 85. 

The moral autumn is quite as gloomy, and 
far more hopeless. 

"The Natural Death of Love" is perhaps 
the best written of all the pieces before us. 
It consists of a very spirited dialogue between 
a married pair, upon the causes of the differ- 
ence between the days of marriage and those 
of courtship ; — in which the errors and faults 
of both parties, and the petulance, impatience, 
and provoking acuteness of the lady, with the 
more reasonable and reflecting, but somewhat 
insulting manner of the gentleman, are all 
exhibited to the life; and with more uniform 
delicacy and finesse than is usual with the 
author. 

"Lady Barbara, or the Ghost," is a long 
story, and not very pleasing. A fair widow 
had been warned, or supposed she had been 
warned, by the ghost of a beloved brother, 
that she would be miserable if she contracted 
a second marriage — and then, some fifteen 
years after, she is courted by the son of a 
reverend priest, to whose house she had re- 
tired — and upon whom, during all the years 
of his childhood, she had lavished the cares 
of a mother. She long resists his unnatural 
passion ; but is at length subdued by his ur- 
gency and youthful beauty, and gives him her 
hand. There is something rather disgusting, 
we think, in this fiction— and certainly the 
worthy lady could not have taken no way so 
likely to save the ghost's credit, as by enter- 
ing into such a marriage — and she confessed 
as much, it seems, on her deathbed. 

" The W T idow," with her three husbands, is 
not quite so lively as the wife of Bath with 
her five ; — but it is a very amusing, as well as 
a very instructive legend ; and exhibits a rich 
variety of those striking intellectual portraits 
which mark the hand of our poetical Rem- 
brandt. The serene close of her eventful 
life is highly exemplary. After carefully col- 
lecting all her dowers and jointures — 

" The widow'd lady to her cot retir'd : 
And there she lives, delighted and admir'd ! 



KEATS' POEMS. 



41 



Civil lo all, compliant and polite, 
pispos'd to think, ' whatever is, is rig_ht.' 
At home awhile — she in the autumn finds 
The sea an object for reflecting minds, 
And change for tender spirits: There she reads, 
And weeps in comfort, in her graceful weeds !" 

Vol. ii. p. 213. 

The concluding tale is but the end of the 
visit to the Hall, and the settlement of the 
younger brother near his senior, in the way 
we have already mentioned. It contains no 
great matter ; but there is so much good na- 
ture and goodness of heart about it, that we 
cannot resist the temptation of gracing our 
exit with a bit of it. After a little raillery, 
the elder brother says — 

"'We part no more, dear Richard! Thou wilt 

need 
Thy brother's help to teach thy boys to read ; 
And I should love to hear Matilda's psalm, 
To keep my spirit in a morning calm, 
And feel the soft devotion that prepares 
The soul to rise above its earthly cares ; 
Then thou and I, an independent two, 
May have our parties, and defend them too ; 
Thy liberal notions, and my loyal fears, 
Will give us subjects for our future years ; 
We will for truth alone contend and read, 
And our good Jaques shall o'ersee our creed.' " 

Vol. ii. pp. 348, 349. 

And then, after leading him up to his new 
purchase, he adds eagerly — 

" ' Alight, my friend, and come, 
I do beseech thee, to that proper home ! 



Here, on this lawn, thy boys and girls shall run, 
And play their gambols, when their tasks are done ; 
There, from that window, shall their mother view 
The happy tribe, and smile at all they do ; 
While thou, more gravely, hiding thy delight, 
Shalt cry, " O ! childish ! and enjoy the sight !' " 

Vol. ii. p. 352. 

We shall be abused by Our political and 
fastidious readers for the length of this article. 
But we cannot repent of it. It will give as 
much pleasure, we believe, and do as much 
good, as many of the articles that are meant 
for their gratification; and, if it appear absurd 
to quote so largely from a popular and acces- 
sible work, it should be remembered, that no 
work of this magnitude passes into circulation 
with half the rapidity of our Journal — and 
that Mr. Crabbe is so unequal a writer, and 
at times so unattractive, as to require, more 
than any other of his degree, some explana- 
tion of his system, and some specimens of 
his powers, from those experienced and in- 
trepid readers whose business it is to pioneer 
for the lazier sort, and to give some account 
of what they are to meet with on their journey. 
To be sure, all this is less necessary now than 
it was on Mr. Crabbe's first re-appearance 
nine or ten years ago ; and though it may not 
be altogether without its use even at present, 
it may be as well to confess, that we have 
rather consulted our own gratification than 
our readers' improvement, in what we have 
now said of him ; and hope they will forgive 
us. 



(August, 1820.) 



1. Endymion: a Poetic Romance. By John Keats. 8vo. pp.207. London: 1818. 

2. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnts, and other Poems. By John Keats, author of 
u Endymion." 12mo. pp.200. London: 1820* 



We had never happened to see either of 
these volumes till very lately — and have been 
exceedingly struck with the genius they dis- 
play, and the spirit of poetry which breathes 
through all their extravagance. That imita- 
tion of our old writers, and especially of our 
older dramatists, to wdiich we cannot help 
flattering ourselves that we have somewhat 
contributed, has brought on, as it were, a 
second spring in our poetry ; — and few of its 
blossoms are either more profuse of sweet- 
ness, or richer in promise, than this which is 
now before us. Mr. Keats, we understand, is 
still a very young man ; and his whole works, 

* I still think that a poet of great power and 
promise was lost to us by the premature death of 
Keats, in the twenty-fifth year of his age ; and re- 
gret that I did not go more largely into the exposi- 
tion of his merits, in the slight notice of them, 
which I now venture to reprint. But though I can- 
not, with propriety, or without departing from the 
principle which must govern this republication, now 
supply this omission, I hope to be forgiven for 
having added a page or two to the citations, — by 
which my opinion of those merits was then illus- 
trated, and is again left to the judgment of the reader. 



indeed, bear evidence enough of the fact. 
They are full of extravagance and irregu- 
larity, rash attempts at originality, intermin 
able wanderings, and excessive obscurity. 
They manifestly require, therefore, all the in 
dulgence that can be claimed for a first at- 
tempt : — But we think it no less plain that 
they deserve it: For they are flushed all over 
with the rich lights of fancy ; and so coloured 
and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that 
even while perplexed and bewildered in their 
labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxi- 
cation of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts 
to the enchantments they so lavishly present. 
The models upon which he has formed him- 
self, in the Endymion, the earliest and by 
much the most considerable of his poems, are 
obviously The Faithful Shepherdess of Fletch- 
er, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jon son ; — 
the exquisite metres and inspired diction of 
which he has copied with great boldness and 
fidelity — and, like his great originals, has also 
contrived to impart to the whole piece that 
true rural and poetical air — which breathes 
only in them, and in Theocritus — which is at 
2&2 



414 



POETRY. 



once homely and majestic, luxurious and rude, 
and sets before us the genuine sights and 
sounds and smells of the country, with all 
the magic and grace of Elysium. His sub- 
ject has the disadvantage of being Mytholog- 
ical: and in this respect, as well as on ac- 
count of the raised and rapturous tone it con- 
sequently assumes, his poem, it may be 
thought, would be better compared to the 
Comus and the Arcades of Milton, of which, 
also, there are many traces of imitation. The 
great distinction, however, between him and 
these divine authors, is, that imagination in 
them is subordinate to reason and judgment, 
while, with him, it is paramount and supreme 
— that their ornaments and images are em- 
ployed to embellish and recommend just 
sentiments, engaging incidents, and natural 
characters, while his are poured out without 
'measure or restraint, and with no apparent 
design but to unburden the breast of the 
author, and give vent to the overflowing vein 
of his fancy. The thin and scanty tissue of 
his story is merely the light framework on 
which his' florid wreaths are suspended ; and 
while his imaginations go rambling and en- 
tangling themselves every where, like wild 
honeysuckles, all idea of sober reason, and 
plan, and consistency, is utterly forgotten, and 
'•strangled in their waste fertility." A great 
part of the work, indeed, is written in the 
strangest and most fantastical manner that 
can be imagined. It seems as if the author 
had ventured every thing that occurred to 
him in the shape of a glittering image or 
striking expression — taken the first word that 
presented itself to make up a rhyme, and then 
made that word the germ of a new cluster of 
images — a hint for a new excursion of the 
fancy — and so wandered on, equally forgetful 
whence he came, and heedless whither he 
was going, till he had covered his pages with 
an interminable arabesque of connected and 
incongruous figures, that multiplied as they 
extended, and were only harmonised by the 
brightness of their tints, and the graces of 
their forms. In this rash and headlong career 
he has of course many lapses and failures. 
There is no work, accordingly, from which a 
malicious critic could cull more matter for 
ridicule, or select more obscure, unnatural, or 
absurd passages. But we do not take that to 
be our office ; — and must beg leave, on the 
contrary, to say, that any one who, on this 
account, would represent the whole poem as 
despicable, must either have no notion of 
poetry, or no regard to truth. 

It is, in truth, at least as full of genius as 
of absurdity; and he who does not find a 
great deal in it to admire and to give delight, 
cannot in his heart see much beauty in the 
two exquisite dramas to which we have al- 
ready alluded ; or find any great pleasure in 
some of the finest creations of Milton and 
Shakespeare. There are very many such per- 
sons, we verily believe, even among the read- 
ing and judicious part of the community — 
correct scholars, we have no doubt, many of 
them, and, it may be, very classical composers 
in prose and in verse — but utterly ignorant, on 



our view of the matter, of the true genius of 
English poetry, and incapable of estimating* 
its appropriate and most exquisite beauties. 
With that spirit we have no hesitation in say- 
ing that Mr. Keats is deeply imbued — and of 
those beauties he has presented us with many 
striking examples. We are very much in- 
clined indeed to add, that we do not know 
any book which we would sooner employ as 
a test to ascertain whether any one had in 
him a native relish for poetry, and a genuine 
sensibility to its intrinsic charm. The greater 
and more distinguished poets of our country 
have so much else in them, to gratify other 
tastes and propensities, that they are pretty 
sure to captivate and amuse those to whom 
their poetry may be but an hinderance and 
obstruction, as well as those to whom it con- 
stitutes their chief attraction. The interest 
of the stories they tell — the vivacity of the 
characters they delineate — the weight and 
force of the maxims and sentiments in which 
they abound — the very pathos, and wit aid 
humour they display, which may all and each 
of them exist apart from their poetry, and in- 
dependent of it, are quite sufficient to account 
for their popularity, without referring much 
to that still higher gift, by which they subdue 
to their enchantments those whose souls are 
truly attuned to the finer impulses of poetr}\ 
It is only, therefore, where those other recom- 
mendations are wanting, or exist in a weaker 
degree, that the true force of the attraction, 
exercised by the pure poetry with which they 
are 60 often combined, can be fairly appre- 
ciated: — where, without much incident or 
many characters, and with little wit, wisdom, 
or arrangement, a number of bright pictures 
are presented to the imagination, and a fine 
feeling expressed of those mysterious relations 
by which visible external things are assimi- 
lated with inward thoughts and emotions, and 
become the images and exponents of all pas- 
sions and affections. To an nnpoetical reader 
such passages will generally appear mere 
raving and absurdity — and to this censure a 
very great part of the volumes before us will 
certainly be exposed, with this class of read- 
ers. Even in the judgment of a fitter audience, 
however, it must, we fear, be admitted, that, 
besides the riot and extravagance of his fancy 
the scope and substance of Mr. Keats' poetry 
is rather too dreamy and abstracted to excite 
the strongest interest, or to sustain the atten 
tion through a work of any great compass oj 
extent. He deals too much with shadowy 
and incomprehensible beings, and is too con- 
stantly rapt into an extramundane Elysium. 
to command a lasting interest with ordinary 
mortals — and must employ the agency of 
more varied and coarser emotions, if he wishes 
to take rank with the enduring poets of this 
or of former generations. There is something 
very curious, too, we think, in the way in 
which he, and Mr. Barry Cornwall also, have 
dealt with the Pagan mythology, of which 
they have made so much use in their poetry. 
Instead of presenting its imaginary persons 
under the trite and vulgar traits that belong 
to them in the ordinary systems, little moio 



KEATS' POEMS. 



41J 



is borrowed from these than the general con- 
ception of their condition and relations; and 
an original character and distinct individuality 
is then bestowed upon them, which has all 
the merit of invention, and all the grace and 
attraction of the fictions on which it is en- 
grafted. The ancients, though they probably 
did not stand in any great awe of their dei- 
ties, have yet abstained very much from any 
minute or dramatic representation of their 
feelings and affections. In Hesiod and Homer, 
they are broadly delineated by some of their 
actions and adventures, and introduced to us 
merely as the agents in those particular trans- 
actions; while in the Hymns, from those 
ascribed to Orpheus and Homer, down to 
those of Callimachus, we have little but pomp- 
ous epithets and invocations, with a flattering- 
commemoration of their most famous exploits 
— and are never allowed to enter into their 
bosoms, or follow out the train of their feel- 
ings, with the presumption of our human 
sympathy. Except the love-song of the Cy- 
clops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritus — the 
Lamentation of Venus for Adonis in Moschus 
— and the more recent Legend of Apuleius, 
we scarcely recollect a passage in all the 
writings of antiquity in which the passions of 
an immortal are fairly disclosed to the scrutiny 
and observation of men. The author before 
us, however, and some of his contemporaries, 
have dealt differently with the subject ; — and, 
sheltering the violence of the fiction nnder 
the ancient traditionary fable, have in reality 
created and imagined an entire new set of 
characters ; and brought closely and minutely 
before us the loves and sorrows and perplexi- 
ties of beings, with whose names and super- 
natural attributes we had long been familiar, 
without any sense or feeling of their personal 
character. We have more than doubts of the 
fitness of such personages to maintain a per- 
manent interest with the modern public; — 
but the way in which they are here managed 
certainly gives them the best chance that 
now remains for them ; and, at all events, it 
cannot be denied that the effect is striking 
and graceful. But we must now proceed to 
our extracts. 

The first of the volumes before us is occu- 
pied with the loves of Endymion and Diana — 
which it would not be very easy, and which 
we do not at all intend to analyse in detail. 
In the beginning of the poem, however, the 
Shepherd Prince is represented as having had 
strange visions and delirious interviews with 
an unknown and celestial beauty : Soon after 
which, he is called on to preside at a festival 
in honour of Pan ; and his appearance in the 
procession is thus described : — 

— — "His youth was full}' blown, 
Showing like Ganymede to manhood grown ; 
And, for those simple times, his garments were 
A chieftain king's: Beneath his breast, half bare, 
Was hung a silver bugle ; and between 
His nervy knees there lay a boar-spear keen. 
A smile was on his countenance : He seem'd, 
To common lookers on. like one who dream'd 
Of idleness in groves Elysian : 
But there were some who feelingly could scan 
A lurking tr ouble in bis nether lip, 



And see that oftentimes the reins would slip 
Through his forgotten hands !" — pp. 11, 12. 

There is then a choral hymn addressed to 
the sylvan deity, which appears to us to be 
full of beauty; and reminds us. in many 
places, of the finest strains of Sicilian — or of 
English poetry. A part of it is as follows : — 

" ' thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
From jagged trunks ; and overshadoweth 
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death 
Of unseen flowers, in heavy peacefulness ! 
Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress 
Their ruffled locks, where meeting hazels darken ; 
And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and 
The dreary melody of bedded reeds— [hearken 
Tn desolate places, where dank moisture breeds 
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth. — 

" ' O thou, for whose soul-sooihing quiet, turllet 
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles, 
What time thou Wanderest at eventide 
Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side 
Of thine enmossed realms: O thou, to whom 
Broad leaved fig trees even now foredoom 
Their ripen'd fruitage ; yellow girled bees 
Their golden honeycombs; our village leas 
Their fairest blossoni'd beans and poppied corn , 
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn, 
To sing for thee ; low creeping strawberries 
Their summer coolness ; pent up butterflies 
Their freckled wings ; yea, the fresh budding yea? 
All its completions ! be quickly near, 
By every wind that nods the mountain pine, 
O forester divine ! 

" ' Thou, to whom every fawn and satyr flies 
For willing service ; whether to surprise 
The squatted hare while in half sleeping fit ; 
Or upward ragged precipices flit 
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; 
Or by mysterious enticement draw 
Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again ; 
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, 
And gather up all fanciful lest shells 
For thee to tumble into Naiad's cells, 
And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping! 
Or to Relight thee with fantastic leaping, 
The while they pelt each other on the crown 
With silv'ry oak apples, and fir coyes brown- 
By all the echoes that about thee ring! 
Hear us, O satyr King ! 

" ' O Hearkener to the loud clapping shears, 
While ever and anon to his shorn peers 
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the horn, 
When snouted wild-boars routing tender corn 
Anger our huntsmen ! Breather round our farms, 
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms: 
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, 
That come a swooning over hollow grounds, 
And wither drearily on barren moors !' " 

pp. 114—117. 

The enamoured youth sinks into insensi- 
bility in the midst of the solemnity, and is 
borne apart and revived by the care of his 
sister ; and, opening his heavy eyes in her 
arms, says — 

" 'I feel this thine endearing love 
All through my bosom ! Thou art as a dove 
Trembling its closed eyes and sleeked wings 
About me ; and the pearliest dew not brines 
Such morning incense from the fields of May, 
As do those brighter drops that twinkling stray 
From those kind eyes. Then think not thou 
That, any longer. I will pass my days 
Alone and sadT No ! I will once more raise 
My voice upon the mountain heights ; once more 
Make my horn parley from their foreheads hoar ! 
Again my trooping hounds their tongues shall loll 
Around the breathed boar : again I'll poll 



416 



POETRY. 



The fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow : 
And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, 
Again I'll linger in a sloping mead * 

To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed 
Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered, sweet, 
And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat 
My soul to keep in its resolved course.' 

" Hereat Peona, in their sjjver source 

Shut her pure sorrow drops, with glad exclaim ; 

And took a lute, from which there pulsing came 

A lively prelude, fashioning the way 

In which her voice should wander. 'Twas a lay 

More subtle cadenced, more forest wild 

Than Dryope's lone lulling of her child ; 

And nothing since has floated in the air 

So mournful strange." — pp.25 — 27. 

He then tells her all the story of his love 
and madness; and gives this airy sketch of 
the first vision he had, or fancied he had, of 
his descending Goddess. After some rapturous 
intimations of the glories of her gold-burnished 
hair, he says — 

" She had, 

Indeed, locks bright enough to make me mad ! 
And they were simply gordian'd up and braided, 
Leaving, in naked comeliness, unshaded, 
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow ; 
The which were blended in, I know not how, 
With such a paradise of lips and eyes, 
Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles, and faintest sighs, 
That when I think thereon, my spirit clings 
A.nd melts into the vision !" 

" And then her hovering feet ! 
More bluely vein'd, more soft, more whitely sweet 
Than those of sea-born Venus, when she rose 
From out her cradle shell ! The wind outblows 
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion ! — 
'Tis blue ; and overspangled with a million 
Of little eyes; as though thou wert to shed 
Over the darkest, lushest blue bell bed, 
Handfuls of daisies." — 

Overpowered by this "celestial colloquy 
sublime," he sinks at last into slumber — and 
on wakening finds the scene disenchanted ; 
and the dull shades of evening deepening over 
his solitude : — ' 

" Then up I started. — Ah ! my sighs, my tears ! 
My clenched hands ! For lo ! the poppies hung 
Dew dabbled on their stalks ; the ouzel sung 
A heavy ditty ; and the sullen day 
Had chidden herald Hesperus away, 
With leaden looks. The solitary breeze 
Bluster'd and slept ; and its wild self did teaze 
With wayward melancholy. And I thought, 
Mark me, Peona! that sometimes it brought, 
Faint Fare-thee-wells — and sigh-shrilled Adieus !" 

Soon after this he is led away by butterflies 
to the haunts of Naiads ; and by them sent 
down into enchanted caverns, where he sees 
Venus and Adonis, and great flights of Cupids; 
and wanders over diamond terraces among 
beautiful fountains and temples and statues, 
and all sorts of fine and strange things. All 
this is very fantastical : But there are splendid 
pieces of description, and a sort of wild rich- 
ness in the whole. We cull a few little mor- 
sels. This is the picture of the sleeping- 
Adonis : — 

" In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth 
Of fondest beauty. Sidevvay his face repos'd 
On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd, 
By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth 
fb slumbery pout ; just as the morning south 



Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. Above his head, 
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed 
To make a coronal ; and round him grew 
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue, 
Together intertwin'd and trammel'd fresh: 
The vine of glossy sprout ; the ivy mesh, 
Shading its Ethiop berries ; and woodbine, 
Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine. 

" Hard by, 
Stood serene Cupids watching silently. 
One kneeling to a lyre, touch'd the strings, 
Muffling to death the pathos with his wings! 
And, ever and anon, uprose to look 
At the youth's slumber; while another took 
A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew, 
And shook it on his hair ; another flew 
In through the woven roof, and fluttering-wise 
Rain violets upon his sleeping eyes." — pp. 72, 73. 

Here is another, and more classical sketch, 
of Cybele — with a picture of lions that might 
excite the envy of Rubens, or Edwin Land- 
seer ! 

11 Forth from a rugged arch, in the dusk below, 
Came mother Cybele ! alone — alone ! — 
In sombre chariot : dark foldings thrown 
About her majesty, and front death-pale 
With turrets crown'd. Four maned lions hale 
The sluggish wheels ; solemn their toothed maws, 
Their surly eyes brow-hidden, heavy paws 
Uplifted drowsily, and nervy tails 
Cowering their tawny brushes. Silent sails 
This shadowy queen athwart, and faints away 
In another gloomy arch !" — p. 83. 

The following picture of the fairy water- 
works, which he unconsciously sets playing in 
these enchanted caverns, is, it must be con- 
fessed, "high fantastical;" but we venture to 
extract it, for the sake of the singular brilliancy 
and force of the execution . — 

" So on he hies 

Through caves and palaces of mottled ore, 
Gold dome, and crystal wall, and turquoise floor, 
Black polish'd porticos of awful shade, 
Till, at the last, a diamond ballustrade 
Leads sparkling just above the silvery heads 
Of a thousand fountains ; so that he could dash 
The waters with his spear ! But at that splash, 
Done heedlessly, those spouting columns rose 
Sudden a poplar's height, and 'gan to enclose 
His diamond path with fretwork, streaming round, 
Alive, and dazzling cool, and with a sound 
Haply, like dolphin tumults, when sweet sheila 
Welcome the car of Thetis ! Long he dwells 
On this delight ; for every minute's space, 
The streams with changing magic interlace ; 
Sometimes like delicatest lattices, 
Cover'd with crystal vines : then weeping trees 
Moving about, as in a gentle wind ; 
Which, in a wink, to wat'ry gauze refin'd 
Pour into shapes of curtain'd canopies, 
Spangled, and rich with liquid broideries 
Of Flowers, Peacocks, Swans, and Naiads fair! 
Swifter than lightning went these wonders rare ; 
And then the water into stubborn streams 
Collecting, mimick'd the wrought oaken beams, 
Pillars, and frieze, and high fantastic roof 
Of those dark places, in times far aloof 
Cathedrals named !" 

There are strange melodies too around him ; 
and their effect on the fancy is thus poetically 
described : — 

" Oh ! when the airy stress 
Of Music's kiss impregnates the free winds, 
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds 
Eolian magic from their lucid wombs, 
Then old songs waken from forgotten tombs ! 



KEATS' POEMS. 



417 



Old ditties sigh above their father's grave ! 
Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave 
Round every spot where trod Apollo's feet! 
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, 
Where long ago, a Giant battle was ! 
And from the turf a lullaby doth pass, 
In every place where infent Orpheus slept!" 

In the midst of all these enchantments he 
has, we do not very well know how, another 
ravishing interview with his unknown god- 
dess; and when she again melts away from 
him, he finds himself in a vast grotto, where 
he overhears the courtship of Alpheus and 
Arethusa; and as they elope together, dis- 
covers that the grotto has disappeared, and 
that he is at the bottom of the sea, under the 
transparent arches of its naked waters ! The 
following is abundantly extravagant ; but 
comes of no ignoble lineage — nor shames its 
high descent : — 

" Far had he roam'd, 
With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd 
Above, around, and at his feet ; save things 
More dead than Morpheus' imaginings ! 
Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large 
Of gone sea-warriors ; brazen beaks and targe ; 
Rudders that for a thousand years had lost 
The sway of human hand ; gold vase emboss'd 
With long-forgotten story, and wherein 
No reveller had ever dipp'd a chin 
But those of Saturn's vintage; mould'ring scrolls, 
Writ in the tongue of heaven, by those souls 
Who first were on the earth ; and sculptures rude 
In pond'rous stone, developing the mood 
Of ancient Nox ; — then skeletons of man, 
Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan, 
And elephant, and eagle — and huge jaw 
Of nameless monster." p. 111. 

There he finds ancient Glaucus enchanted 
by Circe — hears his wild story — and goes with 
him to the deliverance and restoration of thou- 
sands of drowned lovers, whose bodies were 
piled and stowed away in a large submarine 
palace. When this feat is happily performed, 
he finds himself again on dry ground, with 
woods and waters around him ; and can- 
not help falling desperately in love with a 
beautiful damsel whom he finds there, pining 
for some such consolation ; and who tells a 
long story of having come from India in the 
train of Bacchus, and having strayed aw r ay 
from him into that forest ! — So they vow eter- 
nal fidelity ; and are wafted up to heaven on 
flying horses ; on which they sleep and dream 
among the stars; — and then the lady melts 
away, and he is again alone upon the earth ; 
but soon rejoins his Indian love, and agrees 
to give up his goddess, and live only for her : 
But she refuses, and says she is resolved to 
devote herself to the service of Diana : But. 
when she goes to accomplish that dedication, 
she turns out to be the goddess herself in a 
new shape ! and finally exalts her lover with 
her to a blessed immortality ! 

We have left ourselves room to say but lit- 
tle of the second volume ; w r hich is of a more 
miscellaneous character. Lamia is a Greek 
antique story, in the measure and taste of En- 
dymion. Isabella 's a paraphrase of the same 
tale of Boccacio wnich Mr. Cornwall has also 
imitated, under the title of " A Sicilian Story." 
It would be worth while to compare the two 
53 



imitations ; but we have no longer time for 
such a task. Mr. Keats has followed his 
original more closely, and has given a deep 
pathos to several of his stanzas. The widow- 
ed bride's discovery of the murdered body is 
very strikingly given. 

" Soon she turn'd up a soiled glove, whereon 
Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies! 
She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone, 

And put it in her bosom, where it dries. 
Then 'gan she work again ; nor stay'd her care, 
But to throw back at times her veiling hair. 

" That old nurse stood beside her, wondering, 
Until her heart felt pity to the core, 

At sight of such a dismal labouring ; 
And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar, 

And put her lean hands to the horrid thing: 
Three hours they labour'd at this trivial sore ; 

At last they felt the kernel of the grave, &c. 

" In anxious secrecy they took it home, 

And then — the prize was all for Isabel ! 

She calm'd its wild hair with a golden comb ; 
And all around each eye's sepulchral cell 

Pointed each fringed lash : The smeared loam 
With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, [kep" 

She drench'd away : — and still she comb d, an(J 

Sighing all day — and still she kiss'd, and wept ' 

" Then in a silken scarf — sweet with the dews 
Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby, 

And divine liquids come with odorous ooze 
Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, — 

She wrapp'd it up ; and for its tomb did choose 
A garden pot, wherein she laid it by, 

And cover'd it with mould ; and o'er it set 

Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. 

" And she forgot the stars, the moon, the sun ! 
And she forgot the blue above the trees ; 
And she forgot the dells where waters run, 
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze ! 
She had no knowledge when the day was don* \ 
And the new morn she saw not ! But in pea^j 
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, 
And moisten'd it with tears, unto the core !" 

pp. 72 — 73. 

The following lines from an ode to a Night- 
ingale are equally diBtinguished for harmony 
and high poetic fweiiLg : — 

" for a beaker full of the warm South ! 

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking al thj brim, 
And purple-stained mouth ! 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into tjic fjreat dim . 
Ff.de for away ! dissolve — and quite fovget 
What Thou among the leaves hast never 
known — 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret, [groan ; 
Here, — where men sit and hear each other 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and 
dies ! 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed despairs. 
The voice I hear, this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown ! 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sickfoi 
home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ! 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam, 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. ' r 

pp. 108—111. 

We know nothing at once so truly fresh, 
genuine, and English, — and, at the sam© 



418 



POETRY. 



time, so full of poetical feeling, and Greek 
elegance and simplicity, as this address to 
Autumn : — 

" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness — 
Close bosom-friend of the maturing Sun ! 
Conspiring with him now, to load and bless [run ! 
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eave3 
To bend wiih apples the moss'd cottage trees, 
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease ; 
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

" Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
Sometimes, whoever seeks abroad, may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
Or on a half reap'd furrow sound asleep ! 
Drows'd with the fumes of poppies ; while thy hook 
Spares the next swarth, and all its twined flowers ! 
And sometimes like a gleaner, thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head, across a brook ; 
Or by a cider-press, with patient look, 
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours ! 

" Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are 

they ? 
Think not of them ! Thou hast thy music too ; 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ! 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
Among the river sallows; borne aloft 
Or sinking, as the light wind lives or dies ! 
And full grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 
Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft, 
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, 
And gath'ring swallows twitter in the skies !" 

One of the sweetest of the smaller poems \t 
that entitled "The Eve of St. Agnes :' ; though 
we can now afford but a scanty extract. The 
superstition is, that if a maideu goes to bed 
on that night without supper, and never looks 
up after saying her prayers till she falls 
asleep, she will see her destined husband by 
her bed-side the moment she opens her eyes. 
The fair Madeline, who was in love with the 
gentle Porphyro, but thwarted by an imperi- 
ous guardian, resolves to try this spell : — and 
Porphyro, who has a suspicion of her purpose, 
naturally determines to do what he can to 
help it to a happy issue ; and accordingly 
prevails on her ancient nurse to admit him 
to her virgin bower ; wheft? he watches rev- 
erently, till she sinks in slumber ; — and then, 
arranging a most elegant dessert by her 
couch, and gently rousing her with a tender 
and favourite air, finally reveals himself, and 
persuades her to steal from the castle under 
his protection. The opening stanza is a fair 
specimen of the sweetness and force of the 
composition. 

46 St. Agnes Eve ! Ah, bitter cold it was ! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was acold ; 
The hare lirnp'd trembling through the frozen grass, 
And silent was the flock in woolly fold ! 
Numb were the bedesman's fingers, while he told 
His rosary ; and while his frosted breath, 
Like pious incense from a censer old, 
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, 
Past the sweet virgin's picture, while his prayers he 
saith." 

But the glory and charm of the poem is in 
the description of the fair maiden's antique 



chamber, and of all that passes in that swe««» 
and angel-guarded sanctuary : every part of 
which is touched with colours at once rich 
and delicate — and the whole chastened and 
harmonised, in the midst of its gorgeous dis- 
tinctness, by a pervading grace and purity, 
that indicate not less clearly the exaltation 
than the refinement of the author's fancy, 
We cannot resist adding a good part of this 
description. 

" Out went the taper as she hurried in ! 
Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died : 
The door she closed ! She panted, all akin 
To spirits of the air, and visions wide ! 
No utter'd syllable — or woe betide! 
But to her heart, her heart was voluble ; 
Pa ning with eloquence her balmy side ! 

" A casement high and treple-arch'd there was, 

All garlanded with carven imageries 

Of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass-, 

And diamonded with panes of quaint device 

Innumerable, of stains and splendid dyes, 

As are the tiger moth's deep-damask' d wings ! 

" Full on thi3 casement shown the wintery moon, 
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon ! 
Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
And on her silver cross, soft amethyst ; 
And on her hair, a glory like a saint ! 
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest 
Save wings, for heaven ! — Porphyro grew faint, 
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint ! 

" Anon his heart revives ! Her vespers done, 
Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
Unclasps her warmed jewels, one by one ; 
Loosens her fragrant bodice ; by degrees 
Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees! 
Half hidden, like a Mermaid in sea weed, 
Pensive a while she dreams awake, and sees 
In fancy fair, St. Agnes on her bed ! 
But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled '. 

" Soon, trembling, in her soft and chilly nest, 
In sort of wakeful dream, perplex'd she lay ; 
Until the poppied warmth of Sleep oppress'd 
Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away ! 
Haven'd alike from sunshine and from rain, 
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again L 

" Stolen to this paradise, and so entranced, 

Porphyro gaz'd upon her empty dress, 

And listen'd to her breathing; if it chane'd 

To sink into a slumb'rous tenderness? 

Which when he heard, that minute did he bless, 

And breath'd himself;— then from the closet crept, 

Noiseless as Fear in a wide wilderness, 

And over the hush'd carpet silent stept. 

" Then, by the bed-side, where the sinking moon 
Made a dim silver twilight, soft he set 
A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon 
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet, &c 

" And still she slept — an azure-lidded sleep ! 
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd ; 
While he, from forth the closet, brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; 
With jellies smoother than the creamy curd, 
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon ; 
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd 
From Fez ; and spiced dainties every one, 
From silken Samarcand, to cedar'd Lebanon. 

" Those delicates he heap'd with glowing hand, 

On golden dishes, and in baskets bright 

Of wreathed silver; sumptuous they stand 

In the retired quiet of the night, 

Filling the chilly room with perfume light. 

1 And now, my love ! my Seraph fair ! awake ! 

Ope thy sweet eyes ! for dear St. Agnes ' sake !' ' 



ROGERS' HUMAN LIFE. 



41 



It is difficult to break off in such a course 
of citation: But we must stop here; and 
ehall close our extracts with the following 
lively lines: — 

' O sweet Fancy ! let her loose \ 
Summer's joys are spoilt by use, 
And the enjoying of the Spring 
Fades as does its blossoming ; 
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, 
Blushing through the mist and dew, 
Cloys with tasting : What do then ? 
Sit thee by the ingle, when 
The sear faggot blazes bright, 
Spirit of a winter's night ; 
When the soundless earth is muffled, 
And the caked snow is shuffled 
From the plough-boy's heavy shoon ; 
When the Night doth meet the Noon, 
In a dark conspiracy 
To banish Even from her sky. 

Thou shalt hear 

Distant harvest carols clear; 
Rustle of the reaped corn; 
Sweet birds antheming the morn ; 
And, in the same moment — hark! 
'Tis the early April lark, 
Or the rooks, with busy caw, 
Foraging for sticks and straw. 
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold 
The daisy and the marigold ; 
White-plum'd lilies, and the first 
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 
Shaded hyacinth, alway 
Sapphire queen of the mid-May; 
And every leaf, and every flower 



Pearled with the self-same shower. 
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep 
Meagre from its celled sleep; 
And the snake, all winter thin, 
Cast on sunny bank its skin ; 
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see 
Hatching in the hawthorn tree, 
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest 
Quiet on her mossy nest ; 
Then the hurry and alarm 
When the bee-hive casts its swarm; 
Acorns ripe down pattering, 
While the autumn breezes sing." 

pp. 122—125. 

There is a fragment of a projected Epic, 
entitled "Hyperion," on the expulsion of 
Saturn and the Titanian deities by Jupiter 
and his younger adherents, of which we can- 
not advise the completion : For, though there 
are passages of some force and grandeur, it is 
sufficiently obvious, from the specimen before 
us, that the subject is too far removed from 
all the sources of human interest, to be suc- 
cessfully treated by any modern author. Mr. 
Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful 
imagination, a perfect ear for harmony, and a 
great familiarity with the finest diction of 
English poetry • but he must learn not to mis- 
use or misapply these advantages ; and neither 
to waste the good gifts of nature and study on 
intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too reck- 
lessly on such as are more suitable. 



(fHarcCj, 1819.) 

Human Life : a Poem. By Samuel Rogers. 4to. pp.94. London: 1819. 



These are very sweet verses. They do 
not, indeed, stir the spirit like the strong lines 
of Byron, nor make our hearts dance within 
us, like the inspiring strains of Scott ; but 
they come over us with a bewitching soft- 
ness that, in certain moods, is still more de- 
lightful — and soothe the troubled spirits with 
a refreshing sense of truth, purity, and ele- 
gance. They are pensive rather than pas- 
sionate ; and more full of wisdom and ten- 
derness than of high flights of fancy, or over- 
whelming bursts of emotion — while they are 
moulded into grace, at least as much by the 
effect of the Moral beauties they disclose, as 
by the taste and judgment with which they 
are constructed. 

The theme is Human Life ! — not only "the 
subject of all verse " — but the great centre 
and source of all interest in the works of 
human beings — to which both verse and prose 
invariably bring us back, when they succeed 
in ri vetting our attention, or rousing our emo- 
tions — and which turns every thing into poetry 
to which its sensibilities can be ascribed, or 
by which its vicissitudes can be suggested! 
Yet it is not by any means to that which, in 
ordinary language, is termed the poetry or 
the romance of human life, that the present 
work is directed. The life which it endeav- 
ours to set before us, is not life diversified 



with strange adventures, embodied in extra- 
ordinary characters, or agitated with turbu- 
lent passions — not the life of warlike paladins, 
or desperate lovers, or sublime ruffians — or 
piping shepherds or sentimental savages, or 
bloody bigots or preaching pedlars — or con- 
querors, poets, or any other species of mad- 
men — but the ordinary, practical, and amiable 
life of social, intelligent, and affectionate men 
in the upper ranks of society — such, in short, 
as multitudes may be seen living every day 
in this country — for the picture is entirely 
English — and though not perhaps in the 
choice of every one, yet open to the judg- 
ment, and familiar to the sympathies, of all. 
It contains, of course, no story, and no indi- 
vidual characters. It is properly and pecu- 
liarly contemplative — and consists in a series 
of reflections on our mysterious nature and 
condition upon earth, and on the marvellous, 
though unnoticed changes which the or linary 
course of our existence is continually bringing 
about in our being. Its marking peculianty 
in this respect is, that it is free from the least 
alloy of acrimony or harsh judgment, and 
deals not at all indeed in any species of satiri- 
cal or sarcastic remark. The poet looks here 
on man, and teaches us to look on him, not 
merely with love, but with reverence j and, 
mingling a sort of considerate pity for the 



420 



POETRY. 



shortness of his busy little career, and the 
disappointments and weaknesses by which it 
is beset, with a genuine admiration of the 
great capacities he unfolds, and the high des- 
tiny to which he seems to be reserved, works 
out a very beautiful and engaging picture, 
both of the affections by which Life is en- 
deared, the trials to which it is exposed, and 
the pure and peaceful enjoymeats with which 
it may often be filled. 

This, after all, we believe, is the tone of 
true wisdom and true virtue — and that to 
w r hich all good natures draw nearer, as they 
approach the close of life, and come to act 
less, and to know and to meditate more, on 
the varying and crowded scene of human ex- 
istence. — When the inordinate hopes of early 
youth, which provoke their own disappoint- 
ment, have been sobered down by longer ex- 
perience and more extended views — when the 
keen contentions, and eager rivalries, which 
employed our riper age, have expired or been 
abandoned— when w T e have seen, year after 
year, the objects of our fiercest hostility, and of 
our fondest affections, lie down together in the 
hallowed peace of the grave — when ordinary 
pleasures and amusements begin to be insipid, 
and the gay derision which seasoned them to 
appear flat and importunate — when we reflect 
how often we have mourned and been com- 
forted — what opposite opinions we have suc- 
cessively maintained and abandoned — to what 
inconsistent habits we have gradually been 
formed — and how frequently the objects of 
our pride have proved the sources of our 
shame ! we are naturally led to recur to the 
careless days of our childhood, and from that 
distant starting place, to retrace the whole 
of our career, and that of our contemporaries, 
with feelings of far greater humility and indul- 
gence than those by which it had been actu- 
ally accompanied : — to think all vain but af- 
fection and honour — the simplest and cheap- 
est pleasures the truest and most precious — 
and generosity of sentiment the only mental 
superiority which ought either to be wished 
for or admired. 

We are aware that we have said " some- 
thing too much of this j" and that our readers 
would probably have been more edified, as 
well as more delighted, by Mr. Rogers' text, 
than with our preachment upon it. But we 
were anxious to convey to them our sense of 
the spirit in which this poem is written ; — and 
conceive, indeed, that what we have now 
said falls more strictly within the line of our 
critical duty, than our general remarks can 
always be said to do; — because the true 
character and poetical effect of the work 
seems, in this instance, to depend much more 
on its moral expression, than on any of its 
merely literary qualities. 

The author, perhaps, may not think it any 
compliment to be thus told, that his verses 
are likely to be greater favourites with the 
old than with the young ;— and yet it is no 
small compliment, we think, to say, that they 
are likely to be more favourites with his 
readers every year they live : — And it is at 
all event* true, whether it be a compliment 



or not, that as readers of all ages, if they ait* 
any way worth pleasing, have little glimpses 
and occasional visitations of those truths which 
longer experience only renders more familiar, 
so no works ever sink so deep into amiable 
minds, or recur so often to their remem- 
brance, as those which embody simple, and 
solemn, and reconciling truths, in emphatic 
and elegant language — and anticipate, as it 
were, and bring out with effect, those salu- 
tary lessons which it seems to be the great 
end of our life to inculcate. The pictures 
of violent passion and terrible emotion — 
the breathing characters, the splendid im- 
agery and bewitching fancy of Shakespeare 
himself, are less frequently recalled, than 
those great moral aphorisms in which he has 
so often 

Told us the fashion of our own estate 
The secrets of our bosoms — 

and, in spite of all that may be said by grave 
persons, of the frivolousness of poetry, and of 
its admirers, we are persuaded that the most 
memorable, and the most generally admired 
of all its productions, are those which are 
chiefly recommended by their deep practical 
wisdom; and their coincidence with those 
salutary imitations with which nature herself 
seems to furnish us from the passing scenes 
of our existence. 

The literary character of the work is akin 
to its moral character ; and the diction is as 
soft, elegant, and simple, as the sentiments 
are generous and true. The whole piece, 
indeed, is throughout in admirable' keeping ; 
and its beauties, though of a delicate, rather 
than an obtrusive character, set off each other 
to an attentive observer, by the skill with 
which they are harmonised, and the sweet- 
ness with w T hich they slide into each other. 
The outline, perhaps, is often rather timidly 
drawn, and there is an occasional want of 
force and brilliancy in the colouring ; which 
we are rather inclined to ascribe to the refined 
and somewhat fastidious taste of the artist, 
than to any defect of skill or of power. We 
have none of the broad and blazing tints of 
Scott — nor the startling contrasts of Byron — 
nor the anxious and endlessly repeated touch 
of Southey — but something which come9 
much nearer to the soft and tender manner 
of Campbell ; with still more reserve and cau- 
tion, perhaps, and more frequent sacrifices 
of strong and popular effect, to an abhorrence 
of glaring beauties, and a disdain of vulgar 
resources. 

The work opens with a sort of epitome of 
its subject — and presents us with a brief ab- 
stract of man's (or at least Gentleman's) life, 
as marked by the four great eras of— his birth 
— his coming of age — his marriage — and his 
death. This comprehensive picture, with its 
four compartments, is comprised in less than 
thirty lines. — We give the two latter scenes 
only. 

" And soon again shall music swell the breeze ; 
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees 
Vestures of Nuptial white ; and hymns be sung, 
And violets scatter'd round ; ani old and y.ung, 



KOGERS' HUMAN LIFE. 



421 



In every cottage-porch with garlands green, 
Stand still to gaze, and, gating, bless the scene ! 
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side 
Moves in her virgin- veil the gentle Bride. 

" And once, alas ! nor in a distant hour, 
Another voice shall come from yonder tower ! 
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen, 
And weepings heard, where only joy had been ; 
When by his children borne, and from his door 
Slowly departing to return no more, 
He rests in holy earth, with them that went before ! 

" And such is Human Life ! So gliding on, 
It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone !" — pp.8 — 10. 

After 6ome general and very striking re- 
flections upon the perpetual but unperceived 
gradations by which this mysterious being is 
carried through all the stages of its fleeting 
existence, the picture is resumed and expand- 
ed with more touching and discriminating 
details. Infancy, for example, is thus finely 
delineated : — 

"The hour arrives, the moment wish'd and 
fear'd ; 
The child is born, by many a pang endeared. 
And now the mother's ear has caught hi3 cry ; 
Oh grant the cherub to her asking eye ! 
He comes ! — she clasps him. To her bosom press'd, 
He drinks the balm of life, and drops to rest. 

" Her by her smile how soon the stranger knows ; 
How soon, by his, the glad discovery shows! 
As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy, 
What answering looks of sympathy and joy ! 
He walks, he speaks. In many a broken word 
His wants, his wishes, and his griefs are heard. 
And ever, ever to her lap he flies, 
When rosy Sleep comes on with sweet surprise. 
Lock'd in her arms, his arms across her flung 
(That name most dear for ever on his tongue), 
As with soft accents round her neck he clings, 
And, cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings, 
How blest to feel the beatings of his heart, 
Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart ; 
Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove, 
And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love !" 

pp. 19, 20. 

This is pursued in the same strain of ten- 
derness and beauty through all its most in- 
teresting bearings ; — and then we pass to the 
bolder kindlings and loftier aspirations of 
Youth. 

" Then is the Age of Admiration — then 
Gods walks the earth, or beings more than men ! 
Ha! then come thronging many a wild desire, 
And high imaginings and thoughts of fire ! 
Then (rom within a voice exclaims ' Aspire !' 
Phantoms, that upward point, before him pass, 
As in the Cave athwart the Wizard's glass," &c. 

p. 24. 

We cut short this tablature, however, as 
well as the spirited sketches of impetuous 
courage and devoted love that belong to the 
same period, to come to the joys and duties 
of mature r life ; which, we think, are described 
with still more touching and characteristic 
beauties. The Youth passes into this more 
tranquil and responsible state, of course, by 
Marriage ; and we have great satisfaction in 
recurring, with our uxorious poet, to his rep- 
resentation of that engaging ceremony, upon 
which his thoughts seem to dwell with so 
much fondness and complacency. 

" Then are they blest indeed ! and swift the hours 
Till her young Sisters wreathe her hair in flowers, 
Kindling her beauty — while, unseen, the least 
Twitches her robe, then runs behind the rest. 



Known by her laugh that will not be suppress'd. 
Then before All they stand ! The holy vow 
And ring of gold, no fond illusions now, 
Bind her as his ! Across the threshold led, 
And ev'ry tear kiss'd off as soon as shed, 
His house she enters ; there to be a light 
Shining within, when all without is night ! 
A guardian-angel o'er his life presiding, 
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing! 
How oft her eyes read his ; her gentle mind, 
To all his wishes, all his thoughts inclin'd ; 
Still subject — even on the watch to borrow 
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow.'' 

pp. 32, 33. 

Beautiful as this is, we think it much infe- 
rior to what follows; when Parental affection 
comes to complete the picture of Connubial 
bliss. 

" And laughing eyes and laughing voices fill 
Their halls with gladness. She, when all are still, 
Comes and undraws the curtain as they lie 
In sleep, how beautiful ! He, when the sky 
Gleams, and the wood sends up its harmony, 
When, gathering round his bed, they climb to share 
His kisses, and with gentle violence there 
Break in upon a dream not half so fair, 
Up to the hill top leads their little feet ; 
Or by the forest-lodge ; perchance to meet 
The stag-herd on its march, perchance to hear 
The otter rustling in the sedgy mere ; 
Or to the echo near the Abbot's tree, 
That gave him back his words of pleasantry — 
When the House stood, no merrier man than he ! 
And, as they wander with a keen delight, 
If but a leveret catch their quicker sight 
Down a green alley, or a squirrel then 
Climb the gnarled oak, and look and climb again, 
If but a moth flit by, an acorn fall, 
He turns their thoughts to Him who made them ail/* 

pp. 34—36. 
"But Man is born to suffer. On the door 
Sickness has set her mark ; and now no more 
Laughter within we hear, or wood-notes wild 
As of a mother singing to her child; 
All now in anguish from that room retire, 
Where a young cheek glows with consuming fire. 
And innocence breathes contagion ! — all but one, 
But she who gave it birth ! — From her alone 
The medicine-cup is taken. Through the night, 
And through the day, that with its dreary light 
Comes unregarded, she sits silent by, 
Watching the changes with her anxious eye : 
While they without, listening below, above, 
(Who but in sorrow know how much they love ?) 
From every little noise catch hope and fear, 
Exchanging still, still as they turn to hear, 
Whispers and sighs, and smiles all tenderness ! 
That would in vain the starting tear repress." 

pp. 38, 39. 

The scene, however, is not always purely 
domestic — though all its lasting enjoyments 
are of that origin, and look back to that con- 
summation. His country requires the arm of 
a free man ! and home and all its joys musl 
be left, for the patriot battle. The sanguinary 
and tumultuous part is slightly touched ; But 
the return is exquisite; nor do we know, any 
where, any verses more touching and full of 
heartfelt beauty, than some of those we ai« 
about to extract. 

14 He goes, and Night comes as it never came ! 
With shri. ks of horror! — and a vault of flame ! 
And lo ! when morning mocks the desolate, 
Red runs the rivulet by ; and at the gate 
Breathless a horse without his rider stands! 
But hush ! . . a shout from the victorious bands 
And oh the smiles and tears ! a sire restor'd ! 
One wears his helm — one buckles on nis sword. 
o T. 



POETRY. 



Oae hangs the wall with laurel-leaves, and all 
Spring to prepare the soldier's festival ; 
While She best-lov'd, till then forsaken never, 
Clings round his neck, as she would cling for ever ! 

" Such golden deeds lead on to golden days, 
Pays of domestic peace — by him who plays 
On the great stage how uneventful thought; 
Yet with a thousand busy projects fraught, 
A thousand incidents that stir the mind 
To pleasure, such as leaves no sting behind ! 
Such as the heart delights in — and records 
Within how silently — in more than words ! 
A Holyday — the frugal banquet spread 
On the fresh herbage near the fountain-head 
With quips and cranks — what time the wood-lark 

there 
Scatters her loose notes on the sultry air, 
Vhat time the king-fisher sit's perch'd below, 
/here, silver-bright, the water lilies blow :— 
. Wake — the booths whit'ning the village-green, 
Vhere Punch and Scaramouch aloft are seen; 
Jign beyond sign in close array unfurl'd, 
'iciuring at large the wonders of the world; 
_nd far and wide, over the vicar's pale, 
-iack hoods and scarlet crossing hill and dale, 
All, all abroad, and music in the gale : — 
A Wedding-dance — a dance info the night ! 
On the barn-floor when maiden-feet are light ; 
When the young bride receives the promis'd dower, 
And flowers are flung, 4 herself a fairer flower :' — 
A morning-visit to the poor man's shed, 
< W ho would be rich while One was wanting bread ?) 
When all are emulous to bring relief, 
And tears are falling fast — but not for grief: — 
A Walk in Spring — Gr*tt*n, like those with thee, 
By the heath-side (who had not envied me ?) 
When the sweet limes, so full of bees in June, 
Led us to meet beneath their bou°hs at noon ; 
And thou didst say which of the Great and Wise, 
Could they but hear and at thy bidding rise, 
Thou wouldst call up and question." — pp. 42 — 46. 

Other cares and trials and triumphs await 
him. He fights the good fight of freedom in 
the senate, as he had done before in the field — 
and with greater peril. The heavy hand of 
power weighs upon him, and he is arraigned 
of crimes against the State. 

" Like Hampden struggling in his country's cause, 

The first, the foremost to obey the laws, 

The last to brook oppression ! On he moves, 

Careless of blame while his own heart approves, 

Careless of ruin — (" For the general good 

'Tis not the first time I shall shed my blood.") _ 

On through that gate misnamed,* through which 

before. 
Went Sidney, Russel, Raleigh. Cranmer, More ! 
On into twilight within walls of stone, 
Then to the place of trial ; and alone, 
Alone before his judges in array 
Stands for his life ! there, on that awful day, 
Counsel of friends — all human help denied— 
All but from her who sits the pen to guide. 
Like that sweet saint who sat by Russel' s sidet 
Under the judgment-seat ! — But guilty men 
Triumph not always. To his hearth again, 

* Traitor's Gate, in the Tower. 

t We know of nothing at once so pathetic and so 
sublime, as the few simple sentences here alluded 
to, in the account of Lord RussePs trial. 

Lord Russel. May I have somebody write to help 
my memory ? 

Mr. Attorney General. Yes, a Servant. 

Lord Chief Justice. Any of your Servants shall 
assist you in writing any thing you please for you. 

Lord Russel. My Wife is here, my Lord, to do it ? 
——When we recollect who Russel and his wife 
were, and what a destiny was then impending, this 
one trait makes the heart swell, almost to bursting. 



Again with honour to his hearth restor r d, 
Lo, in the accustom'd chair and at the board, 
Thrice greeting those that most withdraw theft 

claim 
(The humblest servant calling by his name), 
He reads thanksgiving in the eyes of all, 
All met as at a holy festival ! 
— On the day destined for his funeral I 
Lo, there the Friend : who, entering where he lay, 
Breath'd in his drowsy ear ' Away, away ! 
Take thou my cloak — Nay, start not, but obey — 
Take it and leave me.' And the blushing Maid, 
Who through the streets as through a desert stray'd; 
And, when her dear, dear Father pass'd along, 
Would not be held; but, bursting through the throng, 
Halberd and battle-axe — kissed him o'er and o'er ; 
Then turn'd and went — then sought him as before, 
Believing she should see his face no more !" 

pp. 48—50. 

What follows is sacred to still higher re- 
membrances. 

" And now once more where most he Iov'd to be, 

In his own fields — breathing tranquillity — 

We hail him — not less happy, P'ox, than thee! 

Thee at St. Anne's, so soon of Care beguil'd, 

Playful, sincere, and artless as a child ! 

Thee, who wouldst watch a bird's nest on the spray, 

Through the green leaves exploring, day by day. 

How oft from grove to grove, from seat to seat, 

With thee conversing in thy lov'd retreat, 

I saw the sun go down ! — Ah, then 'twas thine 

Ne'er to forget some volume half divine, [shade 

Shakespeare's or Dryden's — thro' the chequer'd 

Borne in thy hand behind thee as we stray'd ; 

And where we sate (and many a halt we made) 

To read there with a fervour all thy own, 

And in thy grand and melancholy tone, 

Some splendid passage not to thee unknown, 

Fit theme for long discourse. — Thy bell has toll'd I 

— But in thy place among us we behold 

One that resembles thee." — pp. 52, 53. 

The scene of closing Age is not less beautiful 
and attractive — nor less true and exemplary. 

" 'Tis the sixth hour. 
The village-clock strikes from the distant tower. 
The ploughman leaves the field ; the traveller hears, 
And to the inn spurs forward. Nature wears 
Her sweetest smile ; the day-star in the west 
Yet hovering, and the thistle's down at rest. 

" And such, his labour done, the calm He knows, 
Whose footsteps we have follow'd. Round him 

glows 
An atmosphere that brightens to the last ; 
The light, that shines, reflected from the Past, 
— And from the Future too ! Active in Thought 
Among old books, old friends ; and not unsought 
Bv the wise stranger. In his morning-hours, 
When gentle airs stir the fresh-blowing flowers, 
He muses, turning up the idle weed ; 
Or prunes or grafts, or in the yellow mead 
Watches his bees at hiving-time ; and now, 
The ladder resting on the orchard-bough, 
Culls the delicious fruit that hangs in air, 
The purple plum, green fig, or golden pear, 
Mid sparkling eyes, and hands uplifted there. 

" At night, when all, assembling round the fire, 
Closer and closer draw till they retire, 
A tale is told of India or Japan, 
Of merchants from Golcond or Astraean, 
What time wild Nature revell'd unrestrain'd, 
And Sinbnd voyag'd and the Caliphs reign'd ;— 
Of some Norwegian, while the icy gale 
Rings in the shrouds and beats the iron sail, 
Among the snowy Alps of Polar seas 
Immoveable — for ever there to freeze ! 
Or some great Caravan, from well to well 
Winding as darkness on the desert fell," &c 



ROGERS' HUMAN LIFE. 



An 



" Age has now 
S(h np'd with its signet that ingenuous brow ; 
.And, 'mid his old hereditary trees, 
Trees he has climb'd so oft, he sits and sees 
His children's children playing round his knees: 
Envying no more the young their energies 
Than they an old man when his words are wise ; 
His a delight how pure . . . without alloy ; 
Strong in^their strength, rejoicing in their joy ! 

" Now in their turn assisting, they repay 
The anxious cares of many and many a day; 
And now by those he loves reliev'd, restor'd, 
His very wants and weaknesses afford 
A feeling of enjoyment. In his walks, 
Leaning on them, how oft he stops and talks, 
While they look up! Their questions, their replies, 
Fresh as the welling waters, round him rise, 
Gladdening his spirit." — pp. 53 — 61. 

We have dwelt too long, perhaps, on a 
work more calculated to make a lasting, than 
a strong impression on the minds of its readers 
— and not, perhaps, very well calculated for 
being read at all in the pages of a Miscel- 
laneous Journal. We have gratified ourselves, 
however, in again going over it; and hope we 
have not much wearied our readers. It is 
followed by a very striking copy of verses 
written at Paestum in 1816 — and more char- 
acteristic of that singular and most striking 
scene, than any thing we have ever read, in 
prose or verse, on the subject. The ruins of 
Paestum, as they are somewhat improperly 
called, consist of three vast and massive 
Temples, of the most rich and magnificent 
architecture ; which are not ruined at all, 
but as entire as on the day when they were 
built, while there is not a vestige left of the 
city to which they belonged ! They stand in a 
desert and uninhabited plain, which stretches 
for many miles from the sea to the mountains 
— and, after the subversion of the Roman 
greatness, had' fallen into such complete obli- 
vion, that for nearly nine hundred years they 
had never been visited or heard of by any in- 
telligent person, till they were accidentally 
discovered about the middle of the last cen- 
tury. — The whole district in which they are 
situated, though once the most fertile and 
flourishing part of the Tyrrhene shore, has 
been almost completely depopulated by the 
Mal'aria; and is now. in every sense of the 
word, a vast and dreary desert. The follow- 
ing lines seem to us to tell all that need be 
told, and to express all that can be felt of a 
gcene bh strange and so mournful. 



11 They stand between the mountains and the sea ; 
Awful memorials — but of whom we know not! 
The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck. 
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak, 
Points to the work of magic, and moves on. 
Time was they stood along the crowded street, 
Temples of Gods! and on their ample steps 
What various habits, various tongues beset 
The brazen gates, for prayer and sacrifice ! 

" How many centuries did the sun go round 
From Mount Alburnus to the Tyrrhene sea, 
While, by some spell render'd invisible, 
Or, if approach'd, approached by him alone 
Who saw as though he saw not, they remain'd 
As in the darkness of a sepulchre, 
Waiting the appointed time ! All, all within 
Proclaims that Nature had resum'd her right, 
And taken to herself what man renoune'd ; 
No cornice, triglyph, or worn abacus, 
But with thick ivy hung or branching fern, 
Their iron-brown o'erspread with brightest verdure! 

" From my youth upward have I longed to tread 
This classic ground. — And am I here at last? 
Wandering at will through the long porticoes, 
And catching, as through some majestic grove, 
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like. 
Mountains and mountain-gulphs ! and, half-way up, 
Towns like the living rock from which they grew T 
A cloudy region, black and desolate, 
Where once a slave withstood a world in arms. 

"The air is sweet with violets, running wild 
Mid broken sculptures and fallen capitals! 
Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts, 
Sail'd slowly by, two thousand years ago, 
For Athens ; when a ship, if north-east winds 
Blew from the Paestan gardens, slack'd her course. 
The birds are hush'd awhile; and nothing stirs, 
Save the shrill-voic'd cigala flitiing round 
On the rough pediment to sit and sing ; 
Or the green lizard rustling through the grass, 
And up the fluted shaft, wiih short quick motion, 
To vanish in the chinks that Time has made ! 

" In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk 
Seen at his setting, and a Hood of light 
Filling the courts of these old sanctuaries, 
(Gigantic shadows, broken and eonfus'd, 
Across the innumerable columns flung) 
In such an hour he came, who saw ;.nd told, 
Led by the mighty Genius of the Place ' 
Walls of some capital city first appear'd, 
Half raz'd, half sunk, or scatter'd as in scorn ; 
— And what within them ? what but in the midst 
These Three, in more than their original grandeur, 
And, round about, no stone upon another! 
As if the spoiler had fallen back in fear, 
And, turning, left them to the elements." 

The volume ends with a little ballad, enti- 
tled " The Boy of Egremond" — which is well 
enough for a Lakish ditty, but not quite wor- 
thy of the place in which we meet it. 



4*4 



POETRY. 



(Jane, 1815.) 



Roderick The Last of the Goths. By Robert Southey, Esq., Poet-Laureate, and Member 
of the Royal Spanish Academy. 4to. pp. 477. London: 1814.* 



This is the best, we think, and the most 
powerful of all Mr. Southey's poems. It 
abounds with lofty sentiments, and magnifi- 
cent imagery ; and contains more rich and 
comprehensive descriptions — more beautiful 
pictures of pure affection — and more im- 
pressive representations of mental agony and 
exultation than we have often met with in 
the compass of a single volume. 

A work, of which all this can be said with 
justice, cannot be without great merit ; and 
ought not, it may be presumed, to be without 
great popularity. Justice, however, has some- 
thing more to say of it : and we are not quite 
sure either that it will be very popular, or that 
it deserves to be so. It is too monotonous — 
too wordy — and too uniformly stately, tragical, 
and emphatic. Above all, it is now and then 
a little absurd — and pretty frequently not a 
little affected. 

The author is a poet undoubtedly : but not 
of the highest order. There is rather more 
of rhetoric than of inspiration about him — 
and we have oftener to admire his taste and 
industry in borrowing and adorning, than the 
boldness or felicity of his inventions. He 
has indisputably a great gift of amplifying 
and exalting : but uses it. we must say, rather 
unmercifully. He is never plain, concise, or 
unaffectedly simple, and is so much bent upon 
making the most of every thiug, that he is 
perpetually overdoing. His sentiments and 
situations are. of course, sometimes ordinary 
enough; but the tone of emphasis and pre- 
tension is never for a moment relaxed ; and 
the most trivial occurrences, and fantastical 
distresses, are commemorated with the same 
vehemence and exaggeration of manner, as 
the most startling incidents, or the deepest 
and most heart-rending disasters. This want 
of relief and variety is sufficiently painful of 



* I have, in my time, said petulant and provo- 
king things of Mr. Southey : — and such as I would 
not 6ay now. But I am not conscious that I was 
ever unfair to his Poetry : and if I have noted 
what I thought its faults, in too arrogant and de- 
risive a spirit, I think I have never failed to give 
hearty and cordial praise to its beauties — and 
generally dwelt much more largely on the latter 
than the former. Few things, at all events, would 
now grieve me more, than to think I might give 
pain to his many friends and admirers, by reprint- 
ing, so soon after his death, any thing which might 
appear derogatory either to his character or his 

?enius; and therefore, though I cannot say that I 
ave substantially changed any of the opinions I 
ftave formerly expressed aa to his writings, I only 
insert in this publication my review of his last 
considerable poem : which may be taken as con- 
veying my matured opinion of his merits — and will 
6e felt, 1 trust, to have done no scanty or unwilling 
justice to his great and peculiar powers. 



itself in a work of such length ; but its worst 
effect is, that it gives an air of falsetto and 
pretension to the whole strain of the compo- 
sition, and makes us suspect the author of 
imposture and affectation, even when he has 
good enough cause for his agonies and rap- 
tures. 

How is it possible, indeed, to commit our 
sympathies, without distrust, to the hands of 
a writer, who, after painting with infinite force 
the anguish of soul which pursued the fallen 
Roderick into the retreat to which his crimes 
had driven him, proceeds with redoubled 
emphasis to assure us, that neither his re- 
morse nor his downfal were half so intolera- 
ble to him, as the shocking tameness of the sea 
birds who flew round about him in that utter 
solitude ! and were sometimes so familiar as 
to brush his cheek with their wings ? 

" For his lost crown 
And sceptre never had he felt a thought 
Of pain : Repentance had no pangs to spare 
For trifles such as these. The loss of these 
Was a cheap penalty : . . that he had fallen 
Down to the iowest depth of wretchedness, 
His hope and consolation. But to lose 
His human station in the scale of things, . . 
To see brute Nature scorn him, and renounce 
Its homage to the human form divine! . . 
Had then almighty vengeance thus reveal'd 
His punishment, and was he fallen indeed 
Below fallen man, . . below redemption's reach, . . 
Made lower than the beasts?" — p. 17. 

This, if we were in bad humour, we should 
be tempted to say, was little better than drivel- 
ling ; — and certainly the folly of it is greatly 
aggravated by the tone of intense solemnity 
in which it is conveyed : But the worst fault 
by far, and the most injurious to the effect of 
the author's greatest beauties, is the extreme 
diffuseness and verbosity of his style, and his 
unrelenting anxiety to leave nothing to the 
fancy, the feeling, or even the plain under- 
standing of his readers — but to have every 
thing set down, and impressed and hammered 
into them, which it may any how conduce to 
his glory that they should comprehend. There 
never was any author, we are persuaded, who 
had so great a distrust of his readers' capa- 
city, or such an unwillingness to leave any 
opportunity of shining unimproved ; and ac- 
cordingly, we rather think there is no author, 
who, with the same talents and attainments, 
has been so generally thought tedious — or 
acquired, on the whole, a popularity so in- 
ferior to his real deservings. On the present 
occasion, we have already said, his deserv- 
ings appear to us unusually great, and his 
faults less than commonly conspicuous. But 
though there is less childishness and trifling 
iii tins, than in any of his other productions, 



SOUTHER'S RODERICK. 



425 



there is still, we are afraid, enough of tedious- 
ness and affected energy, very materially to 
obstruct the popularity which the force, and 
the tenderness and beauty of its better parts, 
might have otherwise commanded. 

There is one blemish, however, which we 
think peculiar to the work before us ; and 
that is, the outrageously religious, or rather 
fanatical, tone which pervades its whole 
structure ; — the excessive horror and abuse 
with which the Mahometans are uniformly 
spoken of um account of their religion alone ; 
and the offensive frequency and familiarity 
with which the name and the sufferings of 
our Saviour are referred to at every turn of 
the story. The spirit which is here evinced 
towards the Moors, not only by their valiant 
opponents, but by tne author when speaking 
in his own person, is neither that of pious 
reprobation nor patriotic hatred, but of savage 
and bigotted persecution ; and the heroic 
character and heroic deeds of his greatest 
favourites are debased and polluted by the 
paltry superstitions, and sanguinary fanati- 
cism, which he is pleased to ascribe to them. 
This, which we are persuaded would be re- 
volting in a nation of zealous Catholics, must 
be still more distasteful, we think, among 
sober Protestants ; while, on the other hand, 
the constant introduction of the holiest per- 
sons, and most solemn rites of religion, for 
the purpose of helping on the flagging in- 
terest of a story devised for amusement, can 
scarcely fail to give scandal and offence to all 
persons of right feeling or just taste. This 
remark may be thought a little rigorous by 
those who have not looked into the work to 
which it is applied — For they can have no 
idea of the extreme frequency, and palpable 
extravagance, of the allusions and invoca- 
tions to which we have referred. — One poor 
woman, for example, who merely appears to 
give alms to the fallen Roderick in the season 
of his humiliation, is very needlessly made to 
exclaim, as she offers her pittance, 

" Christ Jesus, for his Mother's sake, 
Have mercy on thee," 

— and soon after, the King himself, when he 
hears one of his subjects uttering curses on 
his name, is pleased to say, 

" Oh, for the love of Jesus curse him not ! 
O brother, donotrurse that sinful soul, 
Which Jesus suffer'd on the cross to save !" 

Whereupon, one of the more charitable audi- 
tors rejoins. 

" Christ bless thee, brother, for that Christian 
speech !" 

— and so the talk goes on, through the greater 
part of the poem. Now, we must say we 
think this both indecent and ungraceful; and 
look upon it as almost as exceptionable a 
way of increasing the solemnity of poetry, as 
common swearing is of adding to the energy 
of discourse. 

We are not quite sure whether we should 

reckon his choice of a subject, among Mr. 

Sou they 's errors on the present occasion; — 

but certainly no theme cculd well have been 

54 



suggested, more utteily alien to all English 
prejudices, traditions, and habits of poetical 
contemplation, than the domestic history of 
the last Gothic King of Spain, — a history ex- 
tremely remote and obscure in itself, and 
treating of persons and places and events, 
with which no visions or glories are associated 
in English imaginations. The subject, how- 
ever, was selected, we suppose, during that 
period when a zeal for Spanish liberty, and a 
belief in Spanish virtue, spirit and talent, were 
extremely fashionable in this country; and 
before "the universal Spanish people" had 
made themselves the objects of mixed con- 
tempt and compassion, by rushing prone into 
the basest and most insulted servitude that 
was ever asserted over human beings. From 
this degradation we do not think they will be 
redeemed by all the heroic acts recorded in 
this poem, — the interest of which, we sus- 
pect, will be considerably lowered, by the late 
revolution in public opinion, as to the merits 
of the nation to whose fortunes it relates. — 
After all, however, we think it must be allow- 
ed, that any author who interests us in his 
story, has either the merit of choosing a good 
subject, or a still higher merit; — and Mr. 
Southey, in our opinion, has made his story 
very interesting. Nor should it be forgotten, 
that by the choice which he has made, he has 
secured immense squadrons of Moors, with 
their Asiatic gorgeousness, and their cymbals, 
turbans, and Paynim chivalry, to give a pic- 
turesque effect to his battles, — and bevies of 
veiled virgins and ladies in armour, — and 
hermits and bishops. — and mountain villagers, 
— and torrents and forests, and cork trees and 
sierras, to remind us of Don Quixote, — and 
store of sonorous names : — and altogether, he 
might have chosen worse among more familiar 
objects. 

The scheme or mere outline of the fable is 
extremely short and simple. Roderick, the 
valiant and generous king of the Goths, being 
unhappily married, allows his affections to 
wander on the lovely daughter of Count Julian; 
and is so far overmastered by his passion, as, 
in a moment of frenzy, to offer violence to her 
person. Her father, in revenge of this cruel 
wrong, invites the Moors to seize on the king- 
dom of the guilty monarch ; — and assuming 
their faith, guides them at last to a signal and 
sanguinary victory. Roderick, after perform- 
ing prodigies of valour, in a seven-days fight, 
feels at length that Heaven has ordained all 
this misery as the penalty of his offences; 
and, overwhelmed with remorse and inward 
agony, falls from his battle horse in the midst 
of the carnage : Stripping off his rich armour, 
he then puts on the dress of a dead peasant; 
and, pursued by revengeful furies, rushes 
desperately on through his lost and desolated 
kingdom, till he is stopped by the sea ; on the 
rocky and lonely shore of which he passes 
more than a year in constant agonies of peni- 
tence and humiliation, — till he is roused at 
length, by visions and impulses, to undertake 
something for the deliverance of his suffering 
people. Grief and abstinence have now so 
changed him, that he is recognised by no one , 
27 2 



426 



POETRY. 



and being universally believed to have fallen 
in battle, he traverses great part of his for- 
mer realm, witnessing innumerable scenes of 
wretchedness and valour, and rousing, by his 
holy adjurations, all the generous spirits in 
Spain, to uni':e against the invaders. After a 
variety of trials and adventures, he at last 
recovers his good war horse, on the eve of a 
great battle with the infidels; and, bestriding 
him in his penitential robes, rushes furiouslv 
into the heart of the fight, where, kindling 
with the scene and the cause, he instinctively 
raises his ancient war cry, as he deals his 
resistless blows on the heads of the mis- 
believers; and the thrilling words of "Rode- 
rick the Goth! Roderick and victory!" re- 
sounding over the astonished field, are taken 
up by his inspired followers, and animate 
them to the utter destruction of the enemy. 
At the close of the day, however, when the 
field is won, the battle horse is found without 
its rider ! and the sword which he wielded 
lying at his feet. The poem closes with a 
brief intimation, that it was not known till 
many centuries thereafter, that the heroic 
penitent had again sought the concealment of 
a remote hermitage, and ended his days in 
solitary penances. The poem, however, both 
requires and deserves a more particular ana- 
lysis. 

The first book or canto opens with a slight 
sketch of the invasion, and proceeds to the 
fatal defeat and heart-struck flight of Roderick. 
The picture of the first descent of the Moorish 
invaders, is a good specimen of the author's 
broader and more impressive manner. He is 
addressing the rock of Gibraltar. 

" Thou saw'st the dark blue waters flash before 
Their ominous way, and whiten round their keels ; 
Their swarthy myriads darkening o'er thy sands. 
There, on the bearh, the misbelievers spread 
Their banners, flaunting to ihe sun and breeze : 
Fair shone the sun upon their proud array, 
While turbans, glitt'ring armour, shields engrail'd 
With gold, and scymitars of Syrian steel; 
And gently did the breezes, as in sport, 
Curl Their long flags outrolling, and display 
The blazon'd scrolls of blasphemy." — pp. 2, 3. 

The agony of the distracted king, as he 
flies in vain from himself through his lost and 
ruined kingdom ; and the spectacle which 
every where presented itself of devastation 
and terror, and miserable emigration, are rep- 
resented with great force of colouring. At 
the end of the seventh day of that solitary 
and despairing flight, he arrives at the portal 
of an ancient convent, from which all its holy 
tenants had retired on the approach of the 
Moors, except one aged priest, who had staid 
to deck the altar, and earn his crown of martyr- 
dom from the infidel host. By him Roderick 
is found grovelling at the foot of the cross, and 
drowned in bitter and penitential sorrows. — 
He leads him in with compassionate soothings, 
and supplicates him before the altar to be of 
comfort, and to trust in mercy. The result is 
told with great feeling and admirable effect : 
and the worthy father weeps and watches with 
his penitent through the night : and in the 
morning resolves te forego the glories of mar- 



tyrdom for his sake, and to bearnim company 
in the retreat to winch he is hastening. They 
set out together, and fix themselves in a little 
rocky bay, opening out to the lonely roar of 
the Atlantic. 

" Behind them was the desert, off'ring fruit 
And water for their need ; on either side 
The white sand sparkling to the sun ; in front, 
Great Ocean with its everlasting voice, 
As in perpetual jubilee, proelaim'd 
The wonders of the Almighty, filling thus 
The pauses of their fervent orisons. 
Where better could the wanderers rest than here V* 

p. 14. 

The Second Book begins with stating, that 
Roderick passed twelve months in penance 
and austerities, in this romantic retreat. — At 
the end of that time, his ghostly father dies; 
and his agonies become more intolerable, in 
the utter desolation to which he is now left. 
The author, however, is here a little unlucky 
in two circumstances, which he imagines and 
describes at great length, as aggravating his 
unspeakable misery ; — one is the tameness of 
the birds, — of which we have spoken already 
— the other is the reflection which he very 
innocently puts into the mouth of the lonely 
King, that all the trouble he has taken in dig- 
ging his own grave, will now be thrown away, 
as there will probably be nobody to stretch 
him out, and cover him decently up in it ! — 
However he is clearly made out to be \ery 
miserable ; and prays for death, or for the 
imposition of some more active penance — 

" any thing 

But stillness, and this dreadful solitude!" 

At length he is visited, in his sleep, by a 
vision of his tender mother; who gives him 
her blessing in a gentle voice, and says, 
" Jesus have mercy on thee." The air and 
countenance of this venerable shade, as she 
bent in sorrow over her unhappy son, are 
powerfully depicted in the following allusion 
to her domestic calamities. He traced there, 
it seems, not only the settled sadness of her 
widowhood — 

M But a more mortal wretchedness than when 
Wiiiza's ruffians and the red hot brass 
Had done their work, and in her arms she held 
Her eyeless husband ; wip'd away the sweat 
Which still his tortures forc'd from every pore ; 
Cool'd his scorch'd lips with medicinal herbs, 
And pray'd the while for patience for herself 
And him, — and pray'd for vengeance too ! and found 
Best comfort in her curses." — pp. 23, 24. 

While he gazes on this piteous countenance, 
the character of the vision is suddenly al- 
tered ; and the verses describing the alteration 
afford a good specimen both of Mr. Southey'a 
command of words, and of the profusion with 
which he sometimes pours them out on hia 
readers. 

" And lo \ her form was chang'd ! 

Radiant in arms she stood ! a bloody Cross 
Gleam'd on her breastplate ; in her shield display'd 
Erect a Lion ramp'd ; her helmed head 
Rose like the Berecynthian Goddess crown'd 
With towers, and in her dreadful hand the sword, 
Red as a fire-brand blaz'd ! Anon the tramp 



SOUTHEY'S RODERICK. 



427 



Of horsemen, and the din of multitudes 
Moving to mortal conflict, rung around ; 
The battle-song, the clang of sword and shield, 
War-cries and tumult, strife and hate and rage, 
Blasphemous prayers, confusion, agony, 
Rout and pursuit, and death ! and over all 
The shout of Victory . . . of Spain and Victory !" 

pp. 24, 25. 

In awaking from this prophetic dream, he 
resolves to seek occasion of active service, 
in such humble capacity as becomes his fallen 
fortune ; and turns from this first abode of his 
penitence and despair. 

The Third Book sets him on his heroic pil- 
grimage ; and opens with a fine picture. 

" 'Twas now the earliest morning ; soon the Sun, 
Rising above Alhardos. pour'd his light 
Amid the forest, and with ray aslant 
Em' ring its depth illum'd the branchless pines; 
Brighten'd their bark, ting'd with a redder hue 
Its rusty stains, and cast along the floor 
Long lines of shadow, where they rose erect, 
Like pillars of the temple. With slow foot 
Roderick pursued his way." — p. 27. 

We do not know that we could extract from 
the whole book a more characteristic passage 
than that which describes his emotion on his 
first return to the sight of man. and the altered 
aspect of his fallen people. He approaches to 
the walls of Leyria. 

" The sounds, the sight 

Of turban, girdle, robe, and scymitar, 

And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts 

Of anger, shame, and anguish in the Goth! 

The unaccustom'd face of human-kind 

Confus'd him now, and through the streets he went 

With hagged mien, and countenance like one 

Craz'd or bewilder'd. 

"One stopt him short, 
Put alms into his hand, and then desir'd, 
In broken Gothic speech, the moon-struck man 
To bless him. With a look of vacancy 
Roderick receiv'd the alms; his wand'ring eye 
Fell on the money ; and the fallen King, 
Seeing his own royal impress on the piece, 
Broke out into a quick convulsive voice, 
That seem'd like laughter first, but ended soon 
In hollow groans supprest ! 
A Christian woman spinning at her door 
Beheld him, and with sudden pity touch'd, 
She laid her spindle by, and running: in 
Took bread, and following after call'd him back, 
And placing in his passive hands the loaf, 
She said, Christ Jesus for his Mother's sake 
Have mercy on thee! With a look that seem'd 
Like idiotcy, he heard her, and stood still, 
Staring awhile ; then bursting into tears 
Wept like a child ! 

" But when he reach'd 
The open fields, and found himself alone 
Beneath the starry canopy of Heaven, 
The sense of solitude, so dreadful late, 
Was then repose and comfort. There he stopt 
Beside a little rill, and brake the loaf; 
And shedding o'er that unaccustom'd food 
Painful but quiet tears, with grateful soul 
He breath'd thanksgiving forth ; then made his bed 
On heath and myrtle." — pp. 28 — 30. 

After this, he journeys on through deserted 
hamlets and desolated towns, till, on entering 
the silent streets of Auria. yet black with 
conflagration, and stained with blood, the 
vestiges of a more heroic resistance appear 
before mm. 

" Helmet and turban, scymitar and sword, 
Christian and Moor in death promiscuous lay 



Each where they fell ; and blood-flakes, parch* d 

and crack'd 
Like the dry slime of some receding flood ; 
And half-burnt bodies, which allur'd from far 
The wolf and raven, and to impious food 
Tempted the houseless dog." — p. 36. 

While he is gazing on this dreadful 6cene 
with all the sympathies of admiration and 
sorrow, a young and lovely woman rusnes 
from the ruins, and implores him to assist her 
in burying the bodies of her child, husband, 
and parents, who all lie mangled at her feet. 
He sadly complies; and listens, with beating 
heart and kindling eyes, to the vehement nar- 
rative and lofty vow of revenge with which 
this heroine closes her story. The story itself 
is a little commonplace; turning mainly upon 
her midnight slaughter of the Moorish cap- 
tain, who sought to make love to her after the 
sacrifice of all her family; but the expression 
of her patriotic devotedness and religious ar- 
dour of revenge, is given with great energy; 
as well as the effect which it produces on the 
waking spirit of the King. He repeats the 
solemn vow which she has just taken, and 
consults her as to the steps that may be taken 
for rousing the valiant of the land to their as- 
sistance. The high-minded Amazon then 
asks the name of her first proselyte. 

" Ask any thing but that ! 

The fallen King replied. My name was lost 
When from the Goths the sceptre past away !" 

She rejoins, rather less felicitously, "Then 
be thy name Maccabee ;"' and sends him on an 
embassage to a worthy abbot among the 
mountains ; to whom he forthwith reports 
what he had seen and witnessed. Upon hear- 
ing the story of her magnanimous devotion, 
the worthy priest instantly divines the name 
of the heroine. 

" Oh none but Adosinda! . .none but she, . . 
None but that noble heart, which was the heart 
Of Auria while it stood — its life and strength, 
More than her father's presence, or the arm 
Of her brave lord, all valiant as he was. 
Hers was the spirit which inspir'd old age, 
Ambitious boyhood, girls in timid youth, 
And virgins in the beauty of their spring. 
And youthful mothers, doting like herself 
With ever-anxious love: She breath'd through all 
That zeal and that devoted faithfulness, 
Which to the invader's threats and promises 
Turn'd a deaf ear alike," &c. — pp. 53 — 54. 

The Kins: then communes on the affairs of 
Spain with this venerable Ecclesiastic and his 
associates ; who are struck with wonder at the 
lofty mien which still shines through his sunk 
and mortified frame. 

" They scann'd his countenance : But not a trace 
Betray'd the royal Goth ! sunk was that eye 
Of sov'reignty ; and on the emaciate cheek 
Had penitence and anguish deeply drawn 
Their furrows premature, . . forestalling time, 
And shedding upon thirty's brow, more snows 
Than threescore winters in their natural course 
Might else have sprinkled there." — p. 57. 

At length, the prelate lays his consecrating 
hands on him ; and sends him to Pelayo, the 
heir-apparent of the sceptre, then a prisonei 
or hostage at the court of the Moorish prince, 
to say that the mountaineers are st:il unsub- 



428 



POETRY". 



dued, and look to him to guide them to 
vengeance. 

These scenes last through two books ; and 
at the beginning of the Fifth, Roderick sets 
out on his mission. Here, while he reposes 
himself in a rustic inn, he hears the assem- 
bled guests at once lamenting the condition 
of ^pain, and imprecating curses on the head 
of its guilty King. He says a few words vehe- 
mently for himself: and is supported by a 
venerable old man, in whom he soon recog- 
nises an ancient servant of his mother's house 
— the guardian and playmate of his infant 
days. Secure from discovering himself, he 
musters courage to ask if his mother be still 
alive; and is soothed to milder sorrow by 
learning that she is. At dawn he resumes 
his course ; and kneeling at a broken crucifix 
on the road, is instil ted by a Moor, who po- 
litely accosts him with a kick, and the dig- 
nified address of "God's curse confound 
thee !" for which Roderick knocks him down, 
and stabs him with his own dagger. The 
worthy old man, whose name is Siverian, 
comes up just as this feat is performed, and 
is requested to assist in "hiding the carrion;" 
after which they proceed lovingly together. 
On their approach to Cordoba, the old man 
calls sadly to mind the scene which he had 
witnessed at his last visit to that place, some 
ten years before, when Roderick, in the pride 
of his youthful triumph, had brought the 
haughty foe of his father to the grave where 
his ashes were interred, and his gentle mother 
came to see that expiation made. The King- 
listens to this commemoration of his past 
glories with deep, but suppressed emotion ; 
and entering the chapel, falls prostrate on the 
grave of his father. A majestic figure starts 
forward at that action, in the dress of penitence 
and mourning; and the pilgrims recognise 
Pelayo, to whom they both come commis- 
sioned. This closes the Sixth Book. 

The Seventh contains their account of the 
6tate of affairs, and Pelayo's solemn accept- 
ance of the dangerous service of leaving the 
meditated insurrection. The abdicated mon- 
arch then kneels down and hails him King 
of Spain ! and Siverian, though with mourn- 
ful remembrances, follows the high example. 

The Eighth Book continues this midnight 
conversation; and introduces the young Al- 
phonso, Pelayo's fellow-prisoner, at the Moor- 
ish court, who is then associated to their 
counsels, and enters with eager delight into 
their plans of escape. These two books are 
rather dull ; though not without force and 
dignity. The worst thing in them is a bit of 
rnetoric of Alphonso, who complains that his 
delight in watching the moon setting over his 
native hills, was all spoiled, on looking up and 
seeing the Moorish crescent on the towers ! 

The Ninth Book introduces an important 
person — Florinda, the unhappy daughter of 
Count Julian. She sits muffled by Pelayo's 
way. as he returns from the chapel ; and begs 
a boon of him in the name of Roderick, the 
chosen friend of 1 is youth. He asks who it 
is that adjures him by that beloved but now 
unuttered name " — 



" She bar'd her face, and, looking up, replied, 

Florinda ! . . Shrinking then, with both her hands 

She hid herself, and bow'd her head abas'd 

Upon her knee !— — - 

Pelayo stood confus'd: He had not seen 

Count Julian's daughter since, in Rod'rick's court, 

Glittering in beauty and in innocence, 

A radiant vision, in her joy she mov'd !. 

More like a poet's dream, or form divine, 

Heaven's prototype of perfect womanhood, 

So lovely was the presence, . . than a thing 

Of earth and perishable elements." — p. 110. 

She then tells him, that wretched as she is, 
the renegade Orpas seeks her hand; and 
begs his assistance to send her beyond his 
reach, to a Christian land. He promised that 
she shall share his own fate ; and they part 
till evening. 

The Tenth Book sends all the heroic party 
upon their night pilgrimage to the mountains 
of Asturia. Roderick and Siverian had gone 
before. Pelayo, with Alphonso and Florinda, 
follow in the disguise of peasants. Their 
midnight march, in that superb climate, is 
well described : — 



" The favouring moon arose, 



To guide them on their flight through upland paths 
Remote from freqnentage, and dales retir'd, 
Forest and mpuntain glen. Before their feet 
The fire-flies, swarming in the woodland shade, 
Sprung up like sparks, and twinkled round their 

wa y; 

The timorous blackbird, starting at their step, 
Fled from the thicket, with shrill note of fear; 
And far below them in the peopled dell, 
When all the soothing sounds of eve had ceas'd, 
The distant watch-dog's voice at times was heard, 
Answering the nearer wolf. All through the night 
Among the hills they travell'd silently ; 
Till when the stars were setting, at what hour 
The breaih of Heaven is coldest, they beheld 
Within a lonely grove the expected fire, 
Where Rod'rick and his comrade anxiously 
Look for the appointed meeting." 

" Bright rose the flame replenish'd ; it illum'd 
The cork-tree's furrow'.d rind, its rifts and swells 
And redder scars, . . and where its aged boughs 
O'erbower'd the travellers, cast upon the leaves 
A floating, grey, unrealising gleam." — pp. 1 17, 118. 

The rest soon sink in serene and untroubled 
sleep : But Roderick and Florinda, little dream- 
ing of each other's presence, are kept awake 
by bitter recollections. At last she approaches 
him ; and, a!wed by the sanctity of his air and 
raiment, kneels down before him, and asks if 
he knows who the wretch is who thus grovels 
before him. He answ r ers that he does not : — 

" Then said she, ' Here thou seest 
One who is known too fatally for all, . . 
The dauchter of Count Julian !' . . . Well it was 
For Rod'rick that no eye beheld him now ! 
From head to foot a sharper pang than death 
Thrill'd him; his heart, as at a mortal stroke, 
Ceas'd from its functions; his breath fail'd. "--p. 120. 

The darkness and her own emotions pre- 
vent her, however, from observing him, and 
she proceeds : — 

" * Father ! at length she said, all tongues amid 

This* general ruin shed their bitterness 

On Rod'rick ; load his memory with reproach, 

And with their curses persecute his soul.' . . . 

' Why shouldst thou tell me this V exclaim'd the 

Goth, 
From his coid forehead wiping as he spake [guilt 
The death-like moisture: .. Why of Rod'rick's 



SOUTHEY'S RODERICK. 



429 



Tell me ? Or thinkest thou I know it not ? 
/S las ! who hath not heard the hideous tale 
Of Rod'rick's shame !' " 

11 ' There ! she cried, 
Drawing her body backward where she knelt, 
And stretching forth her arms with head uprais'd, . . 
There ! it pursues me still ! . . I came to thee, 
Father, for comfort — and thou heapest fire 
Upon my head ! But hear me patiently, 
And let me undeceive thee ! Self-abas'd, 
Not to arraign another, do I come ! . . 
I come a self-accuser, self-condemn'd, 
To take upon myself the pain deserv'd ; 
For I have drank the cup of bitterness, 
And having drank therein of heavenly grace, 
I must not put away the cup of shame. 

" Thus as she spake she falter'd at the close, 
And in that dying fall her voice sent forth 
Somewhat of its original sweetness. ' Thou ! . . 
Thou self-abas'd !' exclaim'd the astonish'd King ; . . 
1 Thou self-condemn'd !' . . The cup of shame for 

thee ! 
Thee . . thee, Florinda !' . . But the very excess 
Of passion check'd his speech." — pp. 121, 122. 

Still utterly unconscious of her strange con- 
fessor, she goes on to explain herself : — 

— — " ' I lov'd the King ! . . 
Tenderly, passionately, madly lov'd him ! 
Sinful it was to love a child of earth 
With such entire devotion as I lov'd 
Rod'rick, the heroic Prince, the glorious Goth ! 
He was the sunshine of my soul ! and like 
A flower, I liv'd and flourish'd in his light 
Oh bear not with rne thus impatiently ! 
No tale of weakness this, that in the act 
Of penitence, indulgent to itself, 
With garrulous palliation half repeats 
The sin it ill repents. I will be brief.' " 

pp. 123, 124. 

She then describes the unconscious growth 
of their mutual passion — enlarges upon her 
own imprudence in affording him opportuni- 
ties of declaring it — and expresses her con- 
viction, that the wretched catastrophe was 
brought about, not by any premeditated guilt, 
but in a moment of delirium, which she had 
herself been instrumental in bringing on : — 

" ' Here then, O Father, at thy feet I own 
Myself the guiltier; and full well I knew 
These were his thoughts ! But vengeance master'd 
And in my agony I curst the man [me, 

Whom I lov'd best.' 

1 Dost thou recall that curse ?' 
Cried Rod'rick, in a deep and inward voice, 
Still with his head depress'd, and covering still 
His countenance. ' Recall it ?' she exclaim'd ; 
' Father ! I came to thee because I gave 
The reins to wrath too long . . because I wrought 
His ruin, death, and infamy. . . O God, 
Forgive the wicked vengeance thus indulg'd ! 
As I forgive the King !' " — p. 132. 

Roderick again stops her enthusiastic self- 
accusation, and rejects her too generous vin- 
dication of the King ; and turning to Siverian, 
adds — 

" ' To that old man,' said he, 

• And to the mother of the unhappy Goth, 
Tell, if it please thee, not what thou hast pour'd 
Into my secret ear, but that the child 
For whom they mourn with anguish unallay'd 
Sinn'd not from vicious will, or heart corrupt, 
But fell by fatal circumstance betray'd ! 
And if, in charity to them, thou say'st 
Something to palliate, something to excuse 
An act of sudden frenzy, when the fiend 



O'ercame him, thnu wilt do for Roderick 
All he could ask thee, all that can be done 
On earth, and all his spirit could endure !' 
Then, vent'ring towards her an imploring look, 
1 Wilt thou join with me for his soul in prayer V 
He said, and trembled as he spake. That voice 
Of sympathy was like Heaven's influence, 
Wounding at once and comforting the soul. 
1 O Father ! Christ requite thee !' she exclaim'd ; 
• Thou hast set free the springs which with' ring 

Have clos'd too long.' " [griefs 

" Then in a firmer speech, 
1 For Rod'rick, for Count Julian, and myself, 
Three wretchedest of all the human race ! 
Who have destroy'd each other and ourselves, 
Mutually wrong'd and wronging — let us pray !'' 

pp. 133, 134. 

There is great power, we think, and great 
dramatic talent, in this part of the poem. 
The meeting of Roderick and Florinda was a 
touchstone for a poet whft had ventured on 
such a subject ; and Mr. Southey, we must 
say, has come out of the test, of standard 
weight and purity. 

The Eleventh Book brings them in safety 
to the castle of Count Pedro, the Father of the 
young Alphonso, formerly the feudal foe, but 
now the loyal soldier of Pelayo. They find 
him arming in his courts, with all his vassals, 
to march instantly against the Moors: And 
their joyful welcome, and the parental delight 
of father and mother at the return of their 
noble boy, are very beautifully described. 

The Twelfth Canto continues these prepa- 
rations. — The best part of it is the hasty and 
hopeful investiture of the young Aiphonso, 
with the honours of knighthood. The mix- 
ture of domestic affection with military ar- 
dour, and the youthful innocence, ingenuous 
modesty, and unclouded hopes of that bloom- 
ing age, are feelingly combined in the follow- 
ing amiable picture, in which the classical 
reader will recognise many touches of true 
Homeric description : — 

" Rejoicing in their task, 
The servants of the house with emulous love 
Dispute the charge. One brings the cuirass, one 
The buckler; this exultingly displays 
The sword, his comrade lifts the helm on high : 
Greek artists in the imperial city forg'd 
That splendid armour, perfect in their craft ; 
With curious skill they wrought it, fram'd alike 
To shine amid the pageantry of war, 
And for the proof of battle. Many a time 
Alphonso from his nurse's lap had stretch'd 
His infant hand toward it eagerly, 
Where, gleaming to the central fire, it hung 

High on the hall. 

No season this for old solemnities ! 

For wassailry and sport ; . . the bath, the bed, 

The vigil, . . all preparatory rites 

Omitted now, . . here in the face of Heaven, 

Before the vassals of his father's house, 

With them in instant peril to partake 

The chance of life or death, the heroic boy 

Dons his first arms ! the coated scales of steel 

Which o'er the tunic to his knees depend ; 

The hose, the sleeves of mail : bareheaded then 

He stood. But when Count Pedro took the spurs, 

And bent his knee, in service to his son, 

Alphonso from that gesture half drew back, 

Starting in rev'rence, and a deeper hue 

Spread o'er the glow of joy which flush'd his cheeks. 

Do thou the rest, Pelayo! said the Count 

So shall the ceremony of this hour 

Exceed in honour what in form it lacks." 

pp. 147—149. 



430 



POETRY. 



The ceremony is followed by a solemn vow 
of fidelity to Spain, and eternal war with the 
Infidel, administered by Roderick, and devout- 
ly taken by the young Knight, and all his as- 
sembled followers. 

The Thirteenth Book contains a brief account 
of the defeat of a Moorish detachment by this 
faithful troop j and of the cowardice and re- 
buke of Count Eudon, who had tamely yielded 
to the invaders, and is dismissed with scorn 
to the castle which his brave countrymen had 
redeemed. They then proceed to guard or 
recover the castle of Pelayo. 

The Fourteenth Book describes their happy 
arrival at that fortress, at the fall of evening; 
where, though they do not find his wife and 
daughters, who had retired for safety, to a 
6acred cave in the mountains, they meet a 
joyful and triumphant band of his retainers, 
returning from a glorious repulse of the Moors, 
and headed by the inspiring heroine Adosinda : 
who speedily recognises in Roderick her 
mournful assistant and first proselyte at Auria, 
while he at the same moment discovers, 
among the ladies of her train, the calm and 
venerable aspect of his beloved mother, 
Rusilla. 

The Fifteenth Book contains the history of 
his appearance before that venerated parent. 
Unable to sleep, he had wandered forth before 
dawn — 

" that morn 

With its cold dews might bathe his throbbing brow, 
And wi(#its breath allay the fev'rish heat 
That burnt within. Alas ! the gales of morn 
Reach not the fever of a wounded heart ! 
How shall he meet his mother's eye. how make 
His secret known, and from that voice rever'd 
Obtain forgiveness ! — p. 179. 

While he is meditating under what pretext 
to introduce himself, the good Siverian comes 
to say, that his lady wishes to see the holy 
father who had spoken so charitably of her 
unhappy son. — The succeeding scene is very 
finely conceived, and supported with great 
judgment and feeling. 

" Count Julian's daughter with Rusilla sate ; 
Both had been weeping, both were pale, but calm. 
With head as for humiiity abas'd 
Rod'rick approach'd, and bending, on his breast 
He cross'd his humble arms. Rusilla rose 
In reverence to the priestly character, 
And with a mournful eye regarding him, 
Thus she began. ' Good Father, I have heard 
From my old faithful servant and true friend, 
Thou didst reprove the inconsiderate tongue, 
That in the anguish of its spirit pour'd 
A curse upon my poor unhappy child ! 

Father Maccabee, this is a hard world, 
And hasty in its judgments ! Time has been, 
When not a tongue within the Pyrenees 
Dar'd whisper in dispraise of Rod'rick's name. 
Now, if a voice be rais'd in his behalf, 

'Tis noted for a wonder ; and the man 

Who utters the strange speech shall be admir'd 

For such excess of Christian charity. 

Thy Christian charity hath not been lost; . . 

Father, I feel its virtue: . . it hath been 

Balm to my heart ! . . With words and grateful 

All that is left me now for gratitude, . . [tears, . . 

1 thank thee ! and beseech thee in thy prayers 
That thou wilt still remember Rod'rick's name.' " 

pp. 180, 181. 



The all-enduring King shudders at these 
words of kindness ; — but repressing his emo- 
tion — 

" ' O venerable Lady, he replied, 

If aught may comfort that unhappy soul 

ft must be thy compassion, and thy prayers. 

She whom he most hath wrong'd, she who alone 

On earth can grant forgiveness for his crime 

She hath forgiven him ! and thy blessing now 

Were all that he could ask, . .all that could bring 

Profit or consolation to his soul, 

If he hath been, as sure we may believe, 

A penitent sincere.' " — p. 182. 

Florinda then asks his prayers for her un- 
happy and apostate father ; and his advice as 
to the means of rejoining him. 

" While thus Florinda spake, the dog who lay 
Before Rusilla' s feet, eyeing him long 
And wistfully, had recognis'd at length, 
Chang'd as he was, and in those soidid weeds, 
His royal master ! And he rose and lick'd 
His wiiher'd hand; and earnestly look'd up 
With eyes whose human meaning did not need 
The aid of speech ; and moan'd, as if at once 
To court and chide the long-withheld caress! 
A feeling uncommix'd with sense of guilt 
Or shame, yet paiufullest, thrill'd through the King, 
But he, to self-control now long inured, 
Represt his rising heart," &.c. — p. 166. 

He makes a short and pious answer to the 
desolate Florinda ; — and then — 

" Deliberately, in self-possession, still, 
Himself from that most painful interview 
Dispeeding, he withdrew. The watchful dog 
Follow'd his footsteps close. But he retir'd 
Into the thickest grove ; there giving way 
To his o'erburthen'd nature, from all eyes 
Apart, he cast himself upon the ground, 
And threw his arms around the dog ! and cried, 
While tears stream'd down, ' Thou, Theron, then 

hast known 
Thy poor lost master, . . Theron, none but thou !' " 

p. 187. 

The Sixteenth Book contains the re-union 
of Pelayo's family in the cave of Covadonga. 
His morning journey to the place of this glad 
meeting, through the enchanting scenery of 
his native hills, and with the joyous company 
of self-approving thoughts, is well described. 

Arrived at last upon the lonely platform 
which masks the cave in which the springs 
burst out, and his children are concealed, he 
sounds his bugle note : and the rock gives up 
its inhabitants ! There is something anima- 
ting and impressive, but withal a little too 
classical and rapturous, in the full-length pic- 
ture of this delightful scene. 

" But when a third and broader blast 
Rung in the echoing archway, ne'er did wand, 
With magic power endued, call up a sight 
So strange, as sure in that wild solitude 
It seem'd when from the bowels of the rock, 
The mother and her children hasten'd ford ' 
She in the sober charms and dignity 
Of womanhood mature, nor verging yet 
Upon decay ; in gesture like a queen, 
Such inborn and habitual majesty 
Ennobled all her steps: . . P'avila such 
In form and stature, as the Sea Nymph's son, 
When that wise Centaur, from his cave, well- 
Beheld the boy divine his growing strength [pleas'd 
Against some shaggy lionet essay ! 
And fixing in the half-grown mane his hands, 
Roll with him in fierce dalliance intertwin'd ! 



SOUTHEY'S RODERICK. 



431 



But like a creature of some higher sphere 

His sister came. She scarcely touch'd the rock, 

So light was Hermesind's aerial speed. 

Beauty and grace and innocence in her 

In heavenly union shone. One who had held 

The faith of elder Greece, would sure have thought 

She was some glorious nymph of seed divine, 

Oread or Dryad, of Diana's train 

The youngest and the loveliest ! yea she seem'd 

Angel, or soul beatified, from realni3 

Of bliss, on errand of parental love 

To earth re-sent."— pp. 197, 198. 

M Many a slow century, since that day, hath fill'd 

Its course, and countless multitudes have trod 

With pilgrim feet that consecrated cave ; 

Yet not in all those ages, amid all 

The untold concourse, hath one breast been swoln 

With such emotions as Pelayo felt 

That hour."— p. 201. 

The Seventeenth Book brings back the 
story to Roderick; who, with feelings more 
reconciled, but purposes of penitence and 
mortification as deep as ever, and as resolved, 
muses by the side of the stream, on past and 
future fortunes. 

" Upon a smooth grey stone sate Rod'rick there ; 
The wind above him stirr'd the hazel boughs, 
And munn'ring at his feet the river ran. 
He sate with folded arms and head declin'd 
Upon his breast, feeding on bitter thoughts, 
Till Nature gave him in the exhausted sense 
Of woe, a respite something like repose ! 
And then the quiet sound of gentle winds 
And waters with their lulling consonance 
Beguil'd him of himself. Of all within 
Oblivious there he sate; sentient alone 
Of outward nature, . . of the whisp' ring leaves 
That sooth'd his ear. . . the genial breath of heaven 
That fann'd his cheek, . . the stream's perpetual 

flow, 
That, with its shadows and its glancing lights, 
Dimples and thread-like motions infinite, 
For ever varying and yet still the same, 
Like time toward eternity, ran by. 
Resting his head upon his Master's knees, 
Upon the bank beside him Theron lay." 

pp. 205, 206. 

In this quiet mood, he is accosted by Sive- 
rian, who entertains him with a long account 
of Pelayo's belief in the innocence, or com- 
parative innocence, of their beloved Roderick; 
and of his own eager and anxious surmises 
that he may still be alive. 

The Eighteenth Book, which is rather long 
and heavy, contains the account of Pelayo's 
coronation. The best part of it, perhaps, is 
the short sketch of his lady's affectionate 
exultation in his glory. When she saw the 
preparations that announced this great event — 



•"her eyes 



Brisrh'en'd. The quicken'd action of the blood 
Ting'd with a deeper hue her glowing cheek ; 
And on her lips there sate a smile, which spake 
The honourable pride of perfect love ; 
Rejoicing, for her husband's sake, to share 
The lot he chose, the perils he defied, 
The lofty fortune which their faith foresaw." 

p. 218. 

Roderick bears a solemn part in the lofty 
ceremonies of this important day ; and, with 
a calm and resolute heart, beholds the alle- 
giance of his subjects transferred to his heroic 
kinsman. 

The Nineteenth Book is occupied with an 
interview between Roderick and his mother, 



who has at last recognised him ; and even 
while she approves of his penitential abandon- 
ment of the world, tempts him with bewitch- 
ing visions of recovered fame and glory, and 
of atonement made to Florinda, by placing 
her in the rank of his queen. He continues 
firm, however, in his lofty purpose, and the 
pious Princess soon acquiesces in those pious 
resolutions; and, engaging to keep his secret, 
gives him her blessing, and retires. 

The Twentieth Book conducts us to the 
Moorish camp and the presence of Count 
Julian. Orpas, a baser apostate, claims the 
promised hand of Florinda; and Julian ap- 
peals to the Moorish Prince, whether the 
law of Mahomet admits of a forced marriage. 
The Prince attests that it does not ; and then 
Julian, who has just learned that his daughter 
was in the approaching host of Pelayo, ob- 
tains leave to despatch a messenger to invite 
her to his arms. 

The Twenty-first Book contains the meet- 
ing of Julian with his daughter and Roderick ; 
under whose protection she comes at evening 
to the Moorish camp, and finds her father at 
his ablutions at the door of his tent, by the 
side of a clear mountain spring. On her ap- 
proach, he clasps her in his arms with over- 
flowing love. 

" ' Thou hast not then forsaken me, my child. 

Howe'er the inexorable will of Fate 

May in the world which is to come divide 

Our everlasting destinies, in this 

Thou wilt not, O my child, abandon me !' 

And then with deep and interrupted voice, 

Nor seeking to restrain his copious tears, 

' My blessing be upon thy head !' he cried, 

A father's blessing ! though all faiths were false, 

It should not lose its worth! . . . She lock'd her 

Around his neck, and gazing in his face [hands 

Through streaming tears, exclaim'd, ' Oh never 

more, 
Here or hereafter, never let us part !' " — p. 258. 

He is at first offended with the attendance 
and priestly habit of Roderick, and breaks 
out into some infidel taunts upon creeds and 
churchmen ; but is forced at length to honout 
the firmness, the humility, and candour of 
this devoted Christian. He poses him, how- 
ever, in the course of their discussion, by 
rather an unlucky question. 

" * Thou preachest that all sins may be effac'd : 
Is there forgiveness, Christian, in thy creed [thee, 
For Rod'rick's crime? . . For Rod'rick, and for 
Count Julian !' said the Goth ; and as he spake 
Trembled through every fibre of his frame, 
' The gate of Heaven is open !' Julian threw 
His wrathful hand aloft, and cried, ' Away ! 
Earth could not hold us both; nor can one Heaven 
Contain my deadliest enemy and me !' " — p. 269. 

This ethical dialogue is full of lofty senti- 
ment and strong images ; but is, on the whole, 
rather tedious and heavy. One of the newest 
pictures is the following ; and the sweetest 
scene, perhaps, that which closes the book 
immediately after : — 

" ' Methinks if ye would know 
How visitations of calamity 
Affect the pious soul, 'tis shown ye there ' 
Look yonder at that cloud, which through the skjr 
Sailing alone, doth cross in her career 
The rolling moon ! I watch'd it as it came 



432 



POETRY. 



A nd deem'd (he deep opaque would blot her beams ; 
But, melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs 
In foids of wavy silver round, and clothes 
The orb with richer beauties than her own, 
Then passing, leaves her in her light serene.' — 

" Thus having said, the pious suff'rer sate, 
Beholding with fix'd eyes that lovely orb, 
Which through the azure depth alone pursues 
Her course appointed ; with indiff'rent beams 
Shining upon the silent hills around, 
And the dark tents of that unholy host, 
Who, all unconscious of impending fate, 
Take their last slumber there. The camp* is still ! 
The fires have moulder'd ; and the breeze which 
The soft and snowy embers, just lays bare [stirs - 
At times a red and evanescent light, 
Or for a moment wakes a feeble flame. 
They by the fountain hear the stream below, 
Whose murmurs, as the wind arose or fell, 
Fuller or fainter reach the ear attun'd. 
And now the nightingale, not distant far, 
Began her solitary song ; and pour'd 
To the cold moon a richer, stronger strain 
Than that with which the lyric lark salutes 
The new-born day. Her deep and thrilling song 
Seem'd with its piercing melody to reach 
The soul ; and in mysterious unison 
Blend with all thoughts of gentleness and love. 
Their hearts were open to the healing power 
Of nature ; and the splendour of the night, 
The flow of waters, and that sweetest lay 
Came to them like a copious evening dew, 
Falling on vernal herbs which thirst for rain." 

pp. 274—276. 

The Twenty-second Book is fuller of busi- 
ness than of poetry. The vindictive Orpas 
persuades the Moorish leader, that Julian 
meditates a defection from his cause ; and, by 
working on his suspicious spirit, obtains his 
consent to his assassination on the first con- 
venient opportunity. 

The Twenty-third Book recounts the car- 
nage and overthrow of the Moors in the Strait 
of Covadonga. Deceived by false intelligence, 
and drunk with deceitful hope, they advance 
up the long and precipitous defile, along the 
cliffs and ridges of which Pelayo had not only 
stationed his men in ambush, but had piled 
huge stones and trunks of trees, ready to be 
pushed over upon the ranks of the enemy in the 
lower pass. A soft summer mist hanging upon 
the side of the cliffs helps to conceal these 
preparations ; and the whole line of the Infidel 
is irretrievably engaged in the gulf, when 
Adosinda appears on a rock in the van, and, 
with her proud defiance, gives the word, which 
is the signal for the assault. The whole de- 
scription is, as usual, a little overworked, but 
is unquestionably striking and impressive. 

" As the Moors 

Advanc'd, the Chieftain in the van was seen, 
Known by his arms, and from the crag a voice 
Pronounc'd his name,. . . 'Alcahman, hoa ! look 
Alcahman !' As the floating mist drew up [up ! 
It had divided there, and open'd round 
The Cross ; part clinging to the rock beneath, 
Hov'ring and waving part in fleecy folds, 
A canopy of silver, light condens'd 
To shape and substance. In the midst there stood 
A female form, one hand upon the Cross, 
The oftier rais'd in menacing act. Below 
Loose flow'd her raiment, but her breast was arm'd, 
And helmeted her head. The Moor turn'd pale, 
For on the walls of Auria he had seen 
That well-known figure, and had well believ'd 
She rested with the dead. ' What, hoa !' she cried. 
Alcahman ! In the name of ail who fell 



At Auria in the massacre, this hour 

I summon thee before the throne of God, 

To answer for the innocent blood ! This hour ! 

Moor, Miscreant, Murderer,Childof Hell ! this how 

I summon thee to judgment! ... In the name 

Of God ! for Spain and Vengeance. 

From voice to voice on either side it past 

With rapid repetition, . . * In the name 

Of God ! for Spain and Vengeance !' and fortkvtlb 

On either side, along the whole defiie, 

The Asturians shouting, in the name of God, 

Set the whole ruin loose ; huge trunks and stones, 

And loosen'd crags ! Down, down they roll'd with 

rush, 
And bound, and thund'ring force. Such was the fall 
As when some city by the labouring earth 
Heav'd from its strong foundations is cast down, 
And all its dwellings, towers, and palaces, 
In one wide desolation prostrated. 
From end to end of that long strait, the crash 
Was heard continuous, and commixt with sounds 
More dreadful, shrieks of horror and despair, 
And death, . . the wild and agonising cry 
Of that whole host, in one destruction whelm'd." 

pp. 298, 299. 

The Twenty-fourth Book is full of tragical 
matter, and is perhaps the most interesting of 
the whole piece. A Moor, on the instigation 
of Orpas and Abulcacem, pierces Julian with 
a mortal wound ; who thereupon exhorts his 
captains, already disgusted with the jealous 
tyranny of the Infidel, to rejoin the standard 
and the faith of their country ; and then re- 
quests to be borne into a neighbouring church, 
where Florinda has been praying for his con- 
version. 

" They rais'd him from the earth ; 

He, knitting as they lifted him his brow, 
Drew in through open lips and teeth firm-clos'd 
His painful breath, and on his lance laid hand, 
Lest its long shaft should shake the mortal wound. 
Gently his men with slow and steady step 
Their suff 'ring burthen bore ; and in the Church, 
Before the altar, laid him down, his head 
Upon Florinda's knees."— pp. 307, 308. 

He then, on the solemn adjuration of Ro- 
derick, renounces the bloody faith to which 
he had so long adhered ; and reverently re- 
ceives at his hand the sacrament of reconcili- 
ation and peace. There is great feeling and 
energy we think in what follows : — 

" That dread office done. 
Count Julian with amazement saw the Priest 
Kneel down before him. ' By the sacrament, 
Which we have here partaken !' Roderick cried, 
' In this most awful moment. By that hope, . . 
That holy faith which comforts thee in death, 
Grant thy forgiveness, Julian, ere thou diest ! 
Behold the man who most hath injur'd thee ! 
Rod'rick! the wretched Goth, the guilty cause 
Of all thy guilt, . . the unworthy instrument 
Of thy redemption, . . kneels before thee here, 
And prays to be forgiven !' 

1 Roderick !' exclaim'd 
The dying Count, . . ■ Roderick !' . . and from the 
With violent effort, half he rais'd himself; [floor, 
The spear hung heavy in his side ; and pain 
And weakness overcame him, that he fell 
Back on his daughter's lap. ' O Death,' cried he, . 
Passing his hand across his cold damp brow, . . 
' Thou tamest the strong limb, and conquerest 
The stubborn heart ! But yesterday I said 
One Heaven could not contain mine enemy 
And me ; and now I lift my dying voice 
To say, Forgive me, Lord ! as I forgive Jeyes 
Him who hath done the wrong !' . . He clos'd his 
A moment ; then with sudden impulse cried, 



SOUTHEY'S RODERICK. 



433 



' Rod' rick, thy wife is dead! — ihe Church hath 

power 
To free thee from thy vows ! The hroken heart 
Might yet be hcal'd, the wrong redress'd, the throne 
Rebuilt by that same hand which pull'd it down ! 
And these curst Africans . . . Oh for a month 
Of that waste life which millions misbestow ! . . ' " 

pp. 311,312. 

Returning weakness then admonishes him. 
however, of the near approach of death ; ana 
he begs the friendly hand of Roderick to cut 
short his pangs, by drawing forth the weapon 
which clogs the wound in his side. He then 
gives him his hand in kindness — blesses and 
kisses his heroic daughter, and expiree. The 
concluding lines are full of force and tender- 



M When from her father's body she arose, 
Her cheek was flush'd, and in her eyes there beam'd 
A wilder brightness. On the Goth she gaz'd ! 
While underneath the emotions of that hour 
Exhausted life gave way ! ' O God !' she said, 
Lifting her hands, ' thou hast restor'd me all, . . 
All • , in one hour !' . . . and around his neck she 
threw [ven !' 

Her arms and cried, ' My Roderick ! mine in Hea- 
Groaning, he claspt her close ! and in that act 
And agony her happy spirit fled !" — p. 313. 

The Last Book describes the recognition 
and exploits of Roderick in the last of his bat- 
tles. After the revolt of Julian's army, Orpas, 
by whose counsels it had been chiefly occa- 
sioned, is sent forward by the Moorish leader, 
to try to win them back ; and advances in 
front of the line, demanding a parley, mount- 
ed on the beautiful Orelio. the famous war 
horse of Roderick, who, roused at that sight, 
obtains leave from Pelayo to give the renegade 
his answer ; and after pouring out upon him 
some words of abuse and scorn, seizes the 
reins of his trusty steed ; and 

— — " ' How now,' he cried, 
' Orelio ! old companion, . . my good horse !' . . 
Off with this recreant burthen !' . . . And with that 
He rais'd his hand, andrear'd, and back'd the steed, 
To that remember'd voice and arm of power 
Obedient. Down the helpless traitor fell, 
Violently thrown; and Roderick over him, 
Thrice led, with just and unrelenting hand, 
The trampling hoofed ' Go, join Witiza now, 
Where he lies howling,' the avenger cried, 
1 And tell him Roderick sent thee !' "—pp. 318, 319. 

He then vaults upon the noble horse ; and 
fitting Count Julian's sword to his grasp, rushes 
in the van of the Christian army into the thick 
array of the Infidel, — where, unarmed as he 
is, and clothed in his penitential robes of 
waving black, he scatters death and terror 
around him. and cuts his way clean through 
the whole host of his opponents. He there 
descries the army of Pelayo advancing to co- 
operate ; and as he rides up to them with his 
wonted royal air and gesture, and on his well- 
known steed of royalty, both the King and 
Siverian are instantaneously struck with the 
apparition ; and marvel that the w r eeds of 
penitence should so long have concealed their 
sovereign. Roderick, unconscious of this re- 
cognition, briefly informs them of what has 
befallen, and requests the honourable rites of 
Christian sepulture for the unfortunate Julian 
and his daughter. 

55 



" ' In this, — and all things else,'— 
Pelayo answer'd, looking wistfully 
Upon the Goth, 'thy pleasure shall be done!' 
Then Rod'rick saw that he was known — and turn'd 
His head away in silence. But the old man 
Laid hold upon his bridle, and look'd up 
In his master's face — weeping and silently ! 
Thereat the Goth with fervent pressure took 
His hand, and bending down towards him, said, 
' My good Siverian, go not thou this day 
To war! I charge thee keep thyself from harm ! 
Thou art past the age for combats ; and with whom 
Hereafter should thy mistress talk of me, 
If thou wert gone V "—p. 330. 

He then borrows the defensive armour of this 
faithful servant; and taking a touching and 
affectionate leave of him, vaults again on the 
back of Orelio ; and placing himself without 
explanation in the van of the army, leads them 
on to the instant assault. The renegade lead- 
ers fall on all sides beneath his resistless 
blows. 

" And in the heat of fight, 
Rejoicing and forgetful of all else, 
Set up his cry as he was wont in youth, [well ! 

' Rod'rick the Goth !' ... his war-cry, known so 
Pelayo eagerly took up the word, 
And shouted out his kinsman's name belov'd, 
' Rod'rick the Goth ! Rod'rick and Victory ! 
Rod'rick and Vengeance !' Odoar gave it forth ; 
Urban repeated it; and through his ranks 
Count Pedro sent the cry. Not from the field 
Of his great victory, when Witiza fell, 
With louder acclamations had that name 
Been borne abroad upon the winds of heaven." 

— -— " O'er the field it spread, 
All hearts and tongues uniting in the cry ; 
Mountains, and rocks, and vales re-echo'd round ; 
And he rejoicing in his strength rode on, [smote. 
Laying on the Moors with that good sword ; and 
And overthrew, and scatter'd, and destroy'd, 
And trampled down ! and still at every blow 
Exultingly he sent the war-cry fonh. 
1 Rod'rick the Goth ! Rod'rick and Victory ! 
Rod'rick and Vengeance !' " — pp. 334, 335. 

The carnage at length is over, and the field 
is won ! — but where is he to whose name and 
example the victory is owing? 

" Upon the banks 

Of Sella was Orelio found ; his legs 
And flanks incarnadin'd, his poitral smear'd 
With froth, and foam, and gore, his silver mane 
Sprinkled with blood, which hung on every hair, 
Aspers'd like dew-drops: trembling there he stood 
From the toil of battle ; and at times sent forth 
His tremulous voice far-echoing loud and shrill ; 
A frequent anxious cry, with which he seem'd 
To call the master whom he lov'd so well, 
And who had thus again forsaken him. 
Siverian's helm and cuirass on the grass 
Lay near; and Julian's sword, its hilt and chain 
Clotted with blood ! But where was he whose hand 
Had wielded it so well that glorious day ? . . . 

Days, months, and years, and generations pass'd, 
And centuries held their course, before, far off 
Within a hermitage near Viseu's walls, 
A humble Tomb was found, which bore inscrib'd 
In ancient characters, King Rod'rick's name !" 

pp. 339, 340. 

These copious extracts must have settled 
our readers' opinion of this poem ; and though 
they are certainly taken from the better parts- 
of it, we have no wish to disturb the forcible 
impression which they must have been the 
means of producing. Its chief fault undoubt- 
edly is the monotony of its tragic and solemn 
2M 



POETRY. 



tone — the perpetual gloom with which all its 
scenes are overcast — and the tediousness with 
which some of them are developed. There 
are many dull passages, in short, and a con- 
siderable quantity of heavy reading — some 
silliness, and a good deal of affectation. But 
the beauties, upon the whole, preponderate; — 
and these, we hope, speak for themselves in 
the passages we have already extracted. 

The versification is smooth and melodious, 
though too uniformly drawn out into long and 
linked sweetness. The diction is as usual 
more remarkable for copiousness than force ; — 
and though less defaced than formerly with 
phrases of affected simplicity and infantine 



pathos, is still too much speckled with strange 
words ; which, whether they are old or new, 
are not English at the present day — and we 
hope never will become so. What use or or- 
nament does Mr. Southey expect to derive for 
his poetry from such words as avid and aureate, 
and auriphrygiate ? or leman and wcedcry, fre- 
quentage and youthhead, and twenty more as 
pedantic and affected ? What good is there 
either, we should like to know, in talking of 
"oaken galilees," or "incarnadined poitrals," 
or "all-able Providence," and such other 
points of learning'? — If poetry is intended for 
general delight, ought not its language to be 
generally intelligible 1 



(JOecembtr, 1816.) 

Childe HaroWs Pilgrimage, Canto the Third. By Lord Byron. 8vo. pp.79. London: 1816. 
The Prisoner of Chillon, and other Poems. By Lord Byron. 8vo. pp. 60. London: 1816.* 



If the finest poetry be that which leaves 
the deepest impression on the minds of its 
readers — and this is not the worst test of its 
excellence — Lord Byron, we think, must be 
allowed to take precedence of all his distin- 
guished contemporaries. He has not the va- 
riety of Scott — nor the delicacy of Campbell — 
nor the absolute truth of Crabbe — nor the 
polished sparkling of Moore ; but in force of 
diction, and inextinguishable energy of senti- 
ment, he clearly surpasses them all. "'Words 
that breathe, and thoughts that burn," are not 
merely the ornaments, but the common staple 
of his poetry; and he is not inspired or im- 
pressive only in some happy passages, but 
through the whole body and tissue of his 
composition. It was an unavoidable condition, 
perhaps, of this higher excellence, that his 
scene should be narrow, and his persons few. 
To compass such ends as he had in view, it 
was necessary to reject all ordinary agents, 
and all trivial combinations. He could not 
possibly be amusing, or ingenious, or playful ; 
or hope to maintain the requisite pitch of in- 
terest by the recitation of sprightly adventures, 
or the opposition of common characters. To 
produce great effects, in short, he felt that it 
was necessary to deal only with the greater 
passions — with the exaltations of a daring 
fancy, and the errors of a lofty intellect — w T ith 
the pride, the terrors, and the agonies of 

* I have already said so much of Lord Byron with 
reference to his Dramatic productions, that I cannot 
now afford to republish more than one other paper 
on the subject of his poetry in general: And I se- 
lect this, rather because it refers to a greater variety 
of these compositions, than because it deals with 
such as are either absolutely the best, or the most 
characteristic of his genius. The truth is, however, 
that all his writings are characteristic; and lead, 
pretty much alike, to those views of the dark and 
the bright parts of his nature, which have led me, I 
fear (though almost irresistibly) into observations 
more personal to the character of the author, than 
whould generally be permitted to a mere literary 
censor. 



strong emotion — the fire and air alone of our 
human elements. 

In this respect, and in his general notion of 
the end and the means of poetry, we have 
sometimes thought that his views fell more 
in with those of the Lake poets, than of any 
other existing party in the poetical common- 
wealth : And, in some of his later productions 
especially, it is impossible not to be struck 
with his occasional approaches to the style 
and manner of this class of writers. Lord 
Byron, however, it should be observed, like 
all other persons of a quick sense of beauty, 
and sure enough of their own originality to 
be in no fear of paltry imputations, is a great 
mimic of styles and manners, and a great 
borrower of external character. He and Scott, 
accordingly, are full of imitations of all the 
writers from whom they have ever derived 
gratification ; and the two most original writers 
of the age might appear, to superficial ob- 
servers, to be the most deepiy indebted to 
their predecessors. In this particular instance, 
w T e have no fault to find with Lord Byron : 
For undoubtedly the finer passages of Words- 
worth and Southey have in them wherewithal 
to lend an impulse to the utmost ambition of 
rival genius; and their diction and manner of 
w r riting is frequently both striking and original. 
But we must say, that it would afford us still 
greater pleasure to find these tuneful gentle- 
men returning the compliment which Lord 
Byron has here paid to their talents; and 
forming themselves on the model rather of 
his imitations, than of their own originals. — 
In those imitations they will find that, though 
he is sometimes abundantly mystical, he 
never, or at least very rarely, indulges in ab- 
solute nonsense — never takes his lofty flights 
upon mean or ridiculous occasions — and, 
above all, never dilutes his strong concep- 
tions, and magnificent imaginations, with a 
flood of oppressive verbosity. On the con 
trary, he is, of all living writers, the most 
concise and condensed ; and ; we would fain 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



435 



nope, may go far, by his example, to redeem 
the great reproach of our modem literature — 
its intolerable prolixity and redundance. In 
his nervous and manly lines, we find no elab- 
orate amplification of common sentiments — 
no ostentatious polishing of pretty expres- 
sions ; and we really think that the brilliant 
success which has rewarded his disdain of 
those paltry artifices, should put to shame for 
ever that puling and self-admiring race, who 
can live throug-h half a volume on the stock 
of a single thought, and expatiate over divers 
fair quarto pages with the details of one te- 
dious description. In Lord Byron, on the con- 
trary, we have a perpetual stream of thick- 
coming fancies — an eternal spring of fresh- 
blown images, which seem called into exist- 
ence by the sudden flash of those glowing 
thoughts and overwhelming emotions, that 
struggle for expression through the whole flow 
of his poetry — and impart to a diction that is 
often abrupt and irregular, a force and a charm 
which frequently realise all that is said of in- 
spiration. 

With all these undoubted claims to our 
admiration, however, it is impossible to deny 
that the noble author before us has still some- 
thing to learn, and a good deal to correct. He 
is frequently abrupt and careless, and some- 
times obscure. There are marks, occasion- 
ally, of effort and straining after an emphasis, 
which is generally spontaneous; and, above 
all, there is far too great a monotony in the 
moral colouring of his pictures, and too much 
repetition of the same sentiments and maxims. 
He delights too exclusively in the delineation 
of a certain morbid exaltation of character and 
feeling — a sort of demoniacal sublimity, not 
without some traits of the ruined Archangel. 
He is haunted almost perpetually with the 
image of a being feeding and fed upon by 
violent passions, and the recollections of the 
catastrophes they have occasioned: And, 
though worn out by their past indulgence, 
unable to sustain the burden of an existence 
which they do not continue to animate : — full 
of pride, and revenge, and obduracy — disdain- 
ing life and death, and mankind and himself 
— and trampling, in his scorn, not only upon 
the falsehood and formality of polished life, 
but upon its tame virtues and slavish devo- 
tion : Yet envying, by fits, the very beings he 
despises, and melting into mere softness and 
compassion, when the helplessness of child- 
hood or the frailty of woman make an appeal 
to his generosity. Such is the person with 
whom we are called Upon almost exclusively 
to sympathise in all the greater productions 
of this distinguished writer: — InChilde Harold 
— in the Corsair — in Lara — in the Siege of 
Corinth — in Parisina, and in most of the 
smaller pieces. 

It is impossible to represent such a charac- 
ter better than Lord Byron has done in all 
these productions — or indeed to represent any 
thing more terrible in its anger, or more attrac- 
tive in its relenting. In point of effect, we 
readily admit, that no one character can be 
more poetical or impressive : — But it is really 
too much to find the scene perpetually filled 



by one character — not only in all the acts of 
each several drama, but in all the different 
dramas of the series; — and, grand and im- 
pressive as it is, we feel at last that these very 
qualities make some relief more indispensable, 
and oppress the spirits of ordinary mortals 
with too deep an impression of awe and re- 
pulsion. There is too much guilt in short, and 
too much gloom, in the leading character : — 
and though it be a fine thing to gaze, now 
and then, on stormy seas, and thunder-shaken 
mountains, we should prefer passing our days 
in sheltered valleys, and by the murmur of 
calmer waters. 

We are aware that these metaphors may be 
turned against us — and that, without meta- 
phor, it may be said that men do not pass 
their days in reading poetry — and that, as they 
may look into Lord Byron only about as often 
as they look abroad upon tempests, they have 
no more reason to complain of him for being 
grand and gloomy, than to complain of the 
same qualities in the glaciers and volcanoes 
which they go so far to visit. Painters, too, 
it may be said, have often gained great repu- 
tation by their representations of tigers and 
others ferocious animals, or of caverns and 
banditti — and poets should be allowed, with- 
out reproach, to indulge in analogous exer- 
cises. We are far from thinking that there is 
no weight in these considerations ; and feel 
how plausibly it may be said, that we have 
no better reason for a great part of our com- 
plaint, than that an author, to whom we are 
already very greatly indebted, has chosen 
rather to please himself, than us, in the use 
he makes of his talents. 

This, no doubt, seems both unreasonable 
and ungrateful : But it is nevertheless true, 
that a public benefactor becomes a debtor to 
the public; and is, in some degree, responsi- 
ble for the employment of those gifts which 
seem to be conferred upon him, not merely 
for his own delight, but for the delight and 
improvement of his fellows through all gene- 
rations. Independent of this, however, we 
think there is a reply to the apology. A great 
living poet is not like a distant volcano, or an 
occasional tempest. He is a volcano in the 
heart of our land, and a cloud that hangs over 
our dwellings ; and we have some reason to 
complain, if, instead of genial warmth and 
grateful shade, he voluntarily darkens and 
inflames our atmosphere with perpetual fiery 
explosions and pitchy vapours. Lord Byron's 
poetry, in short, is too attractive and too 
famous to lie dormant or inoperative ; and, 
therefore, if it produce any painful or perni 
cious effects, there will be murmurs, and 
ought to be suggestions of alteration. Now. 
though an artist may draw fighting tigers and 
hungry lions in as lively and natural away as 
he can, without giving any encouragement to 
human ferocity, or even much alarm to human 
fear, the case is somewhat different, when a 
poet represents men with tiger-like disposi- 
tions: — and yet more so, when he exhausts 
the resources of his genius to make this terri- 
ble being interesting and attractive, and 10 
represent all the lofty virtues as the natural 



436 



IH)ETRY. 



allies of his ferocity. It is still worse when 
he proceeds to show, that all these precious 
gifts of dauntless courage, strong affection, 
and high imagination, are not only akin to 
guilt, but the parents of misery; — and that 
those only have any chance of tranquillity or 
happiness in this world, whom it is the object 
of his poetry to make us shun and despise. 

These, it appears to us, are not merely 
errors in taste, but perversions of morality; 
and, as a great poet is necessarily a moral 
teacher, and gives forth his ethical lessons, 
in general with far more effect and authority 
than any of his graver brethren, he is peculi- 
arly liable to the censures reserved for those 
who turn the means of improvement to pur- 
poses of corruption. 

It may no doubt be said, that poetry in gene- 
ral tends less to the useful than the splendid 
qualities of our nature — that a character po- 
etically good has long been distinguished from 
one that is morally so — and that, ever since 
the time of Achilles, our sympathies, on such 
occasions, have been chiefly engrossed by per- 
sons whose deportment is by no means ex- 
emplary ; and who in many points approach 
to the temperament of Lord Byron's ideal 
hero. There is some truth in this suggestion 
also. But other poets, in the first place, do 
not allow their favourites so outrageous a mo- 
nopoly of the glory and interest of the piece 
— and sin less therefore against the laws 
either of poetical or distributive justice. In 
the second place, their heroes are not, gene- 
rally, either so bad or so good as Lord Byron's 
— and do not indeed very much exceed the 
standard of truth and nature, in either of the 
extremes. His, however, are as monstrous 
and unnatural as centaurs, and hippogriffs — 
and must ever figure in the eye of sober rea- 
son as so many bright and hateful impossi- 
bilities. But the most important distinction 
is, that the other poets who deal in peccant 
heroes, neither feel nor express that ardent 
affection for them, which is visible in the 
whole of this author's delineations ; but mere- 
ly make use of them as necessary agents in 
the extraordinary adventures they have to 
detail, and persons whose mingled vices and 
virtues are requisite to bring about the catas- 
trophe of their story. In Lord Byron, how- 
ever, the interest of the story, where there 
happens to be one, which is not always the 
case, is uniformly postponed to that of the 
character itself — into which he enters so deep- 
ly, and with so extraordinary a fondness, that 
lie generally continues to speak in its lan- 
guage, after it has been dismissed from the 
stage ; and to inculcate, on his own authority, 
the same sentiments which had been pre- 
viously recommended by its example. We 
do not consider it as unfair, therefore, to say 
that Lord Byron appears to us to be the zeal- 
ous apostle of a certain fierce and magnificent 
misanthropy ; which has already saddened 
his poetry with too deep a shade, and not 
only led to a great misapplication of great 
talents, but contributed to render popular some 
very false estimates of the constituents of hu- 
man happiness and merit. It is irksome, 



however, to dwell upon observations so gene* 
ral — and we shall probably have better meani 
of illustrating these remarks, if they are really 
well founded, when we come to speak of the 
particular publications by which they have 
now been suggested. 

We had the good fortune, we believe, to be 
among the first who proclaimed the rising of 
a new luminary, on the appearance of Childe 
Harold on the poetical horizon. — and we pur- 
sued his course with due attention through 
several of the constellations. If we have 
lately omitted to record his progress with the 
same accuracy, it is by no means because we 
have regarded it with more indifference, or 
supposed that it would be less interesting to 
the public — but because it was so extremely 
conspicuous as no longer to require the no- 
tices of an official observer. In general, we 
do not think it necessary, nor indeed quite 
fair, to oppress our readers with an account 
of works, which are as well known to them 
as to ourselves; or with a repetition of sen- 
timents in which all the world is agreed. 
Wherever, a work, therefore, is very popular, 
and where the general opinion of its merits 
appears to be substantially right, we think 
ourselves at liberty to leave it out of our 
chronicle, without incurring the censure of 
neglect or inattention. A very rigorous ap- 
plication of this maxim might have saved our 
readers the trouble of reading what we now 
write — and, to confess the truth, we write it 
rather to gratify ourselves, than with the hope 
of giving them much information. At the 
same time, some short notice of the progress 
of such a writer ought, perhaps, to appear in 
his contemporary journals, as a tribute due 
to his eminence; — and a zealous critic can 
scarcely set about examining the merits of 
any work, or the nature of its reception by 
the public, without speedily discovering very 
urgent cause for his admonitions, both to the 
author and his admirers. 

Our last particular account was of the Cor- 
sair ; — and though from that time to the pub- 
lication of the pieces, the titles of which we 
have prefixed, the noble author has produced 
as much poetry as would have made the for- 
tune of any other person, we can afford to 
take but little notice of those intermediate 
performances; which have already passed 
their ordeal with this generation, and are 
fairly committed to the final judgment of pos- 
terity. Some slight reference to them, how- 
ever, may be proper, both to mark the pro- 
gress of the author's views, and the history 
of his fame. 

Lara was obviously the sequel of the Cor- 
sair — and maintained, in general, the same 
tone of deep interest, and lofty feeling;— 
though the disappearance of Medora from the 
scene deprives it of the enchanting sweet- 
ness, by which its terrors were there redeemed, 
and make the hero on the whole less capti- 
vating. The character of Lara, too, is rather 
too laboriously finished, and his nocturnal en- 
counter with the apparition is worked up too 
ostentatiously. There is infinite beauty in 
the sketch of the dark page — and in many of 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



43' 



the moral or general reflections which are 
interspersed with the narrative. The death 
of Lara, however, is by far the finest pas- 
sage in the poem, and is fully equal to any 
thing else which the author has ever written. 
Though it is not under our immediate cog- 
nisance, we cannot resist the temptation of 
transcribing the greater part of the passage — 
in which the physical horror of the event, 
though described with a terrible force and 
fidelity, is both relieved and enhanced by the 
beautiful pictures of mental energy and re- 
deeming affection with which it is combined. 
Our readers will recollect, that this gloomy 
and daring chief was mortally wounded in 
battle, and led out of it, almost insensible, by 
that sad and lovely page, whom no danger 
could ever separate from his side. On his re- 
treat, slaughter and desolation falls on his 
disheartened followers; and the poet turns 
from the scene of disorder — 

11 Beneath a lime, remoter from the scene, 

Where but for him that strife had never been, 

A breathing but devoted warrior lay : 

'Twas Lara bleeding fast from life away! 

His follower once, and now his only guide, 

Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side, 

And with his scarf would staunch the, tides that rush, 

Wiih each convulsion, in a blacker gush ; 

And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, 

In feebler, not less fatal tricklings flow : 

He scarce can speak ; but motions him 'tis vain, 

And merely adds another throb to pain. 

He clasps the hand that pang which wonld assuage, 

And sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page 

Who nothing fears, nor feels, nor heeds, nor sees, 

Save that damp brow which rests upon his knees'; 

Save that pale aspect, where the eye, though dim, 

Held all the light that shone on earth for him ! 

" The foe arrives, who long had search'd the field, 
Their triumph nought till Lara too should yield ; 
They would remove him ; but they see 'twere vain, 
A,nd he regards them with a calm disdain, 
That rose to reconcile him with his fate, 
And that escape to death from living hate : 
And Otho comes, and leaping from his steed, 
Looks on the bleeding foe that made him bleed, 
And questions of his state : He answers not ; 
Scarce glances on him as on one forgot, 
And turns to Kaled : — each remaining word, 
They understood not, if distinctly heard ; 
His dying tones are in that other tongue, [&c. 

To which some strange remembrance wildly clung," 

Their words though faint were many — from the tone 
Their import those who heard could judge alone ; 
From this, you might have deem'd young Kaled's 

death 
More near than Lara's, by his voice and breath ; » 
So sad, so deep, and hesitating broke 
The accents his scarce- moving pale lips spoke ; 
But Lara's voice though low, at first was clear 
And calm, till murm'ring death gasp'd hoarsely 
But from his visage little could we guess, [near: 
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless, 
Save that when struggling nearer to his last, 
Upon that page his eye was kindly cast ; 
And once as Kaled's answ'ring accents ceast, 
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East. — 

"But gasping heav'd the breath that Lara drew, 
And dull the film along his dim eye grew ; [o'er 
His limbs stretch'd flutt'ring. and his head dropp'd 
The weak, yet still untirin? knee that bore! 
He press'd the hand he held upon his heart- 
It beats no more ! but Kaled will not part 
With the cold grasp ! but feels, and feels in vain, 
For that faint throb which answers not again. 



' It beats !' Away, thou dreamer ! he is gone ! 
It once was Lara which thou look'st upon. 

" He gaz'd, as if not yet had pass'd away 
The haughty spirit of that humble clay ; 
And those around have rous'd him from his trance 
But cannot tear from thence his fixed glance ; 
And when, in raising him from where he bore 
Within his arms the form that felt no more, 
He saw the head his breast would still sustain, 
Roll down, like earth to earth, upon the plain ! 
He did not dash himself thereby ; nor tear 
The glossy tendrils of his raven hair, 
But strove to stand and gaze ; but reel'd and fell, 
Scarce breathing more than that he lov'd so well ! 
Than that He lov'd ! Oh ! never yet beneath 
The breast of Man such trusty love may breathe ! 
That trying moment hath at once reveal'd 
The secret, long and yet but ha!f-conceal'd ; 
In baring to revive that lifeless breast, 
Its grief seem'd ended, but the sex confest ! 
And life return'd, and Kaled felt no shame — 
What now to her was Womanhood or Fame ?" 

We must stop here ) — but the whole sequel 
of the poem is written -with equal vigour and 
feeling ; and may be put in competition with 
any thing that poetry has ever produced, in 
point either of pathos or energy. 

The Siege of Corinth is next in the order 
of time ; and though written, perhaps, with 
too visible a striving after effect, and not very 
well harmonised in all its parts, we cannot 
help regarding it as a magnificent composi- 
tion. There is less misanthropy in it than 
in any of the rest ; and the interest is made 
up of alternate representations of soft and 
solemn scenes and emotions — and of the tu- 
mult, and terrors, and intoxication of war. 
These opposite pictures are perhaps too vio- 
lently contrasted, and, in some parts, too 
harshly coloured; but they are in general 
exquisitely designed, and executed with the 
utmost spirit and energy. What, for in- 
stance, can be finer than the following night- 
piece'? The renegade had left his tent in 
moody musing, the night before the final 
assault on the Christian walls. 

" 'Tis midnight ! On the mountain's brown 
The cold, round moon shines deeply down ; 
Blue roll the waters ; blue the sky 
Spreads like an ocean hung on high, 
Bespangled with those isles of light, 
So wildly, spiritually bright ; 
Who ever gaz'd upon them shining, 
And turn'd to earth without repining, 
Nor wish'd for wings to flee away, 
And mix with their eternal ray ? 
The waves on either shore lay there, 
Calm, clear, and azure as the air; 
And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, 
But murmur'd meekly as the brook. 
The winds were pillow'd on the waves ; 
The banners droop'd along their staves, 
And, as they fell around them furling, 
Above them shone the crescent curling; 
And that deep silence was unbroke, 
Save where the watch his signal spoke, 
Save where the steed neigh'doft and shrill, 
And echo answer'd from the hill, 
And the wide hum of that wild host 
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, 
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air 
In midnight call to wonted prayer." — 

The transition to the bustle and fury of tno 
morning muster, as well as the moving picture 
of the barbaric host, is equally admirable. 
« m * 



438 



POETRY. 



" The night is past, and shines the sun 

As if that morn were a jocund one. 

Lightly and brightly breaks away 

The Morning from her mantle grey, 

And ihe Noon will look on a sultry day ! 

Hark to the trump, and the drum, 

And the mournful sound of the barb'rous horn, 

And the flap of the banners, that flit as they're 

borne, 
And the neigh of the steed, and the multitude's 

hum, 
And the clash, and the shout, ' They come, they 

come !' 
The horsetails are pluck'dfrom the ground, and the 

sword 
From its sheath ! and they form — and but wait for 

the word. 
The steeds are all bridled, and snort to the rein ; 
Curv'd is each neck, and flowing each mane ; 
White is the foam of their champ on the bit : 
The spears are uplifted ; the matches are lit ; 
The cannon are pointed, and ready to roar, 
And crush the wall they have crumbled before! 
Forms in his phalanx each Jani/ar ; 
Alp at their head ; his right arm is bare ; 
So is the blade of his scimitar! 
The khan and the pachas are all at their post ; 
The vizier himself at the head of the host. 
When the culverin's signal is fir'd, then on! 
Leave not in Corinth a living one — 
A priest at her altars, a chief in her halls, 
A hearth in her mansions, a stone on her walls ! 
God and the Prophet !— Alia Hu ! 
Up to the skies with that wild halloo! 

"As the wolves, that headlong go 
On the stately buffalo, 
Though with fiery eyes and angry roar, 
And hoofs that stamp, and horns that gore, 
He tramples on earth, or tosses on high 
The foremost, who rush on his strength but to die : 
Thus against the wall they went, 
Thus the first were backward bent ! 
Many a bosom, sheath'd in brass, 
Sirew'd the earth like broken glass, 
Shivcr'd by the shot, that tore 
The ground whereon they mov'd no more : 
Even as they fell, in files they lay, 
Like the mower's grass at the close of day, 
When his work is done on the lcvell'd plain ; 
Such was the fall of the foremost slain ! 
As the spring-tides, with heavy plash, 
From the cliffs invading dash 
Huge fragments, sapp'd by the ceaseless flow, 
Till white and thundering down they go,— 
Like the avalanche's snow 
On the Alpine vales below ; 
Thus at length, outbreath'd and worn, 
Corinth's sons were downward borne 
By the long, and oft renew'd 
Charge of the Moslem multitude ! 
In firmness they stood, and in masses they fell, 
Heap'd, by the host of the infidel, 
Hand to hand, and foot to foot : 
Nothing there, save death, was mute ; 
Stroke, and thrust, and flash, and cry 
For quarter, or for victory ! 
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun, 
And all but the after-carnage done. 
Shriller shrieks now mingling come 
From within theplunder'd dome : 
Hark to the haste of flying feet ! 
That splash in the blood of the slippery street !" 

Parisina is of a different character. There 
is no tumult or stir in this piece. It is all sad- 
ness, and pity, and terror. The story is told 
in half a sentence. The Prince of Este has 
married a lady who was originally destined 
for his favourite natural son. He discovers a 
criminal attachment between them ; and puts 
the issue and the invader of his bed to death, 



before the face of his unhappy paramour. 
There is too much of honor, perhaps, in the 
circumstances: but the writing is beautifu. 
throughout; and the whole wrapped in a rich 
and redundant veil of poetry, where every 
thing breathes the pure essence of genius anS 
sensibility. The opening verses, though soft 
and voluptuous, are tinged with the same 
shade of sorrow which gives its character and 
harmony to the whole poem. 

" Ir is the hour when from the boughs, 
The nightingale's high note is heard ; 
It is the hour when lovers' vows 
Seem sweet in every whisper' d word ; 
And gentle winds, and waters near, 
Make music to the lonely ear ! 
Each flower the dews have lightly wet ; 
And in the sky the stars are met, 
And on the wave is deeper blue, 
And on the leaf a browner hue, 
And in the heaven that clear obscure, 
So softly dark, and darkly pure, 
Which follows the decline of day, 
As twilight melts beneath the moon away. 
But it is not to list to the waterfall 
That Parisina leaves her hall, &c. 

" With many a ling'ring look they leave 
The spot of guilty gladness past ! 
And though .they hope and vow, they grieve, 
As if that parting were the last. 
The frequent sigh — the long embrace — 
The lip that there would cling forever, 
While gleams on Parisina's face 
The Heaven she fears will not forgive her ! 
As if each calmly conscious star 
Beheld her frailty from afar." 

The arraignment and condemnation of the 
guilty pair, with the bold, high-toned, and yet 
temperate defence of the son, are managed 
with admirable talent ; and yet are Jess touch- 
ing than the mute despair of the fallen beauty, 
who stands in speechless agony beside him. 

" Those lids o'er which the violet vein — 
Wandering, leaves a tender siain, 
Shining through the smoothest white 
That e'er did softest kiss invite — 
Now seem'd with hot and livid glow 
To press, not shade, the orbs below ; 
Which glance so heavily, and fill, 
As tear on tear grows gath'ring still. — 

" Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 
Or shade the glance o'er which they rose, 
But round their orbs of deepest blue 
The circling white dilated grew — 
And there with glassy gaze she stood 
As ice were in her curdled blood ; 
But every now and then a tear 
So large and slowly gather'd, slid 
From the long dark fringe of that fair lid, 
It was a thing to see, not hear ! 
To speak she thought — the imperfect note 
Was chok'd within her swelling throat, 
Yet seem'd in that low hollow groan 
Her whole heart gushing in the tone. 
It ceas'd — again she thought to speak 
Then burst her voice in one long shriek, 
And to the earth she fell, like stone 
Or statue from its base o'erthrown." 

The grand part of this poem, however, is 
that which describes the execution of the 
rival son ; and in which, though there is no 
pomp, either of language or of sentiment, and 
every thing, on the contrary, is conceived and 
expressed with studied simplicity and direct- 
ness, there is a spirit of pathos and poetry to 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



439 



«r)uch it would n :t be easy to find many pa- 
rallels. 

The Convent bells are ringing ! 

But mournfully and slow ; 
In the grey square turret swinging, 

Wiih a deep sound, to and fro ! 
Heavily to the heart they go ! 

Hark ! the hymn is singing ! — 
The song for the dead below, 

Or the living who shortly shall be so ! 
For a departing Being's soul [knoll : 

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells 
He is near his mortal goal ; 
Kneeling at the Friar's knee ; 
Sad to hear — and piteous to see ! — 
Kneeling on (he bare cold ground, 
With the block before and the guards around — 
While the crowd in a speechless circle gather 
To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father ! 

" It is a lovely hour as yet 
Before the summer sun shall set, 
Which rose upon that heavy day, 
And mock'd it with his steadiest ray ; 
And his evening beams are shed 
Full on Hugo's" fated head ! 
As his last confession pouring 
To the monk, his doom deploring 
In penitential holiness, 
He bends to hear his accents bliss 
With absolution such as may 
Wipe our mortal stains away ! 
That high sun on his head did glisten 
As he there did bow and listen ! 
And the rings of chesnut hair 
Curled half-down his neck so bare; 
But brighter still the beam was thrown 
Upon the axe which near him shone 
With a clear and ghastly glitter !— — — 
Oh ! that parting hour was bitter ! 
Even the stern stood chill'd with awe : 
Dark the crime, and just the law — 
Yet they shudder'd as they saw. 

" The parting prayers are said and over 
Of that false son — and daring lover ! 
His beads and sins are all recounted ; 
His hours to their last minute mounted — 
His mantling cloak before was stripp'd, 
His bright brown locks must now be clipp'd ! 
'Tis done — all closely are they shorn — 
The vest which till this moment worn — 

The scarf which Parisina gave — 
Must not adorn him to the grave. 
Even that must now be thrown aside, 
And o'er his eyes the kerchief tied ; 
But no — that last indignity 
Shall ne'er approach his haughty eye. 
1 No ! — yours my forfeit blood and breath — 
These hands are chain'd — but let me die 
At least with an unshackled eye — 
Strike !' — and, as the word he said, 
Upon the block he bow'd his head ; 
These the last accents Huso spoke : 
* Strike!' — and flashing fell the stroke ! — 
Roll'd the head — and, gushing, sunk 
Back the stain'd and heaving trunk, 
In the dust, — which each deep vein 
Slak'd with its cnsanguin'd rain ! 
His eyes and lips a moment quiver, 
Convuls'd and quick — then fix for ever." 

Of the Hebrew melodies — the Ode to Na- 
poleon, and some other smaller pieces that 
appeared about the same time, we shall not 
now stop to say anything. They are ob- 
viously inferior to the works we have been 
noticing, and are about to notice, both in 
general interest, and in power of poetry — 
though some of them, and the Hebrew melo- 
dies especially, display a skill in versification, 
and a mastery in diction, which would have 



raised an inferior artist to Ue very summit of 
distinction. 

Of the verses entitled, "Fare thee well," — 
and some others of a similar character, we 
shall say nothing but that, in spite of their 
beauty, it is painful to read them — and infi- 
nitely to be regretted that they should have 
been given to the public. It would be apiece 
of idle affectation to consider them as mere 
effusions of fancy, or to pretend ignorance of 
the subjects to which they relate — and with 
the knowledge which all the world has of 
these subjects, we must say, that not even 
the example of Lord Byron, himself, can per- 
suade us that they are fit for public discussion. 
We come, therefore, to the consideration of 
the noble author's most recent publications. 

The most considerable of these, is the Third 
Canto of Childe Harold ; a work which has 
the disadvantage of all continuations, in ad- 
mitting of little absolute novelty in the plan 
of the work or the cast of its character, and 
must, besides, remind all Lord Byron's readers 
of the extraordinary effect produced by the 
sudden blazing forth of his genius, upon their 
first introduction to that title. In spite of all 
this, however, we are persuaded that this 
Third Part of the poem will not be pronounced 
inferior to either of the former; and, we think, 
will probably be ranked above them by those 
who have been most delighted with the whole. 
The great success of this singular production, 
indeed, has always appeared to us an extraor- 
dinary proof of its merits; for, with all its 
genius, it does not belong to a sort of poetry 
that rises easily to popularity. — It has no story 
or action — very little variety of character — 
and a great deal of reasoning and reflection 
of no very attractive tenor. It is substantially 
a contemplative and ethical work, diversified 
with fine description, and adorned or over- 
shaded by the perpetual presence of one em- 
phatic person, who is sometimes the author, 
and sometimes the object, of the reflections 
on which the interest is chiefly rested. It 
required, no doubt, great force of writing, and 
a decided tone of originality to recommend a 
performance of this sort so powerfully as this 
has been recommended to public notice and 
admiration — and those high characteristics 
belong perhaps still more eminently to the 
part that is now before us, than to any of the 
former. There is the same stern and lofty 
disdain of mankind, and their ordinary pur- 
suits and enjoyments; with the same bright 
gaze on nature, and the same magic power 
of giving interest and effect to her delinea- 
tions — but mixed up, we think, with deeper 
and more matured reflections, and a more in- 
tense sensibility to all that is grand or lovely 
in the external world. — Harold, in short, is 
somewhat older since he last appeared upon 
the scene — and while the vigour of his intel- 
lect has been confirmed, and his confidence 
in his own opinions increased, his mind has 
also become more sensitive; and his misan- 
thropy, thus softened over by habits of calmer 
contemplation, appears less active and impa- 
tient, even although more deeply rooted than 



440 



POETRY. 



before. Undoubtedly the finest part? of the 
poem before us, are those which thus embody 
the weight of his moral sentiments ; or dis- 
close the lofty sympathy which binds the 
despise r of Man to the glorious aspects of 
Nature. It is in these, we think, that the great 
attractions of the work consist, and the strength 
of the author's genius is seen. The narrative 
and mere description are of far inferior in- 
terest. With reference to the sentiments and 
opinions, however, which thus give its dis- 
tinguishing character to the piece, we must 
say, that it seems no longer possible to ascribe 
them to the ideal person whose name it bears, 
or to any other than the author himself. — 
Lord Byron, we think, has formerly complain- 
ed of those who identified him with his hero, 
or supposed that Harold was but the expositor 
of his own feelings and opinions; — and in 
noticing the former portions of the work, we 
thought it unbecoming to give any counte- 
nance to such a supposition. — In this last part, 
however, it is really impracticable to distin- 
guish them. — Not only do the author and his 
hero travel and reflect together, — but, in truth, 
we scarcely ever have any distinct intimation 
to which of them the sentiments so energeti- 
cally expressed are to be ascribed; and in 
those which are unequivocally given as those 
of the noble author himself, there is the very 
same tone of misanthropy, sadness, and scorn, 
which we were formerly willing to regard as 
a part of the assumed costume of the Childe. 
We are far from supposing, indeed, that Lord 
Byron would disavow any of these sentiments; 
and though there are some Avhich we must 
ever think it most unfortunate to entertain, 
and others which it appears improper to have 
published, the greater part are admirable, and 
cannot be perused without emotion, even by 
those to whom they may appear erroneous. 

The poem opens with a burst of grand poe- 
try, and lofty and impetuous feeling, in which 
the author speaks undisguisedly in his own 
person. 

" Once more upon the waters! yet once more ! 
And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed 
That knows his rider. Welcome, to their roar! 
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead ! 
Though the strain'd mast should quiver as a reed, 
And the rent canva=s fluttering strew the gale, 
Still must I on ; for I am as a weed, 
Flung from the rock, on Ocean's foam, to sail 

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's 
breath prevail. 

" In my youth's summer, I did sing of One, 
The wand'ring outlaw of his own dark mind; 
Again I seize the theme then but begun, 
And bear it with me. as the rushing wind 
Bears the cloud onwards. In that tale I find 
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears, 
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind, 
O'er which all heavily the journeying years 

Plod the last sands of life, — where not a flower 
appears. 

" Since my young days of passion — joy, or pain, 
Perchanre my heart and harp have lost a string, 
And both may jar. It may be. that in vain 
J wouM essay, as I have sung to sing. 
Vet, £r.4gh a dreary strain, to this I cling; 
So that i, wean me from the weary dream 
Of selfish gnef or gladness ! — so it fling 



Forgetfulness around me— it shall seem, 
To me, though to none else, a not ungratelul 
theme." 

After a good deal more in the same strain 
he proceeds, 

" Yet must I think less wildly: — I have thought 
Too long and darkly ; till my brain became 
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, 
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame : 
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, 
My springs of life were poison'd." — 

" Something too much of this: — but now 'tis past, 
And the spell closes with its silent seal ! 
Long absent Harold re-appears at last." 

The character and feelings of this unjoyoua 
personage are then depicted with great force 
and fondness ; — and at last he is placed upon 
the plain of Waterloo. 

"In 'pride of place' where late the Eagle flew, 
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain, 
Pierc'd by the shaft ofbanded nations through!" — 

" Fit retribution ! Gaul may champ the bit 
And foam in fetters; — but is Earth more free ? 
Did nations combat to make One submit ; 
Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty f 
What ! shall reviving Thraldom again be 
The patch'd-up idol of enlighten'd days? 
Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we 
Pay the Wolf homage ?" 

"If not, o'er one fall'n despot boast no more !" 

There can be no more remarkable proof of 
the greatness of Lord Byron's genius than the 
spirit and interest he has contrived to com- 
municate to his picture of the often-drawn and 
difficult scene of the breaking up from Brus- 
sels before the great battle. It is a trite 
remark, that poets generally fail in the repre- 
sentation of great events, when the interest 
is recent, and the particulars are consequently 
clearly and commonly known : and the reason 
is obvious : For as it is the object of poetry to 
make us feel for distant or imaginary occur- 
rences nearly as strongly as if they were pre- 
sent and real, it is plain that there is no scope 
for her enchantments, where the impressive 
reality, with all its vast preponderance of inter- 
est, is already before us, and where the con- 
cern we take in the gazette far outgoes any 
emotion that can be conjured up in us by the 
help of fine descriptions. It is natural, how- 
ever, for the sensitive tribe of poets, to mis- 
take the common interest which they then 
share with the unpoetical part of their coun- 
trymen, for a vocation to versify ; and so they 
proceed to pour out the lukewarm distillations 
of their phantasies upon the unchecked effer- 
vescence of public feeling! All our bards, 
accordingly, great and small, and of all sexes, 
ages, and professions, from Scott and Southey 
down to hundreds without names or additions, 
have adventured upon this theme — and failed 
in the management of it ! And while they 
yielded to the patriotic impulse, as if they had 
all caught the inspiring summons — 

" Let those rhyme now who never rhym'd before, 
And those who always rhyme, rhyme now the 
more — " 

The result has been, that scarcely a line to 
be remembered had been produced on a sub- 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



441 



ject which probably was thought, of itself, a 
secure passport to immortality. It required 
some courage to venture on a theme beset 
with so many dangers, and deformed with the 
wrecks of so many former adventurers; — and 
a theme, too, which, in its general conception, 
appeared alien to the prevailing tone of Lord 
Byron's poetry. See, however, with what 
easy strength he enters upon it. and with how 
much grace he gradually finds his way back 
to his own peculiar vein of sentiment and 
diction. 

1 ' There was a sound of revelry by night ; 
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then 
Her beauiy and her chivalry ; and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. 
A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell ; 

But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising 
knell!" 

" Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gath'ring tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blush'd at the praise of their own loveliness; 
And there were sudden partings; such as press 
The life from out young hearts ; and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated : — who could 

guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 

Since upon nights so sweet such awful morn could 
rise ? 

" And there was mounting in hot haste : the steed, 
The must'ring squadron, and the clatt'ring car, 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 
And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Rous' d up the soldier ere the morning star. 

" And Ardennes waves above them her green 
leaves. 
Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass! 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 
Over the unreturning brave, — alas ! 
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow 
In its next verdure ! when this fiery mass 
Of living valour, rolling on the foe [and low." 

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold 

After some brief commemoration of the 
worth and valour that fell in that bloody field, 
the author turns to the many hopeless mourn- 
ers that survive to lament their extinction ; the 
many broken-hearted families, whose incura- 
ble sorrow is enhanced by the national ex- 
ultation that still points, with importunate joy, 
to the scene of their destruction. There is a 
richness and energy in the following passage 
which is peculiar to Lord Byron, among all 
modern poets, — a throng of glowing images, 
poured forth at once, with a facility and pro- 
fusion which must appear mere wastefulness 
to more economical writers, and a certain 
negligence and harshness of diction, which 
can belong only to an author who is oppressed 
with the exuberance and rapidity of his con- 
ceptions. 

" The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake 
Those whom they thirst for! though the sound 

of Fame 
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake 
The fever of vain longing ; and the name 
So honour'd but assumes a stronger, bitterer claim* 
56 



" They mourn, but smile at .ength ; and, smiling 
The tree will wither long before it fall ; [mourn 
The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn . 
The roof-tree sinks, but moulders on the hall 
In massy hoariness ; the ruin'd wall 
Stands when its wind-worn battlements aregon^; 
The bars survive the captive they enthral ; 
The day drags through, though storms keep out 
the sun ; 

And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on: 

11 Even as a broken mirror, which the glass 
In every fragment multiplies; and makes 
A thousand images of one that was. 
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks ; 
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes, 
Living in shatter'd guise, and still, and cold, 
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches, 
Yet withers on till all without is old, [told." 

Showing no visible sign, — for such things are un- 

There is next an apostrophe to Napoleon, 
graduating into a series of general reflections, 
expressed with infinite beauty and earnest- 
ness, and illustrated by another cluster of 
magical images; — but breathing the very es- 
sence of misanthropical disdain, and embody- 
ing opinions which we conceive not to be less 
erroneous than revolting. After noticing the 
strange combination of grandeur and littleness 
which feeemed to form the character of that 
greatest of all captains and conquerors, the 
author proceeds, 

" Yet well thy soul hath brook'd the turning tide 
With that, untaught innate philosophy, 
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride, 
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy. 
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by, 
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou nast 
With a sedate and all-enduring eye ; — [smil'd 
When fortune fled her spoil'd and favourite child, 

He stood unbow'd beneath the ills upon him pil d. 

Sager than in thy fortunes : For in them 
Ambition steel'd thee on too far to show 
That just ha'^tual scorn which could contemn 
Men and their thoughts. 'Twas wise to feel; not so 
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow, 
And spurn the instruments thou wert to use 
Till they were turn'd unto thine overthrow: 
'Tis but a worthless world to win or lose ! — 
So hath it prov'd to thee, and all such lot who choose. 

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, 
And there hath been thy bane ! There is a fire 
And motion of the soul which will not dwell 
In its own narrow being, but aspire 
Beyond the fitting medium of desire ; 
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, 
Preys upon high adventure ; nor can tire 
Of aught but rest ; a fever at the core, 
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore. 

This makes the madmen, who have made men 
By their contagion ; Conquerors and Kings, [mad 
Founders of sects and systems, — to whom add 
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet things, 
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs, 
And are themselves the fools to those they fool; 
Envied, yet how unenviable ! what stings 
Are theirs ! One breast laid open were a school 

Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or 
rule : 
Their breath is agitation ; and their life, 
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last ; 
And yet so nurs'd and bigotted to strife 
That should their days, surviving perils past> 
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast 
With sorrow and supineness, and so die ! 
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste 
With its own flickering ; or a sword laid by 

Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously. 



442 



POETRY. 



He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall find 
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; 
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, 
Must look down on the hate of those below. 
Though high above the sun of glory glow, 
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, 
Round him are icy rocks; and loudly blow 
Contending tempests on his naked head, [led." 
And thus reward the toils which to those summits 

This is splendidly written, no doubt — but 
we trust it is not true; and as it is delivered 
with much more than poetical earnestness, 
and recurs, indeed, in other forms in various 
parts of the volume, we must really be allowed 
to enter our dissent somewhat at large. With 
regard to conquerors, we wish with all our 
hearts that the case were as the noble author 
represents it : but we greatly fear they are 
neither half so unhappy, nor half so much 
hated as they should be. On the contrary, it 
seems plain enough that they are very com- 
monly idolised and admired, even by those 
on whom they trample ; and we suspect, 
moreover, that in general they actually pass 
their time rather agreeably, and derive con- 
siderable satisfaction from the ruin and deso- 
lation of the world. From Macedonia's mad- 
man to the Swede — from Nimrod to Bonaparte, 
the hunters of men have pursued their sport 
with as much gaiety, and as little remorse, as 
the hunters of other animals— and have lived 
as cheerily in their days of action, and as 
comfortably in their repose, as the followers 
of better pursuits. For this, and for the fame 
which they have generally enjoyed, they are 
obviously indebted to the great interests con- 
nected with their employment, and the men- 
tal excitement which belongs to its hopes and 
hazards. It would be strange, therefore, if 
the other active, but more innocent spirits, 
whom Lord Byron has here placed in the 
same predicament, and who share all their 
sources of enjoyment, without the guilt and 
the hardness which they cannot fail of con- 
tracting, should be more miserable or more 
unfriended than those splendid curses of their 
kind : — And it would be passing strange, and 
pitiful, if the most precious gifts of Providence 
should produce only unhappiness, and man- 
kind regard with hostility their greatest bene- 
factors. 

We do not believe in any such prodigies. 
Great vanity and ambition may indeed lead 
to feverish and restless efforts — to jealousies, 
to hate, and to mortification — but these are 
only their effects when united to inferior 
abilities. It is not those, in short,- who ac- 
tually surpass mankind, that are unhappy; 
but those who struggle in vain to surpass 
them : And this moody temper, which eats 
into itself from within, and provokes fair and 
unfair opposition from without, is generally 
the result of pretensions which outgo the 
merits by which they are supported — and dis- 
appointments, that may be clearly traced, not 
to the excess of genius, but its defect. 

It will be found, we believe, accordingly, 
that the master spirits of their age have al- 
ways escaped the unhappiness which is here 
supposed to be the inevitable lot of extraordi- 
nary talents ; and that this strange tax upon 



genius has only been leried from those who 
held the secondary shares of it. Men of truly 
great powers of mind have generally been 
cheerful, social, and indulgent; while a ten- 
dency to sentimental whining, or fierce intol- 
erance, may be ranked among the surest 
symptoms of little souls and inferior intel* 
lects. In the whole list of our English poets, 
we can only remember Shenstone and Savage 
— two, certainly, of the lowest — who were 
querulous and discontented. Cowley, indeed, 
used to call himself melancholy ; — but he was 
not in earnest ; and, at any rate, was full of 
conceits and affectations ; and has nothing to 
make us proud of him. Shakespeare, the 
greatest of them all, was evidently of a free 
and joyous temperament ; — and so was Chau- 
cer, their common master. The same dis- 
position appears to have predominated in 
Fletcher, Jonson, and their great contempo- 
raries. The genius of Milton partook some- 
thing of the austerity of the party to which he 
belonged, and of the controversies in which 
he was involved ; but even when fallen on 
evil days and evil tongues, his spirit seems to 
have retained its serenity as well as its dig- 
nity ; and in his private life, as well as in his 
poetry, the majesty- of a high character is 
tempered with great sweetness, genial indul- 
gences, and practical wisdom. In the suc- 
ceeding age our poets were but too gay ; and 
though we forbear to speak of living authors, 
we know enough of them to say with confi- 
dence, that to be miserable or to be hated is 
not now, any more than heretofore, the com- 
mon lot of those who excel. 

If this, however, be the case with poets, 
confessedly the most irritable and fantastic 
of all men of genius — and of poets, too, bred 
and born in the gloomy climate of England, 
it is not likely that those who have surpassed 
their fellows in other ways, or in other regions, 
have been more distinguished for unhappiness. 
Were Socrates and Plato, the greatest philoso- 
phers of antiquity, remarkable for unsocial 
or gloomy tempers 1 — was Bacon, the greatest 
in modern times % — was Sir Thomas More — 
or Erasmus — or Hume — or Voltaire? — was 
Newton — or Fenelon ? — was Francis I., or 
Henry IV., the paragon of kings and conquer- 
ors ? — was Fox, the most ardent, and, in the 
vulgar sense, the least successful of states- 
men'? These, and men like these, are un- 
doubtedly the lights and the boast of the 
world. Yet there was no alloy of misan 
thropy or gloom in their genius. They di • 
not disdain the men they had surpassed ; ant, 
neither feared nor experienced their hostility. 
Some detractors they might have, from envy 
or misapprehension ; but, beyond all doubt, 
the prevailing sentiments in respect to them 
have always been those of gratitude and ad- 
miration ; and the error of public judgment, 
where it has erred, has much oftener been to 
overrate than to undervalue the merits of 
those who had claims on their good opinion. 
On the whole, we are far from thinking that 
eminent men are actually happier than those 
who glide through life in peaceful obscurity: 
But it is their eminence, and the consequences 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



443 



of it. rather than the mental superiority by 
winch it is obtained, that interferes with their 
enjoyment. Distinction, however won, usually 
leads to a passion for more distinction ; and is 
apt to engage us in laborious efforts and anx- 
ious undertakings: and those, even when suc- 
cessful, seldom repay, in our judgment at 
least, the ease, the leisure, and tranquillity, 
of which they require the sacrifice : but it 
really passes our imagination to conceive, that 
the very highest degrees of intellectual vigour, 
or fancy, or sensibility, should of themselves 
be productive either of unhappiness or general 
dislike. 

Harold and his poet next move along the 
lovely banks of the Rhine, to which, and all 
their associated emotions, due honour is paid 
in various powerful stanzas. We pass on, 
however, to the still more attractive scenes 
of Switzerland. The opening is of suitable 
grandeur. 

" But these recede. Above me are the Alps, 
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls 
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, 
And throned Eternity in iey halls, 
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls 
The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow ! 
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,- 
Gather around these summits, as to show 

How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain 
man below." 

On this magnificent threshold, the poet 
pauses, to honour the patriot field of Morat, 
and the shrine of the priestess of Aventicum; 
and then, in congratulating himself on his 
solitude, once more moralises his song with 
something of an apology for its more bitter 
misanthropies. 

"To fly from, need not be to* hate mankind; 
All are not fit with them to stir and toil, 
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind 
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil 
In the hot throng," &c. 

" The race of life becomes a hopeless flight 
To those that walk in darkness ; on the sea, 
The boldest steer but where their ports invite, 
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity [shall be. 

Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er 
Is it not better, then, to be alone, 
And love Earth only for its earthly sake ? 
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, 
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, 
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make 
A fair but froward infant her own care, 
Kissing its cries away as these awake." 

The cliffs of Meillerie. and the groves 
of Clarens of course, conjure up the shade 
of Rousseau ; whom he characterises very 
strongly, but charitably, in several enchant- 
ing stanzas; — one or two of which we shall 
cite as a specimen of the kindred rapture 
with which the Poet here honours the Apostle 
of Love. 

" His love was passion's essence ! As a tree 
On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame 
Kindled he was, and blasted ; for to be 
Thus, and enamour'd, were in him the same. 
But his was not the love of living dame, 
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, 
But of ideal beauty ; which became 
In him existence, and o'erflowing teems [seems. 

,■ ong his burning page, distemper'd though it 



This breath'd itself to life in Julie, this 
Invested her with all that's wdd and sweet," &c. 

"Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep 

Love ! 
Thine air is the young breath of passionate 

thought! 
Thy trees take root in Love ; the snows above 
The very Glaciers have his colours caught, 
And sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought 
By rays which sleep there lovingly ! The rocks, 
The permanent crags, tell here of Love ; who 

sought 
In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, 
Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, 

then mocks. 

" All things are here of him ; from the black pines, 
Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar 
Of torrents, where he listeneih, to the vines 
Which slope his green path downward to the 

shore, 
Where the bow'd waters meet him, and adore, 
Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood, 
The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, 
But light leaves, young as joy, stands where k 
stood, 

Offering to him and his, a populous solitude." 

Our readers may think, perhaps, that there 
is too much sentiment and reflection in these 
extracts ; and wish for the relief of a little 
narrative or description : but the truth is, that 
there is no narrative in the poem, and that all 
the descriptions are blended with the expres- 
sion of deep emotion. The following picture, 
however, of an evening calm on the lake of 
Geneva, we think, must please even the lov* 
ers of pure description — 

" Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, 
With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing 
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 
This quiet sail is a noiseless wing 
To waft me from distraction ! Once I lov'd 
Torn ocean's roar ; but thy soft murmuring 
Sounds sweet, as if a sister's voice reprov'd, 

That I with stern delights should e'er have been 
so mov'd. 

" It is the hush of night ; and all between 
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, 
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, 
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear 
-"Precipitously steep ! and-drawing near, 
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, 
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood ; on the ear 
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, [more ! 

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol 

" At intervals, some bird from out the brakes, 
Starts into voice a moment, then is still. 
'1 here seems a floating whisper on the hill ; 
But that is fancy ! — lor the starlight dews 
All silently their fears of love instil, 
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse 
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues." 

The following sketch of a Midsummer 
night's thunder storm in the same sublime 
region, is still more striking and original — 

" The sky is chang'd ! — and such a change ! Oh 
night, [strong ! 

And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along, 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among 
Leaps the live thunder ! N ot from one lone cloud, 
But every mountain now hath fcrand a tongue, 
And Jura answers, through her misty#hroud, 
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud . 



POETRY. 



11 And this is in the night : — Most glorious night ! 
Thou wert not sent for slumber ! let me be 
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, — 
A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea ! 
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth ! 
And now again -'tis black, — and now, the glee 
Of the loud hills shake with its mountain-mirth." 

In passing Ferney and Lausanne, there is a 
fine account of Voltaire and Gibbon ; but we 
have room for but one more extract, and must 
take it from the characteristic reflections with 
which the piece is concluded. These, like 
most of the preceding, may be thought to 
savour too much of egotism : But this is of 
the essence of such poetry ; and if Lord By- 
ron had only been happier, or in better hu- 
mour with the world, we should have been 
delighted with the confidence he has here 
reposed in his readers : — as it is, it sounds too 
like the last disdainful address of a man who 
is about to quit a world which has ceased to 
have any attractions — like the resolute speech 
of Pierre — 

'* For this vile world and I have longbeen jangling, 
And cannot part on better terms than now." — 

The reckoning, however, is steadily and 
sternly made ; and though he does not spare 
himself, we must say that the world comes 
off much the worst in the comparison. The 
passage is very singular, and written with 
much force and dignity. 

** Thus far T have proceeded in a theme 
Renew'd with no kind auspices. — To feel 
We are not what we have been, and to deem 
We are not what we should be ; — and to steel 
The heart against itself; and to conceal, 
With a proud caution, love, or hate, or aught, — 
Passion or. feeling, purpose, grief or zeal, — 
Which is the tyrant spirit of our thought, 

Is a stern task of soul! — No matter! — it is taught. 

M I have not lov'd the world— nor the world me ! 
I have not flatter'd its rank breath; nor bow'd 
To its idolatries a patient knee, — 
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, — nor cried aloud 
In worship of an echo. In the crowd 
They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
Among them, but not of them," &c. 

M I have not lov'd the world, nor the world me * 
But let us part fair foes ; I do believe, 
Though I have found them not, that there may be 
Words which are things,— hopes which will not de- 
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave [ceive 
Snares for the failing ! I would also deem 
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ; 
That two or one, are almost what they seem, — 

That goodness is no name, and happiness no 
dream." 

The closing stanzas of the poem are ex- 
tremely beautiful ; — but we are immoveable 
in the resolution, that no statement of ours 
shall ever give additional publicity to the 
subjects of which they treat. 

We come now to "The Prisoner of Chillon." 
It is very sweet and touching — though we 
can afford but a short account of it. Chillon 
is a ruined castle on the Lake of Geneva, in 
the dungeon of which three gallant brothers 
were confined, each chained to a separate 
pillar, till, after long years of anguish, the 
two younger died, and were buried under the 
cold floBr of the prison. The eldest was at 



length liberated, when worn out with age 
and misery — and is supposed, in his joyless 
liberty, to tell, in this poem, the sad story of 
his imprisonmeirt-. The picture of their first 
feelings, when bound apart in this living 
tomb, and of the gradual sinking of their 
cheery fortitude, is full of pity and agony. 

M We could not move a single pace ; 

We could not see each other's face, 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight ; 

And thus together — vet apart, 

Fetter'd in hand, and pin'd in heart ; 

'Twas still some solace in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter to each, 

Wiih some new hope, or legend old, 

Or song heroically bold ; 

But even these at length grew cold ! 

Our voices took a dreary tone, 

An echo of the dungeon-stone, 
A grating sound — not full and free 
As they of yore were wont to be . 
It might be fancy — but to me 

They never sounded like our own." 

The return to the condition of the younger 
brother, the blooming Benjamin of the family, 
is extremely natural and affecting. 

" I was the eldest of the three, 
And to uphold and cheer the rest, 
I ought to do — and did my best ; 
And each did well in his degree. 
The youngest, whom my father lov'd, 
Because our mother's brow was giv'n 
To him — with eyes as blue as heav'n, 
For him my soul was sorely mov'd ; 
And truly might it be distrest 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 
(When day was beautiful to me 
As to young eagles, being free) — 
And thus he was as pure and bright, 
And in his natural spirit gay, 
With tears for nought but other's ills ; 
And then they flow'd like mountain rills. 

The gentle decay and gradual extinction 
of this youngest life, is the most tender and 
beautiful passage in the poem. 

" But he, the favorite and the flow'r, 
Most cheiish d since his natal hour, 
His mother's image in fair face, 
The infant love of all his race, 
His martyr'd father's dearest thought, 
My latest care, for whom I sought 
To hoard my life, that his might be 
Less wretched now, and one day free ! 
He, too, who yet had held uniir'd 
A spirit natural or inspir'd — 
He, too, was struck ! and day by day 
Was wither'd on the stalk away. 
He faded ; and so calm and meek, 
So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 
So tearless, yet so tender — kind, 
And griev'd for those he left behind ; 
Wiih all the while a cheek whose bloom 
Was as a mockery of the tomb, 
Whose tints as gently sunk away 
As a departing rainbow's ray— 
An eye of most transparent light, 
That almost made the dungeon bright, 
And not a word of murmur ! not 
A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 
A little talk of better days, 
A little hope my own to raise, 
For I was sunk in silence — lost 
In this last loss, of all the most ; 



LORD BYRON'S POETRY. 



445 



And then the sighs he would suppress 

Of fainting nature's feebleness, 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less ! 

I listen'd, but I could not hear! — 

I calPd, for I was wild with fear; 

I call'd, and thought I heard a sound— 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, 

And rush'd to him ! — I found him not, 

1 only siirr'd in tin's black spot, 

/only liv'd — /only drew 

Th' accursed breath of dungeon-dew." 

After this last calamity, he is allowed to be 
at large in the dungeon. 

** And it was liberty to stride 
Alo'g my cell from side to side, 
And up and down, and then athwart,. 
And tread it over every part ; 
And round the pillars one by one, 
Returning where my walk begun, 
Avoiding only, as I trod, 
My brothers' graves without a sod.' 

He climbs up at last to the high chink that 
admitted the light to his prison ; and looks 
out once more on the long- remembered face 
of nature, and the lofty forms of the eternal 
mountains. 

" I saw them — and they were the same, 
They were not chang'd like me in frame ; 
I saw their thousand years of snow 
On high — their wide long lake below, 
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow; 
I heard the torrents leap and gush 
O'er channell'd rock and broken bush ; 
I saw the white-wall'd distant town, 
And whiter sails go skimming down; 
And then there was a little isle, 
Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle ; it seem'd no more, 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 
But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flow'rs growing, 

Of gentle breath and hue. 
The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seem'd joyous, each and all ; 
The eagie rode the rising blast ; 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seem'd to fly." 

The rest of the poems in this little volume, 
are less amiable — and most of them, we fear, 
have a personal and not very charitable ap- 
plication. One, entitled "Darkness," is free 
at least from this imputation. It is a grand 
and gloomy sketch of the supposed conse- 
quences of the final extinction of the Sun and 
the Heavenly bodies — executed, undoubtedly, 
with great and fearful force — but with some- 
thing of German exaggeration, and a fantas- 
tical selection of incidents. The very con- 
ception is terrible, above all conception of 
known calamity — and is too oppressive to the 
imagination, to be contemplated with pleas- 
ure, even in the faint reflection of poetry. 

" The icy earth 
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air," 

Cities and forests are burnt, for light and 
warmth. 

" The brows of men by the despairing light 
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits 
The flashes fell upon them ! Some lay down 
And hid their eyes and wept ; and some did rest 
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiTd ! 



And others hurried to and fro, and fed 
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up 
With mad disquietude on the dull sky, 
The pall of a past world ! and then again 
With curses cast them down upon the dust, 
And gnash'd their teeth, and howl'd !" 

Then they eat each other : and are extin- 
guished ! 

" The world was void, 

The populous and the powerful was a lump, 
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— 
A lump of death — a chaos of hard clay ! 
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still, 
And nothing stirr'd wilhin their silent depths ; 
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, [dropp'd 
And their masts fell down piecemeal : As they 
They slept on the abyss without a surge — 
The waves were dead ; the tides were in their grave 
The moon their mistress had expir'd before ; 
The winds were vvither'd in the stagnant air, 
And the clouds perish'd ; Darkness had no need 
Of aid from them — She was the universe." 

There is a poem entitled "The Dream, 7 ' 
full of living pictures, and written with great 
beauty and genius — but extremely painful — 
and abounding with mysteries into which we 
have no desire to penetrate. "The Incant- 
ation" and "Titan" have the same distressing 
character — though without the sweetness of 
the other. Some stanzas to a nameless friend, 
are in a tone of more open misanthropy. This 
is a favourable specimen of their tone and 
temper. 

" Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though lov'd, thou foreborest to grieve me, 

Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake, — 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 

Though parted, it was not to fly, 
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, 

Nor mute, that the world might belie." 

Beautiful as this poetry is, it is a relief at 
last to close the volume. We cannot maintain 
our accustomed tone of levity, or even speak 
like calm literary judges, in the midst of these 
agonising traces of a wounded and distempered 
spirit. Even our admiration is at last swal- 
lowed up in a most painful feeling of pity and 
of wonder. It is impossible to mistake these 
for fictitious sorrows, conjured up for the pur- 
pose of poetical effect. There is a dreadful 
tone of sincerity, and an energy that cannot 
be counterfeited, in the expression of wretch- 
edness and alienation from human kind, which 
occurs in every page of this publication ; and 
as the author has at last spoken out in his own 
person, and unbosomed his griefs a great deal 
too freely to his readers, the offence now 
would be to entertain a doubt of their reality. 
We certainly have no hope of preaching him 
into philanthropy and cheerfulness : but it is 
impossible not to mourn over such a catas- 
trophe of such a mind ; or to see the prodigal 
gifts of Nature, Fortune, and Fame, thus 
turned to bitterness, without an oppressive 
feeling of impatience, mortification, and sur- 
prise. Where there are such elements, how- 
ever, it is equally impossible to despair that 
they may yet enter into happier combinations, 
—or not to hope this " that puissant spirit" 
"yet shall reascend 
Self-raia'd, and repossess its native seat." 
2N 



446 



POETItf. 



(tfotmnber, 1817.) 

LuUaRuokh; an Oriental Romance.. By Thomas Moore. 4to. pp. 405. : London: 1817. 



There is a great deal of our recent poetry- 
derived from the East : But this is the finest 
Orientalism we have had yet. The land of 
the Sun has never shone out so brightly on the 
children of the North — nor the sweets of Asia 
been poured forth, nor her gorgeousness dis- 
played so profusely to the delighted senses of 
Europe. The beauteous forms, the dazzling 
splendours, the breathing odours of the East, 
seem at last to have found a kindred poet in 
that green isle of the West ; whose Genius 
has long been suspected to be derived from a 
warmer clime, and now wantons and luxuri- 
ates in those voluptuous regions, as if it felt 
that it had at length regained its native ele- 
ment. It is amazing, indeed, how much at 
home Mr. Moore seems to be in India, Persia, 
and Arabia- and how purely and strictly 
Asiatic all the colouring and imagery of his 
book appears. He is thoroughly embued with 
the character of the scenes to which he trans- 
ports us ) and yet the extent of his knowledge 
is less wonderful than the dexterity and ap- 
parent facility with which he has turned it to 
account, in the elucidation and embellishment 
of his poetry. There is not, in the volume 
now before us, a simile or description, a name, 
a trait of history, or allusion of romance which 
belongs to European experience ; or does not 
indicate an entire familiarity with the life, the 
dead nature, and the learning of the East. 
Nor are these barbaric ornaments thinly scat- 
tered to make up a show. They are showered 
lavishly over all the work ; and form, perhaps 
too much, the staple of the poetry — and the 
riches of that which is chiefly distinguished 
for its richness. 

We would confine this remark, however, to 
the descriptions of external objects, and the 
allusions to literature and history — or to what 
may be termed the materiel of the poetry be- 
fore us. The Characters and Sentiments are 
of a different order. They cannot, indeed, be 
said to be copies of European nature ; but they 
are still less like that of any other region. 
They are, in truth, poetical imaginations; — 
but it is to the poetry of rational, honourable, 
considerate, and humane Europe, that they 
belong — and not to the childishness, cruelty, 
and profligacy of Asia. It may seem a harsh 
and presumptuous sentence, to some of our 
Cosmopolite readers : But from all we have 
been able to gather from history or recent ob- 
servation, we should be inclined to say that 
there was no sound sense, firmness of purpose, 
or principled goodness, except among the na- 
tives of Europe, and their genuine descendants. 

There is something very extraordinary, we 
think, in the work before us — and something 
which indicates in the author, not only a great 
exuberance of talent, but a very singular con- | 



stitution of genius. While it is more splendid 
in imagery — (and for the most part in very 
good taste) — more rich in sparkling thoughts 
and original conceptions, and more full indeed 
of exquisite pictures, both of all sorts of beau- 
ties and virtues, and all sorts of sufferings and 
crimes, than any other poem that has yet come 
before us j we rather think we speak the sense 
of most readers, when we add, that the effect 
of the whole is to mingle a certain feeling of 
disappointment with that of admiration ! to 
excite admiration rather than any warmer 
sentiment of delight — to dazzle, more than to 
enchant — and, in the end, more frequently to 
startle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, by 
the constant succession of glittering images 
and high-strained emotions, than to maintain 
a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, 
by a less profuse or more systematic display 
of attractions. 

The style is, on the whole, rather diffuse, 
and too unvaried in its character. But its 
greatest fault, in our eyes, is the uniformity 
of its brilliancy; — the want of plainness, sim- 
plicity, and repose. We have heard it observed 
by some very zealous admirers of Mr. Moore's 
genius, that you cannot open this book with- 
out finding a cluster of beauties in every page. 
Now, this is only another way of expressing 
what we think its greatest defect. No work, 
consisting of many pages, should have detach- 
ed and distinguishable beauties in every one 
of them. No great work, indeed, should have 
many beauties : If it were perfect, it would 
have but one ; and that but faintly perceptible, 
except on a view of the whole. Look, for ex- 
ample, at what is perhaps the most finished 
and exquisite production of human art — the 
design and elevation of a Grecian temple, in 
its old severe simplicity. What penury of 
ornament — what rejection of beauties of de- 
tail ! — what masses of plain surface — what 
rigid economical limitation to the useful and 
the necessary ! The cottage of a peasant is 
scarcely more simple in its structure, and has 
not fewer parts that are superfluous. Yet 
what grandeur — what elegance — what grace 
and completeness in the effect ! The whole is 
beautiful — because the beauty is in the whole : 
But there is little merit in any of the parts, 
except that of fitness and careful finishing. 
Contrast this, now, with a Dutch pleasure- 
house, or a Chinese — where every part is 
meant to be separately beautiful — and the re- 
sult is deformity ! — where there is not an inch 
of the surface that is not brilliant with varied 
colour, and rough with curves and angles. - 
and where the effect of the whole is monstrous 
and offensive. We are as far a9 possible from 
meaning to insinuate that Mr. Moore's poetry 
is of this description. On the contrary, we 



MOORE ? S LALLA ROOKH. 



447 



think his ornaments are, for the most part, 
truly and exquisitely beautiful ; and the gene- 
ral design of his pieces very elegant and in- 
genious : All that we mean to say is, that 
there is too much ornament — too many insu- 
lated and independent beauties — and that the 
notice, and the very admiration they excite, 
hurt the interest of the general design; and 
not only withdraw our attention too importu- 
nately from it, but at last weary it out with 
their perpetual recurrence. 

It seems to be a law of our intellectual con- 
stitution, that the powers of taste cannot be 
permanently gratified, except by some sustain- 
ed or continuous emotion ; and that a series, 
even of the most agreeable excitements, soon 
ceases, if broken and disconnected, to give any 
pleasure. No conversation fatigues so soon as 
that which is made up of points and epigrams; 
and the accomplished rhetorician, who 



could not ope 



His mouth, but out there flew a trope," 

must have been a most intolerable companion. 
There are some things, too, that seem so plainly 
intended for ornaments and seasonings only, 
that they are only agreeable, when sprinkled in 
moderation over a plainer medium. No one 
would like to make an entire meal on sauce pi- 
quante; or to appear in a dress crusted over with 
diamonds ; or to pass a day in a steam of rich 
distilled perfumes. It is the same with the 
glittering ornaments of poetry — with splendid 
metaphors and ingenious allusions, and all the 
figures of speech and of thought that consti- 
tute its outward pomp and glory. Now, Mr. 
Moore, it appears to us, is decidedly too lavish 
of his gems and sweets; — he labours under a 
plethora of wit and imagination — impairs his 
credit by the palpable exuberance of his pos- 
sessions, and would be richer with half his 
wealth. His works are not only of costly ma- 
terial and graceful design, but they are every- 
where glistening with small beauties and tran- 
sitory inspirations — sudden flashes of fancy, 
that blaze out and perish; like earth-born 
meteors that crackle in the lower sky, and un- 
seasonably divert our eyes from the great and 
lofty bodies which pursue their harmonious 
courses in a serener region. 

We have spoken of these as faults of style : 
But they could scarcely have existed in the 
style, without going deeper; and though they 
first strike us as qualities of the composition 
only, we find, upon a little reflection, that the 
same general character belongs to the fable, 
the characters, and the sentiments, — that they 
all sin alike in the excess of their means of 
attraction, — and fail to interest, chiefly by 
being too interesting. 

In order to avoid the debasement of ordi- 
nary or familiar life, the author has soared to 
a region beyond the comprehension of most 
of his readers. All his personages are so very 
beautiful, and brave, and agonising — so totally 
wrapt up in the exaltation of their vehement 
emotions, and withal so lofty in rank, and so 
sumptuous and magnificent in all that relates 
to their external condition, that the herd of 
ordinary mortals can scarcely venture to con- 



ceive of their proceedings, or to sympathise 
freely with their fortunes. The disasters to 
which they are exposed, and the designs in 
which they are engaged, are of the same am 
bitious and exaggerated character; and all 
are involved in so much pomp, and splendour, 
and luxury, and the description of their ex- 
treme grandeur and elegance forms so con- 
siderable a part of the whole work, that the 
less sublime portion of the species can with 
difficulty presume to judge of them, or to en- 
ter into the concernments of such very exqui- 
site persons. The incidents, in like manner, 
are so prodigiously moving, so excessively 
improbable, and so terribly critical, that we 
have the same difficulty of raising our senti- 
ments to the proper pitch for them; — and, 
finding it impossible to sympathise as we 
ought to do with such portentous occurrences, 
are sometimes tempted to withhold our sym- 
pathy altogether, and to seek for its objects 
among more familiar adventures. Scenes of 
voluptuous splendour and -ecstasy alternate 
suddenly with agonising separations, atrocious 
crimes, and tremendous sufferings; — battles, 
incredibly fierce and sanguinary, follow close 
on entertainments incredibly sumptuous and 
elegant; — terrific tempests are succeeded by 
delicious calms at sea: and the land scenes 
are divided between horrible chasms and pre- 
cipices, and vales and gardens rich in eternal 
blooms, and glittering with palaces and tem- 
ples — while the interest of the story is main- 
tained by instruments and agents of no less 
potency than insanity, blasphemy, poisonings, 
religious hatred, national antipathy, demoni- 
acal misanthropy, and devoted love. 

We are aware that, in objecting to a work 
like this, that it is made up of such materials, 
we may seem to be objecting that it is made 
of the elements of poetry, — since it is no doubt 
true, that it is by the use of such materials 
that poetry is substantially distinguished from 
prose, and that it is to them it is indebted for 
all that is peculiar in the delight and the in- 
terest it inspires: and it may seem a little 
unreasonable to complain of a poet, that he 
treats us with the essence of poetry . We have 
already hinted, however, that it is not advisa- 
ble to live entirely on essences ; and our ob- 
jection goes not only to the excessive strength 
of the emotions that are sought to be raised, 
but to the violence of their transitions, and the 
want of continuity in the train of feeling that 
is produced. It may not be amiss, however, 
to add a word or two more of explanation. 

In the first place, then, if we consider how 
the fact stands, we shall find that all the great 
poets, and, in an especial manner, all the 
poets who chain down the attention of their 
readers, and maintain a growing interest 
through a long series of narrations, have been 
remarkable for the occasional familiarity, and 
even homeliness, of many of their incidents, 
characters and sentiments. This is the dis- 
tinguishing feature in Homer, Chaucer, Ari- 
osto, Shakespeare, Dryden, Scott — and will be 
found to occur, we believe, in all poetry that 
has been long and extensively popular ; or that 
is capable of pleasing very strongly, or stirring 



448 



POETRY. 



very deeply, the common sensibilities of our 
nature. We need scarcely make an excep- 
tion for the lofty Lyric, which is so far from 
being generally attractive, that it is not even 
intelligible, except to a studious few — or for 
those solemn and devotional strains which de- 
rive their interest from a still higher princi- 
ple : But in all narrative poetry — in all long 
pieces made up of descriptions and adven- 
tures, it seems hitherto to have been an indis- 
pensable condition of their success, that most 
of the persons and events should bear a con- 
siderable resemblance to those which we meet 
with in ordinary life; and, though more ani- 
mated and important than to be of daily oc- 
currence, should not be immeasurably exalted 
above the common standard of human fortune 
and character. 

It should be almost enough to settle the 
question, that such is the fact — and that no 
narrative poetry has ever excited a great in- 
terest, where the persons were too much puri- 
fied from the vulgar infirmities of our nature, 
or the incidents too thoroughly purged of all 
that is ordinary or familiar. But the slightest 
reflection upon the feelings with which we 
read such poetry, must satisfy us as to the 
reason of our disappointment. It may be told 
in two words. Writings of this kind revolt by 
their improbability; and fatigue, by offering 
no points upon which our sympathies can 
reacfily attach. — Two things are necessary to 
give a fictitious narrative a deep and com- 
manding interest ; first, that we should believe 
that such things might have happened ; and 
secondly, that they might have happened to 
ourselves, or to such persons as ourselves. 
But, in reading the ambitious and overwrought 
poetry of which we have been speaking, we 
feel perpetually, that there could have been 
no such people, and no such occurrences as 
we are there called upon to feel for : and that 
it is impossible for us, at all events, to have 
much concern about beings whose principles 
of action are so remote from our own. and who 
are placed in situations to which we have never 
known any parallel. It is no doubt true, that 
all stories that interest us must represent pas- 
sions of a higher pitch, and events of a more 
extraordinary nature than occur in common 
life; and that it is in consequence of rising 
thus sensibly above its level, that they become 
objects of interest and attention. But, in order 
that this very elevation may be felt, and pro- 
duce its effect, the story must itself, in other 
places, give us the known and ordinary level, 
and, by a thousand adaptations and traits of 
universal nature, make us feel, that the char- 
acters which become every now and then the 
objects of our intense sympathy and admira- 
tion, in great emergencies, and under the in- 
fluence of rare but conceivable excitements, 
are, after all, our fellow creatures — made of 
the same flesh and blood with ourselves, and 
acting, and acted upon, by the common prin- 
ciples of our nature. Without th ; s, indeed, 
the effect of their sufferings and exploits 
would be entirely lost upon us ; as we should 
be without any scale by which to estimate the 
magnitude of the temptations they had to re- 



sist, or the energies they had exerted. To 
make us aware of the altitude of a mountain, 
it is absolutely necessary to show us the plaup. 
from which it ascends. If we are allowed to 
see nothing but the table land at the top. the 
effect will be no greater than if we had re- 
mained on the humble level of the shore — 
except that it will be more lonely, bleak, and 
inhospitable. And thus it is, that by ex- 
aggerating the heroic qualities of heroes, they 
become as uninteresting as if they had no 
such qualities — that by striking out those 
weaknesses and vulgar infirmities which 
identify them with ordinary mortals, they not 
only cease to interest ordinary mortals, but even 
to excite their admiration or surprise ; and ap- 
pear merely as strange inconceivable beings, 
in whom superhuman energy and refinement 
are no more to be wondered at, than the power 
of flying in an eagle, or of fasting in a snake. 
The wise ancient who observed, that being 
a man himself, he could not but take an inter- 
est in every thing that related to man — might 
have confirmed his character for wisdom, by 
adding, that for the same reason he couid take 
no interest in any thing else. There is noth- 
ing, after all, that we ever truly care for, but 
the feelings of creatures like ourselves : — and 
we are obliged to lend them to the flowers 
and the brooks of the valley, and the stars and 
airs of heaven, before we can take any delight 
in them. With sentient beings the case is 
more obviously the same. By whatever 
names we may call them, or with whatever 
fantastic attributes we may please to invest 
them, still we comprehend, and concern our- 
selves about them, only in so far as they re- 
semble ourselves. All the deities of the 
classic mythology — and all the devils and 
angels of later poets, are nothing but human 
creatures — or at least only interest us so long 
as they are so. Let any one try to imagine 
what kind of story he could make of the ad- 
ventures of a set of beings who differed from 
our own species in any of its general attributes 
— who were incapable, for instance, of the 
debasing feelings of fear, pain, or anxiety — 
and he will find, that instead of becoming 
more imposing and attractive by getting rid 
of those infirmities, they become utterly in- 
significant, and indeed in a great degree in- 
conceivable. Or, to come a little closer to 
the matter before us, and not to go beyond 
the bounds of common experience — Suppose 
a tale, founded on refined notions of delicate 
love and punctilious integrity, to be told to a 
race of obscene, brutal and plundering savages 
— or, even within the limits of the same coun- 
try, if a poem, turning upon the jealousies of 
court intrigue, the pride of rank, and the cabals 
of sovereigns and statesmen, Avere put into 
the hands of village maidens or clownish la- 
bourers, is it not obvious that the remoteness 
of the manners, characters and feelings from 
their own, would first surprise, and then re- 
volt them — and that the moral, intellectual 
and adventitious Superiority of the personages 
concerned, would, instead of enhancing the 
interest, entirely destroy it, and very speedily 
extinguish all sympathy with their passions, 



MOORE'S LALLA ROOKH. 



449 



and all curiosity about their fate 1 — Now, what 
gentlemen and ladies are to a ferocious savage, 
or politicians and princesses to an ordinary 
rustic, the exaggerated persons of such poetry 
as we are now considering; are to the ordinary 
readers of poetry. They do not believe in 
the possibility of their existence, or of their 
adventures. They do not comprehend the 
principles of their conduct; and have no 
thorough sympathy with the feelings that are 
ascribed to them. 

We have carried this speculation, we be- 
lieve, a little too far — and, with reference to 
the volume before us, it would be more cor- 
rect perhaps to say, that it had suggested these 
observations, than that they are strictly ap- 
plicable to it. For though its faults are cer- 
tainly of the kind we have been endeavouring 
to describe, it would be quite unjust to char- 
acterise it by its faults — which are beyond all 
doubt less conspicuous than its beauties. 
There is not only a richness and brilliancy of 
diction and imagery spread over the whole 
work, that indicate the greatest activity and 
elegance of fancy in the author; but it is 
everywhere pervaded, still more strikingly, 
by a strain of tender and noble feeling, poured 
out with such warmth and abundance, as to 
6teal insensibly on the heart of the reader, 
and gradually to overflow it with a tide of 
sympathetic emotion. There are passages 
indeed, and these neither few nor brief, over 
which the very Genius of Poetry seems to 
have breathed his richest enchantment — 
where the melody of the verse and the beauty 
of the images conspire so harmoniousl} r with 
the force and tenderness of the emotion, that 
the whole is blended into one deep and bright 
stream of sweetness and feeling, along which 
the spirit of the reader is borne passively 
away, through long reaches of delight. Mr. 
Moore's poetry, indeed, where his happiest 
vein is opened, realises more exactly than that 
of any other writer, the splendid account 
which is given by Comus of the song of 

** His mother Circe, and the Sirens three, 
Amid ihe flowery-kirtled Naiades, 
U ho, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul, 
And lap it in Elysium !" 

And though it is certainly to be regretted 
that he should so often have broken the mea- 
sure with more frivolous strains, or filled up 
its intervals with a sort of brilliant falsetto, it 
should never be forgotten, that his excellences 
are at least as peculiar to himself as h'.s faults, 
and, on the whole, perhaps more characteristic 
of his genius. 

The volume before us contains four sepa- 
rate and distinct poems — connected, how r ever, 
and held together " like orient pearls at ran- 
dom strung," by the slender thread of a slight 
prose story, on which they are all suspended, 
and to the simple catastrophe of which they 
in some measure contribute. This airy and 
elegant legend is to the following effect. 
Lalla Rookh, the daughter of the great Au- 
rengzebe, is betrothed to the young king of 
Bucharia ; and sets forth, with a splendid 
train of Indian and Bucharian attendants, to 
57 



meet her enamoured bridegroom in the de- 
lightful valley of Cashmere. The progress 
of this gorgeous cavalcade, and the beauty 
of the country which it traverses, are exhibit- 
ed with great richness of colouring and pic- 
turesque effect ; though in this, as well as in 
the other parts of the prose narrative, a cer- 
tain tone of levity, and even derision, is fre- 
quently assumed — not very much in keeping, 
we think, with the tender and tragic strain of 
poetry of which it is the accompaniment — 
certain breakings out, in short, of that mock- 
ing European wit, which has made itself 
merry with Asiatic solemnity, ever since the 
time of the facetious Count Hamilton — but 
seems a little out of place in a miscellany, 
the prevailing character of which is of so 
opposite a temper. To amuse the languor, 
or divert the impatience of the royal bride, in 
the noon-tide and night-halts of her luxurious 
progress, a young Cashmerian poet had been 
sent by the gallantry of the bridegroom ; and 
recites, on those occasions, the several poems 
that form the bulk of the volume now before 
us. Such is the witchery of his voice and 
look, and such the sympathetic effect of the 
tender tales which he recounts, that the poor 
princess, as was naturally to be expected, 
falls desperately in love with him before the 
end of the journey; and by the time she 
enters the lovely vale of Cashmere, and sees 
the glittering palaces and towers prepared 
for her reception, she feels that she would 
joyfully forego all this pomp and splendour, 
and fly to the desert wiih her adored Fera- 
morz. The youthful bard, however, has now 
disappeared from her side; and she is sup- 
ported, with fainting heart and downcast 
eyes, into the hated presence of her tyrant ! 
when the voice of Feramorz himself bids her 
be of good cheer — and, looking up, she sees her 
beloved poet in the Prince himself ! who had 
assumed this gallant disguise, and won her 
young affections, without deriving any aid 
from his rank or her engagements. 

The whole story is very sweetly and gaily 
told ; and is adorned with many tender as 
well as lively passages — without reckoning 
among the latter the occasional criticisms of 
the omniscient Fadladeen, the magnificent 
and most infallible grand chamberlain of the 
Haram — whose sayings and remarks, we 
cannot help observing, do not agree very well 
with the character which is assigned him — 
being for the most part very smart, senten- 
tious, and acute, and by no means solemn, 
stupid, and pompous, as was to have been 
expected. Mr. Moore's genius, however, we 
suppose, is too inveterately lively, to make it 
possible for him even to counterfeit dulness. 
We come at last, however, to the poetry. 

The first piece, which is entitled " The 
Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," is the longest, 
we think, and certainly not the best, of the 
series. It has all the faults which we have, 
somewhat too sweepingly, imputed to the 
volume at large ; and it was chiefly, indeed, 
with a reference to it, that we made those 
introductory remarks, which the author will 
probablv think too much in the spirit of thu 
2*2 



450 



POETRY. 



sage Chamberlain. The story, which is not 
in all its parts extremely intelligible, is 
founded on a notice, in D'Herbelot, of a da- 
ring inypostor of the early ages of Islamism, 
who pretended to have received a later and 
more authoritative mission than that of the 
prophet, and to be destined to overturn all 
tyrannies and superstitions on the earth, and 
to rescue all souls that believed in him. To 
shade the celestial radiance of his brow, he 
always wore a veil of silver gauze, and was 
at last attacked by the Caliph, and extermi- 
nated, with all his adherents. On this story, 
Mr. Moore has engrafted a romantic and not 
very probable tale of two young lovers, Azim 
and Zelica; the former of whom having been 
supposed to perish in battle, the grief of the 
latter unsettles her understanding; and her 
distempered imagination is easily inflamed 
by the mystic promises of the Veiled Prophet, 
which at length prevail on her to join the 
troop of lovely priestesses who earn a blissful 
immortality in another world, by sharing his 
embraces upon earth. By what artful illu- 
sions the poor distracted maid was thus be- 
trayed to her ruin, is not very satisfactorily 
explained ; only we are informed that she 
and the Veiled Apostle descended into a 
charnel-house, and took a mutual oath, and 
drank blood together, in pledge of their eter- 
nal union. At length Azim, who had not 
been slain, but made captive in battle, and 
had wandered in Greece till he had imbibed 
the love of liberty that inspired her famous 
heroes of old — hears of the proud promises 
of emancipation which Mokanna (for that 
was the prophet's name) had' held out to all 
nations, and comes to be enrolled among the 
champions of freedom and virtue. On the 
day of his presentment, he is introduced into 
a scene of voluptuous splendour, where all the 
seducive influences of art and nature are in vain 
exerted to divert his thoughts from the love 
of Zelica and of liberty. He breaks proudly 
away from these soft enchantments, and finds 
a mournful female figure before him, in whom 
ne almost immediately recognises his long- 
lost and ever-loved Zelica. The first moment 
of their meeting is ecstasy on both sides ; but 
Ihe unhappy girl soon calls to mind the un- 
utterable condition to which she is reduced — 
and, in agony, reveals to him the sad story of 
her derangement, and of the base advantages 
that had been taken of it. Azim at first 
throws her from him in abhorrence, but soon 
turns, in relenting pity, and offers at last to 
rescue her from this seat of pollution. She 
listens with eager joy to his proposal, and is 
about to fly with him in the instant, when 
the dread voice of Mokanna thunders in her 
ear her oath of eternal fidelity. That terrible 
sound brings back her frenzy. She throws 
her lover wildly from her, and vanishes at 
once, amidst the dazzling lights of that un- 
holy palace. Azim then joins the approaching 
army of the Caliph, and leads on his forces 
against the impious usurper. Mokanna per- 
forms prodigies of valour — but is always borne 
back by the superior force and enthusiasm of 
Azim: and after a long course of horrors and 



illusions, he poisons the remnant of his ad- 
herents, and himself plunges into a bath, of 
such corrosive quality, as instantly to extin- 
guish life, and dissolve all the elements of 
the mortal frame. Zelica then covers herself 
with his fatal veil, and totters out to the ram- 
parts, where, being mistaken for Mokanna, 
she rushes upon the spear of her Azim, ana 
receives his forgiveness in death ! while he 
survives, to pass the rest of his life in contin- 
ual prayer and supplication for her erring spirit; 
and dies at last upon her grave, in the full 
assurance of rejoining her in purity and bliss. 
It is needless to enlarge on the particular 
faults of this story, after the general observa- 
tions we hazarded at the outset. The char- 
acter of Mokanna, as well as his power and 
influence, is a mere distortion and extrava- 
gance : But the great blemish is the corrup- 
tion of Zelica; and the insanity so gratui- 
tously alleged by the poet in excuse of it. 
Nothing less, indeed, could in any way ac- 
count for such a catastrophe ; and, after all, 
it is painful and offensive to the imagination. 
The bridal oath, pledged with blood among 
the festering bodies of the dead, is one of the 
overstrained theatrical horrors of the German 
school ; and a great deal of the theorising 
and argumentation which is intended to palli- 
ate or conceal those defects, is obscure and 
incomprehensible. Rich as it is, in short, in 
fancy and expression, and powerful m some 
of the scenes of passion, we should have had 
great doubts of the success of this volume, if 
it had all been of the same texture with the 
poem of which we are now speaking. Yet, 
even there, there is a charm, almost irresisti- 
ble, in the volume of sweet sounds and beau- 
tiful images, which are heaped together with 
luxurious profusion in the general texture of 
the style, and invest even the absurdities of 
the story w r ith the graceful amplitude of their 
rich and figured veil. What, for instance, can 
be sweeter than this account of Azim's entry 
into this earthly paradise of temptations ? 

" Meanwhile, through vast illuminated halls, 
Silent and bright, where nothii.g but the falls 
Of fragrant wafers, gushing with cool sound 
From many a jasper fount, is heard around, 
Young Azim roams bewilder'd ; nor can guess 
What means this maze of light and loneliness! 
Here, the way leads, o'er tesselated floors 
Or mats of Cairo, through long corridors, 
Where, rang'd in cassolets and silver urns, 
Sweet wood of aloe or of sandal burns ; 
And here, at once, the glittering saloon 
Bursts on his sight, boundless and bright as noon 
Where, in the midst, reflecting back the rays 
In broken rainbows, a fresh fountain plays 
High as th' enamell'd cupola ; which towers 
All rich with Arabesques of gold and flowers : 
And the mosaic floor beneath shines through 
The sprinkling of that fountain's silvery de\v, 
Like the wet, glist'nkig shells, of ev'ry dye ; 
That on the margin of the Red Sea lie. 

" Here too he traces the kind visitings 
Of woman's love, in those fair, living things 
Of land and wave, whose fate — in bondage thrown 
For their weak loveliness — is like her own ! 
On one side gleaming with a sudden grace 
Through water, brilliant as the crystal vase 
In which it undulates, small fishes shine, 
Like golden ingots from a fairy mine ! — 



MOORE'S LALLA ROOKH. 



451 



While, on the other, lattic'd lightly in 
With odorifrous woods of Cotnorin, 
Each brilliant bird that wings the air is seen ;— 
Gay, sparkling loories, such as gleam between 
The crimson blossoms of the coral tree 
In the warm isles of India's sunny sea : 
Mecca's blue sacred pigeon ; and the thrush 
Of Hindostan, whose holy warblings gush, 
At evening, from the tall pagoda's top; — 
Those golden birds that, in the spice-time, drop 
About the gardens, drunk with that sweet food 
Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer 
And those that under Araby's soft sun [flood ; — 
Build their high nests of budding cinnamon." 

pp. 53 — 56. 

The warrior youth looks round at first with 
disvlain upon those seductions, with which he 
supposes the sage prophet wishes to try the 
firmness of his votaries. 

" While thus he thinks, still nearer on the breeze 

Come those delicious, dream-like harmonies, 

Each note of which but adds new, downy links 

To the soft chain in which his spirit sinks. 

He turns him tow'rd the sound ; and, far away 

Through a long vista, sparkling with the play 

Of countless lamps — like the rich track which Day 

Leaves on the waters, when he sinks from us ; 

So long the path, its light so tremulous ; — 

He sees a group of female forms advance, 

Some chain'd together in the mazy dance 

By letters, forg'd in the green sunny bowers, 

As they were captives to the King of Flowers," &c. 

11 Awhile they dance before him ; then divide, 
Breaking, like rosy clouds at even-tide 
Around the rich pavilion of the sun — 
Till silently dispersing, one by one, 
Through many a path that from the chamber leads 
To gardens, terraces, and moonlight meads, 
Their distant laughter comes upon the wind. 
And but one trembling nymph remains behind, 
Beck'ning them back in vain, — for they are gone, 
And she is left in all that light, alone ! 
No veil to curtain o'er her beauteous brow, 
In its young bashfulness more beauteous now ; 
But a light, golden chain-work round her hair 
Such as the maids of Yezd and Shiraz wear, 
While her left hand, as shrinkingly she stood, 
Held a small lute of gold and sandal wood, 
Which, once or twice, she touch d with hurried 
Then took her trembling fingers off again, [strain, 
But when at length a timid glance she stole 
At Azim. the sweet gravity of soul 
She saw through all his features, calm'd her fear; 
And, like a half-tam'd antelope, more near, 
Though shrinking still, she came; — then sat her 
Upon a musnud's edge, and bolder grown, [down 
In the pathetic mode of Ispahan 
Touch'd a preluding strain, and thus began : — " 

The following picture of the grand arma- 
ment of the Caliph shows the same luxuri- 
ance of diction and imagination, directed to 
different objects : — 

" Whose are the gilded tents that crowd the way, 
Where all was wa-te and silent yesterday? 
This City of War which, in a few short hours, 
Hat'i sprung up here, as if the magic powers 
Of Him who, in the twinkling of a star, 
Built the hich pillar'd halls of Chilminar, 
Had conjur'd up, far as the eye can see, 
This world of tents and domes and sun-bright 

armory !— 
Princely pavilions, screen'd by many a fold 
Of crimson cloth, and topp*d with balls of gold ; — 
Steeds, with their housings of rich silver spun, 
Their chains and poitrels glitt'ring in the sun ; 
And camels, tufted o'er with Yemen's shells, 
Shaking in every breeze their light-ton'd bells ! 



11 Ne'er did the march of Mahadt display 
Such pomp before ; — not ev'n when on his way 
To Mecca's Temple, when both land and sea 
Were spoil'd to feed the Pilgrim's luxury ; 
When round him, mid the burning sands, he saw 
Fruits of the North in icy freshness thaw, 
And cool'd his thirsty lip, beneath the glow 
Of Mecca's sun, with urns of Persian snow : — 
Nor e'er did armament more grand than that 
Pour from the kingdoms of the Caliphat. 
First, in the van, the People of the Rock, 
On their light mountain steeds, of royal stock; 
Then. Chieftains of Damascus, proud to see 
The flashing of their swords' rich marquetry," &c. 

pp. 86—89. 

We can afford room now only for the con- 
clusion — the last words of the dying Zelica ; 
which remind us of those of Campbell's Ger- 
trude — and the catastrophe of Azim, which 
is imaged in that of Southey's Roderick. 

" ' But live, my Azim ; — oh ! to call thee mine 

Thus once again ! — my Azim — dream divine ! 

Live, if thou ever lov'dst me, if to meet 

Thy Zelica hereafter would be sweet, 

Oh live to pray for her ! — to bend the knee 

Morning and night before that Deity, 

To whom pure lips and hearts without a stain, 

As thine are, Azim, never breath'd in vain — 

And pray that He may pardon her — may take 

Compassion on her soul for thy dear sake, 

And, nought rememb'ring but her love to thee, 

Make her all thine, all His, eternally ! 

Go to those happy fields where first we twin'd 

Our youthful hearts together — every wind 

That meets thee there, fresh from the well-known 

flowers, 
Will bring the sweetness of those innocent hours 
Back to thy soul, and thou may'st feel again 
For thy poor Zelica as thou didst then. 
So shall thy orisons, like dew that flies 
To heav'n upon the morning's sunshine, rise 
With all love's earliest ardour to the skies !' 

Time fleeted ! Years on years had pass'd away, 
And few of those who, on that mournful day 
Had stood, with pity in their eyes, to see 
The maiden's death, and the youth's agony, 
Were living still — when, by a rustic grave 
Beside the swift Amoo's transparent wave, 
An aged man, who had grown aged there 
By one lone grave, morning and night in prayer, 
For the last time knelt down ! And, though the 

shade 
Of death hung dark'ning over him, there play'd 
A gleam of rapture on his eye and cheek, 
That brighten'd even death — like the last streak 
Of intense glory on th' horizon's brim, 
When night o'er all the rest hangs chill and dim ! — 
His soul had seen a Vision, while he slept ; 
She, for whose spirit he had pray'd and wept 
So many years, had come to him, all drest 
In ansel smiles, and told him she was blest ! 
For this the old man breath'd his thanks, — and 

died !— 
And there, upon the banks of that lov'd tide, 
He and his Zelica sleep side by side." 

pp. 121—123. 

The next piece, which is entitled u Paradise 
and the Peri," has none of the faults of the 
preceding. It is full of spirit, elegance, and 
beauty ; and, though slight enough in its struc- 
ture, breathes throughout a most pure and 
engaging morality. It is, in truth, little more 
than amoral apologue, expanded and adorned 
by the exuberant fancy of the poet who recites 
it. The Peris are a sort of half-fallen female 
angels, who dwell in air, and live on perfumes ; 
and, though banished for a time from Para- 



452 



POETRY. 



dise, go about in this lower world doing good. 
One of these — But it is as short, and much 
more agreeable, to give the author's own in- 
troduction. 

"One morn a Peri at the gate 
Of Eden stood, disconsolate ; 
And as she listen'd to the Springs 

Of Life within, like music flowing; 
And caught the light upon her wings 

Through the half-open portal glowing ! 
She wept to think her recreant race 
Should e'er have lost that glorious place !" 

p. 133. 

The Angel of the Gate sees her weeping, 
and — 

11 ■ Nymph of a fair, but erring line !' 
Gently he said — * One hope is thine. 
'Tis written in the Book of Fate, 

The Peri yet may be forgiven 
Who brings to this Eternal Gate 
v The gift that is most dear to Heaven ! 

Go, seek it, and redeem thy sin ; — 
'Tis sweet to let the Pardon' d in !' " — p. 135. 

Full of hope and gratitude, she goes eagerly 
in search of this precious gift. Her first quest 
is on the plains of India — the luxuriant beauty 
of which is put in fine contrast with the havoc 
and carnage which the march of a bloody 
conqueror had then spread over them. The 
Peri comes to witness the heroic death of a 
youthful patriot, who disdains to survive the 
overthrow of his country's independence. — 
She catches the last drop which flows from 
his breaking heart, and bears that to heaven's 
gate, as the acceptable propitiation that was 
required. For 

"'Oh! if there be, on this earthly sphere, 
A boon, an offering Heaven holds dear, 
'Tis the last libation Liberty draws 
From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her 
cause !' " — p. 140. 

The angel accepts the tribute with respect : 
But the crystal bar of the portal does not 
move ! and she is told that something holier 
even than this, will be required as the price 
of her admission. She now flies to the 
source of the Nile, and makes a delightful but 
pensive survey of the splendid regions which 
it waters ; till she finds the inhabitants of the 
lovely gardens of Rosetta dying by thousands 
of the plague — the selfish deserting their 
friends and benefactors, and the generous, 
when struck with the fatal malady, seeking 
some solitude where they may die without 
bringing death upon others. Among the lat- 
ter is a noble youth, w r ho consoles himself, in 
the hour of his agony, with the thought, that 
his beloved and betrothed bride is safe from 
this mortal visitation. In the stillness of his 
midnight retreat, however, he hears a light 
step approaching. 

" 'Tis she ! — far off, through moonlight dim, 

He knew his own betrothed bride, 
She, who would rather die with him, 

Than live to gain the world beside ! — 
Her arms are round her lover now ! 

His livid cheek to hers she pres-es, 
And dips, to bind his burning brow, 

In the cold lake her loosen'd tresses, 
Ah ! once how little did he think 
An hour would come, when he should shrink 
With horror from that dear embrace," &c. 



" ' Oh ! let me only breathe the air, 

The bit ssed air, ihat's breath'd by thee! 
And, whether on its wings it bear 

Healing or death, 'tis sweet to me ! 
There — drink my tears, while yet they fa'l 

Would that my bosom's blood were bal^i, 
And, well thou know'st, I'd shed it all 

To give thy brow one minute's calm. 
Nay, turn not from me that dear face — 

Am I not thine — thy own lov'd bride— 
The one, the chosen one, whose place, 

In life or death, is by thy side ! 
When the stem dies, the leaf that grew 
Out of its heart must perish too ! 
Then turn to me, my own love ! turn 
Before like thee I fade and burn ; 
Cling to these yet cool lips, and share 
The last pure life that lingers there !' 
She fails — she sinks ! — as dies the lamp 
In charnel airs or cavern-damp, 
So quickly do his baleful sighs 
Quench all the sweet light. of her eyes ! 
One struggle — and his pain is past — 

Her lover is no longer living ! 
One kiss the maiden gives. — one last, 

Long kiss — which she expires in giving." 

pp. 146—148. 

The gentle Peri bids them sleep in peace , 
and bears again to the gates of heaven the 
farewell sign of pure, self-sacrificing love. 
The worth of the gift is again admitted by the 
pitying angel; but the crystal bar still re- 
mains immovable ; and she is sent once more 
to seek a still holier offering. In passing over 
the romantic vales of Syria, she sees a lovely 
child at play among dews and flowers, and 
opposite to him a stern wayfaring man, resting 
from some unhallowed toil, with the stamp of 
all evil passions and evil deeds on his face. 

" But hark ! the vesper-call to prayer, 

As slow the orb of daylight sets, 
Is rising sweetly on the air, 

From Syria's thousand minarets ! 
The boy has started from the bed 
Of flowers, where he had laid his head, 
And down upon the fragrant sod 

Kneels, with his forehead to the south 
Lisping th' eternal name of God 

From purity's own cherub mouth, 
And looking, while his hands and eyes 
Are lifted to the glowing skies, 
Like a stray babe of Paradise, 
Just lighted on that flowery plain, 
And seeking for its home again ! 

" And how felt he, the. wretched Man 
Reclining there — while mem'ry ran 
O'er many a year of guilt and strife ? 
Flew o'er the dark flood of his life, 
Nor found one sunny resting place, 
Nor brought him back one branch of grace ! 
' There was a time,' he said, in mild, 
Heart-humbled tones — ' thou blessed child ! 
When young and haply pure as thou, 
I look'd and pray'd like thee ! — but now !'— 
He hung his head — each nobler aim 

And hope and feeling, which had slept 
From boyhood's hour, that instant came 
Fresh "o*er him, and he wept — he wept !" 

pp. 156, 157. 

This tear of repentance is the acceptable 
gift for the Peri's redemption. The gates of 
heaven fly open, and she rushes into the joy 
of immortality. 

"The Fire Worshippers" is the next in the 
series, and appears to us to be indisputably 
the finest and most powerful. With all the 
richness and beauty of diction that, belong to 



MOORE'S LALLA ROOKH. 



453 



the best parts of Mokanna, it has a far more 
interesting story ; and is not liable to any of 
the objections we have been obliged to bring 
asrainst the contrivance and structure of that 
leading poem. The outline of the story is 
short and simple. — Al Hassan, the bigotted 
and sanguinary Emir of Persia, had long waged 
a furious and exterminating war against the 
votaries of the ancient religion of the land — 
the worshippers of Mithra, or his emblem, 
Fire — then and since designated by the name 
of Ghebers. The superior numbers of the 
invader had overcome the heroic resistance 
of the patriots, and driven them to take refuge 
in a precipitous peninsula, cut off from the 
land by what was understood to be an im- 
passable ravine, and exposing nothing but 
bare rocks to the sea. In this fastness the 
scanty remnant of the Ghebers maintain them- 
selves, under the command of their dauntless 
leader, Hafed, who is still enabled, by sudden 
and daring incursions, to harass and annoy 
their enemy. In one of those desperate en- 
terprises, trr's adventurous leader climbs to 
the summit of a lofty cliff, near the Emir's 
palace, where a small pleasure-house had 
been built, in which he hoped to surprise this 
bigotted foe of his country; but found only 
h : s fair daughter Hinda, the loveliest and gen- 
tlest of all Arabian maids^as he himself ex- 
presses it. 

" He climb' d the gory Vulture's nest, 
And found a trembling Dove within!" 

This romantic meeting gives rise to a mu- 
tual passion — and the love of the fair Hinda 
is inevitably engaged, before she knows the 
name or quality of her nightly visitant. In the 
noble heart of Hafed, however, love was but 
a secondary feeling, to devotion to the free- 
dom and the faith of his country. His little 
band had lately suffered further reverses, and 
saw nothing now before them but a glorious 
self-sacrifice. He resolves, therefore, to tear 
all gentler feelings from his breast, and in one 
last interview to take an eternal farewell of 
the ma ; d who had captivated his soul. In his 
melancholy aspect she reads at once, with the 
instinctive sagacity of love, the tidings of their 
approaching separation ; and breaks out into 
the following sweet and girlish repinings : — 

" ' T know. I knew it could not last — 

'Twas bright, 'twas heavenly — hut 'tis past ! 
Oh ! ever thus, from childhood's hour, 

I've seen my fondest hopes decay ; 
I never lov'd a tree or flower, 

But 'twas the first to fade away. 
I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, 

To glad me with its soft black eye, 
But when it came to know me well, 

And love, me, it was sure to die ! 
Row too — the jov most like divine 

Of all I ever dreamt or knew, 
To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine, — 

Oh mis'ry ! must I lose that too ? 
Yet go ! — on peril's brink we meet : — 

Those frightful rocks — that freach'rous sea — 
No. never come again — though sweet, 

Though heav'n, it may be death to thee.' " 
pp. 187, 188. 

When he smiles sternly at the idea of dan- 
ger she urges him to join her father's forces, 



and earn her hand by helping him to root out 
those impious Ghebers whom he so much ab- 
hors. The spirit of the patriot bursts forth at 
this; and, without revealing his name or 
quality, he proudly avows and justifies tho 
conduct of that luckless sect; and then, re- 
lenting, falls into a gentler and more pathetic 
strain. 

" ' Oh ! had we never, never met ! 

Or could this heart e'en now forget ! 

How link'd, how bless'd we might have been, 

Had fate not frown'd so dark between ! 

Hadst thou been born a Persian maid ; 

In neighboring valleys had we dwelt, 
Through the same fields in childhood play'd, 

At the same kindling altar knelt— 
Then, then, while all those nameless ties, 
In which the charm of Country lies, 
Had round our hearts been hourly spun, 
Till Tran's cause and thine were one ; 
While in thy lute's awak'ning sigh 
I heard the voice of days gone by, 
And saw in ev'ry smile of thine 
Re'urning hours of glory shine ! — 
While the wrong' d Spirit of our Land [thee !— 

Liv'd. look'd, and spoke her wrongs through 
God ! who could then this sword withstand ? 

Its very flash were victory ! 
Rut now ! Estrang'd, divorc'd for ever, 
Far as the grasp of Fate can sever ; 
Our only ties what love has wove — 

Fii'h, friends, and country, sunder'd wide;— 
And then, then only, true to love, 

When false to all that's dear beside ! 
Thy father Iran's deadliest foe — 
Thyself, perhaps, ev'n now — but no — 
Hate never look'd so lovely yet ! 

No ! — sac-red to thy soul will be 
The land of him who could forget 

All but that bleeding land for thee ! 
When other eyes shall see, unmov'd, 

Her widows mourn, her warriors fall, 
Thou'lt think how well one Gheber lov'd, 

And for his sake thou'lt weep for all !" 

pp. 193, 194. 

He then starts desperately away; regains 
his skiff at the foot of the precipice, and 
leaves her in agony and consternation. The 
poet now proceeds to detail, a little more par- 
ticularly, the history of his hero; and recounts 
some of the absurd legends and miraculous 
attributes with which the fears of his enemies 
had invested his name. 

" Such were the tales, that won belief, 

And such the colouring fancy gave 
To a young, warm, and dauntless Chief, — 

One who. no more than mortal brave, 
Fought for the land his soul ador'd, 

For happv homes and altars free ; 
His only talisman, the sword, — 

His only spell-word, Liberty ! 
'Twas not for him to crouch the knee 
Tamely to Moslem tyranny ; — 
'Twas not for him. whose soul was cast 
In the bright mould of ages past, 
Whose melancholy spirit, fed 
With all the glories of the dead ; — 
'Twas not for him, to swell the crowd 
Of slavish heads, that shrinking bow'd 
Before the Moslem, as he pass'd, 
Like shrubs beneath the poison-blast— 
No — far he fled — indignant fled 

The pageant of his country's shame , 
While every tear her children shed 

Fell on his soul, like drop? of flame ; 
And. as a lover hails the dawn 

Of a first smile, so welcom'd be 



454 



POETRY. 



The sparkle of the first sword drawn 
For vengeance and for liberty !" — pp. 206, 207. 

The song then returns to Hinda — 

M Whose life, as free from thought as sin, 
Slept like a lake, till Love threw in 
His talisman, and woke the tide, 
And spread its trembling circles wide. 
Once, Emir! thy unheeding child, 
Mid all this havoc, bloom'd and smil'd, — 
Tranquil as on some battle-plain 

The Persian lily shines and towers, 
Before the combat's reddening stain 

Has fall'n upon her golden flowers. 
Far other feelings Love has brought — 
Her soul all flame, her brow all sadness," &c. 

" Ah ! not the Love, that should have bless'd 
So young, so innocent a breast ! 
Not the pure, open, prosp'rous Love, 
That, pledg'd on earth and seal'd above, 
Grows in the world's approving eyes, 

In friendship's smile, and home's caress, 
Collecting all the hearts sweet ties 
— Into one knot of happiness !" — pp. 215 — 217. 

The Emir now learns, from a recreant pri- 
soner, the secret of the pass to the Gheber's 
retreat ; and when he sees his daughter faint 
with horror at his eager anticipation of their 
filial extirpation, sends her, in a solitary gal- 
ley, away from the scene of vengeance, to the 
quiet of her own Arabian home. 

And does the long-left home she seeks 

Light up no gladness on her cheeks ? 

The flowers she nurs'd — the well-known groves, 

Where oft in dreams her spirit roves — 

Once more to see her dear gazelles 

Come bounding with iheir silver bells ; 

Her birds' new plumage to behold, 

And the gay, gleaming fishes count, 
She left, all filleted with gold, 

Shooting around their jasper fount — 
Her little garden mosque to see, 

And once again, at ev'ning hour, 
To tell her ruby rosary, 

In her own sweet acacia bower. — 
Can these delights, that wait her now, 
Call up no sunshine on her brow ? 
No — silent, from her train apart — 
As if ev'n now she felt at heart 
The chill of her approaching doom — 
She sits, all lovely in her gloom 
As a pale Angel of the Grave." — pp. 227, 228. 

Her vessel is first assailed by a violent 
tempest, and, in the height of its fury, by a 
hostile bark; and her senses are extinguished 
with terror in the midst of the double conflict. 
At last, both are appeased — and her recollec- 
tion is slowly restored. The following pas- 
sage appears to us extremely beautiful and 
characteristic : — 

How calm, how beautiful comes on 
The stilly hour, when storms are gone ; 
When warring winds have died away, 
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray, 
Melt off, and leave the land and sea 
Sleeping in bright tranquillity — 
Fresh as if Day again were born, 
Again upon the lap of Morn ! 

When, 'stead of one unchanging breeze, 
There blow a thousand gentle airs, 
And each a different perfume bears — 

As if the loveliest plants and trees 
Had vassal breezes of their own 
To watch and wait on them alone, 
And waft no other breath than theirs ! 



When the blue waters rise 'a "d fall, 

In sleepy sunshine mantling ml; 

And ev'n that swell the tempest leaves 

Is like the full and silent heaves 

Of lover's hearts, when newly blest ; 

Too newly to be quite at rest ! — 

" Such was the golden hour that broke 
Upon the world, when Hinda woke 
From her long trance ; and heard around 
No motion but the water's sound 
Rippling against the vessel's side, 
As slow it mounted o'er the tide. — 
But where is she ? — Her eyes are dark, 
Are wilder'd still — -is this the bark, 
The same, that from Harmozia's bay 
Bore her at morn — whose bloody way 
The sea-dog tracks ? — No ! — Strange and new 
Is all that meets her wond'ring view 
Upon a galliot's deck she lies, 

Beneath no rich pavilion's shade, 
No plumes to fan her sleeping eyes, 

Nor jasmin on her pillow laid. 
But the rude litter, roughly spread 
With war-cloaks, is her homely bed, 
And shawl and sash, on javelins hung, 
For awning o'er her head are flung."-p. 233-236 

She soon discovers, in short, that she is a 
captive in the hands of the Ghebers ! and 
shrinks with horror, when she finds that she 
is to be carried to their rocky citadel, and to 
the presence of the terrible Hafed. The gal- 
ley is rowed by torchlight through frightful 
rocks and foaming tides, into a black abyss 
of the promontory, where her eyes are ban- 
daged — and she is borne up a long and rugged 
ascent, till at last -^fee is desired to look up, 
and receive her doO'm from the formidable 
chieftain. Before she has raised her eyes, the 
well known voice of her lover pronounces her 
name ; and she finds herself alone in the arms 
of her adoring Hafed ! The first emotion is 
ecstasy. — But the recollection of her father's 
vow and means of vengeance comes like a 
thundercloud on her joy ; — she tells her lover 
of the treachery by which he has been sacri- 
ficed ; and urges him, with passionate eager- 
ness, to fly with her to some place of safety. 

" ' Hafed, my own beloved Lord,' 

She kneeling cries — ' first, last ador'd ! 
If in that soul thou'st ever felt 

Half what thy lips impassion'd swore, 
Here, on my knees, that never knelt 

To any but their God before ! 
I pray thee, as thou lov'st me, fly — 
Now, now — ere yet their blades are nigh. 
Oh haste ! — the bark that bore me hither 

Can waft us o'er yon dark'ning sea 
East — west — alas ! I care not whither, 

So thou art sate, — and I with thee ' 
Go where we will, this hand in thine, 

Those eyes before me beaming thus, 
Through good and ill, through storm and shine, 

The world's a world of love for us ! 
On some calm, blessed shore we'll dwell, 
Where 'tis no crime to love too well ! — 
Where thus to worship tenderly 
An erring child of light like thee 
Will not be sin — or, if it be, 
Where we may weep our faults away, 
Together kneeling, night and day, — 
Thou, for my sake, at Alta's shrine, 
And I — at any god's, for thine !' 
Wildly these passionate words she spoke — 

Then hung her head, and wept for shame ; 
Sobbing, as if a heart-string broke 

With ev'ry deep-heav'd sob that came. 

pp. 261,262. 



MOORES LALLA ROOKH. 



455 



Hafed is mote shocked with the treachery 
to which he is sacrificed than with the fate to 
which it consigns him : — One moment he 
gives up to softness and pity — assures Hinda, 
with compassionate equivocation, that they 
shall soon meet on some 'more peaceful shore 
— places her sadly in a litter, and sees her 
borne down the steep to the galley she had 
lately quitted, and to which she still expects 
that he is to follow her. He then assembles 
his brave and' devoted companions — warns 
them of the fate that is approaching — and ex- 
horts them to meet the host of the invaders 
in the ravine, and sell their lives dearly to 
thei-r steel. After a fierce, and somewhat too 
sanguinary combat, the Ghebers are at last 
borne down by numbers ; and Hafed finds 
himself left alone, with one brave associate, 
mortally wounded like himself. They make 
a desperate effort to reach and die beside the 
consecrated fire which burns for ever on the 
summit of the cliiT. 

" The crags are red ihey've clamber'd o'er, 
The rock-weed's dripping wilh their sore — 
Thy blade too, Hafed, false at length,' 
Now breaks beneath thy toft'ring strength — 
Haste, haste ! — the voices of the Foe 
Come near and nearer from below — 
One effort more — thank Heav'n ! 'tis past, 
They've gnin'd die topmost steep at last, 
And now they touch the temple's walls, 

Now Hafed sees the Fire divine — 
When, lo ! — his weak, worn comrade falls 

Dead, on the threshold of the Shrine. 
'Alas ! brave soul, too quickly fled ! 

' And must I leave thee with' ring here, 
4 The sport of every ruffian's tread, 

' The mark for every coward's spear ? 
'No, by yon altar's sacred beams!' 
He cries, and, with a strength that seems 
Not of this world, uplifts the frame 
Of the faU'n chief, and tow'rds the flame 
Bents him along ! — With death-damp hand 

The corpse upon the pyre he lays ; 
Then lights the consecrated brand, 

And fires the pile, whose sudden blaze 
Like lightnirg burs' s o'er Oman's Sea — 
' Now Freedom's God ! I come to Thee !' 
The youth exclaims, and with a smile 
Of triumph, vaulting on the pile, 
In that last effort, ere the fires 
Have harm'd one glorious limb, expires!" 

pp. 278, 279. 

The unfortunate Hinda, whose galley had 
been detained close under the cliff by the 
noise of the first onset, had heard with agony 
the sounds which marked the progress and 
catastrophe of the fight, and is at last a spec- 
tatress of the lofty fate of her lover. 

" But see — what moves upon the height ? 
Some signal ! — 'tis a torch's light. 

What bodes its solitary glare ? 
In gasping silence tow'rd the shrine 
All eyes are turn'd — thine, Hinda, thine 
Fix their last failing life-beams there ! 
'Twas but a moment — fierce and high 
The death-pile blaz'd into the sky, 
And far away o'er the rock and flood 

Its melancholy radiance pent ; • 
While H;ifed, like a vision, stood 
Reveal'd before the burning pyre ! 
Tall, shadowy, like a Spirit of Fire 

Shrin'd in its own grand element ! 
' 'Tis he !' — the shudd'ring maid exclaims, 

But, while she speaks, he's seen no more ! 



High burst in air the fun'ral flames, 

And Iran's hopes and hers are o'er ! 
One wild, heart-broken shriek she gave — 
Then sprung, as if to reach that blaze, 
Where still she fix'd her dying gaze, 
And, gazing, sunk into the wave! — 
Deep, deep ! — where never care or pain 
Shall reach her innocent heart again !" 

pp. 283, 284. 

This sad story is closed by a sort of choral 
dirge, of great elegance and beauty, of which 
we can only afford to give the first stanza. 

" Farewell — farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! 

(Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea) 
No pearl ever lay, under Oman's green water, 

More pure in its shell than thy Spirit in thee." 

p. 284. 

The general tone of this poem is certainly 
too much strained. It is overwrought through- 
out, and is too entirely made up of agonies 
and raptures ; — but, in spite of all this, it is a 
work of great genius and beauty; and not 
only delights the fancy by its general bril- 
liancy and spirit, but moves all the tender 
and noble feelings with a deep and powerful 
agitation. 

The last piece, entitled " The Light of the 
Haram," is the gayest of the whole ; and is 
of a very slender fabric as to fable or inven- 
tion. In truth, it has scarcely any story at 
all; but is made up almost entirely of beau- 
tiful songs and descriptions. During the sum- 
mer months, when the court is resident in the 
Vale of Cashmere, there is, it seems, a sort of 
oriental carnival, called the Feast of Roses, 
daring which every body is bound to be hap' 
py and in good humour. At this critical pe- 
riod, the Emperor Selim had unfortunately a 
little love-quarrel with his favourite Sultana 
Nourmahal, — which signifies, it seems, the 
Light of the Haram. The lady is rather un- 
happy while the sullen fit is on her : and ap- 
plies to a sort of enchantress, who invokes a 
musical spirit to teach her an irresistible song, 
which she sings in a mask to the offended 
monarch ; and when his heart is subdued by 
its sweetness, throws off her mask, and springs 
with fonder welcome than ever into his re- 
pentant arms. The whole piece is written in 
a kind of rapture, — as if the author had 
breathed nothing but intoxicating gas during 
its composition. It is accordingly quite filled 
with lively images and splendid expressions, 
and all sorts of beauties, — except those of re- 
serve or simplicity. We must give a few 
specimens, to revive the spirits of our readers 
after the tragic catastrophe of Hafed ; and we 
may begin with this portion of the description 
of the Happy Valley. 

" Oh ! to see it by moonlight, — when mellowly 

shines 
The light o'er its palaces, gardens and shrines ; 
When the waterfalls gleam^like a quick fall of stars, 
And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars 
Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet, 
From the cool shining walks where the young peo 

pie meet. — 
Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes 
A new wonder each minute, as slowly it breaks, 
Hills, cupolas, fountains, call'd forth every ono 
Out of darkness, as they were just born of the fcun 



+56 



POETRY. 



When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day, 
From his Haram of night-flowers stealing away ; 
And the wind, full of wantonness, woes like a lover 
The young aspen-trees till they irembie all over. 
When the East is as warm as the light of first hopes, 

And Day, with his banner of radiance unfurl 1 d, 
Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes, 

Sublime, from that Valley of bliss to the world !" 

p. 2%. 

The character of Nourmahal' s beauty is 
much in the same taste : though the diction 
is rather more loose and careless. 

" There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright, 
Like the long sunny lapse of a summers day's 

light, 
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender, 
Till Love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour. 
This was not the beauty — oh ! nothing like this, 
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss ; 
But that loveliness, ever in motion, which plays 
Like the light upon autumn's soft shadowy days. 
Now here and now there, giving warmth as it flies 
From the lips to the cheek, from the cheek to the 

eyes, 
Now melting in mist and now breaking in gleams, 
Like the glimpses a saint has of Heav'n in his 

dreams ! 
When pensive, it seem'd as if that very grace, 
That charm of all others, was born with her face. 
Then her mirth — oh ! 'twas sportive as ever took 

wing [spring;— 

From the heart with a burst, like the wild-bird in 
Illum'd by a wit that would fascinate sages, 
Yet playful as Peris just loos'd from their cages. 
While her laugh, full of life, without any controul 
But the sweet one of gracefulness, rung from her 

soul ; [cover, 

And where it most sparkl'd no glance could dis- 
In lip, cheek or eyes, for she brighten'd all over, — 
Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon, 
When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun. 1 ' 

pp. 302, 303. 

We can give but a little morsel of the en- 
chanting Song of the Spirit of Music. 

" ' For mine is the lay that lightly floats, 
And mine are the murm'ring dying notes, 
That fall as soft as snow on the sea, 
And melt in the heart as instantly ! 
And the passionate strain that, deeply going, 

Refines the bosom it trembles through, 
As the musk-wind, over the water blowing, 

Ruffles the wave, but sweetens it too ! 

1 The warrior's heart, when touch'd by me, 
Can as downy soft and as yielding be 
As his own white plume, that high amid death 
Through the field has shone — yet moves with a 
And, oh, how the eyes of Beauty glisten, [breath. 

When Music has reach' d her inward soul, 
Like the silent stars that wink and glisten, 

While Heav'n's eternal melodies roll ! ' " 

pp. 318, 319. 

Nourmahal herself, however, in her Arabian 
disguise, sings a still more prevailing ditty — 
of whicn we can only insert a few stanzas. 

" ' Fly to the desert, fly with me ! 
Our Arab tents are rude for thee ; 
But oh ! the choice what heart can doubt 
Of tents with love, or thrones without? 

4 Our rocks are rough ; but smiling there 
Th' acacia waves her yellow hair, 
Lonely and sweet — nor lov'd the less 
For flow' ring in a wilderness ! 

' Our sands are bare ; but down their slope 
The silv'ry-footed antelope 
As gracefully and gaily springs «•;- 

As o'er the marble courts of Kings. 



• Then come ! thy Arab maid will be 
The lov'd and lone acacia-tree, 
The antelope, whose feet shall biess 
With their light sound thy loneliness ! 

' Come ! if the love thou hast for me 
Is pure and fresh as mine for thee, — 
Fresh as the fountain underground. 
When first 'tis by the lapwing found. 

1 But if for me thou dost forsake 
Some other maid. — and rudely break 
Her worshipp"d image from its base, 
To give to me the ruin'd place : — 

' Then, fare thee well ! — I'd rather make 
My bow'r upon some icy lake 
When thawing suns begin to shine, 
Than trust to love so false as thine ! ' " 

This strain, and the sentiment which u 
embodies, reminded the offended monarch cf 
his charming Nourmahal; and he names Iter 
name in accents of tenderness and regret. 

,J The mask is off — the charm is wrought ! 
And Selim to his heart has caught, 
In blushes more than ever bright, 
His Nourmahal, his Haram's Light ! " 

p. 334. 

We have now said enough, and showii 
enough, of this book, to let our readers un- 
derstand both what it is, and what we think 
of it. Its great fault certainly is its excess ve 
finery, and its great charm the inexhaustible 
copiousness of its imagery — the sweetness and 
ease of its diction — and the beauty of the ob- 
jects and sentiments with which it is con- 
cerned. Its finery, it should also be observed, 
is not the vulgar ostentation which so often 
disguises poverty or meanness — but the ex- 
travagance of excessive wealth. We have 
said this, however, we believe before — and 
suspect we have little more to say. 

All poets, who really love poetry, and live 
in a poetical age, are great imitators; and 
the character of their writings may often be 
as correctly ascertained by observing whom 
they imitate and whom they abstain from 
imitating, as from any thing else. Mr. 
Moore, in the volume before us, reminds us 
oftener of Mr. Southey and Lord Byron, than 
of any other of his contemporaries. The re- 
semblance is sometimes to the Roderick of 
the first-mentioned author, but most frequent 
ly to his Kehama. This may be partly owing 
to the nature of the subject ; but, in many 
passages, the coincidence seems to be more 
radical — and to indicate a considerable con- 
formity, in taste and habits of conception. 
Mr. Southey's tone, indeed, is more assum- 
ing, his manner more solemn, and his diction 
weaker. Mr. Moore is more lively — his 
figures and images come more thickly ; and 
his language is at once more familiar, and 
more strengthened with points and antitheses. 
In other respects, the descriptive passages in 
Kehama bear a remarkable affinity to many 
in the work before us — in the brightness of 
the colouring, and the amplitude and beauty 
of the details. * It is in his descriptions of love, 
and of female loveliness, that there ia the 
strongest resemblance to Lord Byron — at least 
to the larger poems of that noble author. In 
the powerful and condensed expression o/ 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. 



457 



strong emotion, Mr. Moore seems to us rather 
to have imitated the tone of his Lordship's 
smaller pieces — but imitated them as only an 
original genius could imitate — as Lord Byron 
himself may be said, in his later pieces, to 
have imitated those of an earlier date. There 
is less to remind us of Scott than we can very 
well account for, when we consider the great 
range and variety of that most fascinating and 
powerful writer; and we must say, that if 
Mr. Moore could bring the resemblance a 
little closer, and exchange a portion of his su- 
perfluous images and ecstasies for an equiva- 
lent share of Mr. Scott's gift of interesting and 
delighting us with pictures of familiar nature, 
and of the spirit and energy which never rises 
to extravagance, we think he would be a 
gainer by the exchange. To Mr. Crabbe 
there is no resemblance at all ; and we only 
mention his name to observe, that he and Mr. 
Moore seem to be the antipodies of our present 
poetical sphere; and to occupy the extreme 
points of refinement and homeliness that can 
be said to fall within the legitimate dominion 
of poetry. They could not meet in the mid- 
dle, we are aware, without changing their na- 
ture, and losing their specific character; but 
each might approach a few degrees, we think, 
with great mutual advantage. The outposts 
of all empires are posts of peril : — though 
we do not dispute that there is great honour 
in maintaining them with success. 



There is one other topic upon which we are 
not quite sure we should say any thing. On 
a former occasion, we reproved Mr. Moore, 
perhaps with unnecessary severity, for what 
appeared to us the licentiousness of some of 
his youthful productions. We think it a duty 
to say, that he has long ago redeemed that 
error; and that in all his latter works that 
have come under our observation, he appears 
as the eloquent champion of purity, fidelity, 
and delicacy, not less than of justice, liberty, 
and honour. Like most other poets, indeed, 
he speaks much of beauty and love; and we 
doubt not that many mature virgins and care- 
ful matrons may think his lucubrations on 
those themes too rapturous and glowing to be 
safely admitted among the private studies of 
youth. We really think, however, that there 
is not much need for such apprehensions: 
And, at all events, if we look to the moral 
design and scope of the works themselves, we 
can see no reason to censure the author. All 
his favourites, without exception, are dutiful, 
faithful, and self-denying; and no other ex- 
ample is ever set up for imitation. There is 
nothing approaching to indelicacy even in his 
description of the seductions by which they 
are tried ; and they who object to his enchant- 
ing pictures of the beauty and pure attach- 
ment of the more prominent characters would 
find fault, we suppose, with the loveliness and 
the embraces of angels. 



(Jfo t) ember, 1815.) 



The Excursion; being a Portion of the Recluse, a Poem. By William Wordsworth. 
4to. pp. 447. London: 1814* 

This will never do ! It bears no doubt the ! unfortunately not half so visibly as that of his 
stamp of the author's heart and fancy : But peculiar system. His former poems were 



* I have spoken in many places rather too bit- 
terly and confidently of the faults of Mr. Words- 
worth's poetry: And forgetting that, even on my 
own view of them, they were but faults of taste, or 
venial self-partiality, have sometimes visited them, 
I fear, with an asperity which should be reserved 
for objects nf Moral reprobation. If I were now to 
deal with the whole question of his poetical merits, 
though my judgment might not be substantially 
different, I hope I should repress the greater part 
of these vivacites of expression : And indeed so 
strong has been my feeling in this way, that, con- 
sidering how much I have always loved many of 
the attributes of his Genius, and how entirely I 
respect his Character, it did at first occur to me 
whether it was quite fitting that, in my old age and 
his, I should include in this publication any of those 
critiques which may have formerly given pain or 
offence, to him or his admirers. But, when I re- 
flected that the mischief, if there really ever was 
any, was long ago done, and that I still retain, in 
substance, the opinions which I should now like 
to have seen more gently expressed, I felt that to 
omit all notice of them on the present occasion, 
might be held to import a retractation which I am 
as far as possible from intending ; or even be rep- 
resented as a very shabby way of backing out of 
sentiments which should either be manfully per- 
sisted in, or openly renounced, and abandoned as 
untenable. 

n 



I finally resolved, therefore, to reprint my review 
of" The Excursion ;" which contains a pretty lull 
view of my griefs and charges against Mr. Words- 
worth ; set forth too, I believe, in a more temperate 
strain than most of my other inculpations, — and of 
which I think I may now venture to say farther, 
that if the faults are unsparingly no'ed. thebeautiea 
are not penuriously or grudgingly allowed ; but 
commended to the admiration of the reader with at 
least as much heartiness and good -will. 

But I have also reprinted a short paper on the 
same author's " White Doe of Rylstone,"— in 
which there certainly is no praise, or notice of 
beauties, to set against the very unqualified cen- 
sures of which it is wholly made up I have done 
this, however, not merely because I adhere to these 
censures, but chiefly because it seemed necessary 
to bring me fairly to issue with those who may not 
concur in them. I can easily understand that many 
whose admiration of the Excursion, or the Lyrical 
Ballads, rests substantially on the passages which I 
J too should join in admiring, may view with greater 
i indulgence than I can do. the tedious and flat pas 
j sages with which they are interspersed, and may 
i consequently think my censure of these works a 
j great deal too harsh and uncharitable. Between 
j such persons and me, therefore, there may be no 
j radical difference of opinion, or contrariety as to 
! principles of judgment. But if there be any who 
I actually admire this White Doe of Rylstoiu?, or 
9 O 



458 



POETRY 



intended to recommend that system, and to 
bespeak favour for it by their individual 
merit; — but this, we suspect, must be recom- 
mended by the system — and can only expect 
to succeed where it has been previously estab- 
lished. It is longer, weaker, and tamer, than 
any of Mr. Wordsworth's other productions; 
with less boldness of originality, and less 
eton of that extreme simplicity and lowliness 
of tone which wavered so prettily, in the 
Lyrical Ballads, between silliness and pathos. 
We have imitations of Cowper, and even of 
Milton here ; engrafted on the natural drawl of 
the Lakers — and all diluted into harmony by 
that profuse and irrepressible wordiness which 
deluges all the blank verse of this school of 
poetry, and lubricates and weakens the whole 
structure of their style. 

Though it fairly fills four hundred and 
twenty good quarto pages, without note, vig- 
nette, or any sort of extraneous assistance, it 
is stated in the title — with something of an 
imprudent candour — to be but "a portion" of 
a larger work ; and in the preface, where an 
attempt is rather unsuccessfully made to ex- 
plain the whole design, it is still more rashly 
disclosed, that it is but " a part of the second 
part, of a long and laborious work" — which 
is to consist of three parts ! 

What Mr. Wordsworth's ideas of length are, 
we have no means of accurately judging : But 
wo cannot help suspecting that they are libe- 
ral, to a degree that will alarm the weakness 
of most modern readers. As far as we can 
gather from the preface, the entire poem — 
or one of them, (for w^e really are not sure 
whether there is to be one or two.) is of a 
biographical nature ; and is to contain the 
history of the author's mind, and of the origin 
and progress of his poetical powers, up to the 
period when they were sufficiently matured 
to qualify him for the great work on which 
he has been so long employed. Now, the 
quarto before us contains an account of one 
of his youthful rambles in the vales of Cum- 
berland, and occupies precisely the period of 
three days ! So that, by the use of a very 
powerful calculus, some estimate may be 
fprmed of the probable extent of the entire 
biography. 

This small specimen, however, and the 
statements with which it is prefaced, have 
been sufficient to set our minds at rest in one 
particular. The case of Mr. Wordsworth, 



Peter Bell the Waggoner, r the Lamentations of 
Martha Rae, or the Sonnets on the Punishment of 
Deaih, there can be no such ambiguity, or means 
of reconcilement. Now I have been assured not 
only that there are such persons, but that almost 
all 'hose who seek to exalt Mr. Wordsworth as the 
founder of a new school of poetry, consider these 
as by far his best and most characteristic produc- 
tions ; and would at once reject from their com- 
munion any one who did not acknowledge in them 
the traces of a high inspiration. Now I wish it to 
be understood, ihnt when I speak with general 
intolerance or impatience of I he school of Mr- 
Wordsworth, it is to the school holding thesp 
tenets, and applying ihese tests, that I refer: and I 
really do not see how I could better explain the 
grounds of my dissent from their doctrines, than 
by republishing my remarks on this "White Doe." 



we perceive, is now manifestly nopeless j and 
we give him up as altogether incurable, and 
beyond the power of criticism. We cannot 
indeed altogether omit taking precautions 
now and then against the spreading of the 
malady; — but for himself, though we shall 
watch the progress of his symptoms as a mat- 
ter of professional curiosity and instruction, 
we really think it right not to harass him any 
longer with nauseous remedies, — but rather 
to throw in cordials and lenitives, and wait in 
patience for the natural termination of the 
disorder. In order to justify this desertion 
of our patient, however, it is proper to state 
why we despair of the success of a more 
active practice. 

A man who has been for twenty years at 
work on such matter as is now before us, 
and who comes complacently forward with a 
whole quarto of it, after all the admonitions 
he has received, cannot reasonably be ex- 
pected to "change his hand, or check his 
pride," upon the suggestion of far weightier 
monitors than we can pretend to be. Invete- 
rate habit must now have given a kind of 
sanctity to the errors of early taste ; and the 
very powers of which we lament the perver- 
sion, have probably become incapable of any 
ol her application. The very quantity, too, 
that he has written, and is at this moment 
working up for publication upon the old pat- 
tern, makes it almost hopeless to look for any 
change of it. All this is so much capital 
already sunk in the concern; which must be 
sacrificed if that be abandoned ; and no man 
likes to give up for lost the time and talent 
and labour which he has embodied in any 
permanent production. We were not pre- 
viously aware of these obstacles to Mr. Words- 
worth's conversion ; and. considering the pecu- 
liarities of his former writings merely as the 
result of certain wanton and capricious ex- 
periments on public taste and indulgence, 
conceived it to be our duty to discourage their 
repetition by all the means in our power. 
We now see clearly, however, how the case 
stands; — and, making up our minds, though 
with the most sincere pain and reluctance, 
to consider him as finally lost to the good 
cause of poetry, shall endeavour to be thank- 
ful for the occasional gleams of tenderness 
and beauty which the natural force of his 
imagination and affections must still shed 
over all his productions. — and to which we 
shall ever turn with delight, in spite of the 
affectation and mysticism and prolixity, with 
which they are so abundantly contrasted. 

Long habits of seclusion, and an excessive 
ambition of originality, can alone account for 
the disproportion which seems to exist be- 
tween this author's taste and his genius ; or 
for the devotion with which he has sacrificed 
so many precious gifts at the shrine of those 
paltry idols which he has set up for himself 
among his lakes and his mountains. Solitary 
musings, amidst such scenes, might no doubt 
be expected to nurse up the mind to the ma- 
jesty of poetical conception, — (though it is 
remarkable, that all the greater poets lived, 
or had lived, in the full current of society) : — 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION 



459 



But the collision of equal minds, — the ad- 
monition of prevailing impressions — seems 
necessary to reduce its redundancies, and re- 
press that tendency to extravagance or pueril- 
ity, into which the self-indulgence and self- 
admiration of genius is so apt to be betrayed, 
when it is allowed to wanton, without awe or 
restraint, in the triumph and delight of its 
own intoxication. That its flight should be 
graceful and glorious in the eyes of men, it 
seems almost to be necessary that they should 
be made in the consciousness that men's eyes 
are to behold them, — and that the inward 
transport and vigour by which they are in- 
spired, should be tempered by an occasional 
reference to what w T ill be thought of them by 
those ultimate dispensers of glory. An habit- 
ual and general knowledge of the few settled 
and permanent maxims, which form the canon 
of general taste in all large and polished so- 
cieties — a certain tact, which informs us at 
once that many things, which we still love 
and are moved by in secret, must necessarily 
be despised as childish, or derided as absurd, 
in all such societies — though it will not stand 
in the place of genius, seems necessary to the 
success of its exertions; and though it will 
never enable any one to produce the higher 
beauties of art, can alone secure the talent 
which does produce them from errors that 
must render it useless. Those who have most 
of the talent, however, commonly acquire this 
knowledge with the greatest facility; — and if 
Mr. Wordsworth, instead of confining himself 
almost entirely to the society of the dalesmen 
and cottagers, and little children, who form 
the subjects of his book, had condescended 
to mingle a little more with the people that 
were to read and judge of it, we cannot help 
thinking that its texture might have been 
considerably improved ; At least it appears to 
us to be absolutely impossible, that any one 
who had lived or mixed familiarly with men 
of literature and ordinary judgment in poetry, 
(of course we exclude the coadjutors and dis- 
ciples of his own school.) could ever have 
fallen into such gross faults, or so long mis- 
taken them for beauties. His first essays we 
looked upon in a good degree as poetical 
paradoxes, — maintained experimentally, in 
order to display talent, and court notoriety; — 
and so maintained, with no more serious be- 
lief hi their truth, than is usually generated 
by an ingenious and animated defence of 
other paradoxes. But when we find that he 
has been for twenty years exclusively em- 
ployed upon articles of this very fabric, and 
that he has still enough of raw material on 
hand to keep him so employed for twenty 
years to come, we cannot refuse him the jus- 
tice of believing that he is a sincere convert 
to his own system, and must ascribe the 
peculiarities of his composition, not to any 
transient affectation, or accidental caprice of 
imagination, but to a settled perversity of 
taste or understanding, which has been fos- 
tered, if not altogether created, by the cir- 
cumstances to which we have alluded. 

The volume before us. if we were to de- 
scribe it very shortly, we should characterise 



as a tissue of moral and devotional ravings, in 
which innumerable changes are rung upon a 
few very simple and familiar ideas :— But 
with such an accompaniment of long words, 
long sentences, and unwieldy phrases — and 
such a hubbub of strained raptures and fan- 
tastical sublimities, that it is often difficult for 
the most skilful and attentive student to ob- 
tain a glimpse of the author's meaning — and 
altogether impossible for an ordinary reader 
to conjecture what he is about. Moral and re- 
ligious enthusiasm, though undoubtedly poet- 
ical emotions, are at the same time but dan- 
gerous inspirers of poetry; nothing being so 
apt to run into interminable dulness or melli- 
fluous extravagance, without giving the unfor- 
tunate author the slightest intimation of his 
danger. His laudable zeal for the efficacy of 
his preachments, he very .naturally mistakes 
for the ardour of poetical inspiration; — and, 
while dealing out the high words and glow- 
ing phrases which are so readily supplied by 
themes of this description, can scarcely avoid 
believing that he is eminently original and 
impressive : — All sorts of commonplace no- 
tions and expressions are sanctified in his 
eyes, by the sublime ends for which they are 
employed ; and the mystical verbiage of the 
Methodist pulpit is repeated, till the speaker 
entertains no doubt that he is the chosen 
organ of divine truth and persuasion. But if 
such be the common hazards of seeking in- 
spiration from those potent fountains, it may 
easily be conceived what chance Mr. Words- 
worth had of escaping their enchantment, — 
with his natural propensities to wordiness, 
and his unlucky habit of debasing pathos 
with vulgarity. The fact accordingly is, that 
in this production he is more obscure than a 
Pindaric poet of the seventeenth century; 
and more verbose " than even himself of 
yore ;" while the wilfulness with which he 
persists in choosing his examples of intellec- 
tual dignity and tenderness exclusively from 
the lowest ranks of society, will be sufficiently 
apparent, from the circumstance of his having 
thought fit to make his chief prolocutor in this 
poetical dialogue, and chief advocate of Prov- 
idence and Virtue, an old Scotch Pedlar — re- 
tired indeed from business — but still rambling 
about in his former haunts, and gossiping 
among his old customers, without his pack 
on his shoulders. The other persons of the 
drama are, a retired military chaplain, who 
has grown half an atheist and half a misan- 
thrope — the wife of an un prosperous weaver 
— a servant girl with her natural child — a 
parish pauper, and one or two other person- 
ages of equal rank and dignity. 

The character of the work is decidedly 
didactic; and more than nine tenths of it are 
occupied with a species of dialogue, or rather 
a series of long sermons or harangues which 
pass between the pedlar, the author, the old 
chaplain, and a worthy vicar, who entertains 
the whole party at dinner on the last day of 
their excursion. The incidents which occur 
in the course of it are as few and trifling as 
can well be imagined ; — and those which th^ 
different speakers narrate in the ce*- ^ ot 



460 



POETRY. 



(heir discourses, are introduced rather to il- 
lustrate their arguments or opinions, than for 
any interest they are si pposed to possess of 
their own. — The doctrine which the work is 
intended to enforce, we are by no means cer- 
tain that we have discovered. In so far as 
we can collect, however, it seems to be neither 
more nor less than the old familiar one, that 
a firm belief in the providence of a wise and 
beneficent Being must be our great stay and 
support under all afflictions and perplexities 
upon earth — and that there are indications of 
his power and goodness in all the aspects of 
the visible universe, whether living or inani- 
mate — every part of which should therefore 
be regarded with love and reverence, as ex- 
ponents of those great attributes. We can 
testify, at least, that these salutary and im- 
portant truths are- inculcated at far greater 
length, and with more repetitions, than in any 
ten volumes of sermons that we ever perused. 
It is also maintained, with equal conciseness 
and originality, that there is frequently much 
good sense, as well as much enjoyment, in 
the humbler conditions of life ; and that, in 
spite of great vices and abuses, there is a rea- 
sonable allowance both of happiness and good- 
ness in society at large. If there be any deeper 
or more recondite doctrines in Mr. Words- 
worth's book, we must confess that they have 
escaped us ; — and, convinced as we are of the 
truth and soundness of those to which we 
have alluded, we cannot help thinking that 
they might have been better enforced with 
less parade and prolixity. His effusions on 
what may be called the physiognomy of ex- 
ternal nature, or its moral and theological ex- 
pression, are eminently fantastic, obscure, and 
affected. — It is quite time, however, that we 
should give the reader a more particular ac- 
count of this singular performance. 

It opens with a picture of the author toiling 
across a bare common in a hot summer day, 
and reaching at last a ruined hut surrounded 
with tall trees, where he meets by appoint- 
ment with a hale old man, with an' iron-point- 
ed staff lying beside him. Then follows a 
retrospective account of their first acquaint- 
ance — formed, it seems, -when the author was 
at a village school ; and his aged friend occu- 
pied "one room, — the fifth part of a house" 
in the neighbourhood. After this, we have 
the history of this reverend person at no small 
length. He was born, we are happy to find, 
in Scotland — among the hills of Athol ; and 
his mother, after his father's death, married 
the parish schoolmaster — so that he was 
taught his letters betimes: But then, as it is 
here set forth with much solemnity, 

" From his sixth year, the boy of w horn T speak, 
In summer, tended cattle on the hills!" 

And again, a few pages after, that there may 
be no risk of mistake as to a point of such es- 
sential importance — 

" From eaily childhood, even, as hath been said, 
From his sixth year, he had been sent abroad, 
In summer — to tend herds ! Such was his task !" 

In the course of this occupation it is next 
-""nrdefl, that he acquired such a taste for , 



rural scenery and open air, that when he was 
sent to teach a school in a neighbouring vil- 
lage, he found it "a misery to him;" and 
determined to embrace the more romantic oc- 
cupation of a Pedlar — or, as Mr. Wordsworth 
more musically expresses it, 

"A vagrant merchant, bent beneath his load ;" 

— and in the course of his peregrinations had 
acquired a very large acquaintance, which, 
after he had given up dealing, he frequently 
took a summer ramble to visit. 

The author, on Cuming up to this interest- 
ing personage, finds him sitting with his eyes 
half shut j — and, not being quite sure whether 
he is asleep or awake, stands " some minutes' 
space" in silence beside h;m. — "At length," 
says he, with his own delightful simplicity — 

" At length I hail'd him-^ seeing that his hat 
Was moist with water-drops, as it the brim 
Had newly scoop'd a running stream ! — 
- ' ■ ■ ' 'Tis,' said I, ' a burning day ! 
My lips are parch'd with thiist ;— but you, I guess, 
Have somewhere found reliei.' " 

Upon this, the benevolent old man points 
him out, not a running stream, but a well in 
a corner, to which the author repairs ; and, 
after minutely describing its situation, beyond 
a broken wall, and between two alders that 
"grew in a cold damp nook," he thus faith- 
fully chronicles the process of his return : — 

" My thirst I slak'd ; and from the cheerless spot 
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade return'd, 
Where sate the old man on the cottage bench." 

The Pedlar then gives an account of the 
last inhabitants of the deserted cottage beside 
them. These were, a good industrious weaver 
and his wife and children. They were very 
happy for a while ; till sickness and want of 
work came upon them ; and then the father 
enlisted as a soldier, and the wife pined in 
that lonely cottage — growing every year more 
careless and desponding, as her anxiety and 
fears for her absent husband, of whom no ti- 
dings ever reached her, accumulated. Her 
children died, and left her cheerless and 
alone ; and at last she died also : and the cot- 
tage fell to decay. We must say, that there 
is very considerable pathos in the telling of 
this simple story; and that they who can get 
over the repugnance excited by the triteness 
of its incidents, and the lowness of its objects, 
will not fail to be struck with the author's 
knowledge of the human heart, and the power 
he possesses of stirring up its deepest and 
gentlest sympathies. His prolixity, indeed, it 
is not so easy to get over. This little story 
fills about twenty-five quarto pages; and 
abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment, 
and details of preposterous minuteness. Whec 
the tale is told, the travellers take their staffs, 
and end their first day's journey, without fur* 
ther adventure, at a little inn. 

The Second Book sets them forward betimes 
in the morning. They pass by a Village 
Wake ; and as they approach a more solitary 
part of the mountains, the old man tells the 
author that he is taking him to see an old 
friend of his, who had formerly been chaplain 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. 



461 



to a Highland regiment — had lost a beloved 
wife — been roused from h s dejection by the 
first enthusiasm of the French Revolution — 
had emigrated on its miscarriage, to America 
— and returned disgusted to hide himself in 
the retreat to which they were now ascending. 
That retreat is then most tediously described 
— a smooth green valley in the heart of the 
mountain, without trees, and with only one 
dwelling. Just as they get sight of it from 
the r^idge above, they see a funeral train pro- 
ceeding from the solitary abode, and hurry on 
with some apprehension for the fate of the 
amiable misanthrope — whom they find, how- 
ever, in very tolerable condition at the door, 
and learn that the funeral was that of an aged 
pauper who had been boarded out by the 
parish in that cheap farm-house, and had died 
in consequence of long exposure to heavy rain. 
The old chaplain, or, as Mr. Wordsworth is 
pleased to call him, the Solitary, tells this 
dull story at prodigious length'; and after 
giving an inflated description of an effect of 
mountain mists in the evening sun, treats his 
visitors with a rustic dinner — and they walk 
out to the fields at the close of the second 
book. 

The Third makes no progress in the excur- 
sion. It is entirely filled with moral and re- 
ligious conversation and debate, and with a 
more ample detail of the Solitary's past life 
than had been given in the sketch of his 
friend. The conversation is, in our judgment, 
exceedingly dull and mystical ; and the Soli- 
tary's confessions insufferably diffuse. Yet 
there is occasionally very considerable force 
of writing and tenderness of sentiment in this 
part of the work. 

The Fourth Book is also filled with dia- 
logues, ethical, and theological ; and, with the 
exception of some brilliant and forcible ex- 
pressions here and there, consists of an expo- 
sition of truisms, more cloudy, wordy, and 
inconceivably prolix, than any thing we ever 
met with. 

In the beginning of the Fifth Book, they 
leave the solitary valley, taking its pensive 
inhabitant along with them, and stray on to 
w T here the landscape sinks down into milder 
features, till they arrive at a church, which 
stands on a moderate elevation in the centre 
of a wide and fertile vale. Here they medi- 
tate for a while among the monuments, till 
the Vicar comes out and joins them; — and 
recognising the Pedlar for' an old acquaint- 
ance, mixes graciously in the conversation, 
which proceeds in a very edifying manner till 
the close of the book. 

The Sixth contains a choice obituary, or 
characteristic account of several of the per- 
sons who lie buried before this group of moral- 
isers; — an unsuccessful lover, who had found 
consolation in natural history — a miner, who 
worked on for twenty years, in despite of uni- 
versal ridicule,, and at last found the vein he 
had expected — two political enemies recon- 
ciled in old age to each other — an old female 
miser — a seduced damsel — and two widow- 
ers, one who had devoted himself to the edu- 
cation of his daughters, and one who had 



preferred marrying a prudent middle-aged 
woman to lake care of them. 

In the beginning of the Eighth Book, the 
worthy Vicar expresses, in the words of Mr. 
Wordsworth's own epitome, "his apprehen- 
sions that he had detained his auditors too 
long — invites them to his house — Solitary, dis- 
inclined to comply, rallies the Wanderer, and 
somewhat playfully draws a comparison be- 
tween his itinerant profession and that of a 
knight-errant — which leads to the Wanderer 
giving an account of changes in the country, 
from the manufacturing spirit — Its favourable 
effects — The other side of the picture," &c. 
&c. After these very poetical themes are 
exhausted, they all go into the house, where 
they are introduced to the Vicar's wife and 
daughter ; and while they sit chatting in the 
parlour over a family dinner, his son and one 
of his companions come in with a fine dish 
of trouts piled on a blue slate ; and after being 
caressed by the company, are sent to dinner 
in the nursery. — This ends the eighth book. 

The Ninth and last is chiefly occupied with 
a mystical discourse of the Pedlar j who main r 
tains, that the whole universe is animated by 
an active principle, the noblest seat of which 
is in the human soul; and moreover, that the 
final end of old age is to train and enable us 

■' To hear the miyhty stream of Tendency 
Uttering for elevaion of our ihought, 
A clear soporous voice, itiaudib e 
To the vast multitude whose doom it is 
To run the giddy round of vain delight — " 

with other matters as luminous and emphatic. 
The hostess at length breaks off the harangue, 
by proposing that they should all make a little 
excursion on the lake, — and they embark ac- 
cordingly ; and, after navigating for some time 
along its shores, and drinking tea on a little 
island, land at last on a remote promontory, 
from which they see the sun go down, — and 
listen to a solemn and pious, but rather long 
prayer from the Vicar. They then walk back 
to the parsonage door, where the author and 
his friend propose to spend the evening ; — but 
the Solitary prefers walking back in the moon- 
shine to his own valley, after promising to 
take another ramble with them — 

" If time, with free consent, be yours to give, 
And season favours." 

— And here the publication somewhat abrupt- 
ly closes. 

Our abstract of the story has been so ex- 
tremely concise, that it is more than usually 
necessary for us to lay some specimens of the 
w r ork itself before our readers. Its grand 
staple, as we have already said, consists of a 
kind of mystical morality : and the chief char- 
acteristics of the style are, that it is prolix, and 
very frequently unintelligible : and though we 
are sensible that no great gratification is to be 
expected from the exhibition of those quali- 
ties, yet it is necessary to give our readers a 
taste of them, both to justify the sentence we 
have passed, and to satisfy them that it was 
really beyond our power to present them with 
any abstract or intelligible account of thoss 
long conversations which we have %ad so 

y rx 



462 



POETRY. 



much occasion to notice in our brief sketch 
of its contents. We need give ourselves no 
trouble, however, to select passages for this 
purpose. Here is the first that presents itself 
to us on opening the volume ; and if our read- 
ers can form the slightest guess at its mean- 
ing, we must give them credit for a sagacity 
to which we have no pretension. 

" But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken, 
And subject neither to eclipse or wane, 
Duty exists ;— immutably survive, 
For our support, the measures and the forms, 
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies; [not: 
Whose kingdom is, where Time and Space are 
Of other converse, which mind, soul, and heart, 
Do, with united urgency, require, 
What more, that may not perish ?" 

" 'Tis, by comparison, an easy task 
Earth to despise ; but to converse with Heav'n, 
This is not easy : — to relinquish all 
We have, or hope, of happiness and joy, — 
And stand in freedom loosen'd from this world ; 
I deem not arduous! — but must needs confess 
That 'tis a thing impossible to frame 
Conceptions equal to the Soul's desires." 

pp. 144—147. 

This is a fair sample of that rapturous mys- 
ticism which eludes all comprehension, and 
fills the despairing reader with painful giddi- 
ness and terror. The following, which we 
meet with on the very next page, is in the 
same general strain : — though the first part of 
it affords a good specimen of the author's 
talent for enveloping a plain and trite obser- 
vation in all the mock majesty of solemn ver- 
bosity. A reader of plain understanding, we 
suspect, could hardly recognise the familiar 
remark, that excessive grief for our departed 
friends is not very consistent with a firm be- 
lief in their immortal felicity, in the first 
twenty lines of the following passage : — In the 
succeeding lines we do not ourselves pretend 
to recognise any thing. 

" From this infirmity of mortal kind 
Sorrow proceeds, which else were not; — at least, 
If Grief be something hallow'd and ordain'd, 
If, in proportion, it be just and meet, 
Through this, 'tis able to maintain its hold, 
In that excess which Conscience disapproves. 
For who could sink and settle to that point 
Of selfishness ; so senseless who could be 
In framing estimates of loss and gain, 
As long and perseveringly to mourn 
For any object of his love, remov'd 
From this unstable world, if he could fix 
A satisfying view upon that state 
Of pure, imperishable blessednpss, 
Which Reason promises, and Holy Writ 
Ensures to all Believers ? — Yet mistrust 
Is of such incapacity, methinks, 
No naiural branch ; despondency far less. 
— And, if there be whose tender frames have 

droop' d 
Ev'n to the dust ; apparently, through weight 
Of anguish unreliev'd, and iack of power 
An agonising sorrow to transmute ; 
Infer not hence a hope from those withheld 
When wanted most ; a confidence impair'd 
So pitiably, that, having ceas'd to see 
With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love 
Of what is lost, and perish through regret ! 
Oh ! no, full oft the innocent SufTrer sees 
Too clearly ; feels to> vividly ; and longs 
To realize the Vision with intense 
And overconstant yearning — There — there lies 
The excess, by which the balance is destroy'd. 



Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, 

This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs, 

Though inconceivably endow'd, 100 dim 

For any passion of the soul that leads 

To ecstasy ! and, all the crooked paths 

Of time and change disdaining, lakes its course 

Along the line of limitless desires. 

I, speaking now from such disorder free, 

Nor sleep, nor craving, but in settled peace, 

I cannot doubt that They whom you deplore 

Are glorified."— pp. 148, 149. 

If any farther specimen be wanted 0/ the 
learned author's propensity to deal out the 
most familiar truths as the oracles of his own 
inspired understanding, the following wordy 
paraphrase of the ordinary remark, that the 
best consolation in distress is to be found in 
the exercises of piety, and the testimony of a 
good conscience, may be found on turning the 
leaf. 

" What then remains ? — To seek 
Those helps, for his occasions ever near, 
Who lacks not will to use them ; vows, renew'd 
On the first motion of a holy thought ; 
Viails of contemplation : praise ; and pray'r, 
A Stream, which, from the fountain of the heart 
Issuing however feebly, no where flows 
Without access of unexpected strength. 
But, above all, the victory is most sure 
For Him who, seeking faith by virtue, strives 
To yield entire submission to the law 
Of Conscience; Conscience reverene'd and obey'd 
As God's most intimate Presence in the soul, 
And his most perfect Image in the world." 

p. 151. 

We have kept the book too long open, how- 
ever, at one place, and shall now take a dip 
in it nearer the beginning. The following ac- 
count of the Pedlar's early training, and lonely 
meditations among the mountains, is a good 
example of the forced and affected ecstasies 
in which this author abounds. 

— — " Nor did he fail, 
While yet a Child, with a Child's eagerness 
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye • 

On all things which the moving seasons brought 
To feed such appetite : nor this alone 
Appeas'd his yearning : — in the after day 
Of Boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, 
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, 
He sate, and even in their fix'd lineaments, 
Or from the pow'r of a peculiar eye, 
Or by creative feeling overborne, 
Or by predominance of thought oppress'd, 
Ev'n in their fix'd and steady lineaments 
He trae'd an ebbing and a flowing mind. "-p. 11. 

We should like extremely to know what is 
meant by tracing an ebbing and flowing mind 
in the fixed lineaments of naked crags ? — but 
this is but the beginning of the raving fit. 

In these majestic solitudes, he used also to 
read his Bible ; — and we are told that — 

" There did he see the writing ! — All things there 
Breath'd immortality, revolving life 
And greatness still revolving ; infinite! 
There littleness was not ; the least of things 
Seem'd infinite; and there his spirit shap'd 
Her prospects ; nor did he believe, — he saw ! 
What wonder if his being thus became 
Sublime and comprehensive ! Low desires, 
Low thoughts had there no place ; yet was hte 

heart 
Lowly; for he wis meek in gratitude. "-pp. 14, 15. 

What follows about nature, triangles, stars, 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. 



463 



and tne iaws of light, is still more incompre- 
hensible. 

— — " Yet still uppermost 
Nature was at his heart, as if he felt, 
Though yet he knew nor how, a wasting pow'r 
In all things which from her sweet influence 
Might tend to wean him. Therefore with her hues, 
Her forms, arid with the spirit of her forms, 
He cloth'd the nakedness of austere truth. 
While yet he linger'd in the rudiments 
Of science, and among her simplest laws, 
His triangles — they were the stars of heav'n, 
The silent stars! Oft did he take delight 
To measure th' altitude of some tall crag 
Which is the eagle's birthplace, or some peak 
Familiar with forgotten years, that shows 
Inscrib'd, as with the silence of the thought, 
Upon its bleak and visionary sides ; — 

— — and I have heard him say 
That often, failing at this time to gain 
The peace requir'd. he scanri d the laws of light 
Amid the roar of torrents, where they send 
From hollow clefts up to the clearer air 
A cloud of mist, which in the sunshine frames 
A lasting tablet — for the observer's eye 
Varying its rainbow hues. But vainly thus, 
And vainly by all other means, he strove 
To mitigate the fever of his heart." — pp. 16 — 18. 

The whole book, indeed, is full of such 
stuff. The following is the author's own 
sublime aspiration after the delight of be- 
coming a Motion, or a Presence, or an Energy 
among multitudinous streams. 

" Oh ! what a joy it were, in vig'rous health, 
To have a Body (this our vital Frame 
With shrinking sensibility endu'd, 
And all the nice regards of flesh and blood) 
And to the elements surrender it, 
As if it were a Spirit ! — Uow divine 
The liberty, for frail, for mortal man, 
To roam at large among unpeopled glens 
And mountainous retirements, only trod 
By devious footsteps; regions consecrate 
To oldest time ! and, reckless of the storm 
That keeps the raven quiet in her nest, 
Be as a Presence or a Motion ! — one 
Among the many there'; and, while the Mists 
Flying, and rainy Vapours, call out Shapes 
And Phantoms from the crags and solid earth 
As fast as a Musician scatters sounds 
Out of an instrument ; and, while the Streams— 
(As at a first creation and in haste 
To exercise their untried faculties) 
Descending from the regions of the clouds, 
And starting from the hollows of the earth 
More multitudinous every moment — rend 
Their way before them, what a joy to roam 
An equal among mightiest Energies ! 
And haply sometimes with articulate voice, 
Amid the deaf'ning tumult, scarcely heard 
By him that utters it, exclaim aloud 
Be this continu'd so from day to day, 
Nor let it have an end from month to month !" 

pp. 164, 165. 

We suppose the reader is now satisfied 
with Mr. Wordsworth's sublimities — which 
occupy rather more than half the volume : — 
Of his tamer and more creeping prolixity, we 
have not the heart to load him with many 
specimens. The following amplification of 
the vulgar comparison of human life to a 
stream, has the merit of adding much ob- 
scurity to wordiness; at least, we have not 
ingenuity enough to refer the conglobated 
bubbles and murmurs, and floating islands, 
to their Vital prototypes. 



The tenor 



Which my life holds, he readily may conceive 
Whoe'er hath stood to watch a mountain Brook 
In some still passage of its course, and seen, 
Within the depths of its capacious breast, 
Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure sky; 
And, on its glassy surface, specks of foam, 
And conglobated bubbles undissolv'd, 
Numerous as stars ; that, by their onward lapse, 
Betray to sight the motion of the stream, 
Else imperceptible ; meanwhile, is heard 
Perchance a roar or murmur; and the sound 
Though soothing, and the little floating isles 
Though beautiful, are bo'h by Nature charg'd 
With the same pensive office ; and make known 
Through what perplexing labyrinths, abrupt 
Precipitations, and untoward straits, 
The earth-born wanderer hath pass'd ; and quickly, 
That respite o'er, like traverses and toils 
Must be again encounter'd. — Such a stream 
Is Human'Life."— pp. 139, 140. 

The following, however, is a better example 
of the useless and most tedious minuteness 
with which the author so frequently details 
circumstances of no interest in themselves, — 
of no importance to the story, — and possess- 
ing no graphical merit whatsoever as pieces 
of description. On their approach to the old 
chaplain's cottage, the author gets before his 
companion, 



when behold 



An object that entic'd my steps aside! 

It was an Entry, narrow as a door ; 

A passage whose brief windings open'd out 

Into a platform ; that lay, sheepfold-wise, 

Enclos'd between a single mass of rock 

And one old moss-grown wall ; — a cool Recess, 

And fanciful ! For, where the rock and wall 

Met in an angle, hung a tiny roof, 

Or penthouse, which most quaintly had been fram'd, 

By thrusting two rude sticks into the wall 

And overlaying them with mountain sods! 

To weather-fend a little turf-built seat 

Whereon a full-grown man might rest, nor dread 

The burning sunshine, or a transient shower ; 

But the whole plainly wrought by Children's hands ! 

Whose simple skill had thiong'd the grassy floor 

Wiih work of frame less solid ; a proud sJww 

Of baby-houses, curiously arrang d ! 

Nor wanting ornament of walks between, 

With mimic trees inserted in the turf, 

And srardens interpos'd. Pleased with the sight, 

I could not choose but beckon to my Guide, 

Who, having enter'd, carelessly look'd round, 

And now would have pass'd on ; when I exclaim'd, 

' Lo ! what is here?' and, stooping down, drew 

A Book," &c— pp. 71, 72. [forth 

And this book, which he 



found to be a work 



In the French Tongue, a Novel of Voltaire," 

leads to no incident or remark of any value 
or importance, to apologise for this long story 
of its finding. There is no beauty, we think, 
it must be admitted, in these passages; and 
so little either of interest or curiosity in the 
incidents they disclose, that we can scarcely 
conceive that any man to whom they had ac- 
tually occurred, should take the trouble to 
recount them to his wife and children by his 
idle fireside : — but, that man or child should 
think them worth writing down in blank verse, 
and printing in magnificent quarto, we should 
certainly have supposed altogether impossi 
ble, had it not been for the ample proofs whicl: 
Mr. Wordsworth has afforded to the contrary 



464 



POETRY. 



Sometimes their silliness is enhanced by a 
paltry attempt at effect and emphasis: — as in 
the following account of that very touching 
and extraordinary occurrence of a lamb bleat- 
ing among the mountains. The poet would 
actually persuade us that he thought the 
mountains themselves were bleating; — and 
that nothing could be so grand or impressive. 
'•List!" cries the old Pedlar, suddenly break- 
ing off in the middle of one of his daintiest 
ravings — 



List ! — I heard. 



From yon huge breast of rock, a solemn bleat ! 
Sent fordi as if it were the Mountain's voice ! 
As if the visible Mountain made ihe cry ! 
Again !' — The effect upon the soul was such 
A* he express'd ; for, from the Mountain's heart 
The soleimi bleat appear'd to come ! There was 
No oiher — and the region all around 
Stood silent, empty oi. all shape of life. 
— It was a Lamb— left somewhere to itself!" 

p. 159. 

What we have now quoted will give the 
reader a notion of the taste and spirit in which 
this volume is composed : And yet, if it had 
not contained something a good deal better, 
we do not know how we should have been 
justified in troubling him with any account 
of it. But the truth "is, that Mr Wordsworth, 
with all his perversities, is a person of great 
powers; and has frequently a force in his 
moral declamations, and a tenderness in his 
pathetic narratives, which neither his prolixity 
nor his affectation can altogether deprive of 
their effect. We shall venture to give some 
extracts from the simple tale of the Weaver's 
solitary Cottage. Its heroine is the deserted 
wife ; and its chief interest consists in the 
picture of her despairing despondence and 
anxiety, after his disappearance. The Pedlar, 
recurring to the well to which he had direct- 
ed his companion, observes, 

" As I stoop'd to drink, 

Upon the slimy foot-stone I espied 
The useless fragment of a wooden bowl, 
Green with the moss of years; a pensive sight 
That mov'd my heart ! — recalling former days, 
When I could never pass that road but She 
Who liv'd within these walls, at my approach, 
A Daughter's welcome gave me ; and I lov'd her 
As my own child ! O Sir ! the good die first ! 
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
Burn to the socket." 

"By some especial care 

Her temper had been fram'd, as if to make 
A Being — who by adding love to peace 
Might live on earth a life of happinet-s." 

pp. 27, 28. 

The bliss and tranquillity of these prosper- 
ous years is well and copiously described ; — 
but at last came sickness, and want of em- 
ployment ; — and the effect on the kind- 
hearted and industrious mechanic is strikingly 
delineated. 

" At his door he stood, 

And whntl'd many a snatch of merry tunes 
That had no mirth in them ! or with his knife 
Carv'd uncouth figures on the heads of sticks — 
Then, not less idly, sought, through every nook 
In house or garden, any casual work 
Of use or ornament." — 



11 One while he would speak lightly of his Babes, 
And with a cruel tongue : at other times 
He toss'd them with a lalse unnat'ral joy : 
And 'twas a rueful thn g to see the looks 
Of the poor innocent children." — p. 31. 

At last, he steals from his cottage, and enlists 
as a soldier ; and when the benevolent Pedlar 
comes, in his rounds, in hope of a cheerful 
welcome, he meets with a scene of despair. 

" Having reach'd the door 

I knock'd, — and, when I enter'd with the hope 
Of usual greeting, Margaret look'd at me 
A little while ; then turn'd her head away 
Speechless, — and sitting down upon a chair 
Wept bitterly ! I wist not what to do, 
Or how to speak to her. Poor Wretch ! at last 
She rose from off her seat, and then, — O Sir ! 
I cannot tell how she pronounc'd my name.— 
With fervent love, and with a face of grief 
Unutterably helpless!" — pp. 34, 35. 

Hope, however, and native cheerfulness, 
were not yet subdued ; and her spirit still bore 
up against the pressure of this desertion. 

" Long we had not talk'd 

Ere we built up a pile of better thoughts, 
And with a brighter eye she look'd around 
As if she had been shedding tears of joy." 

"We parted. — 'Twas the time of early spring; 
I left her busy with her garden tools ; 
And well remember, o'er that fence she look'd, 
And while I pared along the footway path, 
Called out, and sent a blessing after me, 
With tender cheerfulness ; and with a voice 
That seem'd the very sound of happy thoughts." 

pp". 36, 37. 

The gradual sinking of the spirit under the 
load of continued anxiety, and the destruc- 
tion of all the finer springs of the soul by a 
course of unvarying sadness, are very feel- 
ingly represented in the sequel of this simple 
narrative. 

— — " I journey'd back this way 
Towards the wane of Summer; when the wheat 
Was yellow ; and the soft and bladed grass 
Springing afresh had o'er the hay-field spread 
Its tender verdure. At the door arriv'd, 
I found that she was absent. In the shade, 
Where now we sit, I waited her return. 
Her Cottage, then a cheerful Object, wore 
Its customary look, — only, I thought, 
The honeysuckle, crowding round the porch, 
Hung down in heavier tufts : and that bright weed, 
The yellow stone-crop, suffer'd to take root 
Along the window's edge, profusely grew, 
Blinding the lower panes. I turn'd aside, 
And stroll'd into her garden. It appear'd 
To lag behind the season, and had lost 
Its pride of neatness." — 

" The sun was sinking in the west ; and now 
T sate wih sad impatience. From within 
Her solitary Infant cried aloud ; 
Then, like a blast that dies away self-still'd, 
The voice was silent." — pp. 37 — 39. 

The desolate woman had now an air of still 
and listless, though patient sorrow. 

" Evermore 

Her eyelids droop'd. her eyes were downward cast ; 
And, when she at her table erave me food. 
She did not look at me ! Her voice was low, 
Her body was subcVd. In ev'ry act 
Pertaining to her house affairs, appear'd 
The careless stillness of a thinking mind 
Self-occupied ; to which all outward things 
Are like an idle matter. Still she sigh'd, 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. 



465 



But yet no motion of the breast was seen, 
No heaving of the heart. While by the fire 
We sate together, sighs came on my ear, 
I know not how, and hardly whence they came. 

I return'd, 

And took my rounds along this road again, 
Ere on its sunny bank the primrose flow'r 
Peep'd forth, to give an earnest of the Spring, 
I found her 6ad and drooping ; she had learn d 
No tidings of her Husband ; if he liv'd 
She knew not that he lived ; if he were dead 
She knew not he was dead. Sheseem'd the same 
In person and appearance ; but her House 
Bespake a sleepy hand of negligence 

Her Infant Babe 

Had from its Mother caught the trick of grief, 
And sigh'd among its playthings !" — pp. 41—43. 

Returning seasons only deepened this gloom, 
and confirmed this neglect. Her child died ; 
and she spent her weary days in roaming 
over the country, and repeating her fond and 
vain inquiries to every passer by. 

" Meantime her House by frost, and thaw, and rain, 
Wassapp'd ; and while she slept the nightly damps 
Did chill her breast ; and in the stormy day 
Her tatter'd clothes were ruffl'd by the wind, 
Ev'n at the side of her own fire. Yet still 
She lov'd this wretched spot ; and here, my Friend, 
In sickness she remain'd ; and here she died ! 
Last Human Tenant of these ruin'd Walls." — p. 46. 

The story of the old Chaplain, though a 
little less lowly, is of the same mournful cast, 
and almost equally destitute of incidents; — 
for Mr. Wordsworth delineates only feelings — 
and all his adventures are of the heart. The 
narrative which is given by the sufferer him- 
self is, in our opinion, the most spirited and 
interesting part of the poem. He begins thus, 
and addressing himself, after a long pause, 
to his ancient countryman and friend the 
Pedlar— 

" You never saw, your eyes did never look 

On the bright Form of Her whom once I lov'd ! — 

Her silver voice was heard upon the earth, 

A sound unknown to you ; else, honour'd Friend, 

Your heart had borne a pitiable share 

Of what I suffer'd, when I wept that loss! 

And suffer now, not seldom, from the thought 

That I remember — and can weep no more!" 

p. 117. 

The following account of his marriage and 
early felicity is written with great sweetness — 
a sweetness like that of Massinger, in his softer 
and more mellifluous passages. 

" This fair Bride— 

In the devotedness of youthful love. 
Preferring me to Parents, and the choir 
Of gay companions, to the natal roof, 
And all known places and familiar sights, 
(Resign'd with sadness gently weighing down 
Her trembling: expectations, but no more 
Than did to her due honour, and to me 
Yielded, that day, a confidence sublime 
In what I had to build upon) — this Bride, 
Young, modest, meek, and beautiful, I led 
To a low Cottage in a sunny Bay, 
Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, 
And the sea breeze as innocently breathes, 
On Devon's leafy shores; — a shelter'd Hold, 
In a soft clime, encouraging the soil 
To a luxuriant bounty ! — As our steps 
Approach the embower'd Abode, our chosen Seat, 
See, rooted in the earth, its kindly bed, 
The unendanger'd Myrtle. deck'd with flowers,' &c. 
59 



" — Wild were our walks upon those lonely Downs 

Whence, unmolested Wanderers, we beheld 

The shining Giver of the Day diffuse 

His brightness, o'er a tract of sea and land 

Gay as our spirits, free as our desires, 

As our enjoyments boundless. — From ihese Height* 

We dropp'd, at pleasure, into sylvan Combs; 

Where arbours of impenetrable shade, 

And mossy seats detain'd us, side by side, 

With hearts at ease, and knowledge in our hearts 

1 That all the grove and all the day was ours.' " 

pp. 113—120. 

There, seven years of unmolested happiness 
were blessed with two lovely children. 

" And on these pillars rested, as on air, 
Our solitude." 

Suddenly a contagious malady swept off both 
the infants. 

" Calm as a frozen Lake when ruthless Winds 
Blow fiercely, agitating eanh and sky, 
The Mother now remain'd." 

M Yet, stealing slow, 

Dimness o'er this clear Luminary crept 

Insensibly ! — The immortal and divine 

Yielded to mortal reflux, her pure Glory, 

As from the pinnacle of worldly state 

Wretched Ambition drops astounded, fell 

Into a gulf obscure of silent grief, 

And keen heart-anguish — of itself asham'd, 

Yet obstinately cherishing itself: 

And, so consum'd, She melted from my arms ! 

And left me, on this earth, disconsolate." 

pp. 125, 126. 

The agony of mind into which the sur 
vivor was thrown, is described with a power- 
ful eloquence ; as well as the doubts and dis- 
tracting fears which the sceptical speculations 
of his careless days had raised in his spirit. 
There is something peculiarly grand and ter- 
rible to our feelings in the imagery of these 
three lines — 

" By pain of heart, now check'd, and now impell'd, 
The Intellectual Power, through words and things, 
Went sounding on, — a dim and perilous way !" 

At last he is roused from this dejected mood, 
by the glorious promises which seemed held 
out to human nature by the first dawn of the 
French Revolution ; — and it indicates a fine 
perception of the secret springs of character 
and emotion, to choose a being so circum- 
stanced as the most ardent votary of that far- 
spread enthusiasm. 

" Thus was I reconverted to the world f 

Society became my glitt'ring Bride, 

And airy hopes my Children ! — If busy Men 

In sober conclave met, to weave a web 

Of amity, whose living threads should stretch 

Beyond the seas, and to the farthest pole, 

There did I sit, assisting. If, with noise 

And acclamation, crowds in open air 

Express'd the tumult of their minds, my voice 

There mingled, heard or not. The powers of song 

I left not uninvok'd ; and, in still groves, 

Where mild Enthusiasts tun'd a pensive lay 

Of thanks and expectation, in accord 

With their belief, I sang Saturnian Rule 

Reiurn'd. — a progeny of golden years 

Permitted to descend, and bless mankind !" 

pp. 128, 129. 

On the disappearance of that bright vision^ 
he was inclined to take part with the despe- 
rate party who still aimed at establishing 



466 



POETRY. 



universal regeneration, though by more ques- 
tionable instruments than they had originally 
assumed. But the military despotism which 
ensued soon closed the scene against all such 
exertions : and, disgusted with men and 
Europe, he sought for shelter in the wilds of 
America. In the calm of the voyage, Memory 
and Conscience awoke him to a sense of his 
misery. 

" Feebly must They have felt 

Who, in old time, attir'd with snakes and whips 

The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards 

Were turn'd on me — the face of her I lov'd ! 

The Wife and Mother, pitifully fixing 

Tender reproaches, insupportable!" — pp. 133, 134. 

His disappointment, and ultimate seclusion in 
England, have been already sufficiently de- 
tailed. 

We must trespass upon our readers with 
the fragments of yet another story. It is that 
of a simple, seduced, and deserted girl, told 
with great sweetness, pathos, and indulgence, 
by the Vicar of the parish, by the side of her 
untimely grave. Looking down on the turf, 
he says — 

11 As, on a sunny bank, a tender Lamb, 
Lurks in safe shelter, from the winds of March 
Screen'd by its Parent, so that little mound 
Lies guarded by its neighbour. The small heap 
Speaks for itself ;— an Infant there doth rest ; 
The shelt'ring Hillock is the Mother's grave ! — 
There, by her innocent Baby's precious grave, 
Yea, doubtless, on the turf that roofs her own, 
The Mother oft was seen to siand, or kneel, 
In the broad day, a weeping Magdalene. 
Now she is not ! The swelling turf reports 
Of the fresh show'r, but of poor Ellen's tears 
Is silent ; nor is any vestige left 
Upon the pathway of her mournful tread ; 
Nor of that pace with which she once had mov'd 
In virgin fearlessness — a step that seem'd 
Caught from the pressure of elastic turf 
Upon the mountains wet with morning dew, 
In the prime hour of sweetest scents and airs." 

pp. 285—287. 

Her virgin graces and gentleness are then 
very beautifully described, and her seduction 
and lonely anguish passed over very tenderly. 

" ' Ah why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself, 

1 Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge ; 

And nature that is kind in Woman's breast, 

And reason that in Man is kind and good, 

And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge, 

Why do not these prevail for human life, 

To keep two hearts together, that began 

Their spring-time with one love, and that have need 

Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet 

To grant, or be receiv'd ?' "—p. 289. 

" A kindlier passion open'd on her soul 

When that poor Child was born. Upon its face 

She look'd as on a pure and spotless gift 

Of unexpected promise, where a grief 

Or dread was all that had been thought of. 

• Till this hour,' 

Thus in her Mother's hearing Ellen spake, 

' There was a stony region in my heart ! 

But He at whose command the parched rock 

Was smitten, and pour'd forth a quenching stream, 

Hath soften' d that obduracy, and made 

Unlook'd-for gladness in the desert place, 

To save the perishing ; and. henceforth, I look 

Upon the light with cheerfulness, for thee 

My Infant ! and for thai good Mother dear, 

Who bore me, — and ha a pray'd for me in vain ! — 



Yet not in vain, it shall not be in vain/ [food 

— Through four months' space the Infant drew its 
From the maternal breast. Then scruples rose ; 
Thoughts, which the rich are free from, came and 

cross' d 
The sweet affection. She no more could bear 
By her offence to lay a twofold weight 
On a kind parent, willing to forget 
Their slender means ! So, to that parent's care 
Trusting her child, she left, their common home, 
And with contented spirit undertook 
A Foster-Mother's office."— pp. 291—293. 

Here the parents of her new nursling soon 
forbade her all intercourse with her own most 
precious child ; — and a sudden malady carried 
it off, in this period of forced desertion. 

" Once, only once, 

She saw it in that mortal malady : 

And, on the burial day, could scarcely gain 

Permission to attend its obsequies ! 

She reach'd the house — last of the fun'ral train ; 

And some One, as she enier'd, having chanc'd 

To urge unthinkingly their prompt departure, 

• Nay,' said she, with commanding look, a spirit 

Of anger never seen in her before, 

1 Nay ye must wait my time !' and down she sate, 

And by the unclos'd coffin kept her seat ; 

Weeping and looking, looking on and weeping 

Upon the last sweet slumber of her Child ! 

Until at length her soul was satisfied. 

You see the Infant's Grave! — and to this Spot, 
The Mother, oft as she was sent abroad, 
And whatsoe'er the errand, urg'd her steps: 
Hither she came ; and here she stood, or knelt, 
In the broad day — a rueful Magdalene !" — p. 294. 

Overwhelmed with this calamity, she was at 
last obliged to leave her service. 

" But the green stalk of Ellen's life was snapp'd, 
And the flower droop' d ; as every eye might see." 

"Her fond maternal Heart had built a Nest 
In blindness all too near the river's edge ; 
That Work a summer flood with hasty swell 
Had swept away ! and now her spirit long'd 
For its last flight to Heaven's security." 

" — Meek Saint! through patience glorified on 

earth ! 
In whom, as by her lonely hearth she sate, 
The ghastly face of cold decay put on 
A sun-like beauty, and appear' d divine ; 
So, through the cloud of death, her Spirit pass'd 
Into that pure and unknown world of love, 
Where injury cannot come : — and here is laid 
The mortal Body bv her Infant's side !" 

pp. 296, 297. 

These passages, we think, are among the 
most touching with which the volume presents 
us ; though there are many in a more lofty 
and impassioned style. The following com- 
memoration of a beautiful and glorious youth, 
the love and the pride of the humble valley, 
is full of warmth and poetry. , 

" The mountain Ash, 

Deck'd with autumnal berries that outshine 
Spring's richest blossoms, yields a splendid show 
Amid the leafy woods; and ye have seen, 
By a brook side or solitary tarn, 
How she her station doth adorn, — the pool 
Glows at her feet, and all the gloomy rocks 
Are brighten'd round her! In his native Vale 
Such and so glorious did this Youth appear; 
A sight that kindled pleasure in all hearts, 
By his ingenuous beauty, by the gleam 
Of his fair eyes, by his capacious brow, 
By all the graces with which nature's hand 
Had bounteously array'd him. As old Bards 



WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. 



46? 



Tell in their idle songs of wand'ring Gods, 

Pan or Apollo, veil'd in human form ; 

Yet, like the sweet-breath' d violet of the shade, 

Discover : d in t heir own despite, to sense 

Of Mortals, (if such fables without blame 

May find chance-mention on this sacred ground,) 

So, through a simple rustic garb's disguise, 

In him reveal'd a Scholar's genius shone ! 

And so, not wholly hidden from men's sight, 

In him the spirit of a Hero walk'd 

Our unpretending valley !" — pp. 342, 343. 

This is lofty and energetic ; — but Mr. 
Wordsworth descends, we cannot think very 
gracefully, when he proceeds to describe how 
the quoit whizzed when his arm launched it 
— and how the football mounted as high as a 
lark, at the touch of his toe : — neither is it 
a suitable catastrophe, for one so nobly en- 
dowed, to catch cold by standing too long in 
the river washing sheep, and die of spasms 
in consequence. 

The general reflections on the indiscrimi- 
nating rapacity of death, though by no means 
original in themselves, and expressed with 
too bold a rivalry of the seven ages of Shake- 
speare, have yet a character of vigour and 
truth about them that entitles them to notice. 

" This file of Infants ; some that never breathed, 
And the besprinkl'd Nursling, unrequir'd 
Till he begins to smile upon the breast 
That feeds him ; and the tott'ring Little-one 
Taken from air and s'uns'hine, when the rose 
Of Infancy first blooms upon his cheek ; [Youth 
The thinking, thoughtless Schoolboy; the bold 
Of soul impetuous; and the bashful Maid 
Smitten while all the promises of life 
Are op'ning round her ; those of middle age, 
Cast down while confident in strength they stand, 
Like pillars fix'd more firmly, as might seem, 
And more secure, by very weight of all 
That, for support, rests on them ; the decay'd 
And burthensome ; and, lastly, that poor few 
Whose light of reason is with age extinct ; 
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last, 
The earliest summon'd and the longest 6par'd, 
Are here deposited ; with tribute paid 
Various, but unto each some tribute paid ; 
As if, amid these peaceful hills and groves, 
Society were touch'd with kind concern, 
And gentle "Nature griev'd that One should die!" 

pp. 244, 245. 

There is a lively and impressive appeal on 
the injury done to the health, happiness, and 
morality of the lower orders, by the unceas- 
ing and premature labours of our crowded 
manufactories. The description of night-work- 
ing is picturesque. In lonely and romantic 
regions, he says, when silence and darkness 
incline all to repose — 

" An unnatural light 

Prepar'd for never-resting Labour's eyes, 

Breaks from a many-window'd Fabric huge; 

And at the appointed hour a Bell is heard — 

Of harsher import than the Curfew-knoll 

That spake the Norman Conqueror's stern behest. 

A local summons to unceasing toil ! 

Disgorg'd are now the Ministers of day; 

And, as they issue from the illumin'd Pile, 

A fresh Band meets them, at the crowded door, — 

And in the Courts ; — and where the rumbling 

That turns the multitude of dizzy wheels, [Stream, 

Glares, like a troubl'd Spirit, in its bed 

Among the rocks below. Men, Maidens, Youths, 

Mother and little Children, Boys and Girls, 

Enter, and each the wonted task resumes 

Within this Temple— where is offer' d up 



To Gain — the master Idol of the Realm, 
Perpetual sacrifice." — p. 367. 

The effects on the ordinary life of the poor 
are delineated in graver colours. 

" Domestic bliss, 

(Or call it comfort, by a humbler name.) 
How art thou blighted for the poor Man's heart! 
Lo ! in such neighbourhood, from morn to eve, 
The Habitations empty ! or perchance 
The Mother left alone, — no helping hand 
To rock the cradle of her peevish babe ; 
No daughters round her, busy at the wheel, 
Or in despatch of each day's little growth 
Of household occupation; no nice arts 
Of needle- work ; no bustle at the fire, 
Where once the dinner was prepared with pride ; 
Nothing to speed the day or cheer the mind ; 
Nothing to praise, to teach, or to command ! 
— The Father, if perchance he still retain 
His old employments, goes to field or wood, 
No longer lea or followed by his Sons ; 
Idiers perchance they were, — but in his sight ; 
Breathing fresh air, and treading the green earth ; 
Till their short holiday of childhood ceas'd, 
Ne'er to return ! That birth-right now is lost. ; ' 

pp. 371,372. 

The dissertation is closed with an ardent 
hope, that the farther improvement and the 
universal diffusion of these arts may take 
away the temptation for us to embark so 
largely in their cultivation ; and that we may 
once more hold out inducements for the re- 
turn of old manners and domestic charities. 

" Learning, though late, that all true glory rests, 

All praise, all safety, and all happiness, 

Upon the Moral law. Egyptian Thebes ; 

Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves ; 

Palmyra, central in the Desert, fell! 

And the Arts died by which they had been raised. 

— Call Archimedes from his buried Tomb 

Upon the plain of vanish'd Syracuse, 

And feelingly the Sage shall make report 

How insecure, how baseless in itself, 

is that Philosophy, whose sway is fram'd 

For^mere material instruments: — How weak 

Those Arts, and high Inventions, if unpropp'd 

By Virtue."— p. 369. 

There is also a very animated exhortation 
to the more general diffusion of education 
among the lower orders : and a glowing and 
eloquent assertion of their capacity for all vir- 
tues and enjoyments. 

" Believe it not! 

The primal Duties shine aloft — like stars ; 

The Charities that soothe, and heal,and bless, 

Are scatter'd at the feet of Man — like flow'rs. 

The gen'rous inclination, the just rule, 

Kind wishes, and good actions, and pure thoughts — 

No mystery is here ; no special boon 

For high and not for low, for proudly grae'd, 

And not for meek of heart. The smoke ascends 

To heav'n as lightly from the Cottage hearth 

As from the haughty palace." — p. 398. 

The blessings and the necessities that now 
render this a peculiar duty in the rulers of 
this empire, are urged in a still loftier tone. 

" Look ! and behold, from Calpe's sunburnt cliffs 
To the flat margin of the Baltic c d*, 
Long-reverenc'd Title? cast away as weeds ; 
Laws overturn' d, — and Territory split ; 
Like fields of ice rent by the polar wind, 
And fore'd to join in less obnoxious shapes, 
Which, ere they gain consistence, by a gust 
Of the same breath are shatter'd and destroy'd. 
Meantime, the Sov'reignty of these fair Isles 



468 



POETRY. 



Remains entire and indivisible ; 

And, if that ignorance were remov'd, which acts 

Within the compass of their sev'ral shores 

To breed commotion and disquietude, 

Each might preserve the beautiful repose 

Of heav'nly bodies shining in their spheres. 

— The discipline of slavery is unknown 

Amongst us. — hence the more do we require 

The discipline of virtue ; order else 

Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace." 

pp. 402, 403. 

There is a good deal of fine description in 
the course of this work; but we have left 
ourselves no room for any specimen. The 
following few lines, however, are a fine epit- 
ome of a lake voyage : — 

" Risjlit across the Lake 

Our pinnace moves: then, coasting creek and bay, 
Glades we behold — and into thickets peep- 
Where crouch the spotted deer ; or jaise our eyes 
To shaggy steeps on which the careless goat 
Browsed by the side of dashing waterfalls." — p. 412. 

We add, also, the following more elaborate 
and fantastic picture — which, however, is not 
without its beauty : — 

" Then having reach'd a bridge, that overarch'd 
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalm'd 
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw 
A twofold Image. On a grassy bank 
A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood 
Another and the same ! Most beautiful, 
On the green turf, with his imperial front 
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, 
The breathing creature stood' as beautiful, 
Beneath him, show'd his shadowy Counterpart. 
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, 
And each seem'd centre of his own fair world : 
Antipodes unconscious of each other. 
Yet, in partition, with their several spheres, 
Blended in perfect stillness to our sight !" — p. 407. 

Besides those more extended passages of 
interest or beauty, which we have quoted, 
and omitted to quote, there are scattered up 
and down the book, and in the midst qf its 
most repulsive portions, a very great number 
of single lines and images, that sparkle like 
gems in the desert, and startle us with an in- 
timation of the great poetic powers that lie 
buried in the rubbish that has been heaped 
around them. It is difficult to pick up these, 
after we have once passed them by; but we 
shall endeavour to light upon one or two. The 
beneficial effect of intervals of relaxation and 
pastime on youthful minds, is finely expressed, 
we think, in a single line, when it is said to 
be— 
" Like vernal ground to Sabbath sunshine left." 

The following image of the bursting forth 
of a mountain-spring, seems to us also to be 
conceived with great elegance and beauty. 

' : And a few steps may bring us to the spot, 
Where haply crown'd with flow'rets and green 

herbs, 
The Mountain Infant to the Sun comes forth, 
Like human h'eht from darkness!" 

The ameliorating effects of song and music 
on the minds which most delight in them, are 
likewise very poetically expressed. 

— — " And when the stream 
Which overflow 'd the soul was pass'd away, 
A consciou9Pess remain'd that it had left, 



Deposited upon the silent shore 

Of Memory, images and precious thoughts, 

That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed. " 

Nor is any thing more elegant than tin) 
representation of the graceful tranquillity oc- 
casionally put on by one of the authors 
favourites; who, .hough gay and aiiy, ia 
general — 

" Was graceful,^ when it pleas'd him, smooth and 

" still 
As the mute Swan that floats adown the stream, 
Or on the waters of th' unruffled lake 
Anchors her placid beauty. Not a leaf 
That flutters on the bough more light than he, 
And not a flow'r that droops in the green shade 
More willingly reserv'd." 

Nor are there wanting morsels of a sterner 
and more majestic beauty ; as when, assuming 
the weightier diction of Cowper, he says, in 
language which the hearts of all readers of 
modern history must have responded — 

>" Earth is sick, 

And Heav'n is weary of the hollow words 

Which States and Kingdom utter when they speak 

Of Truth and Justice." 

These examples, we perceive, are not very 
well chosen — but we have not leisure to im- 
prove the selection ; and, such as they are, 
they may serve to give the reader a notion of 
the sort of merit which we meant to illustrate 
by their citation. When we look .back to 
them, indeed, and to the other passages which 
we have now extracted, we feel half inclined 
to rescind the severe sentence which we 
passed on the work at the beginning : — But 
when we look into the work itself, we perceive 
that it cannot be rescinded. Nobody can be 
more disposed to do justice to the great powers 
of Mr. Wordsworth than we are ; and, from 
the first time that he came before us, down 
to the present moment, we have uniformly 
testified in their favour, and assigned indeed 
our high sense of their value as the chief 
ground of the bitterness with which we re- 
sented their perversion. That perversion, 
however, is now far more visible than their 
original dignity ; and while we collect the 
fragments, it is impossible not to mourn over 
the ruins from which we are condemned to 
pick them. If any one should doubt of the 
existence of such a perversion, or be disposed 
to dispute about the instances we have hastily 
brought forward, we would just beg leave to 
refer him to the general plan and character of 
the poem now before us. Why should Mr. 
Wordsworth have made his hero a superannu- 
ated pedlar? What but the most wretched 
affectation, or provoking perversity of taste, 
could induce any one to place his chosen ad 
vocate of wisdom and virtue in so absurd and 
fantastic a condition ? Did Mr. Wordsworth 
really imagine, that his favourite doctrines 
were likely to gain any thing in point of effect 
or authority by being put into the mouth of a 
person accustomed to higgle about tape, or 
brass sleeve-buttons % Or is it not plain that, 
independent of the ridicule and disgust which 
such a personificat jon must excite in many of 
his readers, its adoption exposes his work 
throughout to the charge of revolting incon- 



WORDSWORTH'S WHITE DOE. 



469 



gruity, and utter disregard of probability or 
nature ? For, after he has thus wilfully de- 
based his moral teacher by a low occupation, 
is there one word that he puts into his mouth, 
or one sentiment of which he makes him the 
organ, that has the most remote reference to 
that occupation 1 Is there any thing in his 
learned, abstract, and logical harangues, that 
savours of the calling that is ascribed to him 1 
Are any of their materials such as a pedlar 
could possibly have dealt in 1 Are the man- 
ners, the diction, the sentiments, in any, the 
very smallest degree, accommodated to a per- 
son in that condition 1 or are they not eminently 
and conspicuously such as could not by possi- 
bility belong to it? A man who went about 
selling flannel and pocket-handkerchiefs in 
this lofty diction, would soon frighten away 
all his customers ; and would infallibly pass 
either for a madman, or for some learned and 
affected gentleman, who, in a frolic, had taken 
up a character which he was peculiarly ill 
qualified for supporting. 



The absurdity in this case, we think, is 
palpable and glaring: but it is exactly of the 
same nature with that which infects the whole 
substance of the work — a puerile ambition 
of singularity engrafted on an unlucky predi- 
lection for truisms; and an affected passion 
for simplicity and humble life, most awk- 
wardly combined with a taste for mystical 
refinements, and all the gorgeousness of ob- 
scure phraseology. His taste for simplicity 
is evinced by sprinkling up and down his in- 
terminable declamations a few descriptions 
of baby-houses, and of old hats with wet 
brims; and his amiable partiality for humble 
life, by assuring us that a wordy rhetorician, 
who talks about Thebes, and allegorizes all 
the heathen mythology, was once a pedlar — 
and making him break in upon his magnifi- 
cent orations with two or three awkward no- 
tices of something that he had seen when 
selling winter raiment about the country — or 
of the changes in the state of society, which 
had almost annihilated his former calling. 



(©ctobcr, 1815.) 



The White Doe of Ryl stone ; or the Fate of the Nortons: a Poem. By William Words- 
worth. 4to. pp. 162. London: 1815. 



This, we think, has the merit of being the 
very worst poem we ever saw imprinted in a 
quarto volume ; and though it was scarcely to 
be expected, we confess, that Mr. Words- 
worth, with all his ambition, should so soon 
have attained to that distinction, the wonder 
may perhaps be diminished when we state, 
that it seems to us to consist of a happy union 
of all the faults, without any of the beauties, 
which belong to his school of poetry. It is 
just such a work, in short, as some wicked 
enemy of that school might be supposed to 
have devised, on purpose to make it ridicu- 
lous ; and when we first took it up, we could 
not help suspecting that some ill-natured 
critic had actually taken this harsh method 
of instructing Mr. Wordsworth, by example, 
in the nature of those errors, against which 
our precepts had been so often directed in 
vain. We had not gone far, however, till we 
felt intimately that nothing in the nature of a 
joke could be so insupportably dull ; — and 
that this must be the work of one who earn- 
estly believed it to be a pattern of pathetic 
simplicity, and gave it out as such to the ad- 
miration of all intelligent readers. In this 
point of view, the work may be regarded as 
curious at least, if not in some degree inter- 
esting ; and, at all events, it must be instruc- 
tive to be made aware of the excesses into 
which superior understandings may be be- 
trayed, by long self-indulgence, and the 
strange extravagances into which they may 
run, w r hen under the influence of that intoxi- 
cation which is produced by unrestrained 
admiration of themselves. This poetical in- 
toxication 3 indeed, to pursue the figure a little 



farther, seems capable of assuming as many 
forms as the vulgar one which arises from 
wine ; and it appears to require as delicate 
a management to make a man a good poet 
by the help of the one, as to make him a 
good companion by means of the other. In 
both cases, a little mistake as to the dose or 
the quality of the inspiring fluid may make 
him absolutely outrageous, or lull him over 
into the most profound stupidity, instead of 
brightening up the hidden stores of his genius : 
and truly we are concerned to say, that Mr. 
Wordsworth seems hitherto to have been 
unlucky in the choice of his liquor — or of his 
bottle-holder. In some of his odes and ethic 
exhortations, he was exposed to the public in 
a state of incoherent rapture and glorious 
delirium, to which we think we have seen a 
parallel among the humbler lovers of jollity. 
In the Lyrical Ballads, he was exhibited, on 
the whole, in a vein of very pretty deliration; 
but in the poem before us, he appears in a 
state of low and maudlin imbecility, which 
would not have misbecome Master Silence 
himself, in the close of a social day. Whether 
this unhappy result is to be ascribed to any 
adulteration of his Castalian cups, or to the 
unlucky choice of his company over them, we 
cannot presume to say. It may be that he 
has dashed his Hippocrene with too large an 
infusion of lake water, or assisted its opera- 
tion too exclusively by the study of the ancient 
historical ballads of "the north countrie." 
That there are palpable imitations of the style 
and manner of those venerable compositions 
in the work before us, is indeed undeniable ; 
but it unfortunately happens, mat whde the 
2P 



470. 



POETRV. 



hobbling versification, the mean diction, and 
flat stupidity of these models are very exactly 
copied, and even improved upon, in this imi- 
tation, their rude energy, manly simplicity, 
and occasional felicity of expression, have 
totally disappeared ; and, instead of them, a 
large allowance of the author's own metaphy- 
sical sensibility, and mystical wordiness, is 
forced into an unnatural combination with the 
borrowed beauties which have just been men- 
tioned. 

The story of the poem, though not capable 
of furnishing out matter for a quarto volume, 
might yet have made an interesting ballad ; 
and, in the hands of Mr. Scott or Lord Byron, 
would probably have supplied many images 
to be loved, and descriptions to be remem- 
bered. The incidents arise out of the short- 
lived 'Catholic insurrection of the Northern 
counties, in the reign of Elizabeth, which was 
supposed to be connected with the project of 
marrying the Queen of Scots to the Duke of 
Norfolk ; and terminated in the ruin of the 
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, 
by whom it was chiefly abetted. Among the 
victims of this rash enterprise was Richard 
Norton of Rylstone, who comes to the array 
with a splendid banner, at the head of eight 
tall sons, but against the will and advice of a 
ninth, who, though he refused to join the host, 
yet follows unarmed in its rear, out of anxiety 
for the fate of his family; and, when the 
father and his gallant progeny are made 
prisoners, and led to execution at York, re- 
covers the fatal banner, and is slain by a 
party of the Queen's horse near Bolton Priory, 
in which place he had been ordered to de- 
posit it by the dying voice of his father. The 
stately halls and pleasant bowers of Rylstone 
are then wasted, and fall into desolation; 
while the heroic daughter, and only survivor 
of. the house, is sheltered among its faithful 
retainers, and wanders about for many years 
in its neighbourhood, accompanied by a beau- 
tiful white doe, which had formerly been a 
pet in the family ; and continues, long after 
the death of this sad survivor, to repair 
every Sunday to the churchyard of Bolton 
Priory, and there to feed and wander among 
the graves, to the wonder and delight of the 
rustic congregation that came there to wor- 
ship. 

This, we think, is a pretty subject for a 
ballad ; and, in the author's better day, mght 
have made a lyrical one of considerable inter- 
est. Let us see, however, how he deals with 
it, since he has bethought him of publishing 
in quarto. 

The First Canto merely contains the de- 
scription of the Doe coming into the church- 
yard on Sunday, and of the congregation 
wondering at her. She is described as being 
as white as a lily — or the moon — or a ship in 
the sunshine ; and this is the style in which 
Mr. Wordsworth marvels and moralises about 
her through ten quarto pages. 

" What harmonious, pensive changes, 
Wait upon her as she ranees 
Round and through this Pile of State, 
Overthrown and desolate !" 



" The presence of this wand'ring Doe 
Fills many a damp obscure recess 
With lustre of a saintly show ; 
And, re-appearing, she no less 
To the open day gives blessedness." 

The mothers point out this pretty creature 
to their children ; and tell them in sweet nur 
sery phrases — 

11 Now you have seen the famous Doe I 
From Rylstone she haih found her way 
Over the hills this Sabbath-day ; 
Her work, whate'er it be, is done, 
And she will depart when we are gone. 

The poet knows why she comes there, and 
thinks the people mayknow it too : But some 
of them think she is a new incarnation of 
some of the illustrious dead that lie buried 
around them; and one, who- it seems is an 
Oxford scholar, conjectures that she may be 
the fairy who instructed Lord Clifford in 
astrology ! an ingenious fancy, which the 
poet thus gently reproveth — 

" Ah, pensive scholar ! think not so! 
But look again at the radiant Doe !" 

And then closes the Canto with this natural 
and luminous apostrophe to his harp. 

"But, harp ! thy murmurs may not cease,— 
Thou hast breeze-like visiiings; 
For a Spirit wilh angel- wings 
Hath touch'd thee, and a Spirit's hand : 
A voice is wiih us — a command 
To chant, in strains of heavenly glory, 
A tale of tears, a mortal story !" 

The Second Canto is more full of business; 
and affords us more insight into the author's 
manner of conducting a story. The opening, 
however, which goes back to the bright and 
original conception of the harp, is not quite 
so intelligible as might have been desired. 

" The Harp in lowliness obey'd : 

And first we sang of the green- wood shade ; 
And a solitary Maid ! 
Beginning, where the song must end, 
With her, and with her sylvan Friend; 
The friend, who stood before her sight, 
Her only unextinguish'd light, — 
Her last companion in a dearth 
Of love, upon a hopeless earth." 

This solitary maid, we are then told, had 
wrought, at the request of her father, "an 
unblessed work " — 

" A Banner — one that did fulfil 
Too perfectly his headstrong will : 
For on this Banner had her hand 
Embroidered (such was the command) 
The Sacred Cross ; and fignr'd there 
The five dear wounds our Lord did bear." 

The song then proceeds to describe the 
rising of Northumberland and Westmoreland, 
in the following lofty and spirited strains : — 

" Two earls fast leagu'd in discontent, 
Who gave their wishes open vent ; 
And boldly urg'd a general plea, 
The rites of ancient piety 
*To be by force of arms renew'd ; 
Glad prospect for the multitude! 
And that same Banner, on whose breast 
The blameless Lady had exprest, 
Memorials chosen to give life, 
And sunshine to a dangerous strife ; 
This Banner," &c. 



WORDSWORTH'S WHITE DOE. 



471 



The poet, however, puts out all his strength 
in the dehortation which he makes Francis 
Norton address to his father, when the prepa- 
rations are completed, and the household is 
ready to take the field. 

" Franci9 Norton said, 

' Father ! rise not in this fray — 

The hairs are white upon your head; 

Dear Father, hear me when I say 

It is for you too late a day ! 

Bethink you of your own good name ; 

A just and gracious queen have we, 

A pure religion, and the claim 

Of peace on our humanity. 

'Tis meet that I endure your scorn, — 

I am your son, your eldest born ; 

The Banner touch not, stay your hand,— 

This multitude of men disband, 

And live at home in blissful ease.' " 

The warlike father makes no answer to this 
exquisite address, but turns in silent scorn to 
the banner, 

" And his wet eyes are glorified ;" 

and forthwith he marches out, at the head of 
his sons and retainers. 

Francis is very sad when thus left alone in 
the mansion — and still worse when he sees 
his sister sitting under a tree near the door. 
However, though "he cannot choose but 
shrink and sigh," he goes up to her and says, 

11 ' Gone are they, — they have their desire ; 
And I with thee one hour will stay, 
To give thee comfort if I may.' 

He paused, her silence to partake, 
And long it was before he spake : 
Then, all at once, his thoughts turned round, 
And fervent words a passage found. 

' Gone are they, bravely, though misled, 
With a dear Father at their head ! 
The Sons obey a natural lord ; 
The Father had given solemn word 
To noble Percy, — and a force 
Still stronger bends him to his course. 
This said, our tears to-day may fall 
As at an innocent funeral. 
In deep and awful channel runs 
This sympathy of Sire and Sons ; 
Untried our Brothers were belov'd, 
And now rheir faithfulness is piov'd ; 
For faithful we must call them, bearing 
That soul of conscientious daring.' " 

After a great deal more, as touching and 
sensible, he applies himself more directly to 
the unhappy case of his hearer — whom he 
thus judiciously comforts and flatters: 

" Hope nothing, if I thus may speak 
To thee a woman, and thence weak; 
Hope nothing, I repeat ; for we 
Are doom'd to perish utterly ; 
'Tis meet that thou with me divide 
The thought while I am by thy side. 
Acknowledging a grace in this, 
A comfort in the dark abyss : 
But look not for me when I am gone, 
And be no farther wrought upon. 
Farewell all wishes, all debate, 
All prayers for this cause, or for that ! 
Weep, if that aid thee ; but depend 
Upon no help of outward friend ; 
Espouse thy doom at once, and cleave 
To fortitude without reprieve." 

It is impossible, however, to go regularly on 
with this goodly matter. — The Third Canto 
brings the Nortons and their banner to the 



head quarters of the insurgent Earls ; and de- 
scribes the first exploits of those conscipntious 
warriors ; who took possession of the Cathe- 
dral of Durham, 

" Sang Ma8s, — and tore the book of Prayer, — 
And trod the Bible beneath their feet." 

Elated by this triumph, they turn to the 
south. 

" To London were the Chieftains bent : 
But what avails the bold intent ? 
A Royal army is gone forth 
To quell the Rising of the North ; 
They march with Dudley at their head, 
And in seven days' space, will to York be led ! — 
And Neville was opprest with fear ; 
For, though he bore a valiant name, 
His heart was of a timid frame." 

So they agree to march back again ; at which 
old Norton is sorely afflicted — and Francis 
takes the opportnity to renew his dehortations 
— but is again repulsed with scorn, and falls 
back to his station in the rear. 

The Fourth Canto shows Emily walking by 
the fish ponds and arbours of Rylstone, in a 
fine moonshiny night, with her favourite white 
Doe not far off. 

11 Yet the meek Creature was not free, 
Ere while, from some perplexity: 
For thrice hath she approach'd, thi3 day, 
The thought-bewilder'd Emily." 

However, they are tolerably reconciled that 
evening; and by and by, just a few minutes 
after nine, an old retainer of the house come.s 
to comfort her, and is sent to follow the host 
and bring back tidings of their success. — The 
worthy yeoman sets out with great alacrity ; 
but not having much hope, it would appear, 
of the cause, says to himself as he goes, 

" ' Grant that the moon which shines this night, 
May guide them in a prudent flight !' " — p. 75. 

Things however had already come to a still 
worse issue — as the poet very briefly and in- 
geniously intimates in the following fine lines : 

" Their flight the fair moon may not see ; 
For, from mid-heaven, already she 
Hath witness'd their captivity !" — p. 75. 

They had made a rash assault it seems, on 
Barnard Castle, and had been all made prison- 
ers, and forwarded to York for trial. 

The Fifth Canto shows us Emily watching 
on a commanding height for the return of her 
faithful messenger; who accordingly arrives 
forthwith, and tells, c as gentl>*as could be,' 
the unhappy catastrophe which he had come 
soon enough to witness. The only comfort he 
can offer is, that Francis is still alive. 

11 To take his life they have not dar'd. 
On him and on his high endeavour 
The light of praise shall shine for ever! 
Nor did he (such Heaven's will) in vain 
His solitary course maintain ; 
Nor vainly struggled in the might 
Of duty seeing with clear sight." — p 85. 

He then tells how the father and his eight 
sons were led out to execution; and how 
Francis, at his father's request, took their 
banner, and prom'sed to bring it back to Bol- 
ton Priory. 



472 



POETRY. 



The Sixth Canto opens with the homeward 
pilgrimage of this unhappy youth; and there 
is something so truly forlorn and tragical in 
his situation, that we should really have 
thought it difficult to have given an account 
of it without exciting some degree of interest 
or emotion. Mr. Wordsworth, however, re- 
serves all his pathos for describing the white- 
ness of the pet doe, and disserting about her 
perplexities, and her high communion, and 
participation of Heaven's grace; — and deals 
in this sort with the orphan son, turning from 
the bloody scaffold of all his line, with their 
luckless banner in his hand. 

" He look'd about like one betray'd ; 
What hath he done ? what promise made ? 
Oh weak, weak moment ! to what end 
Can such a vain oblation tend, 
And he the Bearer? — Can he go 
Carrying this instrument of woe, 
And find, find any where, a risrht 
To excuse him in his Country's sight? 
No, will not all Men deem the change 
A downward course ? perverse and strange ? 
Here is it, — but how, when ? must she, 
The unoffending Emily 
Again this piteous object see ? 

Such conflict long did he maintain 
Within himself, and found no rest; 
Calm liberty he could not gain ; 
And yet the service was unblesf. 
His own life into danger brought 
By this sad burden — even that thought 
Rais'd self-suspicion, which was strong, 
Swaying the brave Man to his wrong: 
And how, unless it were the sense 
Of all-disposing Providence, 
Its will intelligibly shown, 
Finds he the Banner in his hand, 
Without a thought to such intent ?" 

pp.. 99, 100. 

His death is not much less pathetic. A 
troop of the Queen's horse surround him, and 
reproach him. we must confess with some 
plausibility, with having kept his hands un- 
armed, only from dread of death and forfeit- 
ure, while he was all the while a traitor in 
his heart. The sage Francis answers the 
insolent troopers as follows: — 

'"Iamno traitor,' Francis said, 
| Though this unhappy freight I bear; 
It weakens me ; my heart hath bled 
Till it is weak — but you beware, 
Nor do a suffering Spirit wrong, 
Whose self-reproaches are too strong !" 

p. 103. 

This virtuous and reasonable person, how- 
ever, has ill luck in all his dissuasories ; for 
one of the horsemen puts a pike into him 
without more ado — and 

" There did he lie of breath forsaken !" 

And after some time the neighbouring peas- 
ants take him up, and bury him in the church- 
yard of Bolton Priory. 

The Seventh and last Canto contains the 
history of the desolated Emily and her faith- 



ful doe ; but so very discreetly and cautiously 
written, that we will engage that the most 
tender-hearted reader shall peruse it without 
the least risk of any excessive emotion. The 
poor lady runs about indeed for some years in 
a very disconsolate way, in a worsted gown 
and flannel nightcap : But at last the old white 
doe finds her out, and takes again to following 
her — whereupon Mr. Wordsworth breaks out 
into this fine and natural rapture. 

" Oh, moment ever blest ! O Pair ! 
Belov'd of Heaven, Heaven's choicest care ! 
This was for you a precious greeting,— 
For both a bounteous, fruitful meeting. 
Join'd are they ; and the sylvan Doe 
Can she depart ? can she forego 
The Lady, once her playful Peer? 

" That day, the first of a reunion 
Which was to teem with high communion, 
That day of balmy April weather, 
They tarried in the wood together." 

pp. 117, 118. 

What follows is not quite so intelligible. 

" When Emily by morning light 
Went forth, the Doe was there in sight. 
She shrunk: — with one frail shock of pain, 
Received and followed by a prayer, 
Did she behold — saw once again ; 
Shun will she not, she feels, will bear; — 
But wheresoever she look'd round 
All now was trouble-haunted ground." — p.119. 

It certainly is not easy to guess what could 
be in the mind of the author, when he penned 
these four last inconceivable lines; but we 
are willing to infer that the lady's loneliness 
was cheered by this mute associate ; and that 
the doe, in return, found a certain comfort in 
the lady's company — 

" Communication, like the ray 
Of a new morning, to the nature 
And prospects of the inferior Creature !" 

p. 126. 

In due time the poor lady dies, and is 
buried beside her mother; and the doe con- 
tinues to haunt the places which they had 
frequented together, and especially to come 
and pasture every Sunday upon the fine grass 
in Bolton churchyard, the gate of which is 
never opened but on occasion of the weekly 
service. — In consequence of all which, we are 
assured by Mr. Wordsworth, that she 'is ap- 
proved by Earth and Sky, in their benignity;' 
and moreover, that the old Priory itself takes 
her for a daughter of the Eternal Prime — 
which we have no doubt is a very great com- 
pliment, though we have not the good luck to 
understand what it means. 

" And aye, methinks, this hoary Pile, 
Subdued by outrage and decay, 
Looks down upon her with a smile, 
A gracious smile, that seems to say, 
' Thou, thou art not a Child of Time, 
But Daughter of the Eternal Prime ! * 



HEMANS' POEMS. 



473 



(©rtobev, 1829.) 



1. Records of Women: with other Poems. By Felicia Hemans. 2d Edition. 12mo. 

pp.323. Edinburgh: 1828. 

2. The Forest Sanctuary: with other Poems. By Felicia Hemans. 2d Edition, with 

Additions. 12mo. pp. 325. Edinburgh : 1829. 



Women, Ave fear, cannot do every thing; 
nor even every thing they attempt. But what 
they can do, they do, for the most part, excel- 
lently — and much more frequently with an 
absolute and perfect success, than the aspir- 
ants of our rougher and more ambitious sex. 
They cannot, we think, represent naturally the 
fierce and sullen passions of men — nor their 
coarser vices — nor even scenes of actual busi- 
ness or contention — nor the mixed motives, 
and strong and faulty characters, by which 
affairs of moment are usually conducted on 
the great theatre of the world. For much 
of this they are disqualified by the delicacy 
of their training and habits, and the still more 
disabling delicacy which pervades their con- 
ceptions and feelings ; and from much they 
are excluded by their necessary inexperience 
of the realities they might wish to describe — 
by their substantial and incurable ignorance 
of business — of the way in which serious 
affairs are actually managed — and the true 
nature of the agents and impulses that give 
movement and direction to the stronger cur- 
rents of ordinary life. Perhaps they are also 
incapable of long moral or political investiga- 
tions, where many complex and indeterminate 
elements are to be taken into account, and a 
variety of opposite probabilities to be weighed 
before coming to a conclusion. They are 
generally too impatient to get at the ultimate 
results, to go well through with such discus- 
sions ; and either stop short at some imper- 
fect view of the truth, or turn aside to repose 
in the shade of some plausible error. This, 
however, we are persuaded, arises entirely 
from their being seldom set on such tedious 
tasks. Their proper and natural business is 
the practical regulation of private life, in all 
its bearings, affections, and concerns; and the 
questions with which they have to deal in 
that most important department, though often 
of the utmost difficulty and nicety, involve, 
for the most part, but few elements ; and may 
generally be better described as delicate than 
intricate; — requiring for their solution rather 
a quick tact and fine perception, than a pa- 
tient or laborious examination. For the same 
reason, they rarely succeed in long works, 
even on subjects the best suited to their ge- 
nius; their natural training rendering them 
equally averse to long doubt and long labour. 

For all other intellectual efforts, however, 
either of the understanding or the fancy, and 
requiring a thorough knowledge either of 
man's strength or his weakness, we appre- 
hend them to be ; in all respects, as well quali- 
fied as their brethren of the stronger sex : 
60 



While, in their perceptions of grace, propri- 
ety, ridicule — their power of detecting arti- 
fice, hypocrisy, and affectation — the force and 
promptitude of their sympathy, and their ca- 
pacity of noble and devoted attachment, and 
of the efforts and sacrifices it may require, 
they are, beyond all doubt, our Superiors. 

Their business being, as we have said, with 
actual or social life, and the' colours it receives 
from the conduct and dispositions of individ- 
uals, they unconsciously acquire, at a very 
early age, the finest perception of character 
and manners, and are almost as soon instinct- 
ively schooled in the deep and more danger- 
ous learning of feeling and emotion ; while 
the very minuteness with which they make 
and meditate on these interesting observa- 
tions, and the finer shades and variations of 
sentiment which are thus treasured and re- 
corded, trains their whole faculties to a nicety 
and precision of operation, which often dis- 
closes itself to advantage in their application 
to studies of a different character. When 
women, accordingly, have turned their minds 
— as they have done but too seldom — to the 
exposition or arrangement of any branch of 
knowledge, they have commonly exhibited, 
we think, a more beautiful accuracy, and a 
more uniform and complete justness of think- 
ing, than their less discriminating brethren. 
There is a finish and completeness, in short, 
about every thing they put out of their hands, 
which indicates not only an inherent taste for 
elegance and neatness, but a habit of nice 
observation, and singular exactness of judg- 
ment. 

It has been so little the fashion, at any 
time, to encourage women to write for publi- 
cation, that it is more difficult than it should 
be, to prove these truths by examples. Yet 
there are enough, within the reach of a very 
careless and superficial glance over the open 
field of literature, to enable us to explain, at 
least, and illustrate, if not entirely to verify, 
our assertions. No Man, we will venture to 
say, could have written the Letters of Madame 
de Sevigne, or the Novels of Miss Austin, or 
the Hymns and Early Lessons of Mrs. Bar- 
bauld, or the Conversations of Mrs. Marcet. 
Those performances, too, are not only essen- 
tially and intensely feminine ; but they are, 
in our judgment, decidedly more perfect than 
any masculine productions with which they 
can be brought into comparison. They ac- 
complish more completely all the ends at 
which they aim ; and are worked out with a 
gracefulness and felicity of execution which 
excludes all idea of failure, and entirely satia* 
2p2 



474 



POETRY. 



nes the expectations they may have raised. 
We might easily have added to these in- 
stances. There are many parts of Miss Edge- 
worth's earlier stories, and of Miss Mitford's 
sketches and descriptions, and not a little of 
Mrs. Opie's, that exhibit the same fine and 
penetrating spirit of observation, the same 
softness and delicacy of hand, and unerring 
truth of delineation, to which we have allud- 
ed as characterising the purer specimens of 
female art. The same dist nguishing traits of 
woman's spirit are visible through the grief 
and piety of Lady Russel, and the gaiety, the 
spite, and the venturesomeness of Lady Mary 
Wortley. We have not as yet much female 
poetry; but there is a truly feminine tender- 
ness, purity, and elegance, in the Psyche of 
Mrs. Tighe, and in some of the smaller pieces 
of Lady Craven. On some of the works of 
Madame de Stael — her Corinne especially — 
there is a still deeper stamp of the genius of 
her sex. Her pictures of its boundless de- 
votedness — its depth and capacity of suffering 
— its high aspirations — its painful irritability, 
and inextinguishable thirst for emotion, are 
powerful specimens of that morbid anatomy 
of the heart, which no hand but that of a wo- 
man's was fine enough to have laid open, or 
skilful enough to have recommended to our 
sympathy and love. There is the same ex- 
quisite and inimitable delicacy, if not the 
same power, in many of the happier passages 
of Madame de Souza and Madame Cottin — to 
say nothing of the more lively and yet melan- 
choly records of Madame de Stael. during her 
long penance in the court of the Duchesse de 
Maine. 

But we are preluding too largely ; and must 
come at once to the point, to which the very 
heading of this article has already admonish- 
ed the most careless of our readers that we 
are tending. We think the poetry of Mrs. 
Hemans a fine exemplification of Female 
Poetry — and we think it has much of the per- 
fection which we have ventured to ascribe to 
the happier productions of female genius. 

It may not be the best imaginable poetry, 
and may not indicate the very highest or most 
commanding genius; but it embraces a great 
deal of that which gives the very best poetry 
its chief power of pleasing ; and would strike 
us, perhaps, as more impassioned and exalt- 
ed, if it were not regulated and harmonised 
by the most beautiful taste. It is singularly 
sweet, elegant, and tender — touching, per- 
haps, and contemplative, rather than vehe- 
ment and overpowering ; and not only finished 
throughout with an exquisite delicacy, and 
even severity of execution, but informed with 
a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain 
sober and humble tone of indulgence and 
piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and 
allay the apprehensions of those who are most 
afraid of the passionate exaggerations of poetry. 
The diction is always beautiful, harmonious, 
and free —and the themes, though of great 
variety, uniformly treated with a grace, orig- 
inality and judgment, which mark the same 
master hand. These themes she has occa- 
sionally borrowed, with the peculiar imagery 



that belongs to them, from the legends of dif- 
ferent nations, 'and the most opposite states of 
society; and has contrived to retain much of 
what is interesting and peculiar in each of them, 
without adopting, along with it, any of the 
revolting or extravagant excesses which may 
characterise the taste or manners of the people 
or the age from which it has been derived. 
She has transfused into her German or Scan- 
dinavian legends the imaginative and daring 
tone of the originals, without the mystical 
exaggerations of the one, or the painful fierce- 
ness and coarseness of the other — she has 
preserved the clearness and elegance of the 
French, without their coldness or affectation 
— and the tenderness and simplicity of the 
early Italians, without their diffuseness or 
langour. Though occasionally expatiating, 
somewhat fondly and at large, among the 
sweets of her own planting, there is, on the 
whole, a great condensation and brevity in 
most of her pieces, and, almost without ex- 
ception, a most judicious and vigorous con- 
clusion. The great merit, however, of her 
poetry, is undoubtedly in its tenderness and 
its beautiful imagery. The first requires no 
explanation ; but we must be allowed to add 
a word as to the peculiar charm and character 
of the latter. 

It has always been our opinion, that the 
very essence of poetry — apart from the pathos, 
the wit, or the brilliant description which 
may be embodied in it, but may exist equally 
in prose — consists in the fine perception and 
vivid expression of that subtle and mysterious 
Analogy which exists between the physical 
and the moral world — which makes outward 
things and qualities the natural types and em- 
blems of inward gifts and emotions, or leads 
us to ascribe life and sentiment to everything" 
that interests us in the aspects of external 
nature. The feeling of this analogy, obscure 
and inexplicable as the theory of it may be, is 
so deep and universal in our nature, that it 
has stamped itself on the ordinary language 
of men of every kindred and speech : and 
that to such an extent, that one half of the 
epithets by which we familiarly designate 
moral and physical qualities, are in reality so 
many metaphors, borrowed reciprocally, upon 
this analogy, from those opposite forms of 
existence. The very familiarity, however, of 
the expression, in these instances, takes away 
its poetical effect — and indeed, in substance, 
its metaphorical character. The original sense 
of the word is entirely forgotten in the deriva- 
tive one to which it has succeeded ; and it 
requires some etymological recollection to 
convince us that it was originally nothing else 
than a typical or analogical illustration. Thus 
we talk of a sparkling wit. and a furious blast 
— a weighty argument, and a gentle stream 
— without being at all aware that we are 
speaking in the language of poetry, and trans- 
ferring qualities from one extremity of the 
sphere of being to another. In these cases, 
accordingly, the metaphor, by ceasing to be 
felt, in reality ceases to exist, and the analogy 
being no longer intimated, of course can pro- 
duce no effect. But whenever it is intimated, 



HEMANS' POEMS. 



475 



it does produce an effect ; and that effect we 
think is poetry. 

It has substantially two functions, and ope- 
rates in two directions. In the first place, 
wnen material qualities are ascribed to mind, 
it strikes vividly out, and brings at once be- 
fore us, the conception of an inward feeling 
or emotion, which it might otherwise have 
been difficult to convey, by the presentment 
of some bodily form or quality, which is in- 
stantly felt to be its true representative, and 
enables us to fix and comprehend it with a force 
and clearness not otherwise attainable ; and, 
in the second place, it vivifies dead and inani- 
mate matter with the attributes of living and 
sentient mind, and fills the whole visible 
universe around us with objects of interest 
and sympathy, by tinting them with the hues 
of life, and associating them with our own 
passions and affections. This magical opera- 
tion the poet too performs, for the most part, 
in one of two ways — either by the direct 
agency of similies and metaphors, more or 
less condensed or developed, or by the mere 
graceful presentment of such visible objects 
on the scene of his passionate dialogues or 
adventures, as partake of the character of 
the emotion he wishes to excite, and thus 
form an appropriate accompaniment or pre- 
paration for its direct indulgence or display. 
The former of those methods has perhaps 
been most frequently employed, and certainly 
has most attracted attention. But the latter, 
though less obtrusive, and perhaps less fre- 
quently resorted to of set purpose, is, we are 
inclined to think, the most natural and effica- 
cious of the two ; and it is often adopted, we 
believe unconsciously, by poets of the highest 
order; — the predominant emotion of their 
•minds overflowing spontaneously on all the 
objects which present themselves to their 
fancy, and calling out from them, and colour- 
ing with their own hues, those that are natu- 
rally emblematic of its character, and in ac- 
cordance with its general expression. It would 
be easy to show how habitually this is done, 
by Shakespeare and Milton especially, and 
how much many of their finest passages are 
indebted, both for force and richness of effect, 
to this general and diffusive harmony of the 
external character of their scenes with the 
passions of their living agents — this harmonis- 
ing and appropriate glow with which they 
kindle the whole surrounding atmosphere, 
and bring all that strikes the sense into unison 
with all that touches the heart. 

But it is more to our present purpose to 
say, that we think the fair writer before us is 
eminently a mistress of this poetical secret ; 
and, in truth, it was solely for the purpose of 
illustrating this great charm and excellence 
in her imagery, that we have ventured upon 
this little dissertation. Almost all her poems 
are rich with fine descriptions, and studded 
over with images of visible beauty. But these 
are never idle ornaments : all her pomps have 
a meaning j and her flowers and her gems are 
arranged, as they are said to be among Eastern 
lovors, so as to speak the language of truth 
and of passion. This is peculiarly remark- 



able in some little pieces, which seem at first 
sight to be purely descriptive — but are soon 
found to teil upon the heart, with a deep 
moral and pathetic impression. But it is in 
truth nearly as conspicuous in the greater part 
of her productions; where we scarcely meet 
with any striking sentiment that is not ushered 
in by some such symphony of external na- 
ture — and scarcely a lovely picture that does 
not serve as an appropriate foreground to 
some deep or lofty emotion. We may illus- 
trate this proposition, we think, by opening 
either of these little volumes at random, and 
taking what they first present to us. — The 
following exquisite lines, for example, on a 
Palm-tree in an English garden : 

" It wav'd not thro' an Eastern sky, 
Beside a fount of Araby ; 
It was not fann'd by southern breeze 
In some green isle of Indian seas, 
Nor did its graceful shadow sleep 
O'er stream of Afric, lone and deep. 

" But far the exil'd Palm-tree grew 
'Midst foliage of no kindred hue; 
Thro' the laburnum's dropping gold 
Rose the light shaft of. orient mould, 
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet, 
Purpled the moss-beds at his feet. 

" There came an eve of festal hours- 
Rich music fill'd that garden's bowers : 
Lamps, that from flowering branches hung, 
On sparks of dew soft colours flung, 
And bright forms glanc'd — a fairy show — 
Under the blossoms, to and fro. 

" But one, a lone one, 'midst the throng. 
Seem'd reckless all of dance or song: 
He was a youth of dusky mien, 
Whereon the Indian sun had been— 
Of crested brow, and long black hair — 
A stranger, like the Palm-tree, there ! 

" And slowly, sadly mov'd his plumes, 
Glittering athwart the leafy glooms: 
He pass'd the pale green olives by, 
Nor won the chesnut flowers his eye ; 
But, when to that sole Palm he came, 
Then shot a rapture through his frame' 

11 To him, to him its rustling spoke ! 
The silence of his soul it broke ! 
It whisper'd of his own bright isle, 
That lit the ocean with a smile ; 
Aye, to his ear that native tone 
Had something of the sea-wave's moan ) 

11 His mother's cabin home, that lay 
Where feathery cocoas fring'd the bay ; 
The dashing of his brethren's oar ; 
The conch-note heard along the shore ; — 
All thro' his wakening bosom swept; 
He clasp' d his country's Tree — and wept ! 

" Oh! scorn him not. 1 — The strength, whereby 
The patriot girds himself to die, 
Th' unconquerable power, which fills 
The freeman battling on his hills — 
These have one fountain, deep and clear,— 
The same whence gush'd that child-like tear !" 

The following, which the author has named. 
"Graves of a Household," has rather less ot 
external scenery, but serves, like the others, 
to show how well the graphic and pathetic 
may be made to set off each other : 

" They grew in beauty, side by side. 
They fill'd one home with glee , 
Their graves are sever'd, far and wide, 
By mount, and stream, and sea ! 



476 



POETRY. 



" The same fond mother bent at night 
O'er each fair sleeping brow ; 
She had each folded flower in sight, — 
Where are those dreamers now? 
** One, midst the forests of the West, 
By a dark stream is laid, — 
The Indian knows his place of rest, 
Far in the cedar shade. 
" The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one! 
He lies where pearls lie deep: 
He was the lov'd of all, yet none 
O'er his low bed may weep. 
" One sleeps where southern vines are drest 
Above the noble slain : 
He wrapt his colours round his breast, 
On a blood-red field of Spain. 
" And one — o'er her the myrtle showers 
Its leaves, by soft winds fann'd ; 
She faded 'midst Italian flowers, — 
The last of that bright band ! 
" And paried thus they rest, who play'd 
Beneath the same green tree ! 
Whose voices mingled as they pray'd 
Around one parent knee ! 
" They that with smiles lit up the hall, 
And cheer'd with song the hearth,— 
Alas ! for Love, if thou wert all, 
And nought beyond, oh earth !" 

We have taken these pieces chiefly on ac- 
count of their shortness : But it would not be 
fair to Mrs. Hemans not to present our readers 
with one longer specimen — and to give a por- 
tion of her graceful narrative along with her 
pathetic descriptions. This story of "The 
Lady of the Castle," is told, we think, with 
great force and sweetness : — 

11 Thou seest her pictur'd with her shining hair, 
(Fam'd were those tresses in Provencal song) 
Half braided, half o'er cheek and bosom fair 
Let loose, and pouring sunny waves along 
Her gorgeous vest. A child's right hand is roving 
'Midst the rich curls, and, oh ! how meekly loving 
Its earnest looks are lifted to the face, 
Which bends to meet its hpin laughing grace ! - 
Yet that bright lady's eye methinks hath less 
Of deep, and still, and pensive tenderness, 
Than might beseem a mother's : On her brow 

Something too much there sits of native scorn, 
And her smile kindles with a conscious glow, [tell 
— These may be dreams ! But how shall Woman 
Of woman's shame, and not with tears? — She fell! 
That mother left that child ! — went hurrying by 
Its cradle — haply not without a sigh ; 
Haply one moment o'er its rest serene 
She hung — But no ! it could not thus have been, 
For she went on ! — forsook her home, her hearth, 
All pure affection, all sweet household mirth, 
To live a gaudy and dishonour'd thing, 
Sharing inbuilt the splendours of a king. 

" Her lord, in very weariness of life, 
Girt on his sword for scenes of distant strife ; 
He reck'd no more of Glory : — Grief and shame 
Crush'd out his fiery nature, and his name 
Died silently. A shadow o'er his halls 
Crept year by year ; the minstrel pass'd their walls ; 
The warder's horn hung mute : — Meantime the 

child, 
On whose first flow'ring thoughts no parent smil'd, 
A gentle girl, and yet deep-hearted, grew 
Into sad youth : for well, too well she knew 
Her mother's tale ! Its memory made the sky 
Seem all too joyous for her shrinking eye ; 
Check'd on her lip the flow of song, which fain 
Would there have linger'd ; flush'd her cheek to 
If met by sudden glance ; aid gave a tone [pain, 
Of sorrow as for something lovely gone, 
Even to the spring's fllad voice. Her own was low 
And plaintive ! — ObJ there lie such depth of woes 



In a jeuijg Dngnted spirit ! Manhood rears 

A haughty brow ; and Age has done with tears ; 

But Youth bows down to mis'ry, in amaze 

At the dark cloud o'ermantling its fresh days, 

And thus it was with her. A mournful sight 

In one so fair — for she indeed was fair — 
Not with her mother's dazzling eyes of light. 

Hers were more shadowy, full of thought and 
pray'r ; 
And with long lashes o'er a white-rose cheek, 
Drooping in gloom, yet tender still and meek. 

" One sunny morn, 

With alms before her castle gate she stood, 
'Midst peasant-groups ; when, breathless and o'er- 
worn, 

And shrouded in long robes of widowhood, 
A stranger through them broke : — The orphan maid 
With her sweet voice, and proffer'd hand of aid, 
Turn'd to give welcome : But a wild sad look 
Met hers ; a gaze that all her spirit shook ; 
And that pale woman, suddenly subdued 
By some strong passion in its gushing mood, 
Knelt at her feet, and bath'd them with such tear9 
As rain the hoarded agonies of years [press'd 

From the heart's urn ; and with her white lips 
The ground they trode ; then, burying in her vest 
Her brow's deep flush, sobb'd out — 'Oh! un- 

defil'd ! 
I am thy Mother — spurn me not, my child !' 

" Isaure had pray'd for that lost mother ; wept 
O'er her stain'd memory, while the happy slept 
In the hush'd midnight ; stood with. mournful gaze 
Before yon picture's smile of other days, 
But never breath'd in human ear the name 
Which weigh'd her being to the earth wiih shame. 
What marvel if the anguish, the surprise, 
The dark remembrances, the alter'd guise, 
Awhile o'erpower'd her ? — from the weeper's touch 
She shrank ! — 'Twas but a moment— yet too much 
For that all-humbled one ; its mortal stroke 
Came down like lightning, and her full heart broke 
At once in silence. Heavily and prone 
She sank, while, o'er her castle's threshold-stone, 
Those long fair tresses — they still brightly wore 
Their early pride, though bound with pearls no 

more — 
Bursting their fillet, in sad beauty roll'd, 
And swept the dust with coils of wavy gold. 

"Her child bent o'er her — call'd her — 'Twas 
too late — 
Dead lay the wanderer at her own proud gate ! 
The joy of courts, the star of knight and bard, — 
How didst thou fall, bright-hair'd Ermengarde !" 

The following sketch of " Joan of Arc in 
Rheims," is in a loftier and more ambitious 
vein : but sustained with equal grace, and as 
touching in its solemn tenderness. We can 
afford to extract but a part of it : — 

" Within, the light. 

Through the rich gloom of pictur'd windows 
flowing, 
Tinged with soft awfulness a stately sight, 

The chivalry of France, their proud heads bowing 
In martial vassalage ! — while 'midst the ring, 
And shadow'd by ancestral tombs, a king 
Received his birthright's crown. For this, the hymn 

Swell'd out like rushing waters, and the day 
With the sweet censer's misty breath grew dim, 

As through long aisles it floated, o'er th' array 
Of arms and sweeping s'oles. But who, alone 
And unapproach'd, beside the altar stone, [ing, 

With the white banner, forth like sunshine stream- 
And the gold helm, through clouds of fragrance 

gleaming, 
Silent and radiant stood ? — The helm was rais'd, 
And the fair face revol'd, that upward gaz'd, 

Intensely worshipping ; — a still, clear face, 
Youthful but brightly solemn ! — Woman's cheek 
And brow were There, in deep devotion meek, 

Yet glorified with inspiration's trace ! 



HEMANS' POEMS. 



477 



......." A triumphant strain, 

A proud rich stream of warlike melodies, 

Uush'd through the portals of the antique fane, 
And forth she came." 

" The shouts that fill'd 
The hollow heaven tempestuously, were still'd 
One moment ; and in that brief pause, the tone, 
As of a breeze ihat o'er her home had blown, 
Sank on the bright maid's heart! — 'Joanne!' — 
Who spoke ? 

Like those whose childhood with her childhood 
grew 
Under one roof? — ' Joanne!' — that murmur broke 

With sounds of weeping forth ! — She turn'd — 
she knew 
Beside her, mark'd from all the thousands there, 
In the calm beauty of his silver hair, 
The stately shepherd ! and the youth, whose joy 
From his dark eye fla?h'd proudly ; and the boy, 
The youngest-born, that ever lov'd her best ! 
1 Father ! and ye my brothers !' — On the breast 
Of that grey sire she sank — and swifily back, 
Even in an instant, to the native track [more! 

Her free thoughts flow'd. — She saw the pomp no 
The plumes, the banners! — To her cabin door, 
And to the Fairy's Fountain in the glade, 
Where her young sisters by her side had play'd, 
And to the hamlet's chapel, where it rose 
Hallowing the forest into deep repose, 
Her spirit turn'd. — The very wood-note, sung 

In early spring-time by the bird, which dwelt 
Where o'er her lather's roof the beech-leaves hung, 

Was in her heart; a music heard and felt, 
Winning her back to nature ! — She unbound 

The helm of many battles from her head, 
And, with her bright locks bow'd to sweep the 
ground, 

Lifting Tier voice up, wept for joy, and said, — 
• Bless me, my father, bless me ! and with thee, 
To the still cabin and the beechen-tree, 
Let me return !' " 

There are several strains of a more passion- 
ate character ; especially in the two poetical 
. epistles from Lady Arabella Stuart and Pro- 

f>erzia Rossi. We shall venture to give a few 
ines from the former. The Lady Arabella 
was of royal descent ; and having excited the 
fears of our pusillanimous James by a secret 
union with the Lord Seymour, was detained 
in a cruel captivity, by that heartless monarch, 
till the close of her life — during which she is 
supposed to have indited this letter to her 
lover from her prison house : — 

" My friend, my friend ! where art thou ? Day by 

day, 
Gliding, like some dark mournful stream, away, 
My silent youth flows from me ! Spring, the while, 
Comes, and rains beauty on the kindling boughs 
Round haF. and hamlet : Summer, with her smile, 
Fills the green forest ; — young hearts breathe 
their vows ; 
Brothers, long parted, meet; fair children rise 
Round the glad board: Hope laughs from loving 
eyes. 

" Ye are from dingle and fresh glade, ye flowers ! 

By some kind hand to cheer my dungeon sent ; 
O'er you the oak shed down the summer showers, 

And the lark's nest was where your bright cups 
bent, 
Quivering to breeze and rain-drop, like the sheen 
Of twilight stars. On you Heaven's eye hath been, 
Through the leaves pouring its dark sultry blue 
Into your glowing hearts ; the bee to you 
Hath murmur'd, and the rili. — My soul grows faint 
With passionate yearning, as its quick dreams paint 
Your haunts by dell ana stream, — the green, the 

free, 
The full of all sweet sound, — the shut from me ! 



" There went a swift bird singing past my cell — 
O Love and Freedom ! ye are lovely things ! 

With you the peasant on the hills may dwell, 
And by the streams ; But I — the blood of kings. 

A proud unmingling river, through my veins 

Flows in lone brightness, — and its gifts are chains! 

— Kings ! — f had silent visions of deep bliss, 

Leaving their thrones far distant ! and for this 

I am cast under their triumphal car, 

An insect to be crush'd ! 

" Thou hast forsaken me ! I feel, I know ! 
There would be rescue if this were not so. 
Thou'rt at the chase, thou'rt at the festive board, 
Thou'rt where the red wine free and high is pour'd, 
Thou'rt where the dancers meet ! — a magic glass 
Is set within my soul, and proud shapes pass, 
Flushing it o'er with pomp from bower and hall ! 
I see one shadow, stateliest there of all, — 
Thine! — What dost Thou amidst the bright and fair, 
Whisp'ring light words, and mocking my despair ?" 

The following, though it has no very distinct 
object or moral, breathes, we think, the very 
spirit of poetry, in its bright and vague pic- 
turings, and is well entitled to the name it 
bears — " An Hour of Romance : v — 

" There were thick leaves above me and around, 

And low sweet sighs, like those of childhood's 
Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound [sleep, 

As of soft showers on water ! Dark and deep 
Lay the oak shadows o'er the turf, so still 
They seem'd but pictur'd glooms: a hidden rill 
Made music, such as haunts us in a dream, 
Under the fern-tufts: and a tender gleam 
Of soft green light, as by the glow-worm shed, 

Came pouring thro' the woven beech-boughs 
And steep'd the magic page v\ herein I read [down, 

Of royal chivalry and old renown ; 
A tale of Palestine. — Meanwhile the bee 

Swept past me with a tone of summer hours, 

A drowsy bugle, wafting thoughts of flowers, 
Blue skies and amber sunshine : brightly free, 
On filmy wings the purple drogon-fly 
Shot glancing like a fairy javelin by ; 
And a sweet voice of sorrow told the dell 

Where sat the lone wood-pigeon : 

But ere long, 
All sense of these things faded, as the spell 
Breathing from that high gorgeous tale grew strong 

On my chain'd soul ! — 'Twas not the leaves I 
A Syrian wind the Lion-banner stirr'd, [heard — 
Thro' its proud, floating folds! — 'twas not the 

Singing in secret thro' its grassy glen ; — [brook, 

A wild shrill trumpet of the Saracen 
Peal'd from the desert's lonely heart, and shook 
The burning air ! — Like clouds when winds are 
O'er glitt'ring sands flew steeds of Araby ; [high, 
And tents rose up, and sudden lance and spear 
Flash'd where a fountain's diamond wave lay clear, 
Shadow'd by graceful palm-trees ! Then the shout 
Of merry England's joy swell'd freely out, 
Sent thro' an Eastern heaven, whose glorious hue 
Made shields dark mirrors to its depth of blue! 
And harps were there ; — I heard their sounding 

strings, 
As the waste echo'd to the mirth of kings.— 
The bright masque faded ! — Unto life's worn track, 
What call'd me from its flood of glory back ? 
A voice of happy childhood ! — and they pass'd, 
Banner, and harp, and Paynim trumpet's blast 
Yet might I scarce bewail the splendours gone, 
My heart so leap'd to that sweet laughter's tone." 

There is great sweetness in the following 
portion of a little poem on a " Girl's School :"- - 

" Oh ! joyous creatures ! that will sink to rest, 
Lightly, when those pure orisons are done, 
As birds with slumber's honey-dew opprest, 
'Midst the dim folded leaves, at set of sun — 



i78 



POETRY. 



Y~et in those flute-like voices, mingling low, 
Is Woman's tenderness — how soon her woe ! 

kl Her look is on you — silent tears to weep, [hour ; 

And patient smiles to wear, through suff'ring's 
And sumless riches, from affection's deep, 

To pour on broken reeds — a wasted show'r ! 
And to make idols, — and to find them clay, 
And to bewail that worship ! — therefore pray ! 

' Her lot is on you ! to be found untir'd, 

Watching the stars out by the bed of pain, 
With a pale cheek, and yet a brow inspir'd, 

And a true heart of hope, though hope be vain ; 
Meekly to bear with wrong, to cheer decay, 
And, oh ! to Love through all things ! — there- 
fore pray !" 

There is a fine and stately solemnity, too, 
in these lines on " The Lost Pleiad :" — 

" Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night ? 
She wears her crown of old magnificence, 
Though thou art exiled thence — 
No deserr seems to part those urns of light, 
'Midst the far depths of purple gloom intense. 

11 They rise in joy, the starry myriads, burning — 
The shepherd greets them on his mountains 
And from the silvery sea [free ; 

To them the sailor's wakeful eye is turning — 
Unchanged they rise; they have not mourn'd 
for thee ! 

14 Couldst thou be shaken from thy radiant place, 
E'en as a dew-drop from the myrtle spray, 
Swept by the wind away ? 
Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race ? 
And was there power to smite them with decay? 

■' Then who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riv'n ? 
Bow'd be our hearts to think on what we are ! 
When from its height afar 
A World sinks thus — and yon majestic heav'n 
Shines not the less for that one vanish'd star !" 

The following, on "The Dying Improvisa- 
1 Dre," have a rich lyrical cadence, and glow 
< f deep feeling : — 

" Never, oh ! never more, 
On thy Rome's purple heaven mine eye shall dwell, 
Or watch the bright waves melt along thy shore — 
My Italy, farewell! 

" Alas ! — thy hills among, 
Had I but left a memory of my name, 
Of love and grief one deep, true, fervent song, 
Unto immortal fame ! 

" But like a lute's brief tone, 
Like a rose-odour on the breezes cast, 
Like a swift flush of dayspring. seen and gone, 
So hath my spirit pass'd ! 

" Yet, yet remember me ! 
Friends ! that upon its murmurs oft have hung, 
When from my bosom, joyously and free, 
The fiery fountain sprung ! 

" Under the dark rich blue 
Of midnight heav'ns, and on the star-lit sea, 
And when woods kindle into spring's first hue, 
Sweet friends I remember me! 

** And in ths marble halls, 
Where life's full glow the dreams of beauty wear, 
And poet-thoughts embodied light the walls, 
Let me be with you there ! 

" Fain would I bind, for you, 
My memory with all glorious things to dwell ; 
Fain bid all lovely sounds my name renew — 
Sweet friends ! bright land ! farewell !" 

But we must stop here. There would be 
no end of our extracts, if we were to yield to 



the temptation of noting down every beautiful 
passage which arrests us in turning over the 
leaves of the volumes before us. We ought 
to recollect, too, that there are few to whom 
our pages are likely to come, who are not 
already familiar with their beauties; and, in 
fact, we have made these extracts, less with 
the presumptuous belief that we are intro- 
ducing Mrs. Hemans for the first time to the 
knowledge or admiration of our readers, than 
from a desire of illustrating, by means of 
them, that singular felicity in the choice and 
employment of her imagery, of which we 
have already spoken so much at large ; — that 
fine accord she has established between the 
world of sense and of soul — that delicate 
blending of our deep inward emotions with 
their splendid symbols and emblems without. 

We have seen too much of the perishable 
nature of modern literary fame, to venture to 
predict to Mrs. Hemans that hers will be im- 
mortal, or even of very long duration. Since 
the beginning of our critical career we have 
seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into 
oblivion, in spite of our feeble efforts to recall 
or retain it in remembrance. The tuneful 
quartos of Southey are already little better 
than lumber: — and the rich melodies of 
Keats and Shelley, — and the fantastical em- 
phasis of Wordsworth, — and the plebeian 
pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the 
field of our vision. The novels of Scott have 
put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains 
of Moore are fading into distance and dim- 
ness, except where they have been married 
to immortal music; and the blazing star of 
Byron himself is receding from its place of 
pride. We need say nothing of Milman, and 
Croly, and Atherstone, and Hood, and a legion 
of others, who, with no ordinary gifts of taste 
and fancy, have not so properly survived their 
fame, as been excluded by some hard fatality, 
from what seemed their just inheritance. The 
two who have the longest withstood this rapid 
withering of the laurel, and with the least 
marks of decay on their branches, are Rogers 
and Campbell ; neither of them, it may be re- 
marked, voluminous writers, and both dis- 
tinguished rather for the fine taste and con- 
summate elegance of their writings, than for 
that fiery passion, and disdainful vehemence, 
which seemed for a time to be so much more 
in favour with the public. 

If taste and elegance, however, be titles to 
enduring fame, we might venture securely to 
promise that rich boon to the author before 
us; who adds to those great merits a tender- 
ness and loftiness of feeling, and an ethereal 
purity of sentiment, which could only ema- 
nate from the soul of a woman. She must 
beware, however, of becoming too volumin- 
ous ; and must not venture again on any thing 
so long as the "Forest Sanctuary." But, if 
the next generation inherits our taste for short 
poems, we are persuaded it will not readily 
allow her to be forgotten. For we do not 
hesitate to say, that she is, beyond all com- 
parison, the most touching and accomplished 
writer of occasional verses that our literature 
has yet to boast of. 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE MINI), 
METAPHYSICS, AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



I am aware that the title prefixed to this head or Division of the present publication, is 
not likely to attract many readers; and, for this reason, I have put much less under it, than 
under any of the other divisions. But. having been at one time more addicted to the studies 
to which it relates than to any other — and still confessing to a certain partiality for them — I 
could not think of letting this collection of old speculations go forth to the world, without some 
specimen of those which once found so much favour in my eyes. 

I will confess, too, that I am not unwilling to have it known that, so long ago as 1804, I 
adventured to break a spear (and I trust not quite ingloriously) in these perilous lists, with two 
such redoubted champions as Jeremy Bentham and Dugald Stewart, then in the maturity of 
their fame ; and also to assail, with equal gallantry, what appeared to me the opposite .errors 
of the two great Dogmatical schools of Priestley and of Reid. 

I will venture also to add, that on looking back on what I have now reprinted of these 
early lucubrations, I cannot help indulging a fond, though probably delusive expectation, that 
the brief and familiar exposition I have there attempted, both of the fallacy of the Materialist 
theory, and of the very moderate practical value that can be assigned to Metaphysical dis- 
cussions generally, and especially of the real shallowness and utter insignificance of the 
thorough-going Scepticism (even if unanswerable) to which they have been supposed to lead 
may be found neither so tedious, nor so devoid of interest even to the general reader, as the 
mere announcement of the subjects might lead him to apprehend. 



(aprtl, 1804.) 



Traites de Legislation Civile et Penale; precedes de Principes Generaux de Legislation, et d'une 
Vue dhtn Corps cowplct de Droit ; termines par an Essai sur V influence des Terns et des 
Lieux relativemcnt aux Lois. Par M. Jeremie Bentham, Jurisconsulte Anglois. Publies 
en Francois par M. Dumont de Geneve, d'apres les Manuscrits confies par 1'Auteur. 8vo. 
3 torn. Paris, an X. 1802. 



The title-page of this work exhibits a curi- 
ous instance of the division of labour; and of 
the combinations that hold together the lite- 
rary commonwealth of Europe. A living- 
author consents to give his productions to the 
world in the language of a foreign editor ; and 
the speculations of an English philosopher are 
published at Paris, under the direction of a 
redacteur from Geneva. This arrangement is 
not the most obvious or natural in the world ; 
nor is it very flattering to the literature of this 
country; but we have no doubt that it was 
adopted for sufficient reasons. 

It is now about fifteen years since Mr. 
Bentham first announced to the world his de- 
sign of composing a great work on the Prin- 
ciples of morals and legislation. The specimen 
which he then gave of his plan, and of his 
abilities, was calculated, we think, to excite 
considerable expectation, and considerable 
alarm, in the reading part of the community. 



While the author displayed, in many places, 
great originality and accuracy of thinking, and 
gave proofs throughout of a very uncommon 
degree of courage, acuteness, and impartiality, 
it was easy to perceive that he was encum-. 
bered witn the magnitude of his subject, and 
that his habits of discussion were but ill 
adapted to render it popular with the greater 
part of his readers. Though fully possessed 
of his subject, he scarcely ever appeared to 
be properly the master of it ; and seemed evi- 
dently to move in his new career with great 
anxiety and great exertion. In the subordi- 
nate details of his work, he is often extremely 
ingenious, clear, and satisfactory; but in the 
grouping and distribution of its several parts, 
he is apparently irresolute or capricious; and 
has multiplied and distinguished them by such 
a profusion of divisions and subdivisions, that 
the understanding is nearly as much bewil- 
dered from the excessive labour anu com- 

479 



480 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



nlexity of the arrangement, as it could have 
been from its absolute omission. In following 
out the discussions into which he is tempted 
by every incidental suggestion, he is so anxi- 
ous to fix a precise and appropriate principle 
of judgment, that he not only loses sight of 
the general scope of his performance, but 
pushes his metaphysical analysis to a degree 
of subtlety and minuteness that must prove 
repulsive to the greater part of his readers. In 
the extent and the fineness of those specula- 
tions, he sometimes appears to lose all recol- 
lection of his subject, and often seems to have 
tasked his ingenuity to weave snares for his 
understanding. 

The powers and the peculiarities which 
were thus indicated by the preliminary trea- 
tise, were certainly such as to justify some 
solicitude as to the execution of the principal 
work. While it was clear that it would be 
well worth reading, it was doubtful if it would 
be very fit for being read : and while it was 
certain that it would contain many admirable 
remarks, and much original reasoning, there 
was room for apprehending that the author's 
love of method and metaphysics might place 
his discoveries beyond the reach of ordinary 
students, and repel the curiosity which the 
importance of the subject was so likely to ex- 
cite. Actuated probably, in part, by the con- 
sciousness of those propensities (which nearly 
disqualified him from being the editor of his 
own speculations), and still too busily occu- 
pied with the prosecution of his great work 
to attend to the nice finishing of its parts, Mr. 
Bentham, about six years ago, put into the 
hands of M. Dumont a large collection of 
manuscripts, containing the greater part of 
the reasonings and observations which he 
proposed to embody into his projected sys- 
tem. These materials, M. Dumont assures 
us, though neither arranged nor completed, 
were rather redundant than defective in quan- 
tity; and left nothing to the redacteur, but the 
occasional labour of selection, arrangement, 
and compression. This task he has performed, 
as to a considerable part of the papers entrust- 
ed to him, in the work now before us; and 
has certainly given a very fair specimen both 
of the merit of the original speculations, and 
of his own powers of expression and distribu- 
tion. There are some passages, perhaps, into 
which a degree of levity has been introduced 
that does not harmonise with the general tone 
of the composition; and others in which we 
miss something of that richness of illustration 
and homely vigour of reasoning which de- 
lighted us in Mr. Bentham's original publica- 
tions; but, in point of neatness and perspicuity, 
conciseness and precision, we have no sort of 
doubt that M. Dumont has been of the most 
essential service to his principal ; and are in- 
clined to suspect that, without this assistance, 
we should never have been able to give any 
account of his labours.* 

The principle upon which the whole of Mr. 

* A considerable portion of the original paper 
is hete omitted; and thobe parts only retained, 
which relate to the general principle and scope of 
the system. 



Bentham's system depends is, that Utility. 
and utility alone, is the criterion of right and 
wrong, and ought to be the sole object of the 
legislator. This principle, he admits, has 
often been suggested, and is familiarly recur- 
red to both in action and deliberation ; but he 
maintains that it has never been followed out 
with sufficient steadiness and resolution, and 
that the necessity of assuming it as the exclu- 
sive test of our proceedings has never been 
sufficiently understood. There are two prin- 
ciples, he alleges, that have been admitted to 
a share of that moral authority which belongs 
of right to utility alone, and have exercised a 
control over the conduct and opinions of so- 
ciety, by which legislators have been very 
frequently misled. One of these he denomi- 
nates the Ascetic principle, or that which en- 
joins the mortification of the senses as a duty, 
and proscribes their gratification as a sin ; and 
the other, which has had a much more exten- 
sive influence, he calls the principle of Sym- 
pathy or Antipathy ; under which name he 
comprehends all those systems which place 
the basis of morality in the indications of a 
moral Sense, or in the maxims of a rule of 
Right ; or which, under any other form of ex- 
pression, decide upon the propriety of human 
actions by any reference to internal feelings, 
and not solely on a consideration of their con- 
sequences. 

As utility is thus assumed as the test and 
standard of action and approbation, and as it 
consists in procuring pleasure and avoiding 
pain, Mr. Bentham has thought it necessary, 
in this place, to introduce a catalogue of all 
the pleasures and pains of which he conceives 
man to be susceptible ; since these, he alleges, 
are the elements of that moral calculation in 
which the wisdom and the duty of legislators 
and individuals must ultimately be found to 
consist. The simple pleasures of which man 
is susceptible are fourteen, it seems, in num- 
ber; and are thus enumerated — 1. pleasures 
of sense : 2. of wealth : 3. of dexterity : 4. of 
good character : 5. of friendship : 6. of power : 
7. of piety: 8. of benevolence : 9. of malevo- 
lence : 10. of memory: 11. of imagination: 
12. of hope: 13. of association : 14. of relief 
from pain. The pains, our readers will be 
happy to hear, are only eleven ; and are al- 
most exactly the counterpart of the pleasures 
that have now been enumerated. The con- 
struction of these catalogues, M. Dumont con- 
siders as by far the greatest improvement that 
has yet been made in the philosophy of hu- 
man nature ! 

It is chiefly by the fear of pain that men 
are regulated in the choice of their deliberate 
actions; and Mr. Bentham finds that pain 
may be attached to particular actions in four 
different ways: 1. by nature : 2. by public 
opinion: 3. by positive enactment : and 4. by 
the doctrines of religion. Our institutions will 
be perfect when all these different sanctions 
are in harmony with each other. 

But the most difficult part of our author's 
task remains. In order to make any use of 
those " elements of moral arithmetic," which 
are constituted, by the lists of our pleasures 



BENTHAM ON LEGISLATION. 



481 



and pains, it was evidently necessary to as- 
certain their relative Value, — to enable him to 
proceed in his legislative calculations with any 
degree of assurance. Under this head, how- 
ever, we are only told that the value of a 
pleasure or a pain, considered in itself, de- 
pends, 1. upon its intensity, 2. upon its prox- 
imity, 3. upon its duration, and 4. upon its 
certainty; and that, considered with a view 
to its consequences, its value is further affect- 
ed, 1. by its fecundity, i. e. its tendency to 
produce other pleasures or pains; 2. by its 
purity, i. e. its being unmixed with other sen- 
sations; and, 3. by the number of persons to 
whom it may extend. These considerations, 
however, the author justly admits to be still 
inadequate for his purpose ; for, by what 
met us is the Intensity of any pain or pleasure 
to be measured, and how, without a knowledge 
of this, are we to proportion punishments to 
temptations, or adjust the measures of recom- 
pense or indemnification ] To solve this pro- 
blem, Mr. Bentham seems to have thought it 
sufficient to recur to his favourite system of 
Enumeration ; and to have held nothing else 
necessary than to make out a fair catalogue 
of "the circumstances by which the sensi- 
bility is affected." These he divides into two 
branches — the primary and the secondary. 
The first he determines to be exactly fifteen, 
viz. temperament — health — strength — bodily 
imperfection — intelligence — strength of un- 
derstanding — fortitude — perseverance — dis- 
positions — notions of honour — notions of reli- 
gion — sympathies — antipathies — folly or de- 
rangement — fortune. The secondary are only 
nine, viz. sex — age — rank — education — pro- 
fession — climate — creed — government — re- 
ligious creed. By carefully attending to these 
twenty-four circumstances, Mr. Bentham is of 
opinion that we may be able to estimate the 
value of any particular pleasure or pain to an 
individual, with sufficient exactness ; and to 
judge of the comparative magnitude of crimes, 
and of the proportionate amount of pains and 
compensations. 

Now the first remark that suggests itself is, 
that if there is little that is false or pernicious 
in this system, there is little that is either new 
or important. That laws were made to pro- 
mote the general welfare of society, and that 
nothing should be enacted which has a differ- 
ent tendency, are truths that can scarcely 
claim the merit of novelty, or mark an epoch 
by the date of their promulgation ; and we 
have not yet been able to discover that the 
vast technical apparatus here provided by Mr. 
Bentham can be of the smallest service in 
improving their practical application. 

The basis of the whole system is the undi- 
vided sovereignty of the principle of Utility, 
and the necessity which there is for recurring 
strictly to it in every question of legislation. 
Moral feelings, it is admitted, will frequently 
be found to coincide with it ; but they are on 
no account to be trusted to, till this coinci- 
dence has been verified. They are no better, 
in short, than sympathies and antipathies, 
mere private and unaccountable feelings, that 
may vary in the case of every individual; 
61 



and therefore can afford no fixed standard for 
general approbation or enjoyment. Now we 
cannot help thinking, that this fundamental 
proposition is very defective, both in logical 
consistency, and in substantial truth. In the 
first place, it seems very obvious that the 
principle of utility is liable to the very same 
objections, on the force of which the authority 
of moral impressions has been so positively- 
denied. For how shall utility itself be recog- 
nised, but by a feeling exactly similar to that 
which is stigmatised as capricious and unac- 
countable? How are pleasures and pains, and 
the degrees and relative magnitude of plea- 
sures and pains, to be distinguished, but by 
the feeling and experience of every individual? 
And what greater certainty can there be in 
the accuracy of such determinations, than in 
the results of other feelings no less general 
and distinguishable? If right and wrong, in 
short, be not precisely the same to every in- 
dividual, neither are pleasure and pain; and 
if there be despotism and absurdity in impos- 
ing upon another, one's own impressions of 
wisdom and propriety, it cannot be just and 
reasonable to erect a standard of enjoyment, 
and a consequent rule of conduct, upon the 
narrow basis of our own measure of sensibility. 
It is evident, therefore, that by assuming the 
principle of utility, we do not get rid of the 
risk of variable feeling ; and that we are still 
liable to all the uncertainty that may be pro- 
duced by this cause, under the influence of 
any other principle. 

The truth is, however, that this uncertainty 
is in all cases of a very limited nature ; and 
that the common impressions of morality, the 
vulgar distinctions of right and wrong, virtue 
and vice, are perfectly sufficient to direct the 
conduct of the individual, and the judgment 
of the legislator, for all useful purposes, with- 
out any reference to the nature or origin of 
those distinctions. In many respects, indeed, 
we conceive them to be much fitter for this 
purpose than Mr. Bentham's oracles of utility. 
In the first place, it is necessary to observe, 
that it is a very gross and unpardonable mis- 
take to represent the notions of right and 
wrong, which are here in question, as depend- 
ing altogether upon the private and capricious 
feelings of an individual. Certainly no man 
was ever so arrogant or so foolish, as to insist 
upon establishing his own individual persua- 
sion as an infallible test of duty and wisdom 
for all the rest of the world. The moral feel- 
ings, of which Mr. Bentham would make so 
small account, are the feelings which obser- 
vation has taught us to impute to all men-, 
those in which, under every variety of cir 
cumstances, they are found pretty constantly 
to agree, and as to which the uniformity of 
their conclusions may be reasoned and reck- 
oned upon, with almost as much security as 
in the case of their external perceptions. 
The existence of such feelings, and the uni- 
formity with which they are excited in all 
men on the same occasions, are facts, in short, 
that admit of no dispute ; and, in point of cer- 
tainty and precision, are exactly on a footing 
with those perceptions of utility that can only 
2Q 



4*2 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



be relied on after they also have been verified 
by a similar process of observation. Now, 
we are inclined to think, in opposition to Mr. 
Bentham, that a legislator will proceed more 
safely by following the indications of those 
moral distinctions as to which all men are 
agreed, than by setting them altogether at 
defiance, and attending exclusively to those 
perceptions of utility which, after all, he must 
collect from the same general agreement. 

It is now, we believe, universally admitted, 
that nothing can be generally the object of 
moral approbation, which does not tend, upon 
the whole, to the good of mankind ; and we 
are not even disposed to dispute with Mr. 
Bentham, that the true source of this moral 
approbation is in all cases a perception or ex- 
perience of what may be called utility in the 
action or object which excites it. The dif- 
ference between us, however, is considerable; 
and it is precisely this — Mr. Bentham. main- 
tains, that in all cases we ought to disregard 
the presumptions arising from moral approba- 
tion, and, by a resolute and scrupulous analy- 
sis, to get at the actual, naked utility upon 
which it is founded ; and then, by the appli- 
cation of his new moral arithmetic, to deter- 
mine its quantity, its- composition, and its 
value ; and, according to the result of this in- 
vestigation, to regulate our moral approbation 
for the future. We, on the other hand, are 
inclined to hold, that those feelings, where 
they are uniform and decided, are by far the 
surest tests of the quantity and value of the 
utility by which they are suggested ; and that 
if we discredit their report, and attempt to as- 
certain this value by any formal process of cal- 
culation or analysis, we desert a safe and natu- 
ral standard, in pursuit of one for the construc- 
tion of which we neither have, nor ever can 
have, any rules or materials. A very few ob- 
servations, we trust, will set this in a clear light. 

The amount, degree, or intensity of any 
pleasure or pain, is ascertained by feeling; 
and not determined by reason or reflection. 
These feelings however are transitory in their 
own nature, and, when they occur separately, 
and, as it were, individually, are not easily 
recalled with such precision as to enable us, 
upon recollection, to adjust their relative val- 
ues. But when they present themselves in 
combinations, or in rapid succession, their 
relative magnitude or intensity is generally 
perceived by the mind without any exertion, 
and rather by a sort of immediate feeling, 
than in consequence of any intentional com- 
parison : And when a particular combination 
or succession of such feelings is repeatedly or 
frequently suggested to the memory, the rela- 
tive value of all its parts is perceived with 
great readiness and rapidity, and the general 
lesult is fixed in the mind 7 without our being 
conscious of any act of reflection. In this 
way, moral maxims and impressions arise in 
the minds of all men, from an instinctive and 
involuntary valuation of the good and the evil 
which they have perceived to be connected 
with certain actions or habits; and those im- 
pressions may safely be taken for the just re- 
sult of that valuation, which we may after- 



wards attempt, unsuccessfully, though \vi»b 
great labour, to repeat. They may be com- 
pared, on this view of the matter, to thon,o 
acquired perceptions of sight by which the eye 
is enabled to judge of distances; of the pro- 
cess of acquiring which we are equally un- 
conscious, and yet by which it is certain that 
we are much more safely and commodiously 
guided, within the range of our ordinary occu- 
pations, than we ever could be by any formal 
scientific calculations, founded on the faint- 
ness of the colouring, and the magnitude of the 
angle of vision, compared with the average 
tangible bulk of the kind of object in question. 

The comparative value of such good and 
evil, we have already observed, can obviously 
be determined by feeling alone ; so that the 
interference of technical and elaborate reason- 
ing, though it may well be supposed to disturb 
those perceptions upon the accuracy of which 
the determination must depend, cannot in any 
case be of the smallest assistance. Where 
the preponderance of good or evil is distinctly 
felt by all- persons to whom a certain combi- 
nation of feelings has been thus suggested, 
we have all the evidence for the reality of 
this preponderance that the nature of the 
subject will admit ; and must try in vain to 
traverse that judgment, by any subsequent 
exertion of a faculty that has no jurisdiction 
in the cause. The established rules and im- 
pressions of morality, therefore, we consider 
as the grand recorded result of an infinite 
multitude of experiments upon human feeling 
and fortune, under every variety of circum- 
stances; and as affording, therefore, by far 
the nearest approximation to a just standard 
of the good and the evil that human conduct 
is concerned with, which the nature of our 
faculties will allow. In endeavouring to cor- 
rect or amend this general verdict of ipankind, 
in any particular instance, we not only substi- 
tute our own individual feelings for that large 
average which is implied in those moral im- 
pressions, which are universally prevalent, 
but obviously run the risk of omitting or mis- 
taking some of the most important elements 
of the calculation. Every one at all ac- 
customed to reflect upon the operations of 
his mind, must be conscious how difficult it 
is to retrace exactly those trains of thought 
which pass through the understanding almost 
without giving us any intimation of their ex- 
istence, and how impossible it frequently is 
to repeat any process of thought, when we 
purpose to make it the subject of observation. 
The reason of this is, that our feelings are not 
in their natural state when we would thus 
make them the objects of study or analysis ; 
and their force and direction are far better 
estimated, therefore, from the traces which 
they leave in their spontaneous visitations, 
than from any forced revocation of them for 
the purpose of being measured or compared. 
When the object iiself is inaccessible, it is 
wisest to compute its magnitude from its 
shadow ; where the cause cannot be directly 
examined, its qualities are most securely in- 
ferred from its effects. 

One of the most obvious consequences of 



BENTHAM ON LEGISLATION. 



483 



disregarding the general impressions of mo- 
rality, and determining every individual ques- 
tion upon a rigorous estimate of the utility it 
might appear to involve, would be, to give an 
additional force to the causes by which our 
judgments are most apt to be perverted, and 
entirely to abrogate the authority of those 
General rules by which alone men are com- 
monly enabled to judge of their own conduct 
with any tolerable impartiality. If we were 
to dismiss altogether from our consideration 
those authoritative maxims, which have been 
sanctioned by the general approbation of man- 
kind, and to regulate our conduct entirely by 
a view of the good and the evil that promises 
to be the consequence of every particular 
action, there is reason to fear, not only that 
inclination might occasionally slip a false 
weight into the scale, but that many of the 
most important consequences of our actions 
might be overlooked. Those actions are bad, 
according to Mr. Bentham, that produce more 
evil than good : But actions are performed by 
individuals ; and all the good may be to the 
individual, and all the evil to the community. 
There are innumerable cases, in which the 
advantages to be gained by the commission 
of a crime are incalculably greater (looking 
only to this world) than the evils to which it 
may expose the criminal. This holds in al- 
most every instance where unlawful passions 
may be gratified with very little risk of de- 
tection. A mere calculation of utilities would 
never prevent such actions; and the truth 
undoubtedly is, that the greater part of men 
are only withheld from committing them by 
those general impressions of morality, which 
it is the object of Mr. Bentham's system to 
supersede. Even admitting, what might well 
be denied, that, in all cases, the utility of the 
individual is inseparably connected with that 
of society, it will not be disputed, at least, 
that this connection is of a nature not very 
striking or obvious, and that it may frequently 
be overlooked by an individual deliberating 
on the consequences of his projected actions. 
It is in aid of this oversight, of this omission, 
of this partiality, that we refer to the General 
rtdes of morality; rules, which have been 
suggested by a larger observation, and a longer 
experience, than any individual can dream of 
pretending to, and which have been accom- 
modated, by the joint action of our sympathies 
with delinquents and with sufferers, to the 
actual condition of human fortitude and in- 
firmity. If they be founded on utility, it is 
on an utility that cannot always be discovered ; 
and that can never be correctly estimated, in 
deliberating upon a particular measure, or 
with a view to a specific course of conduct : 
It is on an utility that does not discover itself 
till it is accumulated ; and only becomes ap- 
parent after a large collection of examples 
have been embodied in proof of it. Such 
summaries of utility, such records of uniform 
observation, we conceive to be the General 
rules of Morality, by which, and by which 
alone, legislators or individuals can be safely 
directed in determining on the propriety of 
any course of conduct. They are observa- 



tions taken in the calm, by which we must 
be guided in the darkness and the tenor of 
the tempest ; they are beacons and strongholds 
erected in the day of peace, round which we 
must rally, and to which we must betake our- 
selves, in the hour of contest and alarm. 

For these reasons, and for others wnicn our 
limits will not now permit us to hint at, we 
are of opinion, that the old established mo- 
rality of mankind ought upon no account to 
give place to a bold and rigid investigation 
into the utility of any particular act, or any 
course of action that may be made the sub- 
ject of deliberation ; and that the safest and 
the shortest way to the good which we all 
desire, is the beaten highway of morality, 
which was formed at first by the experience 
of good and of evil. 

But our objections do not apply merely to 
the foundation of Mr. Bentham's new system 
of morality : We think the plan and execu- 
tion of the superstructure itself defective in 
many particulars. Even if we could be per- 
suaded that it would be wiser in general to 
follow the dictates of utility than the impres- 
sions of moral duty, we should still say that 
the system contained in these volumes does 
not enable us to adopt that substitute : and 
that it really presents us with no means of 
measuring or comparing utilities. After pe- 
rusing M. Dumont's eloquent observations on 
the incalculable benefits which his author's 
discoveries were to confer on the science of 
legislation, and on the genius and good fortune 
by which he had been enabled to reduce 
morality to the precision of a science, by fix- 
ing a precise standard for the good and evil 
of our lives, we proceeded with the perusal 
of Mr. Bentham's endless tables and divisions, 
with a mixture of impatience, expectation, 
and disappointment. Now that we have fin- 
ished our task, the latter sentiment alone 
remains; for we perceive very clearly that 
M. Dumont's zeal and partiality have imposed 
upon his natural sagacity, and that Mr. Ben- 
tham has just left the science of morality in 
the same imperfect condition in which it was 
left by his predecessors. The whole of Mr. 
Bentham's catalogues and distinctions tend 
merely to point out the Number of the causeg 
that produce our happiness or misery, but by 
no means to ascertain their relative Magnitude 
or force ; and the only effect of their introduc- 
tion into the science of morality seems lobe, 
to embarrass a popular subject with a technical 
nomenclature, and to perplex familiar truths 
with an unnecessary intricacy of arrangement. 

Of the justice of this remark any one may 
satisfy himself, by turning back to the tables 
and classifications which we have exhibited 
in the former part of this analysis, and trying 
if he can find there any rules for estimating 
the comparative value of pleasures and pains, 
that are not perfectly familiar to the most un- 
instructed of the species. In the table of 
simple pleasures, for instance, what satisfac- 
tion can it afford to find the pleasure of riches 
set down as a distinct genus from the pleasure 
of power, and the pleasure of the senses — 
unless some scale were annexed bv which ihp 



484 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



respective value of these several pleasures 
might be ascertained 1 If a man is balancing 
between the pain of privation and the pain 
of shame, how is he relieved by merely find- 
ing these arranged under separate titles 1 or, 
in either case, will it give him any informa- 
tion, to be told that the value of a pain or 
pleasure depends upon its intensity, its dura- 
tion, or its certainty 1 If a legislator is desi- 
rous to learn what degree of punishment is 
suitable to a particular offence, will he be 
greatly edified to read that the same punish- 
ment may be more or less severe according 
to the temperament, the intelligence, the 
rank, or the fortune of the delinquent ; and 
that the circumstances that influence sensi- 
bility, though commonly reckoned to be only 
nine, may fairly be set down at fifteen ? Is 
there any thing, in short, in this whole book, 
that realises the triumphant Introduction of 
the editor, or that can enable us in any one 
instance to decide upon the relative magnitude 
of an evil, otherwise than by a reference to 
the common feelings of mankind 1 It is true, 
we are perfectly persuaded, that by the help 
of these feelings, we can form a pretty correct 
judgment in most cases that occur ; but Mr. 
Bentham is not persuaded of this ; and insists 
upon our renouncing all faith in so incorrect 
a standard, while he promises to furnish us 
with another that is liable to no sort of inac- 
curacy. This promise we do not think he has 
in any degree fulfilled ; because he has given 
us no rule by which the intensity of any pain 
or pleasure can be determined; and furnish- 
ed us with no instrument by which we "may 
take the altitude of enjoyment, or fathom the 
depths of pain. It is no apology for having 
made this promise, that its fulfilment was 
evidently impossible. 

In multiplying these distinctions and divi- 
sions which form the basis of his system, Mr. 
Bentham appears to us to bear less resem- 
blance to a philosopher of the present times, 
than to one of the old scholastic doctors, who 
substituted classification for reasoning, and 
looked upon the ten categories as the most 
useful of all human inventions. Their dis- 
tinctions were generally real, as well as his, 
and could not have been made without the 
misapplication of much labour and ingenuity : 
But it is now generally admitted that they are 
of no use whatever, either for the promotion 
of truth, or the detection of error ; and that 
they only serve to point out differences that 
cannot be overlooked, or need not be remem- 
bered. There are many differences and many 
points of resemblance in all actions, and in 
all substances, that are absolutely indifferent 
in any serious reasoning that may be entered 
into with regard to them ; and though much 
industry and much acuteness maybe display- 
ed in finding them out, the discovery is just 
as unprofitable to science, as the enumeration 
of the adverbs in the creed, or the dissyllables 
in the decalogue, would be to theology. The 
greater number of Mr. Bentham's distinctions, 
however, are liable to objection, because they 
state, under an intricate and technical arrange- 
ment, those facts and circumstances only that 



are necessarily familiar to all mankind, and 
cannot possibly be forgotten on any occasion 
where it is of importance to remember them 
If bad laws have been enacted, it certainly is 
not from having forgotten that the good of 
society is the ultimate object of all law, or 
that it is absurd to repress one evil by the 
creation of a greater. Legislators have often 
bewildered themselves in the choice of means; 
but they have never so grossly mistaken the 
ends of their institution, as to need to be re- 
minded of these obvious and elementary 
truths. 

If there be any part of Mr. Bentham's clas- 
sification that might be supposed to assist us 
in appreciating the comparative value of 
pleasures and pains, it must certainly be his 
enumeration of the circumstances that affect 
the sensibility of individuals. Even if this 
table were to fulfil all that it promises, how- 
ever, it would still leave the system funda- 
mentally deficient, as it does not enable us to 
compare the relative amount of any two plea- 
sures or pains, to individuals in the same cir- 
cumstances. In its particular application, 
however, it is truly no less defective; for 
though we are told that temperament, intelli- 
gence, &c. should vary the degree of punish- 
ment or reward, we are not told to what extent, 
or in what proportions, it should be varied by 
these circumstances. Till this be done, how- 
ever, it is evident that the elements of Mr. 
Bentham's moral arithmetic have no determi- 
nate value; and that it would be perfectly 
impossible to work any practical problem in 
legislation by the help of them. It is scarcely 
necessary to add, that even if this were ac- 
complished, and the cognisance of all these 
particulars distinctly enjoined by the law, the 
only effect would be, to introduce a puerile 
and fantastic complexity into our systems of 
jurisprudence, and to encumber judicial pro- 
cedure with a multitude of frivolous or im- 
practicable observances. The circumstances, 
in consideration of which Mr. Bentham would 
have the laws vary the punishment, are so 
numerous and so indefinite, that it would re- 
quire a vast deal more labour to ascertain 
their existence in any particular case, than to 
establish the principal offence. The first is 
Temperament ; and in a case of flogging, we 
suppose Mr. Bentham would remit a few 
lashes to a sanguine and irritable delinquent, 
and lay a few additional stripes on a phleg- 
matic or pituitous one. But how is the tem- 
perament to be given in evidence 1 or are the 
judges to aggravate or alleviate a punishment 
upon a mere inspection of the prisoner's com- 
plexion. Another circumstance that should 
affect the pain, is the offender's firmness of 
mind ; and another his strength of understand- 
ing. How is a court to take cognisance of 
these qualities ? or in what degree are they to 
affect their proceedings "? If we are to admit 
such considerations into our law at all, they 
ought to be carried a great deal farther than 
Mr. Bentham has indicated ; and it should be 
expressed in the statutes, what alleviation of 
punishment should be awarded to a culprit 
on account of his wife's pregnancy, or the 



BENTHAM ON LEGISLATION. 



485 



colour of his children's hair. We cannot help 
thinking that theundistinguishinggrossness of 
our actual practice is better than such foppery. 
We fix a punishment which is calculated for 
the common,' average condition of those to 
whom it is to be applied ; and, in almost all 
cases, we leave with the judge a discretionary 
power of accommodating it to any peculiarities 
that may seem to require an exception. After 
all, this is the most plausible part of Mr. Ben- 
tham' s arrangements. 

In what he has said of the false notions 
which legislators have frequently followed in 
preference to the polar light of utility, we 
think we discover a good deal of inaccuracy, 
and some little want of candour. Mr. Ben- 
tham must certainly be conscious that no one 
ever pretended that the mere antiquity of a 
law was a sufficient reason for retaining it, in 
spite of its evident inutility : But when the 
utility of parting with it is doubtful, its an- 
tiquity may fairly be urged as affording a pre- 
sumption in its favour, and as a reason for 
being cautious at least in the removal of what 
must be incorporated with so many other in- 
stitutions. We plead the antiquity of our 
Constitution as an additional reason for not 
yielding it up to innovators : but nobody ever 
thought, we believe, of advancing this plea in 
support of the statutes against Witchcraft. In 
the same way, we think, there is more wit 
than reason in ascribing the errors of many 
legislators to their being misled by a metaphor. 
The metaphor, we are inclined to think, has 
generally arisen from the principle or practice 
to which Mr. Bentham would give effect in- 
dependent of it. The law of England respects 
the sanctity of a free citizen's dwelling so 
much, as to yield it some privilege ; and there- 
fore an Englishman's house is called his Castle. 
The piety or superstition of some nations has 
determined that a criminal cannot be arrested 
in a place of worship. This is the whole fact ; 
the usage is neither explained nor convicted 
of absurdity, by saying that such people call 
a church the House of God. If it were the 
house of God, does Mr. Bentham conceive 
that it ought to be a sanctuary for criminals ? 
In what is said of the Fictions of law, there 
is much of the same misapprehension. Men 
neither are, nor ever were, misguided by 
lhese fictions ; but the fictions are merely cer- 
tain quaint and striking methods of expressing 
a rule that has been adopted in an apprehen- 
sion of its utility. To deter men from com- 
mitting treason, their offspring is associated 
to a certain extent in their punishment. The 
motive and object of this law is plain enough; 
and calling the effect "Corruption of blood," 
will neither aggravate nor hide its injustice. 
When it is said that the heir is the same per- 
son with the deceased, it is but a pithy way 
of intimating that he is bound in all the obli- 
gations, and entitled to all the rights of his 
predecessor. That the King never dies, is 
only another phrase for expressing that the 
office is never vacant ; and that he is every 
where, is true, if it be lawful to say that a 
person can act by deputy. In all these ob- 
servation^ and in many that are scattered 



through the subsequent part of his book, Mr. 
Bentham seems to forget that there is such a 
thing as common sense in the world ; and to 
take it for granted, that if there be an opening 
in the letter of the law for folly, misapprehen- 
sion, or abuse, its ministers will eagerly take 
advantage of it, arid throw the whole frame of 
society into disorder and wretchedness. A 
very slight observation of the actual business 
of life might have taught him, that expediency 
may, for the most part, be readily and cer- 
tainly discovered by those who are interested 
in finding it ; and that in a certain stage of 
civilisation there is generated such a quantity 
of intelligence and good sense, as to disarm 
absurd institutions of their power to do mis- 
chief, and to administer defective laws into a 
system of practical equity. This indeed is 
the grand corrective which remedies all the 
errors of legislators, and retrenches all that is 
pernicious in prejudice. It makes us inde- 
pendent of technical systems, and indifferent 
to speculative irregularities; and he who could 
increase its quantity, or confirm its power, 
would do more service to mankind than all 
the philosophers that ever speculated on the 
means of their reformation. 

In the following chapter we meet with a 
perplexity which, though very ingeniously 
produced, appears to us to be wholly gratui- 
tous. Mr. Bentham for a long time can see 
no distinction between Civil and Criminal 
jurisprudence ; and insists upon it, that rights 
and crimes necessarily and virtually imply 
each other. If I have a right to get your 
horse, it is only because it would be a crime 
for you to keep him from me ; and if it be a 
crime for me to take your horse, it is only be- 
cause you have a right to keep him. This 
we think is very pretty reasoning: But the 
distinction between the civil and the criminal 
law is not the less substantial and apparent. 
The civil law is that which directs and en- 
joins — the criminal law is that which Punishes. 
This is enough for the legislator ; and for those 
who are to obey him. It is a curious inquiry, 
no doubt, how far all rights may be considered 
as the counterpart of crimes; and whether 
every regulation of the civil code necessarily 
implies a delict in the event of its violation. 
On this head there is room for a good deal of 
speculation ; but in our opinion Mr. Bentham 
pushes the principle much too far. There 
seems to be nothing gained, for instance, 
either in the way of clearness or consistency, 
by arranging under the head of criminal law, 
those cases of refusal to fulfil contracts, or to 
perform obligations, for which no other pun- 
ishment is or ought to be provided, but a com- 
pulsory fulfilment or performance. This is 
merely following out the injunction of the 
civil code, and cannot, either in law or in logic, 
be correctly regarded as a punishment. The 
proper practical test of a crime, is where, over 
and above the restitution of the violated right 
( where that is possible), the violator is sub- 
jected to a direct pain, in order to «leter from 
the repetition of such offences. 

In passing to the code of crimina 1 law, Mi . 
Bentham does not forget the neee&iuty of class- 
2q2 



486 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



ifying and dividing. Delicts, according to 
him, are either, 1. Private, or against one or 
a few individuals; 2. Reflective, or against the 
delinquent himself; 3. Semipublic, or against 
some particular class or description of per- 
sons ; and, finally. Public, or against the whole 
community. Private delicts, again, relate 
either to the person, the property, the repu- 
tation or the condition ; and they are distrib- 
uted into complex and simple, principal and 
accessory, positive and negative, &c. &c. The 
chief evil of a crime is the alarm which it 
excites in the community; and the degree of 
this alarm, Mr. Bentham assumes, depends 
upon eight circumstances, the particular situa- 
tion of the delinquent, his motives, his noto- 
riety, his character, the difficulties or facilities 
of the attempt, &c. But here again, we see 
no sense in the enumeration ; the plain fact 
being, that the alarm is increased by every 
thing which "renders it probable that such acts 
may be frequently repeated. In one case, and 
one of considerable atrocity, there is no alarm 
at all ; because the only beings who can be 
affected by it, are incapable of fear or suspi- 
cion — this is the case of infanticide : and Mr. 
Bentham ingeniously observes, that it is pro- 
bably owing to this circumstance that the 
laws of many nations have been so extremely 
indifferent on that subject. In~modern Eu- 
rope, however, he conceives that they are 
barbarously severe. In the case of certain 
crimes against the community, such as mis- 
government of all kinds, the danger again is 
always infinitely greater than the alarm. 

The remedies which law has provided 
against the mischief of crimes, Mr. Bentham 
says, are of four orders ; preventive — repres- 
sive — compensatory — or simply penal. Upon 
the subject of compensation or satisfaction, 
Mr. Bentham is most copious and most origi- 
nal; and under the title of satisfaction in 
honour, he presents us with a very calm, 
acute, and judicious inquiry into the effects 
of duelling; which he represents as the only 
remedy which the impolicy or impotence of 
our legislators has left for such offences. We 
do not think, however, that the same good 
sense prevails in what he subjoins, as to the 
means that might be employed to punish in- 
sults and attacks upon the honour of individu- 
als. According to the enormity of the offence, 



he is for making the delinquent pronounce i\ 
discourse of humiliation, either standing, or on 
his knees, before the offended party, and 
clothed in emblematical robes, with a mas> 
of a characteristic nature on his head, &t 
There possibly may be countries where sucl 
contrivances might answer; but, with us, 
they would not only be ineffectual, but ridic- 
ulous. 

In the choice of punishments, Mr. Bentham 
wishes legislators to recollect, that punish- 
ment is itself an evil ; and that it consists of 
five parts ; — the evil of restraint — the evil of 
suffering — the evil of apprehension — the evil 
of groundless persecution — and the evils that 
extend to the innocent connections of the de- 
linquent. For these reasons, he is anxious that 
no punishment should be inflicted without a 
real cause, or without being likely to influence 
the will ; or where other- remedies might 
have been employed; or in cases where the 
crime produces less evil than the punishment. 
These admonitions are all very proper, and, 
we dare say, sincere; but we cannot think 
that they are in any way recommended by 
their novelty. 

In the section upon the indirect means of 
preventing crimes, there is a great deal of 
genius and strong reasoning; though there 
are many things set down in too rash and per- 
emptory a manner, and some that are sup- 
ported with a degree of flippancy not very 
suitable to the occasion. The five main sources 
of offence he thinks are, want of occupation } 
the angry passions, the passion of the sexes, 
the love of intoxication, and the love of gain. 
As society advances, all these lose a good 
deal of their mischievous tendency, excepting 
the last ; against which, of course, the legisla- 
ture should be more vigilant than ever. In 
the gradual predominance of the avaricious 
passions over all the rest, however, Mr. Ben- 
tham sees many topics of consolation; and 
concludes this part of his work with declar- 
ing, that it should be the great object of the 
criminal law to reduce all offences to that 
species which can be completely atoned for 
and repaired by payment of a sum of money. 
It is a part of his system, which we have for- 
gotten to mention, that persons so injured 
should in all cases be entitled to reparatioa 
out of the public purse. 



(lannarp, 1804.) 

Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Rcid, D. D. F. R. S., Edinburgh, late Professor of 



Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. By Dugald Stewart, F. R. S 



Read at different Meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
and London: 1803. 



8vo. pp. 225. 



Edinburgh: 
Edinburgh 



Although it is impossible to entertain 
greater respect for any names than w r e do for 
tlnse that are united in the title of this work, 
w rnus' be permitted to say, that there are 
many things with which we cannot agree, 
both in the system of Dr. Reid, and in Mr. 



Stewards elucidation and defence of it. That 
elucidation begins, indeed, with a remark, 
which we are not at all disposed to contro- 
vert ; that the distinguishing feature of Dr. 
Reid's philosophy is the systematical steadi- 
ness with which he has adhered to the course 



STEWART'S LIFE OF REID. 



487 



of correct observation, and the admirable self- 
command by which he has confined himself 
to the clear statement of the facts he has col- 
lected : But then Mr. Stewart immediately 
follows up this observation with a warm en- 
comium on the inductive philosophy of Lord 
Bacon, and a copious and eloquent exposition 
of the vast advantage that may be expected 
from applying to the science of Mind those 
sound rules of experimental philosophy that 
have undoubtedly guided us to all the splen- 
did improvements in modern physics. From 
the time indeed that Mr. Hume published his 
treatise of human nature, down to the latest 
speculations of Condorcet and Mr. Stewart 
himself, we have observed this to be a favour- 
ite topic with all metaphysical writers ; and 
that those who have differed in almost every 
thing else, have agreed in magnifying the im- 
portance of such inquiries, and in predicting 
the approach of some striking improvement in 
the manner of conducting them. 

Now, in these speculations we cannot help 
suspecting that those philosophers have been 
misled in a considerable degree by a false 
analogy ; and that their zeal for the promotion 
of their favourite studies has led them to form 
expectations somewhat sanguine and extrava- 
gant, both as to their substantial utility and 
as to the possibility of their ultimate improve- 
ment. In reality, it does not appear to us 
that any great, advancement in the knowledge 
of the operations of mind is to be expected 
from any improvement in the plan of investi- 
gation; or that the condition of mankind is 
likely to derive any great benefit from the 
cultivation of this interesting but abstracted 
study. 

Inductive philosophy, or that which pro- 
ceeds upon the careful observation of facts, 
may be applied to two different classes of 
phenomena. The first are those that can be 
made the subject of proper Experiment : 
where the substances are actually in our 
power, and the judgment and artifice of the 
inquirer can be effectually employed to ar- 
range and combine them in such a way as to 
disclose their most hidden properties and re- 
lations. The other class of phenomena are 
those that occur in substances that are placed 
altogether beyond our reach; the order and 
succession of which we are generally unable 
to control ; and as to which we can do little 
more than collect and record the laws by 
which they appear to be governed. Those 
substances are not the subject of Experiment, 
but of Observation ; and the knowledge we 
may obtain, by carefully watching their varia- 
tions, is of a kind that does not directly in- 
crease the power which we might otherwise 
have had over them. It seems evident, how- 
ever, that it is principally in the former of 
these departments, or the strict experimental 
philosophy, that those splendid improvements 
have been made, which have erected so vast 
a trophy to the prospective genius of Bacon. 
The astronomy of Sir Isaac Newton is no ex- 
ception to this general remark: All that mere 
Observation could do to determine the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies, had been ac- 



complished by the star-gazers who preceded 
him; and the law of gravitation, which he 
afterwards applied to the planetary system, 
was first calculated and ascertained by experi- 
ments performed upon substances which were 
entirely at his disposal. 

It will scarcely be denied, either, that it is 
almost exclusively to this department of pro- 
per Experiment, that Lord Bacon has directed 
the attention of his followers. His funda- 
mental maxim is, that knowledge is power; 
and the great problem which he constantly 
aims at resolving is, in what manner the na- 
ture of any substance or quality may, by ex- 
periment, be so detected and ascertained as 
to enable us to manage it at our pleasure. 
The greater part of the Novum Organum ac- 
cordingly is taken up with rules and examples 
for contriving and conducting experiments; 
and the chief advantage which he seems to 
have expected from the progress of those in- 
quiries, appears to be centered in the enlarge- 
ment of man's dominion over the material 
universe which he inhabits. To the mere 
Observer, therefore, his laws of philosophising, 
except where they are prohibitory laws, have 
but little application ; and to such an inquirer, 
the rewards of his philosophy scarcely appear 
to have been promised. It is evident indeed 
that no direct utility can result from the most 
accurate observation of occurrences which we 
cannot control ; and that for the uses to which 
such observations may afterwards be turned, 
we are indebted not so much to the observer, 
as to the person who discovered the applica- 
tion. It also appears to be pretty evident 
that in the art of observation itself, no very 
great or fundamental improvement can be 
expected. Vigilance and attention are all that 
can ever be required in an observer; and 
though a talent for methodical arrangement 
may facilitate to others the study of the facts 
that have been collected, it does not appear 
how our actual knowledge of those facts can 
be increased by any new method of describing 
them. Facts that we are unable to modify or 
direct, in short, can only be the objects of ob- 
servation; and observation can only inform 
us that they exist, and that their succession 
appears to be governed by certain general 
laws. 

In the proper Experimental philosophy, 
every acquisition of knowledge is an increase 
of power ; because the knowledge is neces- 
sarily derived from some intentional disposi- 
tion of materials which we may always com- 
mand in the same manner. In the philoso- 
phy of observation, it is merely a gratification 
of our curiosity. By experiment, too. we 
generally acquire a pretty correct knowledge 
of the causes of the phenomena we produce ; 
as we ourselves have distributed and arranged 
the circumstances upon which they depend ; 
while, in matters of mere observation, the 
assignment of causes must always be in a 
good degree conjectural, inasmuch as we have 
no means of separating the preceding pheno- 
mena, or deciding otherwise than by analogy, 
to which of them the succeeding event is to 
be attributed. 



488 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



Now, it appears to us to be pretty evident 
that the phenomena of the Human Mind are 
almost all of the latter description. We feel, 
and perceive, and remember, without any 

Surpcse or contrivance of ours, and have evi- 
ently no power over the mechanism by which 
those functions are performed. We may ob- 
serve and distinguish those operations of 
mind, indeed, with more or less attention or 
exactness; but we cannot subject them to 
experiment, or alter their nature by any pro- 
cess of investigation. We cannot decompose 
our perceptions in a crucible, nor divide our 
sensations with a prism ; nor can we, by art 
and contrivance, produce any combination of 
thoughts or emotions, besides those with which 
all men have been provided by nature. No 
metaphysician expects by analysis to discover 
a new power, or to excite a new sensation in 
the mind, as a chemist discovers a new earth 
©r a new metal ; nor can he hope, by any 
process of synthesis, to exhibit a mental com- 
bination different from any that nature has 
produced in the minds of other persons. The 
science of metaphysics, therefore, depends 
upon observation, and not upon experiment : 
And all reasonings upon mind proceed ac- 
cordingly upon a reference to that general 
observation which all men are supposed to 
have made, and not to any particular experi- 
ments, which are known only to the inventor. 
— The province of philosophy in this depart- 
ment, therefore, is the province of observation 
•nly; and in this department the greater part 
of that code of laws which Bacon has pro- 
vided for the regulation of experimental in- 
duction is plainly without authority. In meta- 
physics, certainly, knowledge is not power; 
and instead of producing new phenomena to 
elucidate the old, by well-contrived and well- 
conducted experiments, the most diligent in- 
quirer can do no more than register and arrange 
the appearances, which he can neither account 
for nor control. 

But though our power can in no case be 
directly increased by the most vigilant and 
correct observation alone, our knowledge may 
often be very greatly extended by it. In the 
science of mind, however, we are inclined to 
suspect that this is not the case. From the 
very nature of the subject, it seems necessa- 
rily to follow, that all men must be practically 
familiar with all the functions and qualities 
of their minds ; and with almost all the laws 
by which they appear to be governed. Every 
one knows exactly what it is to perceive and 
to feel, to remember, imagine, and believe ; 
and though he may not always apply the 
words that denote these operations with per- 
fect propriety, it is not possible to suppose that 
any one is ignorant of the things. Even those 
laws of thought, or connections of mental 
operation, that are not so commonly stated in 
words, appear to be universally known ; and 
are found to regulate the practice of those 
who never thought of enouncing them in pre- 
cise or abstract propositions. A man who 
uever heard it asserted that memory depends 
upon attention, yet attends with uncommon 
care to any thing that he wishes to remember ; 



and accounts for his forge tfulness, by acknow 
ledging that he had paid no attention. A 
groom, who never heard of the association of 
ideas, feeds the young war-horse to the sound 
of a drum; and the unphilosophical artists 
who tame elephants and train dancing dogs, 
proceed upon the same obvious and admitted 
principle. The truth is, that as we only know 
the existence of mind by the exercise of its 
functions according to certain laws, it is im- 
possible that any one should ever discover or 
bring to light any functions or any laws of 
which men would admit the existence, unless 
they were previously convinced of their oper- 
ation on themselves. A philosopher may be 
the first to state these laws, and to describe 
their operation distinctly in words ; but men 
must be already familiarly acquainted with 
them in reality, before they can assent to the 
justice of his descriptions. 

For these reasons, we cannot help thinking 
that the labours of tne metaphysician, instead 
of being assimilated to those of the chemist 
or experimental philosopher, might, with less 
impropriety, be compared to those of the gram- 
marian who arranges into technical order the 
words of a language which is spoken famil- 
iarly by all his readers ; or of the artist who ex- 
hibits to them a correct map of a district with 
every part of which they were previously 
acquainted. We acquire a perfect knowledge 
of our own minds without study or exertion, 
just as we acquire a perfect knowledge of our 
native language or our native parish ; yet we 
cannot, without much study and reflection, 
compose a grammar of the one, or a map of 
the other. To arrange in correct order all the 
particulars of our practical knowledge, and to 
set down, without omission and without dis- 
tortion, every thing that we actually know 
upon a subject, requires a power of abstrac- 
tion, recollection, and disposition, that falls to 
the lot of but few. In the science of mind, 
perhaps, more of those qualities are required 
than in any other ; but it is not the less true 
of this, than of all the rest, that the materials 
of the description must always be derived 
from a previous acquaintance with the sub- 
ject — that nothing can be set down technically 
that was not practically known — and that no 
substantial addition is made to our knowledge 
by a scientific distribution of its particulars. 
After such a systematic arrangement has been 
introduced, and a correct nomenclature ap- 
plied, we may indeed conceive more clearly, 
and will certainly describe more justly, the 
nature and extent of our information ; but our 
information itself is not really increased, and 
the consciousness by which we are supplied 
with all the materials of our reflections, does 
not become more productive, by this dispo- 
sition of its contributions. 

But though we have been induced in this 
way to express our scepticism, both as to the 
probable improvement and practical utility 
of metaphysical speculations, we would by 
no means be understood as having asserted 
that these studies are absolutely without 
interest or importance. With regard to Per- 
ception, indeed, and some of the other primary 



STEWART'S LIFE OF REID. 



489 



functions of mind, it seems now to be admit- 
ted, that philosophy can be of no use to us. 
and that the profoundest reasonings lead us 
back to the creed, and the ignorance, of the 
vulgar. As to the laws of Association, how- 
ever, the case is somewhat different. In- 
stances of the application of such laws are 
indeed familiar to every one, and there are 
few who do not of themselves arrive at some 
imperfect conception of their general limits 
and application : But that they are sooner 
learned, and may be more steadily and ex- 
tensively applied, when our observations are 
assisted by the lessons of a judicious instruc- 
tor, seems scarcely to admit of doubt ; and 
though there are no errors of opinion perhaps 
that may not be corrected without the help 
of metaphysical principles, it cannot be dis- 
puted, that an habitual acquaintance with 
those principles leads us more directly to the 
source of such errors, and enables us more 
readily to explain and correct some of the 
most formidable aberrations of the human 
understanding. After all, perhaps, the chief 
value of such speculations will be found to 
consist in the wholesome exercise which 
they afford to the faculties, and the delight 
which is produced by the consciousness of 
intellectual exertion. Upon this subject, we 
gladly borrow from Mr. Stewart the following 
admirable quotations : — 

" An author well qualified to judge, from his 
own experience, of whatever conduces to invigo- 
rate or to embellish the understanding, has beauti- 
fully remarked, that, ' by turning the soul inward 
on itself, its forees are concentrated, and are fitted 
for stronger and bolder flights of science ; and that, 
in such pursuits, whether we take, or whether we 
lose the game, the Chase is certainly of service.' 
In this respect, the philosophy of the mind (abstract- 
ing entirely from that pre-eminence which belongs 
to it in consequence of its practical applications) 
may claim a distinguished rank among those pre- 
paratory disciplines, which another writer of equal 
talents has happily compared to ' the crops which 
are raised, not for the sake of the harvest, but to 
be ploughed in as a dressing to the land.' " 

pp. 166, 167. 

In following out his observations on the 
scope and spirit of Dr. Reid's philosophy, Mr*. 
Stewart does not present his readers with any 
general outline or summary of the peculiar 
doctrines by which it is principally distin- 
guished. This part of the book indeed ap- 
pears to be addressed almost exclusively to 
those who are in some degree initiated in the 
studies of which it treats, and consists of a 
vindication of Dr. Reid's philosophy from the 
most important objections that had been made 
to it by his antagonists. The first is proposed 
by the materialist, and is directed against the 
gratuitous assumption of the existence of 
mind. To this Mr. Stewart answers with 
irresistible force, that the philosophy of Dr. 
Reid has in reality no concern with the theo- 
ries that may be formed as to the causes of 
our mental operations, but is entirely confined 
to the investigation of those phenomena which 
are known to us by internal consciousness, 
and not by external perception. On the 
theory of Materialism itself, he makes some 
admirable observations : and, after having 
62 



stated the perceptible improvement that has 
lately taken place in the method of consider- 
ing those intellectual phenomena, he con- 
cludes with the following judicious and elo- 
quent observations: — 

" The authors who form the most conspicuous 
exceptions to this gradual progress, consist chiefly 
of men, whose errors may be easily accounted for, 
by the prejudices connected with their circumscribed 
habits of observation and inquiry; — of Physiolo- 
gists, accustomed to attend to that part alone of the 
human frame, which the knife ot the Anatomist 
can lay open; or of Chemists, who enter on the 
analysis of Thought, fresh from the decompositions 
of the laboratory ; carrying into the Theory of Mind 
itself (what Bacon expressly calls) ' the smoke and 
tarnish of the furnace.' Of the value of such pur- 
suits, none can think more highly than myself; but 
I must be allowed to observe, that the most dis- 
tinguished pre-eminence in them does not neces- 
sarily imply a capacity of collected and abstracted 
reflection ; or an understanding superior to the pre- 
judices of early association, and the illusions of 
popular language. I will not go so far as Cicero, 
when he ascribes to those who possess these ad- 
vantages, a more than ordinary vigour of intellect : 
' 3fagni est ingenii revocare mentem a sensibus, et 
cogitationem a consueludine abducere.' I would 
only claim for them, the merit of patient and cau- 
tious research ; and would exact from their an- 
tagonists the same qualifications." — pp. 110, 111. 

The second great objection that has been 
made to the doctrines of Dr. Reid, is, that 
they tend to damp the ardour of philosophical 
curiosity, by stating as ultimate facts many 
phenomena which might be resolved into 
simpler principles ; and perplex the science 
of mind with an unnecessary multitude of 
internal and unaccountable properties. As 
to the first of these objections, we agree en- 
tirely with Mr. Stewart. It is certainly bet- 
ter to damp the ardour of philosophers, by 
exposing their errors and convincing them of 
their ignorance, than to gratify it by sub- 
scribing to their blunders. It is one step to- 
wards a true explanation of an) r phenomenon, 
to expose the fallacy of an erroneons one j 
and though the contemplation of such errors 
may render us more diffident of our own suc- 
cess, it will probably teach us some lessons 
that are far from diminishing our chance of 
obtaining it. But to the charge of multiply- 
ing unnecessarily the original and instinctive 
principles of our nature, Mr. Stewart, we 
think, has not made by any means so satis- 
factory an answer. The greater part of what 
he says indeed upon this subject, is rather an 
apology for Dr. Reid, than a complete justifi- 
cation of him. In his classification of the 
active powers, he admits that Dr. Reid has 
multiplied, without necessity, the number of 
our original affections ; and that, in the other 
parts of his doctrine, he has manifested a 
leaning to the same extreme. It would have 
been better if he had rested the defence of 
his author upon those concessions; and upon 
the general reasoning with which they are 
very skilfully associated, to prove the supe- 
rior safety and prudence of a tardiness to 
generalise and assimilate : For, with all our 
deference for the talents of the author, we 
find it impossible to agree with him in those 
particular instances in which he has endeav' 



490 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



cmred to expose the injustice of the accusa- 
tion. After all that Mr. Stewart has said, we 
can still see no reason for admitting a prin- 
ciple of credulity, or a principle of veracity, 
in human nature ; nor can we discover any 
sort of evidence for the existence of an in- 
stinctive power of interpreting natural signs. 

Dr. Reid's only reason for maintaining that 
the belief we commonly give to the testimo- 
ny of others is not derived from reasoning 
and experience, is, that this credulity is more 
apparent and excessive in children, than in 
those whose experience and reason is mature. 
Now, to this it seems obvious to answer, that 
the experience of children, though not exten- 
sive, is almost always entirely uniform in fa- 
vour of the veracity of those about them. 
There can scarcely be any temptation to utter 
serious falsehood to an infant; and even if 
that should happen, they have seldom such a 
degree of memory or attention as would be 
necessary for its detection. In all cases, be- 
sides, it is admitted that children learn the 
general rule, before they begin to attend to 
the exceptions ; and it will not be denied that 
the general rule is, that there is a connection 
between the assertions of mankind and the 
realities of which they are speaking. False- 
hood is like those irregularities in the con- 
struction of a language, which children always 
overlook for the sake of the general analogy. 
* The principle of veracity is in the same 
situation. Men speak and assert, in order to 
accomplish some purpose : But if they did not 
generally speak truth, their assertions would 
answer no purpose at all — not even that of 
deception. To speak falsehood, too. even if 
we could suppose it to be done without a 
motive, requires a certain exercise of imagi- 
nation and of the inventive faculties, which is 
not without labour : While truth is suggested 
spontaneously — not by the principle of veraci- 
ty, but by our consciousness and memory. 
Even if we were not rational creatures, there- 
fore, but spoke merely as a consequence of 
our sensations, we would speak truth much 
oftener than falsehood ; but being rational, and 
addressing ourselves to other beings with a 
view of influencing their conduct or opinions, 
it follows, as a matter of necessity, that we 
must almost always speak truth : Even the 
principle of credulity would not otherwise be 
sufficient to render it worth while for us to 
speak at all. 

With regard to the principle by which we 
are enabled to interpret the natural signs of 
the passions, and of other connected events, 
we cannot help entertaining a similar scepti- 
cism. There is no evidence, we think, for the 
existence of such a principle ; and all the 
phenomena may be solved with the help of 
memory and the association of ideas. The 
'•inductive principle" is very nearly in the 
game predicament ; though the full discussion 
of the argument that might be maintained 
upon that subject would occupy more room 
than we can now spare. 

After some very excellent observations on 
the nature and the functions of instinct, Mr. 
Stewart proceeds to consider, as the last great 



objection to Dr. Reid's philosophy, the alleged 
tendency of his doctrines on the subject of 
common sense, .to sanction an appeal from the 
decisions of the learned to the voice of the 
multitude. Mr. Stewart, with great candour, 
admits that the phrase was unluckily chosen; 
and that it has not always been employed with 
perfect accuracy, either by Dr. Reid or hi3 
followers : But he maintains, that the greater 
part of the truths which Dr. Reid has referred 
to this authority, are in reality originally and 
unaccountably impressed on the human un- 
derstanding, and are necessarily implied in 
the greater part of its operations. These, he 
says, may be better denominated, " Funda- 
mental laws of belief;" and he exemplifies 
them by such propositions as the following: 
"I am the same person to-day that I was 
yesterday. — The material world has a real 
existence. — The future course of nature will 
resemble the past." We shall have occasion 
immediately to offer a few observations on 
some of those propositions. 

With these observations Mr. Stewart con- 
cludes his defence of Dr. Reid's philosophy : 
but we cannot help thinking that there was 
room for a farther vindication, and that some 
objections may be stated to the system in 
question, as formidable as any of those which 
Mr. Stewart has endeavoured to obviate. We 
shall allude very shortly to those- that appear 
the most obvious and important. Dr. Reid's 
great achievement was undoubtedly the sub- 
version of the Ideal system, or the confutation 
of that hypothesis which represents the im- 
mediate objects of the mind in perception, as 
certain images or pictures of external objects 
conveyed by the senses to the sensorium. 
This part of his task, it is now generally ad- 
mitted that he has performed with exemplary 
diligence and complete success : But we are 
by no means so entirely satisfied with the 
uses he has attempted to make of his victory. 
After considering the subject with some atten- 
tion, we must confess that we have not been 
able to perceive how the destruction of the 
Ideal theory can be held as a demonstration 
of the real existence of matter, or a confuta- 
tion of the most ingenious reasonings which 
have brought into question the popular faith 
upon this subject. The theory of images and 
pictures, in fact, was in its original state more 
closely connected with the supposition of a 
real material prototype, than the theory of 
direct perception; and the sceptical doubts 
that have since been suggested, appear to us 
to be by no means exclusively applicable to 
the former hypothesis. He who believes that 
certain forms or images are actually transmit- 
ted through the organs of sense to the mind, 
must believe, at least, in the reality of the 
organs and the images, and probably in their 
origin from real external existences. He who 
is contented with stating that he is conscious 
of certain sensations and perceptions, by no 
means assumes the independent existence of 
matter, and gives a safer account of the pne- 
nomena than the idealist. 

Dr. Reid's sole argument for the real exist- 
ence of a material world, is founded on the 



STEWART'S LIFE OF REID. 



491 



irresistible behef of it that is implied in Per- 
ception and Memory ; a belief, the founda- 
tions of which, he seems to think, it would 
be something more than absurd to call in 
question. Now the reality of this general 
persuasion or belief, no one ever attempted to 
deny. The question is only about its justness 
or truth. It is conceivable, certainly, in every 
case, that our belief should be erroneous; 
and there can be nothing absurd in suggesting 
reasons for doubting of its conformity with 
truth. The obstinacy of our belief, in this 
instance, and its constant recurrence, even 
after all our endeavours to familiarise our- 
selves with the objections that have been 
made to it, are not absolutely without parallel 
in the history of the human faculties. All 
children believe that the earth is at rest : and 
that the sun and fixed stars perform a diurnal 
revolution round it. They also believe that 
the place which they occupy on the surface 
is absolutely the uppermost, and that the in- 
habitants of the opposite surface must be 
suspended in an inverted position. Now of 
this universal, practical, and irresistible belief, 
all persons of education are easily disabused 
in speculation, though it influences their ordi- 
nary language, and continues, in fact, to be 
the habitual impression of their minds. In 
the same way, a Berkleian might admit the 
constant recurrence of the illusions of sense, 
although his speculative reason were suffi- 
ciently convinced of their fallacy. 

The phenomena of Dreaming and of De- 
lirium, however, appear to afford a sort of 
experimentum cruris, to demonstrate that a 
real external existence is not necessary to 
produce sensation and perception in the hu- 
man mind. Is it utterly absurd and ridiculous 
to maintain, that all the objects of our thoughts 
maybe "such stuff as dreams are made of?" 
or that the uniformity of Nature gives us some 
reason to presume that the perceptions of ma- 
niacs and of rational men are manufactured, 
like their organs, out of the same materials'? 
There is a species of insanity known among 
medical men by the epithet notional, in which, 
as well as in delirium tremens, there is fre- 
quently no general depravation of the reason- 
ing and judging faculties, but where the 
disease consists entiiely in the patient mis- 
taking the objects of his thought or imagina- 
tion for real and present existences. The 
error of his perceptions, in such cases, is only 
detected by comparing ihem with the per- 
ceptions of other people; and it is evident 
that he has just the same, reason to impute 
error to them, as they can have individually 
for imputing it to him. The majority, indeed, 
necessarily carries the point, as to all practi- 
cal consequences: But is there any absurdity 
in alleging that we can have no absolute or 
infallible assurance of that as to which the 
internal conviction of an individual must be 
supported, and may be overruled by the testi- 
mony of his fellow-creatures? 

Dr. Reid has himself admitted that "we 
might probably have been so made, as to have 
all the perceptions and sensations which we 
now have, without any impression on our 



bodily organs at all." But it is surely alto- 
gether as reasonable to say, that we might 
have had all those perceptions, without the 
aid or intervention of any material existence 
at all. Those perceptions, too, might still have 
been accompanied with a belief that would 
not have been less universal or irresistible for 
being utterly without a foundation in reality. 
In short, our perceptions can never afford any 
complete or irrefragable proof of the real ex- 
istence of external things ; because it is easy 
to conceive that we might have such percep- 
tions without them. We do not know, there- 
fore, with certainty, that our perceptions are 
ever produced by external objects; and in the 
cases to which we have just alluded, we ac- 
tually find perception and its concomitant be- 
lief, where we do know with certainty that it 
is not produced by any external existence. 

It has been said, however, that we have the 
same evidence for the existence of the mate- 
rial world, as for that of our own thoughts or 
conceptions ; — as we have no reason for be- 
lieving in the latter, but that we cannot help 
it ; which is equally true of the former. Now, 
this appears to us to be very inaccurately ar- 
gued. Whatever we doubt, and whatever we 
prove, we must plainly begin with consciousness. 
That alone is certain — all the rest is inference. 
Does Dr. Reid mean to assert, that our per- 
ception of external objects is not a necessary 
preliminary to any proof of their reality, or 
that our belief in their reality is not founded 
upon our consciousness of perceiving them ? It 
is only our perceptions, then, and not the ex- 
istence of their objects, which we cannot help 
believing; and it would be nearly as reason- 
able to say that we must take all our dreams 
for realities, because we cannot doubt that we 
dream, as it is to assert that we have the same 
evidence for the existence of an external 
world, as for the existence of the sensations 
by which it is suggested to our minds. 

We dare not now venture farther into this 
subject : yet we cannot abandon it without ob- 
serving, that the question is entirely a matter 
of philosophical and abstract speculation, and 
that by far the most reprehensible passages 
in Dr. Reid's writings, are those in which he 
has represented it as otherwise. When we 
consider, indeed, the exemplary candour, and 
temper, and modesty, with which this excel- 
lent man has conducted the whole of his 
speculations, we cannot help wondering that 
he should ever have forgotten himself so far 
as to descend to the vulgar raillery which he 
has addressed, instead of argument, to the 
abettors of the Berkleian hypothesis. The 
old joke, of the sceptical philosophers running 
their noses against posts, tumbling into ken- 
nels, and being sent to madhouses, is repeated 
at least ten times in different parts of Dr. 
Reid's publications, and really seems to have 
been considered as an objecton not less forci- 
ble than facetious. Yet Dr. Reid surely could 
not be ignorant that those who have questioned 
the reality of a material universe, never af- 
fected to have perceptions, ideas, and sensa- 
tions, of a different nature from other people. 
The debate was merely about the origin of 



492 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



these sensations j and could not possibly affect 
the conduct or feelings of the individual. The 
sceptic, therefore, who has been taught by 
experience that certain perceptions are con- 
nected with unpleasant sensations, will avoid 
the occasions of them as carefully as those 
who look upon the object of their perceptions 
as external realities. Notions and sensations 
he cannot deny to exist; and this limited 
faith will regulate his conduct exactly in the 
same manner as the more extensive creed of 
his antagonists. We are persuaded that Mr. 
Stewart would reject the aid of such an argu- 
ment for the existence of an external world. 

The length to which these observations 
have extended, deters us from prosecuting 
any farther our remarks on Dr. Reid's philoso- 
phy. The other points in which it appears to 
us that he has left his system vulnerable are, 
his explanation of our idea of cause and effect, 
and his speculations on the question of liberty 



and necessity. In the former, we cannot help 
thinking that he has dogmatised, with a de- 
gree of confidence which is scarcely justified 
by the cogency of his arguments ; and has 
endeavoured to draw ridicule on the reasoning 
of his antagonists, by illustrations that are ut- 
terly inapplicable. In the latter, also, he has 
made something more than a just use of the 
prejudices of men and the ambiguity of lan- 
guage ; and has more than once been guilty, 
if we be not mistaken, of what, in a less 
respectable author, we should not have scru- 
pled to call the most palpable sophistry. We 
are glad that our duty does not require us to 
enter into the discussion of this very per- 
plexing controversy ; though we may be per- 
mitted to remark, that it is somewhat extra- 
ordinary to find the dependence of human 
actions on Motives so positively denied by 
those very philosophers with whom the doc- 
trine of Causation is of such high authority. 



(©ctobtv, 180G.) 

Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, to the year 1795, written by himself: With a Continuation to 
the time of his decease, by his Son Joseph Priestley ; and Observations on his Writings. By 
Thomas Cooper, President Judge of the Fourth District of Pennsylvania, and the Reverend 
William Christie. 8vo. pp. 481. London: 1805. 



Dr. Priestley has written more, we be- 
lieve, and on a greater variety of subjects, 
than any other English author; and probably 
believed, as his friend Mr. Cooper appears to 
do at this moment, that his several publica- 
tions were destined to make an sera in the 
respective branches of speculation to which 
they bore reference. We are not exactly of 
that opinion : But we think Dr. Priestley a 
person of no common magnitude in the his- 
tory of English literature j and have perused 
this miscellaneous volume with more interest 
than we have usually found in publications 
of the same description. The memoirs are 
written with great conciseness and simplicity, 
and present a very singular picture of that in- 
defatigable activity, that bigotted vanity, that 
precipitation, cheerfulness, and sincerity, 
which made up the character of this restless 
philosopher. The observations annexed by 
Mr. Cooper are the work, we think, of a pow- 
erful, presumptuous, and most untractable 
understanding. They are written in a defy- 
ing, dogmatical, unaccommodating style : with 
much force of reasoning, in many places, but 
often with great rashness and arrogance; and 
occasionally with a cant of philosophism, and 
a tang of party politics, which communicate 
an air of vulgarity to the whole work, and ir- 
resistibly excite a smile at the expense of this 
magnanimous despiser of all sorts of prejudice 
and bigotry.* 

* I omit now a very considerable portion of this 
review, containing a pretty full account of Dr. 
Priestley's life and conversation, and of his various 
publications on subjects of theology, natural philoso- 
phy, and chemistry; retaining only the following 
examination of his doctrine of Materialism. 



In the Second part of his book, Mr. Cooper 
professes to estimate the Metaphysical wri- 
tings of Dr. Priestley, and delivers a long and 
very zealous defence of the doctrines of Ma- 
terialism, and of the Necessity of human ac- 
tions. A good deal of learning and a good 
deal of talent are shown in this production : 
But we believe that most of our readers will 
be surprised to find that Mr. Cooper con- 
siders both these questions as having been 
finally set at rest by the disquisitions of his 
learned friend ! 

" Indeed," he observes, " these questions must 
now be considered as settled ; for those who can 
resist Collins' philosophical inquiry, the section of 
Dr. Hartley on the mechanism of the mind, and 
the review of the subject taken by Dr. Priestley 
and his opponents, are not to be reasoned with. 
Interest reipuhlicce ut denique sit finis litium, is a 
maxim of technical law. It will apply equally to 
the republic of letters; and the time seems to have 
arrived, when the separate existence of the human 
Soul, the freedom of the Will, and the eternal 
duration of Future punishment, like the doctrines 
of the Trinity ! and Transubstantiation, may be 
regarded as no longer entitled to public discus- 
sion."— p. 335. 

The advocates of Necessity, we know, have 
long been pretty much of this opinion; and 
we have no inclination to disturb them at 
present with any renewal of the controversy : 
But we really did not know that the advo- 
cates of Materialism laid claim to the same 
triumph; and certainly find some difficulty in 
admitting that all who believe in the existence 
of mind are unfit to be reasoned with. To us, 
indeed, it has always appeared that it was 
much easier to prove the existence of mind, 
than the existence of matter; and with what- 



PRIESTLEY'S MEMOIRS. 



493 



ever contempt Mr. Cooper and his friends may 
regaru as, we must be permitted to say a word 
or two in defence of the vulgar opinion. 

The sum of the argument against the exist- 
ence of mind, in case any of our readers 
should be ignorant of it, is shortly as follows. 
The phenomena of thinking, or perception, 
are always found connected with a certain 
mass of organised matter, and have never 
been known to exist in a separate or detached 
state. It seems natural, therefore, to consider 
them as qualities of that substance : Nor is it 
any objection to say, that the quality of think- 
ing has no sort of resemblance or affinity to 
any of the other qualities with which we 
know matter to be endowed. This is equally 
true of all the primary qualities of matter, 
when compared with each other. Solidity, 
for instance, bears no sort of resemblance os 
affinity to extension ; nor is there any other 
reason for our considering them as qualities 
of the same substance, but that they are al- 
ways found in conjunction — that they occupy 
the same portion of space, and present them- 
selves together, on all occasions, to our obser- 
vation. Now, this may be said, with equal 
force, of the quality of thinking. It is al- 
ways found in conjunction with a certain mass 
of solid and extended matter — it inhabits the 
same portion of space, and presents itself in- 
variably along with those other qualities the 
assemblage of which makes up our idea of 
organised matter. Whatever substratum can 
support and unite the qualities of solidity and 
extension, may therefore support the quality 
of thinking also; and it is eminently unphilo- 
sophical to suppose, that it inheres in a sepa- 
rate substance to which we should give the 
appellation of Mind. All the phenomena of 
thought, it is said, may be resolved by the 
assistance of Dr. Hartley, into perception and 
association. Now, perception is evidently 
produced by certain mechanical impulses 
upon the nerves, transmitted to the brain, 
and can therefore be directly proved to be 
merely a peculiar species of motion ; and as- 
sociation is something very like the vibration 
of musical cords in juxtaposition, and is strictly 
within the analogy of material movement. 

In answering this argument, we will fairly 
confess that we have no distinct idea of Sub- 
stance ; and that we are perfectly aware 
that it is impossible to combine three propo- 
sitions upon the subject, without involving a 
contradiction. All that we know of substance, 
are its qualities ; yet qualities must belong to 
something — and of that something to which 
they belong, and by which they are united, 
we neither know anything nor can form any 
conception. We, cannot help believing that it 
exists ; but we have no distinct notion as to 
the mode of its existence. 

Admitting this, therefore, in the first place, 
we may perhaps be permitted to observe, that 
it seems a little disorderly and unphilosophi- 
cal, to class perception among the qualities 
of matter, when it is obvious, that it is by 
means of perception alone that we get any 
notion of matter or its qualities ; and that it 
is possible, with perfect consistency, to main- 



tain the existence of our perceptions, and to 
deny that of matter altogether. The other 
qualities of cnatter are perceived by us; but 
perception cannot be perceived: And all we 
know about it is, that it is that by -which we 
perceive every thing else. It certainly does 
sound somewhat absurd and unintelligible, 
therefore, to say, that perception is that 
quality of matter by which it becomes con- 
scious of its own existence, and acquainted 
with its other qualities : Since it is plain that 
this is not a quality, but a knowledge of quali- 
ties; and that the percipient must necessarily 
be distinct from that which is perceived. We 
must always begin with perception ; and the 
followers of Berkeley will tell us, that we 
must end there also. At all events, it certainly 
never entered into the head of any plain man 
to conceive that the faculty of perception was 
itself one of the qualities with which that 
faculty made him acquainted : or that it could 
possibly belong to a substance, which his 
earliest intimations and most indestructible 
impressions taught him to regard as some- 
thing external and separate.* 

This, then, is the first objection to the doc- 
trine of Materialism, — that it makes the 
faculty of perception a quality of the thing 
perceived ; and converts, in a way that must 
at first sight appear absurd to all mankind, 
our knowledge of the qualities of matter into 
another quality of the same substance. The 
truth is, however, that it is a gross and un- 
warrantable abuse of language, to call percep- 
tion a quality at all. It is an act or an event — 
a fact or a phenomenon — of which the percipi- 
ent is conscious: but it cannot be intelligibly 
conceived as a quality; and, least of all, as a 
quality of that substance which is known to 
us as solid and extended. 1st, All the qualities 
of matter, it has been already stated, are per- 
ceived by the senses : but the sensation itself 
cannot be so perceived ; nor is it possible to call 
it an object of sense, without the grossest per- 
version of language. 2dly, All the qualities 
of matter have a direct reference to Space or 
extension ; and are conceived, in some mea- 
sure, as attributes or qualities of the space 
within which they exist. When we say that 
a particular body is solid, we mean merely 
that a certain portion of space is impenetra- 
ble : when we say that it is coloured, we 



* We are not very partial to the practice of quo- 
ting poetry in illustration of metaphysics; but the 
following lines seem to express so forcibly the uni- 
versal and natural impression of mankind on this 
subject, that we cannot help offering ihem to the 
consideration of the reader. 
" Am I but what I seem, mere flesh and blood ? 
A branching channel, and a mazy flood? 
The purple stream, that through my vessels glides, 
Dull and unconscious flows like common tides. 
The pipes, through which the circling juices stray, 
Are not that thinking I, no more than they. 
This frame, compacted with transcendent skill, 
Of moving joints, obedient to my will, 
Nurs'd from the fruitful glebe like yonder tree, 
Waxes and wastes : I call it mine, not me. 
New matter still the mould'ring mass sustains ; 
The mansion chang'd, the tenant still remains, 
And, from the fleeting stream repair'd by food, 
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood." 
2R 



494 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



mean that the same portion of space appears 
of one hue, — and so of the other qualities : 
but sensation or thought is never conceived 
so to occupy space, or to characterise it ; nor 
can those faculties be at all conceived as 
beir.g merely definite portions of space, en- 
dued with perceptible properties. In the third 
place, all the primary qualities of matter are 
inseparable from it, and enter necessarily into 
its conception and definition. All matter 
must necessarily be conceived as extended, 
solid, and figured : and also as universally 
capable of all the secondary qualities. It is 
obvious, however, that thought or sensation 
is not an inseparable attribute of matter ; as 
by far the greater part of matter is entirely 
destitute of it ; and it is found in connection 
only with those parts which we term organ- 
ised; and with those, only while they are 
in a certain state, which we call alive. If 
it be said, however, that thought may re- 
semble those accidental qualities of matter, 
6iich as heat or colour, which are not insepa- 
rable or permanent: then we reply, that 
neither of these things can, in strictness, be 
termed qualities of matter, more than thought 
or sensation : They are themselves substan- 
ces, or matter possessed of inseparable and 
peculiar qualities, as well as those which 
address themselves to the other senses. Light 
is a material substance, from which the 
quality of colour is inseparable ; and heat is 
a material substance, which has universally 
the quality of exciting the sensation of 
warmth: and both address themselves to, 
and are distinctly perceived through, our 
senses. If thought be allowed to be a sub- 
stance in this sense, it will remain to show 
that it also is material ; by being referable to 
6pace, capable of subsisting in every sort of 
body, of being perceived by the senses, of 
being transferred from one body to another, 
and liable to attraction, repulsion, condensa- 
tion, or reflection — like heat or light. 

It is to be remarked also, that wherever 
any proper quality, primary or secondary, can 
be ascribed generally to any perceptible body 
or mass of matter, that quality must exist and 
be recognised in every part of it. If the whole 
of any such body is hard, or coloured, or 
weighty, or hot. or cold, every part of it, 
whether merely considered and examined as 
separable, or actually separated and detached, 
must be hard, coloured, and weighty also : 
these qualities being truly conditions, and, in 
fact, the only real proofs of the material ex- 
istence of such a body, and of all the parts of 
it. But though thought or volition may be 
said to have their residence somewhere with- 
in a human body, they certainly are not quali- 
ties of its material mass, in this sense; or to 
the effect of being sensibly present in every 

Eart or portion of it ! We never, at least, 
ave happened to hear it surmised that there 
is thought in the elbow-joint, or volition in 
the nail of the great toe : and if it be said 
that these phenomena are results only of the 
living organisation as a whole, it seems to us 
that, this'is a substantial abandonment of the 
whole argument, and an admission that they 



are not qualities of matter (for results and 
qualities belong not to the same category), bat 
mere facts or phenomena of a totally different 
description, for the production of which the 
apparatus of some such organisation may, for 
the time, be necessary. 

But the material thing is, that it is not to 
the whole mass of our bodies, or their living 
organisation in general, that these phenomena 
are said by Dr. Priestley and his disciples to 
belong-, as proper qualities. On the contrary, 
they distinctly admit that they are not qualities 
of that physical mass generally, nor even of 
those finer parts of it which constitute our 
organs of sense. They admit that the eye 
and the ear act the parts merely of optical or 
acoustic instruments; and are only useful in 
transmitting impulses (or, it may be, fine sub- 
stances) to the nervous part of the brain: of 
which alone, therefore, and indeed only of its 
minute and invisible portions, these singular 
phenomena are alleged to be proper physical 
qualities ! It is difficult, we think, to make 
the absurdity of such a doctrine more appa- 
rent than by this plain statement of its import 
and amount. The only ground, it must always 
be recollected, for holding that mind and all 
its phenomena are mere qualities of matter., is 
the broad and popular one. that we always 
find them connected with a certain visible 
mass of organised matter, called a living body : 
But when it is admitted that they are not 
qualities of this mass generally, or even of 
any part of it which is visible or perceptible 
by our senses, the allegation of their being 
mere material qualities of a part of the brain, 
must appear not merely gratuitous, but incon- 
sistent and absolutely absurd. If the eye 
and the ear, with their delicate structures 
and fine sensibility, are but vehicles and ap- 
paratus, why should the attenuated and un- 
known tissues of the cerebral nerves be sup- 
posed to be any thing else 1 or why should 
the resulting sensations, to which both are 
apparently ministrant. and no more than min- 
istrant, and which have no conceivable re- 
semblance or analogy to any attribute of mat- 
ter, but put on the list of the physical qualities 
of the latter — which is of itself too slight and 
subtle to enable us to say what are its com- 
mon physical qualities? But we have yet 
another consideration to suggest, before final- 
ly closing this discussion. 

It probably has not escaped observation, 
that throughout the preceding argument, we 
have allowed the advocates for Materialism 
to assume that what (to oblige them) we have 
called thought or perception generally, was 
one uniform and identical thing; to which, 
therefore, the appellation of a quality might 
possibly be given, without manifest and pal- 
pable absurdity. But in reality there is no 
ground, or even room, for claiming such an 
allowance. The acts or functions which we 
ascribe to mind, are at all events not one, but 
many and diverse. Perception no doubt is 
one of them — but it is not identical with sen- 
sation; and still less with memory or imagi- 
nation, or volition. — or with love, anger, fear, 
deliberation; or hatred. Each of these, on the 



PRIESTLEY'S MEMOIRS. 



49! 



contrary, is a separate and distinguishable 
act, function, or phenomenon, of the existence 
of which we become aware, not through per- 
ception, or the external senses at all, but 
through consciousness or reflection alone: and 
none of them (with the single exception, per- 
haps, of perception) have any necessary or 
natural reference to any external or material 
existence whatever. It is not disputed, how- 
ever, that it is only by perception and the 
6enses, that we can gain any knowledge of 
matter; and, consequently, whatever we come 
to know by consciousness only, cannot pos- 
sibly belong to that category, or be either ma- 
terial or external. But we are not aware that 
any materialist has ever gone the length of 
directly maintaining that volition for example, 
or memory, or anger, or fear, or any other 
such affection, were proper material qualities 
of our bodily frames, or could be perceived 
and recognised as such, by the agency of 
the external senses ; in the same way as the 
weight, heat, colour, or elasticity which may 
belong to these frames. But if they are not 
each of them capable of being so perceived, 
as separate physical qualities, it is plain that 
nothing can be gained in argument, by affect- 
ing to disregard their palpable diversity, and 
seeking to class them all under one vague 
name, of thought or perception. Even with 
that advantage, we have seen that the doc- 
trine, of perception or thought being a mere 
quality of matter, is not only untenable, but 
truly self-contradictory and unintelligible. 
But when the number and diversity of the 
phenomena necessarily covered by that gene- 
ral appellation is considered, along with the 
fact that most of them have no reference to 
matter, and do in no way imply its existence, 
the absurdity of representing them as so 
many of its distinct perceptible qualities, 
must be too apparent, we think, to admit of 
any serious defence. 

The sum of the whole then is, that all the 
knowledge which we gain only by Perception 
and the use of our external Senses, is know- 
ledge of Matter, and its qualities and attri- 
butes alone; and all which we gain only by 
Consciousness and Reflection on our own in- 
ward feelings, is necessarily knowledge of 
Mind, and its states, attributes, and functions. 
This in fact is the whole basis, and rationale 
of the distinction between mind and matter : 
and, consequently, unless it can be shown 
that love, anger, and sorrow, as well as memo- 
ry and volition, are direct objects of sense or 
external perception, like heat and colour, or 
figure and solidity, there must be an end, we 
think, of all question as to their being ma- 
terial qualities. 

But, though the very basis and foundation 
of the argument for Materialism is placed 
upon the assumption, that thought and per- 
ception are qualities of our bodies, it is re- 
markable that Dr. Priestley, and the other 
champions of that doctrine, do ultimately give 
up that point altogether, and maintain, that 
thought is nothing else than Motion ! Now, 
this, we cannot help thinking, was very im- 
politic and injudicious in these learned per- 



sons: For, so long as they stuck to the genc- 
ral^assertion, that thought might, in some way 
or other, be represented as a quality of mat- 
ter, — although it was not perceived by the 
senses, and bore no analogy to any of its other 
qualities. — and talked about the inherent ca- 
pacity of substance, to support all sorts of 
qualities) although their doctrine might elude 
our comprehension, and revolt all our habits 
of thinking, — still it might be difficult to 
demonstrate its fallacy; and a certain per- 
plexing argumentation might be maintained, 
by a person well acquainted with the use, 
and abuse, of words : But when they cast 
away the protection of this most convenient 
obscurity, and, instead of saying that they 
do not know what thought is, have the cour- 
age to refer it to the known category of Mo- 
tion, they evidently subject their theory to the 
test of rational examination, and furnish us 
with a criterion by which its truth may be 
easily determined. 

We shall not be so rash as to attempt any 
definition of motion ; but we believe we may 
take it for granted, that our readers know 
pretty well what it is. At all events, it is not 
a quality of matter. It is an act, a phenome- 
non, or a fact : — but it makes no part of the 
description or conception of matter; though 
it can only exist with reference to that sub- 
stance. Let any man ask himself, however, 
whether the motion of matter bears any sort 
of resemblance to thought or sensation ; or 
whether it be even conceivable that these 
should be one and the same thing'? — But, ^t is 
said, we find sensation always prod need by 
motion ; and as we can discover nothing else 
in conjunction with it, we are justified in as- 
cribing it to motion. But this, we beg leave 
to say, is not the question. It is not neces- 
sary to inquire, whether motion may produce 
sensation or not, but whether sensation demo- 
tion, and nothing else % It seems pretty evi- 
dent, to be sure, that motion can never pro- 
duce any thing but motion or impulse ; and 
that it is at least as inconceivable that it should 
ever produce sensation in matter, as that it 
should produce a separate substance, called 
mind. But this, w r e repeat, is not the ques- 
tion with the materialists. Their proposition 
is, not that motion produces sensation — which 
might be as well in the mind as in the body ; 
but, tint sensation is motion; and that all the 
phenomena of thought and perception are in- 
telligibly accounted for by saying, that they 
are certain little shakings in the pulpy part of 
the brain. 

There are certain propositions which it is 
difficult to confute, only because it is impos- 
sible to comprehend them : and this, the sub- 
stantive article in the creed of Materialism, 
really seems to be of this description. To say 
that thought is motion, is as unintelligible to 
us, as to say that it is space, or time, or pro- 
portion. 

There may be little shakings in the brain, 
for any thing we know, and there may even 
be shakings of a different kind, accompanying 
every act of thought or perception; — but, that 
the shakings themselves are the. thought or 



496 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



perception, we are so far from admitting, that 
we find it absolutely impossible to compre- 
hend what is meant by the assertion. The 
shakings are certain th robbings, vibrations, or 
stirrings, in a whitish, half-fluid substance 
like custard, which we might see perhaps, or 
feel, if we had eyes and fingers sufficiently 
small or fine for the office. But what should 
we see or feel, upon the supposition that we 
could detect, by our senses, every thing that 
actually took place in the brain ? We should 
see the particles of this substance change their 
place a little, move a little up or down, to the 
right or to the left, round about, or zig-zag, or 
in some other course or direction. This is 
all that we could see, if Hartley's conjecture 
were proved by actual observation ; because 
this is all that exists in motion, — according to 
our conception of it ; and all that we mean, 
when we say that there is motion in any sub- 
stance. Is it intelligible, then, to say, that 
this motion, the whole of which we see and 
comprehend, is thought and feeling'} — and 
that thought and feeling will exist wherever 
we can excite a similar motion in a similar 
substance 1 — In our humble apprehension, the 
proposition is not so much false, as utterly 
unmeaning and incomprehensible. That sen- 
sation may follow motion in the brain, or may 
even be produced by it, is conceivable at 
least, and may be affirmed with perfect pre- 
cision and consistency; but that the motion is 
itself sensation, and that the proper and com- 
plete definition of thought and feeling is. that 
they are certain vibrations in the brain, is a 
doctrine, we think, that can only be wondered 
at. and that must be comprehended before it 
be answered. 

No advocate for the existence of mind, ever 
thought it necessary to deny that there was a 
certain bodily apparatus necessary to thought 
and sensation in man — and that, on many oc- 
casions, the sensation was preceded or intro- 
duced by certain impulses and corresponding 
movements of this material machinery : — we 
cannot see without eyes and light, nor think 
without living bodies. All that they maintain 
is, that these impulses and movements are 
not feelings or thought, but merely the occa- 
sions of feeling and thought ; and that it is 
impossible for them to confound the material 
motions which precede those sensations, with 
the sensations themselves, which have no 
conceivable affinity with matter. 

The theory of Materialism, then, appears to 
us to be altogether unintelligible and absurd ; 
and, without recurring to the reasoning of the 



Berkeleians, it seems quite enough to detci 
mine us to reject it, that it confounds the act 
of perception with the qualities perceived, an; I 
classes among the objects of perception, trie 
faculty by which these objects are introduced 
to our knowledge, — and which faculty must 
be exercised, before we can attain to any con- 
ception, either of matter or its qualities. 

We do not pretend to have looke/j through 
the whole controversy which Dr. Priestley's 
publications on this subject appears to have 
excited : But nothing certainly has struck us 
with more astonishment, than the zeal with 
which he maintains that this doctrine, and 
that of Necessity, taken together, afford the 
greatest support to the cause of religion and 
morality ! We are a little puzzled, indeed, to 
discover what use, or what room, there can be 
for a God at all, upon this hypothesis of Ma- 
terialism ; as well as to imagine what species 
of being the God of the materialist must be. 
If the mere organisation of matter produces 
reason, memory, imagination, and all the 
other attributes of mind, — and if these differ- 
ent phenomena be the necessary result of cer- 
tain motions impressed upon matter \ then 
there is no need for any other reason or en- 
ergy in the universe : and things may be ad- 
ministered very comfortably, by the intellect 
spontaneously evolved in the different combi- 
nations of matter. But if Dr. Priestley will 
have a superfluous Deity notwithstanding, we 
may ask what sort of a Deity he can expect?- 
He denies the existence of mind or spirit al- 
together; so that his Deity must be material ; 
and his wisdom, power, and goodness must 
be the necessary result of a certain organisa- 
tion. But how can a material deity be im- 
mortal ? How could he have been formed ? 
Or why should there not be more, — formed 
by himself, or by his creator'? We will not 
affirm that Dr. Priestley has not attempted to 
answer these questions ; but we will take it 
upon us to say, that he cannot have answered 
them in a satisfactory manner. As to his 
paradoxical doctrines, with regard to the na- 
tural mortality of man, and the incompre- 
hensible gift of immortality conferred on a 
material structure which visibly moulders and 
is dissolved, we shall only say that it exceeds 
in absurdity any of the dog-mas of the Catho- 
lics; and can only be exceeded by his own 
supposition, that our Saviour, being only a 
man, and yet destined to live to the day of 
judgment, is still alive in his original human 
body upon earth, and is really the Wander'ng 
Jew of vulgar superstition ! 



(©ctobtr, 1805.) 

AcarJemical Questions. By the Right Honourable William Drummond. K. C, F. R. S.. F. R. S. E 
Author of a Translation of Persius. Vol. I. 4to. pp. 412. Cadell and Davies. London: 1805 



We do not know very well what to say of 
this very learned publication. To some read- 
ers it will probably be enough to announce, 



that it is occupied with Metaphysical specu 
lations. To others, it may convey a more 
precise idea of its character, to be told, tliat 



DRUMMOND'S ACADEMICAL QUESTIONS. 



497 



though it gave a violent headache, in less than 
an hour, to the most intrepid logician of our 
fraternity, he could not help reading on till he 
came to the end of the volume.* 

Mr. Drummond begins with the doctrine 
of Locke ; and exposes, we think, very suc- 
cessfully, the futility of that celebrated au- 
thor's definition of Substance, as "one knows 
not wJiM" support of such qualities as are ca- 
pable of producing simple ideas in us. This 
notion of substance he then shows to be de- 
rived from the old Platonic doctrine of the 
primary matter, or t&Jf, to which the same 
objections are applicable. 

Having thus discarded Substance in general 
from the list of existences, Mr. Drummond 
proceeds to do as much for the particular sub- 
stance called Matter, and all its qualities. In 
this chapter, accordingly, he avows himself 
to be a determined Idealist ; and it is the scope 
of his whole argument to prove, that what we 
call qualities in external substances, are in 
fact nothing more than sensations in our own 
minds; and that what have been termed pri- 
mary qualities, are in this respect entirely 
upon a footing with those which are called 
secondary. His reasoning upon this subject 
coincides very nearly with that of Bishop 
Berkeley ; of whom, indeed, he says, that if 
his arguments be not really conclusive, it is 
certainly to be lamented that they should have 
been so imperfectly answered. 

To us. we will confess, it does not seem of 
very great consequence to determine whether 
there be any room for a distinction between 
the primary and secondary qualities of matter ; 
for though we are rather inclined to hold that 
Dr: Reid's observations have established its 
possibility. We cannot help saying, that it is a 
distinction which does not touch at all upon 
the fundamental question, as to the evidence 
which we have, by our senses, for the exist- 
ence of a material world. Dr. Reid and his 
followers contend as strenuously for the real 
existence of those material qualities which 
produce in us the sensations of heat, or of 
colour, as of those which give us intimations 
of solidity, figure, or extension. We know a 
little more, indeed, according to them, about 
the one sort of qualities than the other; but 
the evidence we have for their existence is 
exactly the same in both cases: nor is it more 
a law of our nature, that the sensation of re- 
sistance should suggest to us the definable 
quality of solidity in an external object, than 
that the sensation of heat should suggest to 
us, that quality in an external object, which 
we cannot define otherwise than as the external 
cause of this sensation. 

Mr. Drummond, we think, has not attended 
sufficiently to this part of his antagonist's po- 
sition; and after assuming, somewhat too pre- 

* For the reasons stated in the note prefixed to 
this division of the book, I refrain from reprinting 
the greater part of this review ; and give only that 
part of it which is connected with the speculations 
in the preceding articles, and bears upon the ques- 
tion of the existence of an external world, and the 
faith to be given to the intimations of our senses, 
end other internal convictions. 
63 



cipitately, that secondary qualities are uni- 
versally admitted to have no existence but in 
the mind of him who perceives them, proceeds, 
with, an air of triumph that is at all events 
premature, to demonstrate, that there is noth- 
ing in the case of primary qualities by which 
they can be distinguished in this respect from 
the secondary. The fact unquestionably is, 
that Dr. Reid and his followers assert the posi- 
tive and independent existence of secondary. 
as well as of primary qualities in matter ; ana 
that there is, upon their hypothesis, exactly the 
same evidence for the one as for the other. 
The general problem, as to the probable exist- 
ence of matter — unquestionably the most fun- 
damental and momentous in the whole science 
of metaphysics — may be fairly and intelligibly 
stated in a very few words. 

Bishop Berkeley, and after him Mr. Drum- 
mond, have observed, that by our senses, we 
can have nothing but sensations; and that 
sensations, being affections of mind, cannot 
possibly bear any resemblance to matter, or 
any of its qualities ; and hence they infer, that 
we cannot possibly have any evidence for the 
existence of matter; and that what we term 
our perception of its qualities, is in fact noth- 
ing else than a sensation in our own minds. 
Dr. Reid, on the other hand, distinctly admit- 
ting that the primary functions of our senses 
is to make us conscious of certain sensations, 
which can have no sort of resemblance or af- 
finity to the qualities of matter, has asserted 
it as a fact admitting of no dispute, but recog- 
nised by every human creature, that these 
sensations necessarily suggest to us the notion 
of certain external existences, endowed with 
particular definable qualities ; and that these 
perceptions, by which our sensations are ac- 
companied, are easily and clearly distinguish- 
able from the sensations themselves, and 
cannot be confounded with them, without the 
most wilful perversity. Perception, again, he 
holds, necessarily implies the existence of the 
object perceived ; and the reality of a material 
world is thus as clearly deduced from the 
exercise of this faculty, as the reality of our 
own existence can be from our consciousness } 
or other sensations. It appears, therefore, 
that there are two questions to be considered 
in determining on the merits of this contro- 
versy. First, whether there be any room for 
a distinction between sensation and percep- 
tion; and, secondly, if we shall allow such a 
distinction, whether perception does neces- 
sarily imply the real and external existence 
of the objects perceived. 

If by perception, indeed, we understand, as 
Dr. Reid appears to have done, the immediate 
and positive discovery of external existences, 
it is evident that the mere assumption of this 
faculty puts an end to the whole question ; 
since it necessarily takes those existences for 
granted, and, upon that hypothesis, defines 
the faculty in question to be that by which 
we discover their qualities. This, however, 
it is plain, is not reasoning, but assertion ; and 
it is not the mere assertion of a fact, which 
in these subjects is the whole perhaps of our 
legitimate philosophy, but of something which 
2 r 2 



498 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



may or may not be inferred from the fact, ac- 
cording to the views of the inquirer. The 
inquiry is an inquiry into the functions and 
operations of mind; and all that can possibly 
be stated as fact on such an occasion, must re- 
late to the state and affections of mind only : 
I)Ut to assume the existence of a material 
world, in order afterwards to define one func- 
tion of mind to be that by which it discovers 
material qualities, is evidently blending hy- 
pothesis in the statement, and prejudging the 
controversy by assumption. The fact itself, 
we really conceive not to be liable to any kind 
of doubt or dispute ; and yet the statement of 
it, obvious as it is, seems calculated to retrench 
a good deal from each of the opposite asser- 
tions. The fact, if we be not greatly mis- 
taken, is confessedly as follows. 

We have occasionally certain sensations 
which we call heat, pain, resistance, &c. 
These feelings, of course, belong only to the 
mind, of w T hich they are peculiar affections, * 
and bjth parties are agreed in asserting, that 
they have no resemblance, or necessary refer- 
ence, to any thing external. Dr. Reid has 
made this indeed the very ground-work of his 
reasonings on the subject of perception ; and 
it will not probably be called in question by 
his antagonists, who go the length of inferring 
from it, that nothing but mind can be con- 
ceived to have an existence in nature. This, 
then, is one fact which we may safely assume 
as quite certain and indisputable, viz. that 
our sensations are affections of the mind, and 
have no necessary reference to any other ex- 
istence. But there is another fact at least as 
obvious and indisputable, which the one party 
seems disposed to overlook, and the other to 
invest with undue authority, in the discussion. 
This second fact is, that some of the sensations 
in question are uniformly and irresistibly ac- 
companied by the apprehension and belief of 
certain external existences, distinguished by 
peculiar qualities. The fact certainly admits 
of no dispute ; and, accordingly, the philoso- 
phers who first attempted to prove that this 
belief was without foundation, have uniformly 
claimed the merit of disabusing mankind of a 
natural and universal illusion. Now this ap- 
prehension and belief of external existences, 
is in itself as much an affection of mind, as 
the sensations by which it is accompanied : 
and those who deny the distinction between 
perception and sensation, might be justified 
perhaps in asserting, that it is only a sensa- 
tion of another kind : at the same time, as the 
essence of it consists in the apprehension of 
an independent existence, there can be no 
harm in distinguishing it, by a separate appel- 
lation, from those sensations which centre in 
the sentient being, and suggest to him no idea 
of any other existence. It is in this sense 
alone, it appears to us, that perception can be 
understood in strict philosophical language. 
It means no more than that affection of the 
mind which consists in an apprehension and 
belief in the existence of external objects. 

Now in this sense of the word, there can 
be no doubt that there is a real distinction j 
between mere sensation and perception ; in- 1 



asmuch as there is a distinction between our 
feelings of pain, resistance, &c, and our con- 
ception and belief of real external existences: 
But they differ merely as one affection of 
mind may differ from another; and it is plainly 
unwarrantable to assume the real existence 
of external objects as a part of the statement 
of a purely intellectual phenomenon. After 
allowing the reality of this distinction, there 
is still room therefore for considering the 
second question to which we alluded in the 
outset, viz. Whether perception does neces- 
sarily imply the existence of external ob- 
jects. 

Upon this subject, we entertain an opinion 
which will not give satisfaction, we are afraid, 
to either of the contending parties. We think 
that the existence of external objects is not 
necessarily implied in the phenomena of per- 
ception ; but we think that there is no com- 
plete proof of their nonexistence ; and that 
philosophy, instead of being benefited, would 
be subjected to needless embarrassments, by 
the absolute assumption of the ideal theory. 

The reality of external existences is not 
necessarily implied in the phenomena of per- 
ception ; because we can easily imagine that 
our impressions and conceptions might have 
been exactly as they are. although matter had 
never been created. Belief, we familiarly 
know, to be no infallible criterion of actual 
existence; and it is impossible to doubt, that 
we might have been so framed as to receive 
all the impressions which we now ascribe to 
the agency of external objects, from the me- 
chanism of our own minds, or the particular 
volition of the Deity. The phenomena of 
dreaming, and of some species of madness, 
seem to form experimental proofs of the pos- 
sibility we have now stated ; and demonstrate, 
in our apprehension, that perception, as we 
have defined it, {i. e. an apprehension and be- 
lief of external existences,) does not necessa- 
rily imply the independent reality of its ob- 
jects. Nor is it less absurd to say that we 
have the same evidence for the existence of 
external objects that we have for the exist- 
ence of our own sensations: For it is quite 
plain, that our belief in the former is founded 
altogether on our consciousness of the latter; 
and that the evidence of this belief is conse- 
quently of a secondary nature. We cannot 
doubt of the existence of our sensations, 
without being guilty of the grossest contra- 
diction ; but we may doubt of the existence 
of the material world, without any contradic- 
tion at all. If we annihilate our sensations, 
we annihilate ourselves ; and, of course, leave 
no being to doubt or to reason. If we anni- 
hilate the external world, we still leave entire 
all those sensations and perceptions which a 
different hypothesis would refer to its myste- 
rious agency on our minds. 

On the other hand, it is certainly going too 
far to assert, that the nonexistence of matter 
is 'proved by such evidence as necessarily to 
command our assent : Since it evidently im- 
plies no contradiction to suppose, that such a 
thing as matter may exist, and that an omnip- 
otent being might make us capable of dis- 



DRUMMOND'S ACADEMICAL QUESTIONS. 



49* 



covering: its qualities. The instinctive and 
insurmountable belief that we have of its 
existence, certainly is not to be surrendered, 
merely because it is possible to suppose it 
erroneous; or difficult to comprehend how a 
material and immaterial substance can act 
upon each other. The evidence of this uni- 
versal and irresistible belief, in short, is not 
to be altogether disregarded; and, unless it 
can be shov/n that it leads to actual contra- 
dictions and absurdities, the utmost length 
that philosophy can warrantably go, is to con- 
clude that it may be delusive; but that it 
may also be true. 

The rigorous maxim, of giving no faith to 
any thing short of direct and immediate con- 
sciousness, seems more calculated, we think, 
to perplex than to simplify our philosophy, 
and will run us up, in two vast strides, to the 
very brink of absolute annihilation. We deny 
the existence of the material world, because 
we have not for it the primary evidence of 
consciousness ; and because the clear concep- 
tion and indestructible belief we have of it, 
may be fallacious, for any thing we can prove 
to the contrary. This conclusion annihilates 
at once all external objects; and, among 
them, our own bodies, and the bodies and 
viinds of all other men ; for it is quite evident 
that we can have no evidence of the exist- 
ence of other minds, except through the me- 
diation of the matter they are supposed to 
animate ; and if matter be nothing more than 
an affection of our own minds, there is an end 
to the existence of every other. This first step, 
therefore, reduces the whole universe to the 
mind of the individual reasoner; and leaves 
no existence in nature, but one mind, with its 
compliment of sensations and ideas. The 
second step goes still farther; and no one can 
hesitate to take it. who has ventured deliber- 
ately on the first. If our senses may deceive 
us, so may our memory: — if we will not be- 
lieve in the existence of matter, because it is 
not vouched by internal consciousness, and 
because it is conceivable that it should not 
exist, we cannot consistently believe in the 
reality of any past impression : for which, in 
like manner, we cannot have the direct evi- 
dence of consciousness, and of which our 
present recollection may possibly be falla- 
cious. Even upon the vulgar hypothesis, we 
know that memory is much more deceitful 
than perception ; and there is still greater 
hazard in assuming the reality of any past 
existence from our present recollection of it, 
than m relying on the reality of a present 
existence from our immediate perception. If 
we discredit our memory, however, and deny 
all existence of which we have not a present 
consciousness or sensation, it is evident that 
we must annihilate our own personal identity, 
and refuse to believe that we had thought or 
sensation at any previous moment. There 
can be no reasoning, therefore, nor know- 
ledge, nor opinion ; and we must end by vir- 
tually annihilating ourselves, and denying 
that any thing whatsoever exists in nature, 
but the present solitary and momentary im- 
pression. 



This is the legitimate and inevitable ter- 
mination of that determined scepticism which 
refuses to believe any thing without the high- 
est of all evidence, and chooses to conclude 
positively that every thing is not, which may 
possibly be conceived not to be. The process 
of reasoning which it implies, is neither long 
nor intricate; and its conclusion would be 
undeniably just, if every thing was necessarily 
true which could be asserted without a con- 
tradiction. It is perfectly true, that we are 
absolutely sure of nothing but what we feel at 
the present moment; and that it is possible 
to distinguish between the evidence we have 
for the existence of the present impression, 
and the evidence of any other existence. The 
first alone is complete and unquestionable ; 
we may hesitate about all the rest without 
any absolute contradiction. But the distinc- 
tion, we apprehend, is in itself of as little use 
in philosophy, as in ordinary life ; and the ab- 
solute and positive denial of all existence, 
except that of our immediate sensation, alto- 
gether rash and unwarranted. The objects 
of our perception and of our recollection, cer- 
tainly may exist, although we cannot demon- 
strate that they must ; and when in spite of 
all our abstractions, we find that we must 
come back, and not only reason with our fel- 
low creatures as separate existences, but en- 
gage daily in speculations about the qualities 
and properties of matter, it must appear, at 
least, an unprofitable refinement which would 
lead us to dwell much on the possibility of 
their nonexistence. There is no sceptic, pro- 
bably, who would be bold enough to maintain, 
that this single doctrine of the nonexistence 
of any thing but our present impressions, 
would constitute a just or useful system of 
logic and moral philosophy; and if, after 
flourishing with it as an unfruitful paradox in 
the outset, we are obliged to recur to the or- 
dinary course of observation and conjecture 
as to the nature of our faculties, it may be 
doubted whether any real benefit has been 
derived from its promulgation, or whether the 
hypothesis can be received into any sober 
system of philosophy. To deny the existence 
of matter and of mind, indeed, is not to phi- 
losophise, but to destroy the materials of phi- 
losophy. It requires no extraordinary iiir 
gen uity or power of reasoning to perceive the 
grounds upon which their existence may be 
doubted; but we acknowledge that we cannot 
see how it can be said to have been disproved; 
and think we perceive very clearly, that phi- 
losophy will neither be simplified nor abridged 
by refusing to take it for granted. 

Upon the whole, then, we are inclined to 
think, that the conception and belief which 
we have of material objects (which is what 
we mean by the perception of them) does not 
amount to a complete proof of their existence, 
but renders it sufficiently probable : that the 
superior and complete assurance we have of 
the existence of our present sensations, does 
by no means entitle us positively to deny the 
reality of every other existence ; and that ag 
this speculative scepticism neither renders tts 
independent of the ordinary modes of investi- 



uoo 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



gation, nor assists us materially in the use of 
them, it is inexpedient to dwell long upon it 
in the course of our philosophical inquiries, 
and much more advisable to proceed upon 
the supposition that the real condition of things 
is conformable to our natural apprehensions. 

The little sketch we have now ventured to 
offer of the abstract, or thorough-going phi- 
losophy of scepticism, will render it unneces- 
sary for U3 to follow our author minutely 
through the different branches of this inquiry. 
Overlooking, or at least undervaluing the in- 
disputable fact, that our sensations are uni- 
formly accompanied with a distinct apprehen- 
sion, and firm belief in the existence of real 
external objects, he endeavours to prove, that 
the qualities which we ascribe to them are in 
reality nothing more than names for our pecu- 
liar sensations; and maintains accordingly, 
that because men differ in their opinions of 
the same object, i-S is impossible to suppose 
that they actually perceive any real object at 
all ; as a real existence must always appear 
the same to those who actually perceive it. 

His illustrations are of this nature. Water, 
which feels tepid to a Laplander, would appear 
cold to a native of Sumatra : But the same 
water cannot be both hot and cold : therefore 
it is lo be inferred that neither of them is 
affected by any real quality in the external 
body, but that each describes merely his 
own sensations. Now, the conclusion here is 
plainly altogether unwarranted by the fact ; 
since it is quite certain that both the persons 
in question perceive the same quality in the 
water, though they are affected by it in a dif- 
ferent manner. The solution of the whole 
puzzle is, that heat and cold are not different 
qualities; but different degrees of the same 
quality, and probably exist only relatively to 
each other. If the water is of a higher tem- 
perature than the air r or the body of the 
person who touches it, he w T ill call it warm ; 
if of a lower temperature, he will call it cold. 
But this does not prove by any means, that 
the difference between two distinct tempera- 
tures is ideal, or that it isnot always perceived 
by all individuals in the very same way. If 
Mr. Drummond could find out a person who 
not only thought the water cold which other 
people called warm, but also thought that 
warm which they perceived to be cold, he 
might have some foundation for his inference ; 
but while all mankind agree that ice is cold, 
and steam hot, and concur indeed most exactly 
in their judgments of the comparative heat of 
all external bodies, it is plainly a mere quib- 
ble on the convertible nature of these quali- 
ties, to call in question the identity of their 
perceptions, because they make the variable 
Standard of their own temperature the rule 
for denominating other bodies hot or cold. 

In the same way, Mr. Drummond goes on 
to say, one man calls the flavour of assafcetida 
nauseous, and another thinks it agreeable ; — 
one nation delights in a species of food which 
to its neighbours appears disgusting. How, 
then, can we suppose that they perceive the 
same real qualities, when their judgments in 
regard to them are so diametrically opposite 1 



Now, nothing, we conceive, is more obvious 
than the fallacy of this reasoning. The li- 
king, or disliking, of men to a particular object, 
has nothing to do wdth the perception of its 
external qualities; and they may differ en- 
tirely as to their opinion of its agrecableness, 
though they concur perfectly as to the de- 
scription of all its properties. One man may 
admire a tall woman, and another a short one; 
but it would be rather rash to infer, that they 
did not agree in recognising a difference in 
stature, or that they had no uniform ideas of 
magnitude in general. In the same way, one 
person may have an antipathy to salt, and 
another a liking for it ; but they both perceive 
it to be salt, and both agree in describing it 
by that appellation. To give any degree of 
plausibility to Mr. Drummond's inferences, it 
would be necessary for him to show that some 
men thought brandy and Cayenne pepper in- 
sipid and tasteless, and objected at the same 
time to milk and spring water as excessively 
acrid and pungent. 

In the concluding part of his book, Mr. 
Drummond undertakes nothing less than a 
defence of the theory of Ideas, against the 
arguments of Dr.* Reid. This is a bold at- 
tempt; but, we are inclined to think, not a 
successful one. Mr. Drummond begins with 
the old axiom, that nothing can act but where 
it is; and infers, that as real material objects 
cannot penetrate to the seat of the soul, that 
sentient principle can only perceive certain 
images or ideas of them ; against the assump- 
tion of which he conceives there can be no 
considerable obstacle. Now, it is needless, 
we think, to investigate the legitimacy of this 
reasoning very narrowly, because the founda- 
tion, we are persuaded, is unsound. The 
axiom, we believe, is now admitted to be 
fallacious (in the sense at least here assigned 
to it) by all who have recently paid any atten- 
tion to the subject. But what does Mr. Drum- 
mond understand exactly by ideas ? Does he 
mean certain films, shadows, or simulacra. 
proceeding from real external existences, and 
passing through real external organs to the 
local habitation of the soul? If he means 
this, then he admits the existence of a ma- 
terial world, as clearly as Dr. Reid does ; 
and subjects himself to all the ridicule which 
he has himself so justly bestowed upon the 
hypothesis of animal spirits, or any other 
supposition, which explains the intercourse 
between mind and matter, by imagining some 
matter, of so fine a nature as almost to gra- 
duate into mind ! If, on the other hand, by 
ideas, Mr. Drummond really means nothing 
but sensations and perceptions (as we have 
already explained that word), it is quite ob- 
vious that Dr. Reid has never called their 
existence in question ; and the whole debate 
comes back to the presumptions for the exist- 
ence of an external world ; or the reasonable- 
ness of trusting to that indestructible belief 
which certainly accompanies those sensations, 
as evidence of their having certain external 
causes. We cannot help doubting, whether 
Mr. Drummond has clearly stated to himself, 
in which of these two senses he proposes to 



FORBES' LIFE OF DR. BEATTIE. 



501 



defend the doctrine of ideas. The doctrine 
of images proceeding from actual external 
existences, is the only one in behalf of which 
he can claim the support of the ancient phi- 
losophers ; and it is to it he seems to allude, 
in several of the remarks which he makes on 
the illusions of sight. On the other supposi- 
tion, however, he has no occasion to dispute 
with Dr. Reid about the existence of ideas ; for 
the Doctor assuredly did not deny that w r e 
had sensations and perceptions, notions, re- 
collections, and all the other affections of 
mind to which the w r ord idea may be applied, 
in that other sense of it. There can be no 
question upon that supposition, but about the 
origin of these ideas — which belongs to 
another chapter. 

Mr. Drummond seems to lay the whole 
stress of his argument upon a position of 
Hume's, which he applies himself to vindicate 
from the objections which Dr. Reid has urged 
against it. "The table which I see," says 
Dr. Hume, " diminishes as I remove from it ; 
but the real table suffers no alteration : — it 
could be nothing but its image, therefore, 
which was present to my mind." Now this 
statement, we think; admits pretty explicitly, 
that there is a real table, the image of which 
is presented ^o the mind : but, at all events, 
we conceive that the phenomenon may be 
easily reconciled with the supposition of its 
real existence. Dr. Reid's error, if there be 
one, seems to consist in his having asserted 
positively, and without any qualification, that 
it is the real table which we perceive, when 
our eyes are- turned towards it. When the 
matter however is considered very strictly, it 
will be found that by the sense of seeing w r e 
can perceive nothing but light, variously ar- 
ranged and diversified ; and that, when we 
look towards a table, we do not actually see 
the table itself, but only the rays of light 
which are reflected from it to the eye. Inde- 
pendently of the co-operation of our other 
senses, it seems generally to be admitted, that 
we should perceive nothing by seeing but an 
assemblage of colours, divided by different 
lines; and our only visual notion of the table 
(however real it might be) w r ould, therefore, 
be that of a definite portion of light, distin- 



guished by its colour, from the other portions 
that were perceived at the same time. It 
seems equally impossible to dispute, however, 
that we should receive from this impression 
the belief and conception of an external ex- 
istence, and that we should have the very 
same evidence for its reality, as for that of the 
objects of our other senses. But if the exter- 
nal existence of light be admitted, a very 
slight attention to its laws and properties, w 7 ill 
show its appearances must vary, according to 
our distance from the solid objects which emit 
it. We perceive the form of bodies by sight, 
in short, very nearly as a blind man perceives 
them, by tracing their extremities with his 
stick : It is only the light in one case, and the 
stick in the other, that is properly felt or per- 
ceived ; but the real form of the object is 
indicated, in both cases, by the state and dis- 
position of the medium which connects it with 
our sensations. It is by intimations formerly 
received from the sense of Touch, no doubt, 
that we ultimately discover that the rays of 
light which strike our eyes with the impres- 
sions of form and colour, proceed from distant 
objects, which are solid and extended in three 
dimensions ; and it is only by recollecting 
what we have learned from this sense, that 
we are enabled to conceive them as endued 
I with these qualities. By the eye itself we 
J do not perceive these qualities: nor. in strict- 
J ness of speech, do we perceive, by this sense, 
j any qualities whatever of the reflecting ob- 
| ject ; we perceive merely the light which it 
reflects; distinguished by its colour from the 
other light that falls on the eye along with it, 
and assuming a new form and extension, ac- 
cording as the distance or position of the body- 
is varied in regard to us. These variations 
are clearly explained by the known properties 
of light, as ascertained by experiment; and 
evidently afford no ground for supposing any 
alteration in the object which emits it, or for 
throwing any doubts upon the real existence 
of such an object. Because the divergence 
of the rays of light varies with the distance 
between their origin and the eye, is there the 
slightest reason for pretending, that the mag- 
nitude of the object from which they proceed 
must be held to have varied also ? 



(Capril, 1807.) 

An account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL. D. late Professor of Moral Phil^.o- 
phy and Logic in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen : including many of his 
original Letters. By Sir W. Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet, one of the Executors of Dr. 
Beattie. 2 vols. 4to. pp.840. Edinburgh and London: 1806. 

Dr. Beattie's great work, and that which I measured praises are bestowed, both by his 
was undoubtedly the first foundation of his ce- I present biographer, and by all the authors 
lebrity, is the " Essay on the Nature and \ male and female correspondents, that it is 
Immutability of Truth;" on which such un- with difficulty we can believe that they aie 

~ VW^ r i • 7\ . '• - , , ,, speaking of the performance which we have 

* i he greater part of this ariicle also is withheld • V'u • i „ -«u i~~i • 

from the W"t reprint, fcr the reasons formerly ! J ust b J?, n VWM ourselves With looking 
stated ; and only those parts given which hear upon j over - That the author's intentions were good, 
points of metaphysics. I and his convictions sincere, we entertain noi 



S02 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



the least doubt; but that the merits of his 
book have been prodigiously overrated, we 
think, is equally undeniable. It contains ab- 
solutely nothing, in the nature of argument, 
that had not been previously stated by Dr. 
Reid in his "Inquiry into the Human Mind;" 
and, in our opinion, in a much clearer and 
more unexceptionable form. As to the merits 
of that philosophy, we have already taken 
occasion, in more places than one, to submit 
our opinion to the judgment of our readers ; 
and, after having settled our accounts with 
Mr. Stewart and Dr. Reid, we really do not 
think it worth while to enter the lists again 
with Dr. Beattie. Whatever may be the ex- 
cellence of the common-sense school of phi- 
losophy, he certainly has no claim to the 
honours of a founder. He invented none of 
it : and it is very doubtful with us, whether 
he ever rightly understood the principles upon 
which it depends. It is unquestionable, at 
least, that he has exposed it to considerable 
disadvantage, and embarrassed its more en- 
lightened supporters, by the misplaced con- 
fidence with which he has urged some 
propositions, and the fallacious and fantastic 
illustrations by which he has aimed at recom- 
mending many others. 

His confidence and his inaccuracy, however, 
might have been easily forgiven. Every one 
has not the capacity of writing philosophically: 
But every one may at least be temperate and 
candid ; and Dr. Beattie's book is still more 
remarkable for being abusive and acrimonious, 
than for its defects in argument or originality. 
There are no subjects, however, in the wide 
field of human speculation, upon which such 
vehemence appears more groundless and un- 
accountable, than the greater part of those 
which have served Dr. Beattie for topics of 
declamation or invective. 

His first great battle is about the real exist- 
ence of external objects. The sceptics say, 
that perception is merely an act or affection 
of the mind, and. consequently might exist 
without any external cause. It is a sensation 
or affection of the mind, to be sure, which 
consists in the apprehension and belief of such 
external existences : But being in itself a phe- 
nomenon purely mental, it is a mere supposition 
or conjecture to hold that there are any such 
existences, by whose operation it is produced. 
It is impossible, therefore, to bring any evi- 
dence for the existence of material objects; 
and the belief which is admitted to be in- 
separable from the act of perception, can 
never be received as such evidence. The 
whole question is about the grounds of this 
belief, and not about its existence ; and the 
phenomena of dreaming and madness prove 
experimentally, that perception, as character- 
ised by belief, may exist where there is no 
external object. Dr. Beattie answers, after 
Dr. Reid, that the mere existence of this in- 
stinctive and indestructible belief in the re- 
ality of external objects, is a complete and 
sufficient proof of their reality; that nature 
meant us to be satisfied with it ; and that we 
cannot call it in question, without running into 
the greatest absurdity. 



This is the whole dispute; and a pretty 
correct summary of the argument upon both 
sides of the question. But is there any thing 
here that could justify the calling of rames, 
or the violation of decorum among the dis- 
putants ? The question is, of all other ques- 
tions that can be suggested, the most purely 
and entirely speculative, and obviously dis- 
connected from any practical or moral con- 
sequences. After what Berkeley has written 
on the subject, it must be a gross and wilful 
fallacy to pretend that the conduct of men can 
be in the smallest degree affected by the 
opinions they entertain about the existence 
or nonexistence of matter. The system 
which maintains the latter, leaves all our sen- 
sations and perceptions unimpaired and en- 
tire ; and as it is by these, and by these only, 
that our conduct can ever be guided, it is 
evident that it can never be altered by the 
adoption of that system. The whole dispute 
is about the cause or origin of our perceptions ; 
which the one party ascribes to the action of 
external bodies, and the other to the inward 
development of some mental energy. It is a 
question of pure curiosity; it never can be 
decided ; and as its decision is perfectly in- 
different and immaterial to any practical pur- 
pose, so, it might have been expected that 
the discussion should be conducted without 
virulence or abuse. 

The next grand dispute is about the evi- 
dence of Memory. The sceptics will have 
it, that we are sure of nothing but our present 
sensations; and that, though these are some- 
times characterised by an impression and 
belief that other sensations did formerly exist, 
we can have no evidence of the justice %i' this 
belief, nor any certainty that this illusive con- 
ception of former sensation, which we call 
memory, may not be an original affection of 
our minds. The orthodox philosophers, on 
the other hand, maintain, that the instinctive 
reliance we have on memory is complete and 
satisfactory proof of its accuracy; that it is 
absurd to ask for the grounds of this belief; 
and that we cannot call it in question without 
manifest inconsistency. The same observa- 
tions which were made on the argument for 
the existence of matter, apply also to this con- 
troversy. It is purely speculative, and with- 
out application to any practical conclusion. 
The sceptics do not deny that they remember 
like other people, and, consequently, that they 
have an indestructible belief in past events or 
existences. All the question is about the origin, 
or the justice of this belief; — whether it arise 
from such events having actually happened 
before, or from some original affection of the 
mind, which is attended with that impression. 
The argument, as commonly stated by the 
sceptics, leads only to a negative or sceptical 
conclusion. It amounts only to this, that the 
present sensation, which we call memory, 
affords no conclusive evidence of past existence 
and that for any thing that can be proved to 
the contrary, nothing of what we remember 
may have existed. We think this undeniably 
true ; and so we believe did Dr. Beattie. He 
thought it also very useless ; and there, too, 



FORBES' LIFE OF DR. BEATTIE. 



503 



wo agree with him : But he thought it very 
wicked and very despicably silly; and there 
we cannot agree with him at all. It is a very 
pretty and ingenious puzzle, — affords a very 
useful mortification to human reason, — and 
leads us to that state of philosophical wonder 
and perplexity in which we feel our own 
helplessness, and in which we ought to feel 
the impropriety of all dogmatism or arrogance 
in reasoning upon such subjects. This is the 
only use and the only meaning of such scep- 
tical speculations. It is altogether unfair, 
and indeed absurd, to suppose that their 
authors could ever mean positively to main- 
tain that we should try to get the better of 
any reliance on our memories, or that they 
themselves really doubted more than other 
people as to the past reality of the things 
they remembered . The very arguments they 
use, indeed, to show that the evidence of 
memory may be fallacious, prove, completely, 
that, in point of fact they relied as implicitly 
as their antagonists on the accuracy of that 
faculty. If they were not sure that they re- 
collected the premises of their own, reason- 
ings, it is evidently impossible that they 
should ever have come to any conclusion. 
If they did not believe that they had seen the 
books they answered, it is impossible they 
should have set about answering them. 

The truth is, however, that all men have a 
practical and irresistible belief both in the 
existence of matter, and in the accuracy of 
memory ; and that no sceptical writer ever 
meant or expected to destroy this practical 
belief in other persons. All that they aimed 
at was to show their own ingenuity, and the 
narrow limits of the human understanding; — 
to point out a curious distinction between the 
evidence of immediate .consciousness, and 
that of perception of memory, — and to show 
that there was a kind of logical or argumen- 
tative possibility, that the objects of the latter 
faculties might have no existence. There 
never was any danger of their persuading 
men to distrust their senses or their memory; 
nor can they be rationally suspected of such 
an intention. On the contrary, they neces- 
sarily took for granted the instinctive and in- 
destructible belief for which they found it so 
difficult to account. Their whole reasonings 
consist of an attempt to explain that admitted 
fact, and to ascertain the grounds uf)on which 
that belief depends. In the end, they agree 
with their adversaries that those grounds can- 
not be ascertained : and the only difference 
between them is, that the adversary main- 
tains that they need no explanation ; while the 
sceptic insists that the want of it still leaves 
a possibility that the belief may be fallacious ; 
and at any rate establishes a distinction, in 
degree, between the primary evidence of con- 
sciousness, which it is impossible to distrust 
without a contradiction, and the secondary evi- 
dence of perception and memory, which may- 
be clearly conceived to be erroneous. 

To this extent, we are clearly of opinion 
that the sceptics are right; and though the 
value of the discovery certainly is as small as 
possible, we are just as well satisfied that its 



consequences are perfectly harmless. Their 
reasonings are about as ingenious and as inno- 
cent as some of those which have been em- 
ployed to establish certain strange paradoxes 
as to the nature of motion, or the infinite divis- 
ibility of matter. The argument is perfectly 
logical and unanswerable ; and yet no man in 
his senses can practically admit the conclu- 
sion. Thus, it may be strictly demonstrated, 
that the swiftest moving body can never over- 
take the slowest which is before it at the com- 
mencement of the motion ; or, in the words 
of the original problem, that the swift-footed 
Achilles could never overtake a snail that had 
a few yards the start of him. The reasoning 
upon which this valuable proposition is found- 
ed, does not admit, we believe, of any direct 
confutation ; and yet there are few, we sup- 
pose, who, upon the faith of it, would take a bet 
as to the result of such a race. The sceptical 
reasonings as to the mind lead to no other 
practical conclusion ; and may be answered 
or acquiesced in with the same good nature. 

Such, however, are the chief topics which 
Dr. Beattie has discussed in this Essay, with 
a vehemence of temper, and an impotence 
of reasoning, equally surprising and humilia- 
ting to the. cause of philosophy. The subjects 
we have mentioned occupy the greater part 
of the work, and are indeed almost the only 
ones to which its title at all applies. Yet we 
think it must be already apparent, that there 
is nothing whatever in the doctrines he op- 
poses, to call down his indignation, or to jus- 
tify his abuse. That there are other doctrines 
in some of the books which he has aimed at 
confuting, which would justify the most zeal- 
ous opposition of every friend to religion, we 
readily admit ; but these have no necessary 
dependence on the general speculative scep- 
ticism to which we have now been alluding, 
and will be best refuted by those who lay all 
that general reasoning entirely out of con- 
sideration. Mr. Hume's theory of morals, 
which, when rightly understood, we conceive 
to be both salutary and true, certainly has no 
connection with his doctrine of ideas and im- 
pressions; and the great question of liberty 
and necessity, which Dr. Beattie has settled, 
by mistaking, throughout, the power of doing 
what we will, for the power of willing with- 
out motives, evidently depends upon consider- 
ations altogether apart from the nature and 
immutability of truth. It has always appeared 
to us, indeed, that too much importance has 
been attached to Theories of morals, and to 
speculations on the sources of approbation. 
Our feelings of approbation and disapproba- 
tion, and the moral distinctions which are 
raised upon them, are Facts which no theory 
can alter, although it may fail to explain. 
While these facts remain, they must regulate 
the conduct, and affect the happiness of man- 
kind, whether they are well or ill accounted 
for by the theories of philosophers. It is the 
same nearly with regard to the controversy 
about cause and effect. It does not appeal to 
us, however, that Mr. Hume ever meant *.o 
deny the existence of such a relation, or tf 
the relative idea of power. He has merelj 



504 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



given a new theory as to its genealogy or 
descent ; and detected some very gross inac- 
curacies in the opinions and reasonings which 
were formerly prevalent on the subject. 

If Dr. JBsattie had been able to refute these 
doctrines, we cannot help thinking that he 
would have done it with more temper and 
moderation ; and disdained to court popularity 
by so much fulsome cant about common sense, 
virtue, and religion, and his contempt and 
abhorrence for infidels, sophists, and meta- 
physicians ; by such babyish interjections, as 
"fy on it ! fy on it!" — such triumphant ex- 
clamations, as, " say, ye candid and intelli- 
gent!" — or such terrific addresses, as, "ye 
traitors to human kind ! ye murderers of the 
human soul !" — " vain hypocrites ! perfidious 
profligates ! " and a variety of other embellish- 
ments, as dignified as original in a philosophi- 
cal and argumentative treatise. The truth is, 
that the Essay acquired its popularity, partly 
from the indifference and dislike which has 
long prevailed in England, as to the meta- 
physical inquiries which were there made the 
subject of abuse ; partly from the perpetual 
appeal which it affects to make from philoso- 
phical subtlety to common sense ; and partly 
from the accidental circumstances of the au- 
thor. It was a great matter for the orthodox 



! scholars of the south, who knew little of metu 
physics themselves, to get a Scotch professor' 
| of philosophy to take up the gauntlet in then 
I behalf. The contempt with which he chose 
! to speak of his antagonists was the very tone 
| which they wished to be adopted ; and, some 
of them, imposed on by the confidence of his 
manner, and some resolved to give it all 
chances of imposing on others, they joined in 
one clamour of approbation, and proclaimed a 
triumph for a mere rash skirmisher, while the 
leader of the battle was still doubtful of the 
victory. The book, thus dandled into popu- 
larity by bishops and good ladies, contained 
many pieces of nursery eloquence, and much 
innocent pleasantry : it was not fatiguing to 
the understanding; and read less heavily, on 
the whole, than most of the Sunday library. 
In consequence of all these recommendation?, 
it ran through various editions, and found its 
way into most well-regulated families ; and, 
though made up of such stuff, as we really 
believe no grown man who had ever thought 
of the subject could possibly go through with- 
out nausea and compassion, still retains its 
place among the meritorious performances, 
by which youthful' minds are to be purified 
and invigorated. We shall hear no more of it, 
however, among those who have left college. 



(N Qvzmbtv, 1810.) 

Philosophical Essays. By Dugald Stewart, Esq., F. R. S. Edinburgh, Emeritus Professor of 
Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, &c. &c. 4to. pp. 590. Edinburgh: 1810. 



The studies to which Mr. Stewart has de- 
voted himself, have lately fallen out of favour 
with the English public ; and the nation which 
once placed the name of Locke immediately 
under those of Shakespeare and of Newton, 
and has since repaid the metaphysical labours 
of Berkeley and of Hume with such just ce- 
lebrity, seems now to be almost without zeal 
or curiosity as to the progress of the Philoso- 
phy of Mind. 

The causes of this distaste it would be cu- 
rious, and probably not uninstructive, to inves- 
tigate : but the inquiry would be laborious, 
and perhaps not very satisfactory. It is easy, 
indeed, to say, that the age has become fri- 
volous and impatient of labour ; and has aban- 
doned this, along with all other good learning, 
and every pursuit that requires concentration 
of thought, and does not lead to immediate 
distinction. This is satire, and not reason- 
ing; and, were it even a fair statement of the 
fact, such a revolution in the intellectual 
habits and character of a nation, is itself a 
phenomenon to be accounted for, — and not to 
be accounted for upon light or shallow con- 
siderations. To us, the phenomenon, in so 
far as we are inclined to admit its existence, 
has always appeared to arise from the great 
multiplication of the branches of liberal study, 
and from the more extensive diffusion of 
knowledge among the body of the people, — 



and to constitute, i« this way, a signal ex- 
ample of that compensation, by which the good 
and evil in our lot is constantly equalised, or 
reduced at least to no very variable standard. 
The progress of knowledge has given biith, 
of late years, to so many arts and sciences, that 
a man of liberal curiosity finds bolh sufficient 
occupation for his time, and sufficient exercise 
to his understanding, in acquiring a superficial 
knowledge of such as are most inviting and 
most popular; and, consequently, has much 
less leisure, and less inducement than formerly, 
to dedicate himself to those abstract studies 
which calf for more patient and persevering 
attention. In older times, a man had nothing 
for it, but either to be absolutely ignorant and 
idle, or to take seriously to theology and the 
school logic. When things grew a little bet- 
ter, the classics and mathematics filled up the 
measure of general education and private 
study ; and, in the most splendid periods of 
English philosophy, had received little ad- 
dition, but from these investigations into our 
intellectual and moral nature. Some few in- 
dividuals might attend to other things; but a 
knowledge of these was all that was required 
of men of good education ; and was held ac- 
complishment enough to entitle them to the 
rank of scholars and philosophers. Now-a- 
days, however, the necessary qualification is 
prodigiously raised, — at least in denomina- 



STEWART'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. 



505 



lion ; and a man can scarcely pass current in 
Ihe informed circles of society, without know- 
ing something of political economy, chemistry, 
mineralogy, geology, and etymology, — having 
a small notion of painting, sculpture, and ar- 
chitecture, with some sort of taste for the 
picturesque, — and a smattering of German 
and Spanish literature, and even some idea 
of Indian, Sanscrit, and Chinese learning and 
history, — over and above some little know- 
ledge of trade and agriculture; with a reason- 
able acquaintance with what is called the phi- 
losophy of politics, and a far more extensive 
knowledge of existing parties, factions, and 
eminent individuals, both literary and politi- 
cal, at home and abroad, than ever were re- 
quired in any earlier period of society. The 
dissipation of time and of attention occasion- 
ed by these multifarious occupations, is, of 
course, very unfavourable to the pursuit of 
any abstract or continued study; and even if 
a man could, for himself, be content to remain 
ignorant of many things, in order to obtain a 
profound knowledge of a few, it would be 
difficult for him, in the present state of the 
world, to resist the impulse and the seduc- 
tions that assail him from without. Various 
and superficial knowledge is now not only so 
common, that the want of it is felt as a dis- 
grace ; but the facilities of acquiring it are so 
great, that it is scarcely possible to defend 
ourselves against its intrusion. So many easy 
and pleasant elementary books, — such tempt- 
ing summaries, abstracts, and tables, — such 
beautiful engravings, and ingenious charts, 
and coups-d'ail of information, — so many mu- 
seums, exhibitions, and collections, meet us at 
every corner, — and so much amusing and pro- 
voking talk in every party, that a taste for 
miscellaneous and imperfect information is 
formed, almost before we are aware ; and our 
time and curiosity irrevocably devoted to a 
sort of Encyclopedical trifling. 

In the mean time, the misfortune is, that 
there is no popular nor royal road to the pro- 
founder and more abstract truths of philoso- 
phy : and that these are apt, accordingly, to 
fall into discredit or neglect, at a period when 
it is labour enough for most men to keep them- 
selves up to the level of that great tide of 
popular information, which has been rising, 
with such unexampled rapidity, for the last 
forty years. 

Such, we think, are the most general and 
uncontrollable causes which have recently 
depressed all the sciences requiring deep 
thought and solitary application, far below the 
level of their actual importance ; and pro- 
duced the singular appearance of a partial 
falling off in intellectual enterprise and vigour, 
in an age distinguished, perhaps, above all 
others, for the rapid development of the hu- 
man faculties. The effect we had formerly 
occasion to observe, when treating of the sin- 
gular decay of Mathematical science in Eng- 
land; and so powerful and extensive is the 
operation of the cause, that, even in the intel- 
lectual city which we inhabit, we have known 
instances of persons of good capacity who 
had never found leisure to go beyond the first 
64 



elements of mathematical learning ; and were 
even suspected of having fallen into several 
heresies in metaphysics, merely from want 
of time to get regularly at the truth ! 

If the philosophy of mind has really suffered 
more, from this universal hurry, than all her 
sister sciences of the same serious complex- 
ion, we should be inclined to ascribe this mis- 
fortune, partly to the very excellence of what 
has been already achieved by her votaries, 
and partly to the very severe treatment which 
their predecessors have received at their hands. 
Almost all the great practical maxims of this 
mistress of human life, such as the use of the 
principle of Association in education, and the 
generation and consequences of Habits in all 
periods of life, have been lately illustrated in 
the most popular and satisfactory manner ; 
and rendered so clear and familiar, as rules 
of practical utility, that few persons think it 
necessary to examine into the details of that 
fine philosophy by which they may have been 
first suggested, or brought into notice. There 
is nothing that strikes one as very important 
to be known upon these subjects, which may 
not now be established in a more vulgar and 
empirical manner. — or which requires, in 
order to be understood, that the whole pro- 
cess of a scientific investigation should be 
gone over. By most persons, therefore, the 
labour of such an investigation will be de- 
clined; and the practical benefits applied — 
with ungrateful indifference to the sources 
from which they were derived. Of those, 
again, whom curiosity might still tempt to 
look a little closer upon this great field of 
wonders, no small part are dismayed at the 
scene of ruin which it exhibits. The destruc 
tion of ancient errors, has hitherto constituted 
so very large a part of the task of modern 
philosophers, that they may be said to have 
been employed rather in throwing down, than 
in building up, and have as yet established 
very little but the fallacy of all former phi- 
losophy. Now, they who had been accus- 
tomed to admire that ancient philosophy, can 
not be supposed to be much delighted with 
its demolition ; and, at all events, are natu- 
rally discouraged from again attaching them- 
selves to a system, which they may soon have 
the mortification of seeing subverted in its 
turn. In their minds, therefore, the opening 
of such a course of study is apt only to breed 
a general distrust of philosophy, and to rivet 
a conviction of its extreme and irremediable 
uncertainty: while those who had previously 
been indifferent to the systems of error, are 
displeased with the labour of a needless ref- 
utation ; and disappointed to find, that, after 
a long course of inquiry, they are brought 
back to that very state of ignorance from 
which they had expected it would relieve 
them. 

If anything could counteract the effect of 
these and some other causes, and revive in 
England that taste for abstract speculation for 
which it was once so distinguished, we should 
have expected this to be accomplished by the 
publications of the author before us. — The 
great celebrity of his name, and the uniform 
2S 



506 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



clearness, simplicity, and good sense of his 
statements, might indeed have failed to attract 
those whom similar merits could no longer 
tempt to look into the pages of Locke or of 
Berkeley. But the singular eloquence with 
which Mr. Stewart has contrived to adorn the 
most unpromising parts of his subject, — the 
rich lights which his imagination has every 
where thrown in, with such inimitable judg- 
ment and effect, — the warm glow of moral 
enthusiasm which he has spread over the 
whole of his composition, — and the tone of 
mildness, dignity, and animation which he 
lias uniformly sustained, in controversy, as 
well as in instruction ; are merits which we 
do not remember to have seen united in any 
other philosophical writer; and which might 
have recommended to general notice, topics 
far less engaging than those on which they 
were employed. His former work, on the 
Philosophy of the Human Mind, has accord- 
ingly been more read than any other modern 
book on such subjects; and the volume be- 
fore us, we think, is calculated to be still more 
popular.* 

But it is in the second part of the Prelimi- 
nary Dissertation that we take the chief in- 
terest — as Mr. Stewart has there taken occa- 
sion to make a formal reply to some of our 
hasty speculations, and has done us the honour 
of embodying several of our transitory pages 
in this enduring volume. If we were at 
liberty to yield to the common weaknesses 
of authors, we should probably be tempted to 
defend ourselves in a long dissertation; but 
we know too well what is due to our readers 
and to the public, to think of engaging any 
considerable share of their attention with a 
controversy which may be considered in some 
measure as personal to ourselves; and there- 
fore, however honourable we think it, to be 
thus singled out for equal combat by such an 
antagonist, we shall put what we have to say 
within the shortest possible compass. 

The observations to which Mr. Stewart has 
here condescended to reply, occur in an early 
number of our publication, and were intended 
to show, that as mind was not the proper sub- 
ject of Experiment, but of Observation, so, 
there could be no very close analogy between 
the rules of metaphysical investigation, and 
the most approved methods of inquiry as to 
those physical substances which are subject 
to our disposal and control ; — that as all the 
facts with regard to mind must be derived 
from previous and universal Consciousness, it 
was difficut to see how any arrangement of 
them could add to our substantial knowledge; 
and that there was, therefore, no reason either 
to expect Discoveries in this branch of science, 
or to look to it for any real augmentation of 
our Power. 

With regard to Perception and the other 
primary functions of mind, it was observed, 
that this doctrine seemed to hold without any 
limitation ; and as to the Associating princi- 

* A portion of ihe original article, containing a 
general view of the subject of these Essays, is here 
omitted, for the reasons stated at the head of this 
division. 



pie, while it was admitted that the case wa* 
somewhat different, it was observed, that ad 
men were in reality aware of its existence, 
and acted upon it on all important occasions, 
though they might never have made its laws 
a subject of reflection, nor ever stated its 
general phenomena in the form of an abstract 
proposition. 

To all this Mr. Stewart proceeds to answer, 
by observing, that the distinction between ex- 
periment and observation is really of no im- 
portance whatever, in reference to this argu- 
ment; because the facts disclosed by experi- 
ment are merely phenomena that are observed) 
and the inferences and generalisations thai 
are deduced from the observation of spon- 
taneous phenomena, are just of the same sort 
with those that are inferred from experiment, 
and afford equally certain grounds of conclu- 
sion, provided they be sufficiently numerous 
and consistent. The justice of the last pro- 
position, we do not mean to disrute; and 
assuredly, if any thing inconsistent with it is 
to be found in our former speculations, it must 
have arisen from that haste and inadvertence 
which, we make no doubt, have often betray- 
ed us into still greater errors. But it is very 
far from following from this, that there is not 
a material difference between experiment and 
observation ; or that the philoso} hy of mind 
in not necessarily restrained wilhin very nar- 
row limits, in consequence of that distinction. 
Substances which are in our power, are the 
objects of experiment; those which are not 
in our power, of observation only. "With re- 
gard to the former, it is obvious, that, by well- 
contrived experiments, we may discover many 
things that could never be disclosed by any 
length of observation. With regard to the 
latter, an attentive observer may, indeed, see 
more in them than strikes the eye of a care- 
less spectator: But he can see nothing that 
may not be seen by every body ; and, in cases 
where the appearances are very few, or very 
interesting, the chance is, that he does see 
nothing more — and that all that is left to phi- 
losophy is, to distinguish them into classes, 
and to fit them with appropriate appellations. 
Now, Mind, we humbly conceive, considered 
as a subject of investigation, is the subject of 
observation only ; and is known nearly as well 
by all men, as by those who have most dili- 
gently studied its phenomena. "We cannot 
decompose our sensations." we foimerly ob- 
served, " in a crucible, nor divide our percep- 
tions with a prism." The metaphor was some- 
thing violent; but, the meaning obviously 
was, that we cannot subject those faculties 
to any analogous processes ; nor discover more 
of their nature than consciousness has taught 
all the beings who possess them. Is it a 
satisfactory answer, then, for Mr. Stewart, to 
say, that we may analyse them by reflection 
and attention, and other instruments better 
suited than prisms or crucibles to the intel- 
lectual laboratory which furnishes their ma- 
terials? Our reply is, that we cannot analyse 
them at all ; and can never know more of them 
than has always been known to all to whom 
they had been imparted ; and that, for this 



STEWARTS PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. 



507 



pjain reason, that the truth of every thing that 
is said with regard to the mind, can be deter- 
mined by an appeal to consciousness alone, 
and would not be even intelligible, if it in- 
formed men of any thing that they did not 
previously feel to be true. 

With regard to the actual experiments to 
which Mr. Stewart alludes, as having helped 
to explain the means by which the eye judges 
of distances and magnitudes, these, we must 
observe, are, according to our conception, very 
clearly experiments, not upon mind, but upon 
matter ; and are only entitled to that name at 
all, in so far as they are carried on by means 
of the power we possess of disposing certain 
pieces of matter in certain masses and inter- 
vals. Strictly considered, they are optical 
experiments on the effects produced by dis- 
tance on the light reflected from known 
bodies; and are nearly akin to experiments 
on the effects produced on such reflected rays 
by the interposition of media of different re- 
fracting powers, whether in the shape of 
prisms, or in any other shape. At all events, 
they certainly are not investigations carried 
on solely by attending to the subjects of our 
Consciousness; which is Mr. Stewart's own 
definition of the business of the philosophy 
of mind. 

In answer to our remark, that "no meta- 
physician expects, by analysis, to discover a 
new power, or to excite a new sensation in 
the mind, as the chemist discovers a new earth 
or a new metal," Mr. Stewart is pleased to 
observe — 

" That if is no more applicable to the anatomy 
of the mind, than to the anatomy of the body. 
After all the researches of physiologists on 'his last 
subject, both in the way of observation and of ex- 
periment, no discovery has yet bpen made of a new 
organ, either of power or of pleasure, or even of 
the means of adding a cubit to the human s'afure ; 
but it does not therefore follow that these researches 
are useless. Bv enlarging his knowledge of his 
own internal structure, thev increase the power of 
man, in that way in which alone they profess to 
increase it. They furnish him with resources for 
remedying many of the accidents to which his 
health and his life are liable ; for recovering, in some 
cases, those active powers which disease has de- 
stroyed or impaired ; and. in o'hers. bv giving sight 
to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, for awakening 
powers of perception which were dormant before. 
Nor must we overlook what they have contribu'ed. 
in conjunction with the a»ts of the optician and of 
the mechanist, to pxtend the sphere of those senses, 
and to prolong their duration." — Prelim. Diss. pp. 
xlvi, xlvii. 

Now, ingenious and elegant as this parallel 
must be admitted to be, we cannot help re- 
garding it as utterly fallacious — for this sim- 
ple reason — that the business of anatomv is 
to lay open, with the knife, the secrets of that 
internal structure, which could never other- 
wise be apparent to the keenest eye ; while 
the metaphysical inquirer can disclose nothing 
of which all his pupils are not previously- 
aware. There is no opaque skin, in short, on 
the mind, to conceal its interior mechanism ; 
nor does the metaphysician, when he appeals 
to the consciousness of all thinking beings 
for the truth of his classifications, perform 
any thing at all aaalogous to the dissector, 



when he removes those outer integuments, 
and reveals the wonders of the inward organi- 
sation of our frame. His statements do not 
receive their proof from the previous, though 
perhaps undigested knowledge of his hearers, 
but from the actual revelation v» hich he makes 
to their senses; and his services would evi- 
dently be more akin to those of the metaphy- 
sician, if, instead of actually disclosing what- 
was not previously known, or suspected to 
exist, he had only drawn the attention of an 
incurious generation to the fact that they had 
each ten fingers and ten toes, or that most of 
them had thirty-two teeth, distinguishable 
into masticators and incisors. 

When, from these, and some other consid- 
erations, we had ventured to infer, that the 
knowledge derived from mere observation 
could scarcely make any addition to our 
power, Mr. Stewart refers triumphantly to the 
instance of astronomy; and, taking it almost 
for granted, that all the discoveries in that 
science have been made by observation alone, 
directs the attention of his readers to the in- 
numerable applications which may be made 
of it, to purposes of unquestioned utility. 

" Tn compensation," he observes, "for the in- 
ability of the astronomer to control those move- 
ments of which he studies the laws, he may boast, 
as t already hinted, of the immense accession of a 
more useful power which his discoveries have added 
to the human race, on the surface of their own 
planet. It would be endless to enumerate all the 
practical uses to which his labours are subservient. 
It is sufficient for me to repeat an old. but very 
striking reflection, that the only accurate knowledge 
which Man yet possesses of the surface of the earth, 
has been derived from the previous knowledge he 
had acquired of the phenomena of the stars. Is it 
possible to produce a more apposite, or a more un- 
deniable proof of the universality of Bacon's maxim, 
that ' knowledge is -power? than a fact which de- 
monstrates the essential aid which man has derived, 
in asserting his dominion over this lower world, 
from a branch of science which seems, at first view, 
fined only to gratify a speculative curiosity ; and 
which, in its infancy, served to amuse the leisure 
of the Chaldean shepherd?" — Prelim. Diss. pp. 
xxxviii, xxxix. 

To this we have to answer, in the first place, 
that astronomical science has not been per- 
fected by observation alone ; but that all the 
elements which have imparted lo it the cer- 
tainty, the simplicity, and the sublimity which 
it actually possesses, have been derived from 
experiments made upon substances in the 
power of their contrivers ; — from experiments 
performed with small pieces of matter, on 
the laws of projectile motion — the velocities 
of falling bodies — and on centrifugal and cen- 
tripetal forces. The knowledge of those laws, 
like all other valuable knowledge, was ob- 
tained by experiment only; and" their appli- 
cation to the movements of the heavenly 
bodies was one of those splendid generalisa- 
tions, which derive their chief merit from 
those inherent imperfections of observation by 
vvh'ch they were rendered necessary. 

But, in the second place, we must observe, 
that even holding astronomy to be ;t science 
of mere observation, the power which Mr. 
Stewart says we have obtained by means of 
it ; is confessedly a power, not over the sub- 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



stances with which that science is conversant ; 
but over other substances which stand in some 
relation to them ; and to which, accordingly, 
that science is capable of being applied. It 
is over the earth and the ocean that we have 
extended our dominion by means of our know- 
ledge of the stars. Now, applying this case 
to that of the philosophy of Mind, and as- 
suming, as we seem here entitled to assume, 
that it has invested us with no new power 
over mind itself, — what, we would ask, are 
the other objects over which our power is in- 
creased by means of our knowledge of mind'? 
Is there any other substance to which that 
knowledge can possibly be applied 1 Is there 
any thing else that we either know better, or 
can dispose of more effectually in consequence 
of our observations on our own intellectual 
constitution ? It is evident, we humbly con- 
ceive, that these questions must be answered 
in the negative. The most precise knowledge 
which the metaphysician can acquire by re- 
flecting on the subjects of his consciousness, 
can give him no new power over the mind in 
which he discovers those subjects; and it is 
almost a self-evident proposition, that the 
most accurate knowledge of the subjects of 
consciousness can give him no power over 
any thing but mind. 

There is one other little point connected 
with this argument, which we wish to settle 
with Mr. Stewart. In speaking of the useful 
applications that may be ultimately made of 
the knowledge derived from observation, we 
had said, that for the power or the benefit so 
obtained, mankind were indebted — not to the 
observer, but to him who suggested the ap- 
plication. Mr. Stewart admits the truth of 
this — but adds, that the case is exactly the 
same with the knowledge derived from ex- 
periment : — and that the mere empiric is on a 
footing with the mere observer. Now, we do 
not think the cases exactly the same; — and 
it is in their difference that we conceive the 
great disadvantage of observation to consist. 
Whoever makes an experiment, must have 
the power at least to repeat that experiment 
— and, in almost every case, to repeat it with 
some variation of circumstances. Here, there- 
fore, is one power necessarily ascertained and 
established, and an invitation held out to in- 
crease that power, by tracing it through all 
the stages and degrees of its existence: while 
he who merely observes a phenomenon over 
which he has no control, neither exercises any 
power, nor holds out the prospect of acquir- 
ing any power, either over the subject of his 
observation, or over any other substance. He 
who first ascertained, by experiment, the ex- 
pansive force of steam, and its destruction by 
cold — or the identity of lightning and elec- 
tricity, and the consequent use of the con- 
ducting rod, plainly bestowed, in that instant, 
a great power upon mankind, of which it was 
next to impossible that some important appli- 
cation should not be speedily made. But he 
who first observed the periodical immersions 
and emersions of the satellites of Jupiter, cer- 
lainly neither acquired nor bestowed any 
power in the first instance; and seems to 



have been but a remote and casual auxiliary 
to him whose genius afterwards found Lie 
means of employing those phenomena to 
guide him through the trackless waters of 
the ocean. — Epxeriment. therefore, necessari- 
ly implies power : and, by suggesting analo- 
gous experiments, leads naturally to the in- 
terminable expansion of inquiry and of know- 
ledge : — but observation, for the most part, 
centres in itself, and tends rather to gratify 
and allay our curiosity, than to rouse or in- 
flame it. 

After having thus attemped to prove that 
experiment has no prerogative above mere ob- 
servation, Mr. Stewart thinks it worth while 
to recur again to the assertion, that the phi- 
losophy of mind does admit of experiments ; 
and, after remarking, rather rashly, that 
"the whole of a philosopher's life, if he 
spends it to any purpose, is one continued se- 
ries of experiments on his own faculties and 
powers," he goes on to state, that 

" hardly any experiment can be imagined, 

which has not already been tried by the hand of 
Nature ; displaying, in the' infinite varieties of hu- 
man genius and pursuis, the astonishingly diversi- 
fied effects, resulting from the possible combina- 
tions, of those elementary facuhies and principles, 
of which every man is conscious in himself Savage 
society, and all the different modes of civilization ; 
— the different callings and professions of individu- 
als, whether liberal or mechanical; ihe prejudiced 
clown ; — the factitious man of fashion ; — the vary- 
ing phases of character from infancy lo old age ; — 
the prodigies effected by human art in all the 
objects around us; — laws, — government, — com- 
merce. — religion: — but above all, the records of 
thought, preserved in those volumes which fill our 
libraries; what are they but experiments, by which 
Naiure illus. rales, for our instruction, on her own 
grand scale, the varied range of man's intellectual 
iacubies, and the omnipotence of education in 
fashioi.ing his mind ? " — Prel. Diss. pp. xlv, xlvi. ' 

If experiment be rightly defined the inten- 
tional arrangement of substances in our power, 
for the purpose of observing the result, then 
these are not experiments; and neither im- 
ply, nor tend to bestow, that power which 
enters into the conception of all experiment. 
But the argument, in our apprehension, is 
chargeable with a still more radical fallacy. 
The philosophy of mind is distinctly defined, 
by Mr. Stewart himself, to be that which is 
employed " on phenomena of which we are 
conscious;" its peculiar object and aim is 
stated lo be, " to ascertain the laws of our 
constitution, in so far as they can be ascer- 
tained, by attention to the subjects of our 
consciousness;" and, in a great variety of pas- 
sages, it is explained, that the powers by 
which all this is to be effected, are. reflection 
upon our mental operations, and the faculty 
of calm and patient attention to the sensations 
of which we are conscious. But, if this be 
the proper province and object of the philoso- 
phy of mind, \^hat benefit is the student to 
receive from observing the various effects of 
manners and situation, in imparting a pecu- 
liar colour or bias to the character of the sav- 
age and the citizen, "the prejudiced clown, 
and factitious man of fashion V The obser- 
vation of such varieties is, no doubt, a very 



STEWART'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. 



curious and a very interesting occupation ; — 
but we humbly conceive it to form no part, or, 
at least, a very small and inconsiderable part, 
of the occupation of a student of philosophy. ! 
It is an occupation which can only be erfec- j 
tually pursued, in the world, by travelling, and 
intercourse with society; and, at all events, 
by vigilant observation of what is shown to 
us, by our senses, of the proceedings of our 
fellow-men. The philosophy of mind, how- 
ever, is to be cultivated in solitude and silence 
— by calm reflection on our own mental ex- 
periences, and patient attention to the sub- 
jects of our own consciousness. But can we 
ever be conscious of those varieties of temper 
and character ihat distinguish the different 
conditions of human life? — or, even independ- 
ent of Mr. Stewart's definition — is it reconcila- 
ble to common usage or general understand- 
ing, to call our attention to such particulars 
the study of the philosophy of mind? — Is it 
not, on the contrary, universally understood 
to be the peculiar and limited province of 
that philosophy, to explain the nature and 
distinctions of those primary functions of the 
mind, which are possessed in common by 
men of all vocations and all conditions? — to 
treat, in short, of perception, and attention, 
and memory, and imagination, and volition, 
and judgment, and all the other powers or 
faculties into which our intellectual nature 
may be distinguished? — Is it not with these, 
that Hobbes, and Locke, and Berkeley, and 
Reid. and all the other philosophers who have 
reasoned or philosophised about mind, have 
been occupied ? — or, what share of Mr. Stew- 
art's own invaluable publications is devoted 
to those slighter shades of individual charac- 
ter, to which alone his supposed experiments 
have any reference ? The philosophy of the 
human mind, we conceive, is conversant only 
with what is common to all human beings — 
and with those faculties of which every indi- 
vidual of the species is equally conscious : 
and though it may occasionally borrow illus- 
trations, or even derive some reflected light 
from the contemplation of those slighter va- 
rieties that distinguish one individual from 
another, this evidently forms no part of the 
study of the subjects of our consciousness, 
and can never be permitted to rank as a le- 
gitimate part of that philosophy. 

This exhausts almost all that we have to 
say in defence of our supposed heresies as to 
the importance and practical value of the 
philosophy of mind, considered with refer- 
ence to the primary and more elementary 
faculties of man. With regard to the Asso- 
ciating principle, we have still a word or two 
to add. In our original observations we ad- 
mitted, that this principle seemed to stand in 
a situation somewhat different from the sim- 
pler phenomena of the mind — and that the 
elucidations which Philosophy had furnished 
with regard to its operations, were not so 
easily recognised as previously impressed on 
our consciousness, as most of her revelations. 
We allowed, therefore, that some utility might 
be derived from the clear exposition of this 
more complicated part of our mental organi- 



sation, in respect both to the certainty and the 
extent of its application : at the same time 
that we felt ourselves constrained to add, that, 
even as to this habit of the mind. Philosophy 
could lay no claim to the honours of a dis- 
covcry ; since the principle was undoubtedly 
familiar to the feelings of all men, and was 
acted upon, with unvarying sagacity, in almost 
every case where it could be employed with 
advantage; though by persons who had never 
thought of embodying it in a maxim, or at- 
tending to it as a law of general application. 
The whole scheme of education, it was ob- 
served, has been founded on this principle, 
in every age of the world. u The groom," it 
was added, u who never heard of ideas or as- 
sociations, feeds the young war-horse to the 
sound of the trumpet; and the unphilosophi- 
cal artists who tame elephants, or train dan- 
cing dogs, proceed on the same obvious and 
familiar principle." 

As this part of our speculations has in- 
curred more of Mr. Stewart's disapprobation 
than any thing which we have hitherto at- 
tempted to defend, we think ourselves called 
upon to state the substance of his objections, 
in his own eloquent and impressive words. 
After quoting the sentence we have already 
transcribed, he proceeds: — 

" This argument, I suspect, leads a little too far 
for the purpose of its author; inasmuch as it con- 
cludes si ill more forcibly (in consequence of the 
great familiarity of the subject) against Physics, 
strictly so called, than against the Science of Mind. 
The savage, who never heard of the accelerating 
force of gravity, yet knows how to add to the mo- 
mentum of his missile weapons, by gaining an emi- 
nence ; though a stranger to Newton's third law of 
motion, he applies it to its practical use, when he 
sets his canoe afloat, by pushing with a pole against 
the shore: in the use of his sling, he illustrates, 
with equal success, the doctrine of centrifugal 
forces, as he exemplifies (without any knowledge 
of the experiments of Robins) the principle of the 
rifle-barrel, in feathering his arrow. The seme 
groom who, "in feeding his young war-horse to 
The sound of the drum," has nothing to learn from 
Locke or from Hume concerning the laws of asso- 
ciation, might boast, with far greater reason, that, 
without having looked into Borelli, he can train that 
animal to his various paces ; and that, when he 
exercises him with the longe, he exhibits an ex- 
perimental illustration of the centrifugal force, and 
of the centre of gravity, which was known in the 
riding-school long before their theories were un- 
folded in the Principia of Newton. Even the ope- 
rations of the animal which is the subject of his 
discipline, seem to involve an acquaintance with the 
same physical laws, when we attend to the mathe- 
matical accuracy with which he adapts the obliquity 
of his body to the rate of his circular speed. In 
both cases (in that of the man as well as of the 
brute) this practical knowledge is obtruded on the 
organs of external sense by the hand of Nature 
herself: But it is not on that account the less useful 
to evolve the general theorems which are thus em- 
bodied with their particular applications ; and to 
combine them in a systematical and scientific form, 
for our own instruction and that of others. Does 
it detract from the value of the theory of pneuma 
tics to remark, that the same effects of a vacuum, 
and of the elasticity and pressure of the air, which 
afford an explanation of its most curious pheno- 
mena, are recognized in an instinctive process 
coeval with the first breath which we draw ; and 
exemplified in the mouth of every babe and Buck- 
ling?"— Frel. Diss, p lx. lxi. 
2s2 



510 



METAPHYSICS AND JURISPRUDENCE. 



Now, without recurring to what we have 
already said as to the total absence of power 
in all cases of mere observation, we shall 
merely request our readers to consider, what 
is the circumstance that bestows a value, an 
importance, or an utility, upon the discovery 
and statement of those general laws, which 
are admitted, in the passage now quoted, to 
have been previously exemplified in practice. 
Is it any thing else, than their capacity of a 
more extensive application? — the poss.bility 
or facility of employing them to accomplish 
many things to which they had not been pre- 
viously thought applicable ? If Newton's third 
law of motion could never have been em- 
ployed for any other purpose than to set afloat 
the canoe of the savage — or if the discovery 
of the pressure of the atmosphere had led to 
nothing more than an explanation of the 
operation of sucking — would there have been 
any thing gained by stating that law, or that 
discovery, in general and abstract terms ? 
Would there have been any utility, any dignity 
or real advancement of knowledge, in the mere 
technical arrangement of these limited and fa- 
miliar phenomena under a new classification? 

There can be but one answer to these in- 
terrogatories. But we humbly conceive, that 
all the laws of mental operation which phi- 
losophy may collect and digest, are exactly 
in this last predicament. They have no ap- 
plication to any other phenomena than the 
particular ones by which they are suggested — 
and which they were familiarly employed to 
produce. They are not capable of being ex- 
tended to any other cases; and all that is 
gained by their digestion into a system, is a 
more precise and methodical enumeration of 
truths that were always notorious. 

From the experience and consciousness of 
all men, in all ages, we learn that, when two 
or more objects are frequently presented to- 
gether, the mind passes spontaneously from 
one to the other, and invests both with some- 
thing of the colouring which belongs to the 
most important. This is the law of associa- 
tion ; which is known to every savage, and 
to every clown, in a thousand familiar in- 
stances : and, with regard to its capacity of 
useful application, it seems to be admitted, 
that it has been known and acted upon by 
parents, pedagogues, priests, and legislators, in 
all ages of the world; and has even been em- 
ployed, as an obvious and easy instrument, by 
such humble judges of intellectual resources, 
as common horse-jockies and bear-dancers. 

If this principle, then, was always known, 
and regularly employed wherever any advan- 
tage could be expected from its employment, 
what reason have we to imagine, that any 
substantial benefit is to be derived from its 
scientific investigation, or any important uses 
hereafter discovered for it, in consequence 
merely of investing it with a precise name, 
and stating, under one general theorem, the 
common law of its operation ? If such per- 
sons as grooms and masters of menageries 
have been guided, by their low intellects and 
sordid motives, to its skilful application as a 
means of directing even the lower animals, 



is it to be believed, that there can be many 
occasions for its employment in the govern- 
ment of the human mind, of which men 
have never yet had the sense to bethink 
themselves? Or, can it be seriously main- 
tained, that it is capable of applications as 
much more extensive and important than 
those which have been vulgarly made in past 
ages, as are the uses of Newton's third law 
of motion, compared with the operation of 
the savage in pushing his canoe from the 
shore ? If Mr. Stewart really entertained any 
such opinion as this, it was incumbent upon 
him to have indicated, in a general way, the 
departments in which he conceived that these 
great discoveries were to be made ; and to 
have pointed out some, at least, of the new 
applications, on the assumption of which 
alone he could justify so ambitious a paral- 
lel.* Instead of this, however, we do not 
find that he has contemplated any other 
spheres for the application of this principle, 
than those which have been so long conceded 
to it — ihe formation of taste, and the conduct 
of education : and, with regard to the last and 
most important of these, he has himself re- 
corded an admission, which to us, we will 
confess, appears a full justification of all that 
we have now been advancing, and a suffi- 
cient answer to the positions we have been 
endeavouring to combat. " In so far," Mr. 
Stewart observes, "as education is effectual 
and salutary, it is founded on those princi- 
ples of our nature which have forced them- 
selves upon general observation, in conse- 
quence of the experience of ages." That 
the principle of association is to be reckoned 
in the number of these, Mr. Stewart certainly 
will not deny; and our proposition is, that all 
the principles of our nature which are ca- 
pable of any useful application, have ihus 
"forced themselves on general observation " 
many centuries ago, and can now receive 
little more than a technical nomenclature and 
description from the best efforts of philosophy. 
The sentiments to which we have ventured 
to give expression in these and our former 
hasty observations, were suggested to us. we 
will confess, in a great degree, by the striking 
contrast between the wonders which have 
been wrought by the cultivation of modern 
Physics, and the absolute nothingness of ihe 
effects that have hitherto been produced by 
the labours of the philosophers of mind. We 
have only to mention the names of Astrono- 
my, Chemistry, Mechanics, Optics, and Navi- 
gation ; — nay, we have only to look around us, 
in public or in private, — to cast a glance on 
the machines and manufactures, the ships, 
observatories, steam engines, and elabora to- 
nes, by which we are perpetually surrounded, 
— or to turn our eyes on the most common 



* Upwards of thirty years have now elapsed 
since this was written ; during which a taste for 
metaphysical inquiry has revived in France, and 
been greatly encouraged in Germany. Yet I am 
not aware to what useful applications of the science 
its votaries can yet point ; or what practical improve- 
ment or increase of human power they can trace to 
its cultivation. 



STEWART'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. 



511 



articles of our dress and furniture, — on the 
mirrors, engravings, books, fire-arms, watches, 
barometers, thunder-rods and opera-glasses, 
that present themselves in our ordinary dwell- 
ings, to feel how vast a progress has been 
made in exploring and subduing the physical 
elements of nature, and how stupendous an 
increase the power of man has received, by 
the experimental investigation of her laws. 
Now is any thing in ths astonishing survey 
more remarkable, than the feeling with which 
it is always accompanied, that what we have 
hitherto done in any of these departments is 
but a small part of what we are yet destined 
to accomplish; and that the inquiries which 
have led us so far. will infallibly carry us still 
farther. When we ask, however, for the tro- 
phies of the philosophy of mind, or inquire for 
the vestiges of her progress in the more plastic 
and susceptible elements of human genius 
and character, we are answered only by in- 
genuous silence, or vague anticipations — and 
find nothing but a blank in the record of her 
actual achievements. The knowledge and 
the power of man over inanimate nature has 
been increased tenfold in the course of the 
last two centuries. The knowledge and the 
power of man over the mind of man remains 
almost exactly where it was at the first de- 
velopment of his faculties. The natural phi- 
losophy of antiquity is mere childishness and 
dotage, and their physical inquirers are mere 
pigmies and drivellers, compared with their 
successors in the present age ; but their logi- 
cians, and metaphysicians, and moralists, and, 
what is of infinitely more consequence, the 
practical maxims and the actual effects result- 
ing from their philosophy of mind, are very 
nearly on a level with the philosophy of the 
present day. The end and aim of all that 
philosophy is to make education rational and 
effective, and to train men to such sagacity 
and force of judgment, as to induce them to 
cast off the bondage of prejudices, and to fol- 
low happiness and virtue with assured and 
steady steps. We do not know, however, 
what modern work contains juster, or more 
profound views on the subject of education, 
than may be collected from the writings of 
Xenophon and Quintilian, Polybius, Plutarch, 
and Cicero : and, as to that sagacity and just- 
ness of thinking, which, after all, is the fruit 
by which this tree of knowledge must be ulti- 
mately known, we are not aware of many 
modern performances that exemplify it in a 
stronger degree, than many parts of the his- 
tories of Tacitus and Thucydides, or the Satires 
and Epistles of Horace. In the conduct of 
business and affairs, Ave shall find Pericles, 
and Caesar, and Cicero, but little inferior to the 
philosophical politicians of the present day; 
and, for lofty and solid principles of practi- 
cal ethics, we might safely match Epictetus 
and Antoninus (without mentioning Aristotle, 
Plato, Plutarch, Xenophon. or Polybius,) with 
most of our modern speculators. 

Where, then, it may be asked, are the per- 
formances of this philosophy, which makes 
such large promises ] or, what are the grounds 
upon which we should expect to see so much 



accomplished, by an instrument which has 
hitherto effected so little 1 It is in vain for 
Mr. Stewart to say, that the science is yet but 
in its infancy, and that it will bear its fruit in . 
due season. The truth is. that it has, of ne- 
cessity, been more constantly and diligently 
cultivated than any other. It has always 
been the first object with men of talent and 
good affections, to influence and to form the 
minds of others, and to train their own to the 
highest pitch of vigour and perfection : and 
accordingly, it is admitted by Mr. Stewart, 
that the most important principles of this phi- 
losophy have been long ago " forced upon 
general observation" by the feeLngs and ex- 
perience of past ages. Independently, how- 
ever, of this, the years that have passed since 
Hobbes, and Locke, and Malebranche. and 
Leibnitz drew the attention of Europe to this 
study, and the very extraordinary genius and 
talents of those who have since addicted them- 
selves to it. are far more than enough to have 
brought it, if not to perfection, at least to such 
a degree of excellence, as no longer to leave 
it a matter of dispute, whether it was really 
destined to add to our knowledge and our 
power, or to produce any sensible effects upon 
the happiness and condition of mankind. 
That society has made great advances in com- 
fort and intelligence, during that period, is 
indisputable ; but we do not find that Mr. 
Stewart himself imputes any great part of this 
improvement to our increased knowledge of 
our mental constitution ; and indeed it is quite 
obvious, that it is an effect resulting from the 
increase of political freedom — the influences 
of reformed Christianity — the invention of 
printing — and that improvement and multipli- 
cation of the mechanical arts, that have ren- 
dered the body of the people far more busy, 
wealthy, inventive and independent, than they 
ever were in any former period of society. 

To us, therefore, it certainly does appear, 
that the lofty estimate which Mr. Stewart has 
again made of the practical importance of his 
favourite studies, is one of those splendid vi^ 
sions by which men of genius have been so 
often misled, in the enthusiastic pursuit of 
science and of virtue. That these studies are 
of a very dignified and interesting nature, we 
admit most cheerfully; — that they exercise 
and delight the understanding, by reasonings 
and inquiries, at once subtle, cautious, and 
profound, and either gratify or exalt a keen 
and aspiring curiosity, must be acknowledged 
by all who have been initiated into their ele- 
ments. Those who have had the good fortune 
to be so initiated by the writings of Mr. Stew- 
art, will be delighted to add, that they are 
blended with so many lessons of gentle and of 
ennobling virtue — so many striking precepts 
and bright examples of liberality, high-minded- 
ness, and pure taste — as to be calculated, in an 
eminent degree, to make men love goodness 
and aspire to elegance, and to improve at once 
j the understanding, the imagination, and the 
heart. But this must be the limit of our praise. 

The sequel of this article is not now re. 
printed, for the reasons already stated. 



NOVELS, TALES, 

AND 

PROSE WORKS OF FICTION. 



As I perceive I have, in some of the following papers, made a sort of apology for oeek- 
mg to direct the attention of my readers to things so insignificant as Novels, it may be worth 
while ta inform the present generation that, in my youth, writings of this sort were rated 
very low with us — scarcely allowed indeed to pass as part of a nation's permanent literature 
— and generally deemed altogether unworthy of any grave critical notice. Nor, in truth— 
in spite of Cervantes and Le Sage — and Marivaux, Rousseau, and Voltaire abroad — and even 
our own Richardson and Fielding at home — would it have been easy to controvert that opin- 
ion, in our England, at the time : For certainly a greater mass of trash and rubbish never 
disgraced the press of any country, than the ordinary Novels that filled and supported our 
circulating libraries, down nearly to the time of Miss Edgeworth's first appearance. There 
had been, the Vicar of Wakefield, to be sure, before ; and MissBurney's Evelina and Cecilia 
— and Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, and some bolder and more varied fictions of the Misses 
Lee. But the staple of our Novel market was, beyond imagination, despicable : and had 
consequently sunk and degraded the whole department of literature, of which it had usurped 
the name. 

All this, however, has since been signally, and happily, changed ; and that rabble rout 
of abominations driven from our confines for ever. The Novels of Sir Walter Scott are, beyond 
all question, the most remarkable productions of the present age ; and have made a sensa- 
tion, and produced an effect, all over Europe, to which nothing parallel can be mentioned 
since the days of Rousseau and Voltaire ; while, in our own country, they have attained a 
place, inferior only to that which must be filled for ever by the unapproachable glory of 
Shakespeare. With the help, no doubt, of their political revolutions, they have produced, 
in Fiance, Victor Hugo, Balsae, Paul de Cocq, &c, the promessi sposi in Italy — and Cooper, 
at least, in America. — In England, also, they have had imitators enough; in the persons of 
Mr. James, Mr. Lover, and others. But the works most akin to them in excellence have 
rather, I think, been related as collaterals than as descendants. Miss Edge worth, indeed, 
stands more in the line of their ancestry; and I take Miss Austen and Sir E. L. Bulwer to 
be as intrinsically original ; — as w v ell as the great German writers, Goethe. Tiek, Jean Paul, 
Richter, &c. Among them, however, the honour of this branch of literature has at any rate 
been splendidly redeemed ; — and now bids fair to maintain its place, at the head of all that 
is graceful and instructive in the productions of modern genius. 



(iitia, 1809.) 

Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss Edgeworth, Author of " Practical Education," 
'•'Belinda," "Castle Rackrent," &c. 12mo. 3 vols. London: 1809. 

If it were possible for reviewers to Envy any other writer, male or female, of her gene- 
the authors who are brought before them for j ration. Other arts and sciences have their 
judgment, we rather think we should be ! use, no doubt ; and, Heaven knows, they have 
tempted to envy Miss Edgeworth; — not, | their reward and their fame. But the great 
however, so much for her matchless powers ; art is the art of living; and the chief science 
of probable invention — her never-failing good j the science of being happy. Where there is 
sense and cheerfulness — nor her finediscrimi- ! an absolute deficiency of good sense, these 
nation of characters — as for the delightful | cannot indeed be taught; and. with an extra- 
consciousness of having done more good than i ordinary share of it, they may be acquired 
512 



MISS EDGEWORTHS TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



513 



without an instructor: but the most common 
case is, \o be capable of learning, and yet to 
require teaching; and a far greater part of 
the misery which exists in society arises from 
ignorance, than either from vice or from inca- 
pacity. 

Miss Edgeworth is the great modern mis- 
tress in this school of true philosophy ; and 
has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her 
predecessors. By her many excellent tracts 
on education, she has conferred a benefit on 
the whole mass of the population ; and dis- 
charged, with exemplary patience as well as 
extraordinary judgment, a task which super- 
ficial snirits may perhaps mistake for an hum- 
ble and easy one. By her Popular Tales, she 
has rendered an invaluable service to the 
middling and lower orders of the people ; and 
by her Novels, and by the volumes before us, 
has made a great and meritorious effort to 
promote the happiness and respectability of 
the higher classes. On a former occasion we 
believe we hinted to her, that these would 
probably be the least successful of all her 
labours; and that it was doubtful whether 
she could be justified for bestowing so much 
of her time on the case of a few persons, who 
scarcely deserved to be cured, and were 
scarcely capable of being corrected. The 
foolish ami unhappy part of the fashionable 
world, for the most part, " is not fit to bear 
itself convinced." It is loo vain, too busy, 
and loo dissipated to listen to, or remember 
any thing that is said to it. Every thing seri- 
ous it repels, by "its dear wit ami gay "rheto- 
ric ;" and against every thing poignant, it 
seeks shelter in the impenetrable armour of 
its conjunct audacity. 

" Laugh'd at, it laughs again ; — and, stricken hard, 
Turns to the stroke its adamantine scales, 
That fear no discipline of human hands." 

A book, on the other hand, and especially a 
witty and popular book, is still a thing of con- 
sequence, to such of the middling classes of 
society as are in the habit of reading. They 
dispute about it, and think of it ; and as they 
occasionally make themselves ridiculous by 
copying the manners it displays, so they are 
apt to be impressed with the great lessons it 
may be calculated to teach ; and, on the whole, 
receive it into considerable authority among 
the regulators of their lives and opinions. — 
But a fashionable person has scarcely any 
leisure to read ; and none to think of what he 
has been reading. It would be a derogation 
from his dignity to speak of a book in any 
terms but those of frivolous derision ; and a 
strange desertion of his own superiority, to 
allow himself to receive, from its perusal, any 
impressions which could at all affect his con- 
duct or opinions. 

But though, for these reasons, we continue 
to think that Miss Edgeworth's fashionable 
patients will do less credit to her prescriptions 
than the more numerous classes to whom 
they might have been directed, we admit 
that her plan of treatment is in the highest 
degree judicious, and her conception of the 
disorder most luminous and precise. 
65 



There are two great sources of unhappiness 
to those whom fortune and nature seem to 
have placed above the reach of ordinary 
miseries. The one is ennui — that stagnation 
of life ami feeling which results from the ab- 
sence of all motives to exertion ; and by 
which the justice of providence has so fully 
compensated the partiality of fortune, that it 
may be fairly doubted whether, upon the 
whole, the race of beggars is not happier 
than the race of lords; and whether those 
vulgar wants that are sometimes so importu- 
nate, are not, in this world, the chief ministers 
of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects 
all indolent persons who can live on in the 
rank in which they were born, without the 
necessity of working: but, in a free country, 
it rarely occurs in any great degree of viru- 
lence, except among those who are already 
at the summit of human felicity. Below this, 
there is room for ambition, and envy, and 
emulation, and all the feverish movements of 
aspiring vanity and unresting selfishness, 
which act as prophylactics against this more 
dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker 
which corrodes the full-blown flower of hu- 
man felicity — the pestilence which smites at 
the bright hour of noon. 

The other curse of the happy, has a range 
more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, tor- 
tures only the comparatively rich and for- 
tunate; but is most active among the least 
distinguished ; and abates in malignity as we 
ascend to the lofty regions of pure ennui. 
This is the desire of being fashionable; — the 
restless and insatiable passion to pass for 
creatures a little more distinguished than we 
really are — with the mortification of frequent 
failure, and the humiliating consciousness of 
being perpetually exposed to it. Among those 
who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire," 
and are thus above the chief physical evils 
of existence, we do believe that this is a more 
prolific source of unhappiness, than guilt, dis- 
ease, or wounded affection ; and that more 
positive misery is created, and more true en- 
joyment excluded, by the eternal fretting 
and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by 
all the ravages of passion, the desolations of 
war, or the accidents of mortality. This may 
appear a strong statement ; but we make it 
deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its 
truth. The wretchedness which it produces 
may not be so intense; but it is of much 
longer duration, and spreads over a far wider 
circle. It is quite dreadful, indeed, io think 
what a sweep this pest has taken among tru; 
comforts of our prosperous population. To 
be thought fashionable — that is, to be thought 
more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing 
of intimacy with a greater number of distin 
guished persons than they really are, is the 
great and laborious pursuit of four families 
out of five, the members of which are ex 
empted from the necessity 01* daily industry. 
In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents 
are wasted ; their tempers, soured ; their affec- 
tions palsied ; and their natural manners and 
dispositions altogether sophisticated and lost. 

These are the giant curses of fashionable 



514 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



life, and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly 
dedicated her two best tales to the delinea- 
tion of their symptoms. The history of "Lord 
Glenthom" is a fine picture of ennui — that of 
"Almeria" an instructive representation of 
the miseries of aspirations after fashion. We 
do not know whether it was a part of the fair 
writer's design to represent these maladies as 
absolutely incurable, without a change of 
condition ; but the fact is, that in spite of the 
best dispositions and capacities, and the most 
powerful inducements to action, the hero of 
ennui makes no advances towards amend- 
ment, till he is deprived of his title and estate ! 
and the victim of fashion is left, at the end of 
the tale, pursuing her weary career, with fa- 
ding hopes and wasted spirits, but with in- 
creased anxiety and perseverance. The moral 
use of these narratives, therefore, must consist 
in warning us against the first approaches of 
evils which can never afterwards be resisted. 

These are the great twin scourges of the 
prosperous: But there are other maladies, of 
no slight malignity, to which they are pecu- 
liarly liable. One of these, arising mainly 
from want of more worthy occupation, is that 
perpetual use of stratagem and contrivance — 
that little, artful diplomacy of private life, by 
which the simplest and most natural transac- 
tions are rendered complicated and difficult, 
and the common business of existence made 
to depend on the success of plots and counter- 
plots. By the incessant practice of this petty 
policy, a habit of duplicity and anxiety is in- 
fallibly generated, which is equally fatal to 
integrity and enjoyment. We gradually come 
to look on others with the distrust which we 
are conscious of deserving; and are insensibly 
formed to sentiments of the most unamiable 
selfishness and suspicion. It is needless to 
say, that all these elaborate artifices are worse 
than useless to the person who employs them ; 
and that the ingenious plotter is almost always 
baffled and exposed by the downright honesty 
of some undesigning competitor. Miss Edge- 
worth, in her tale of " Manoeuvring," has given 
a very complete and. most entertaining repre- 
sentation of " the by-paths and indirect crook'd 
ways," by which these artful and inefficient 
people generally make their way to disap- 
pointment. In the tale, entitled "Madame de 
Fleury," she has given some useful examples 
of the ways in which the rich may most ef- 
fectually do good to the poor — an operation 
which, we really believe, fails more frequently 
from want of skill than of inclination : And, in 
"The Dan," she has drawn a touching and 
most impressive picture of the wretchedness 
which the poor so frequently suffer, from the 
unfeeling thoughtlessness which withholds 
from them the scanty earnings of their labour. 

Of these tales, " Ennui " is the best and the 
most entertaining — though the leading char- 
acter is somewhat caricatured, and the de- 
nouement is brought about by a discovery 
which shocks by its needless improbability. 
Lord Glenthom is bred up, by a false and in- 
dulgent guardian, as the heir to an immense 
English and Irish estate ; and, long before he 
y% of age, exhausts almost all the resources by 



which life can be made tolerable to thqse who 
have nothing to wish for. Born on the very 
pinnacle of human fortune, "he had nothing 
to do but to sit still and enjoy the barrenness 
of the prospect." He tries travelling, gaming, 
gluttony, hunting, pugilism, and coach-driv- 
ing ; but is so pressed down with the load of 
life, as to be repeatedly on the eve of suicide. 
He passes over to Ireland, where he receives 
a temporary relief, from the rebellion — and 
from falling in love with a lady of high char- 
acter and accomplishments; but the effect of 
these stimulants is speedily expended, and 
he is in danger of falling into a confirmed 
lethargy, when it is fortunately discovered 
that he has been changed at nurse ! and that, 
instead of being a peer of boundless fortune, 
he is the son of a cottager who lives on pota- 
toes. With great magnanimity, he instantly 
gives up the fortune to the rightful owner, 
who has been bred a blacksmith, and takes 
to the study of the law. At the commence- 
ment of this arduous career, he fortunately 
falls in love, for the second time, with the 
lady entitled, after the death of the black- 
smith, to succeed to his former estate. Pover- 
ty and love now supply him with irresistible 
motives for exertion. He rises in his profes- 
sion ; marries the lady of his heart ; and in 
due time returns, an altered man. to the pos- 
session of his former affluence. 

Such is the naked outline of a story, more 
rich in character, incident, and reflection, than 
any English narrative which we can now call 
to remembrance : — as rapid and various as 
the best tales of Voltaire, and as full of prac- 
tical good sense and moral pathetic as any of 
the other tales of Miss Edgeworth. The Irish 
characters are inimitable ; — not the coarse ca- 
ricatures of modern playwrights — but drawn 
with a spirit, a delicacy, and a precision, to 
which we do not know if there be any paral- 
lel among national delineations. As these are 
tales of fashionable life, we shall present our 
readers, in the first place, with some traits of 
an Irish lady of rank. Lady Geraldine — the 
enchantress whose powerful magic almost 
raised the hero of ennui from his leaden slum- 
bers is represented with such exquisite liveli- 
ness and completeness of effect, that the 
reader can scarcely help imagining that he 
has formerly been acquainted with the origi- 
nal. Every one, at least we conceive, must 
have known somebody, the recollection of 
whom must convince him that the following 
description is as true nature as it is creditable 
to art : — 

"As Lady Geraldine entered, I gave one involun- 
tary glance of curiosity. I saw a tall, finely-shaped 
woman, with the commanding air of a person of 
rank: she moved well; not with feminine timidity, 
yet with ease, promptitude, and decision. She had 
fine eyes, and a fine complexion, yet no regularity 
of feature. The only thin? that struck me a3 really 
extraordinary, was her indifference when I was in- 
troduced to her. Every bo.ly had seemed extremely 
desirous that I should see her ladyship, and that 
her ladyship should see me ; and I was rather sur- 
prised by her unconcerned air. This piqued me, 
and fixed my attention. She turned from me, and 
began to converse with others. Hf j r voice was 
agreeable, though rather loud : she did not speak 



MISS EDGEWORTH'S TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



515 



with the Irish accent ; but, when I listened ma- 
l'cionsly, I delected certain Hibernian inflexions — 
nothing of the vulgar Irish idiom, but something 
that was more interrogative, more exclamatory, and 
perhaps more rhetorical, than the common language 
of English ladies, accompanied with infinitely more 
animation of countenance and demonstrative ges- 
ture. This appeared to me peculiar and unusual, but 
not affected. She was uncommonly eloquent ; and 
yet, without action, her words were not sufficiently 
rapid to express her ideas. Her manner appeared 
foreign, yet it was not quite French. If I had 
been obliged to decide, I should, however, have 
pronounced it rather more French than English. 
To determine which it was, or whether I had ever 
seen any thing similar, I stood considering her lady- 
ship wiih more attention than I had ever bestowed 
on any other woman. The words striking— fasci- 
nating — bewitching, occurred to me as I looked at 
her and heard her speak. I resolved to turn my 
eyes away, and shut my ears ; for I was positively 
determined not to like her; I dreaded so much the 
idea of a second Hymen. I retreated to the farthest 
window, and looked out very soberly upon a dirty 
fish-pond. 

" If she had treated me wiih tolerable civility at 
first, I never should have thought about her. High- 
born and high-bred, she seemed to consider more 
what she should think of others, than what others 
thought of her. Frank, candid, and affable, yet 
opinionated, insolent, and an egotist: her candour 
and affability appeared the effect of a naturally good 
temper; her insolence and egotism only that of a 
spoiled child. She seemed to talk of herself purely 
to oblige others, as the most interesting possible 
topic of conversation; for such it had always been 
to her fond mother, who idolized her ladyship as an 
only daughter, and the representative of an ancient 
house. Confident of her talents, conscious of her 
charms, and secure of her station, Lady Geraldine 
gave free scope to her high spirits, her fancy, and 
her turn for ridicule. She looked, spoke, and acted, 
like a person privileged to think, say, and do, what 
she pleased. Her raillery, like the raillery of princes, 
was without fear of retort. She was not ill-natured, 
yet careless to whom she gave offence, provided 
she produced amusement ; and in this she seldom 
failed ; for, in her conversation, there was much of 
the raciness of Irish wit, and the oddity of Irish 
humour. The singularity that struck me most 
about her ladyship was her indifference to flattery. 
She certainly preferred frolic. Miss Bland was her 
humble companion ; Miss Tracey her butt. It was 
one of Lady Geraldine's delights, to humour Miss 
Tracey's rnge for imitating the fashions of fine 
people. ' Now you shall see Miss Tracey appear 
at the ball to-morrow, in every thing that I have 
sworn to her is fashionable. Nor have I cheated 
her in a single article : but the tout ensemble I leave 
to her better judgment ; and you shall see her, I 
trust, a perfect monster, formed of every creature's 
best: Lady Kilrush's feathers, Mrs. Moore's wig, 
Mrs. O'Connor's gown, Mrs. Leighton's sleeves, 
and all the necklaces of all the Miss Ormsbys. 
She has no taste, no judgment; none at all, poor 
thing; but she can imitate as well as those Chinese 
painters, who, in their drawings, give you the flower 
of one plant stuck on the stalk of another, and gar- 
nished wiih the leaves of a third.' " — i. 130—139. 

This favourite character is afterwards ex- 
hibited in a great variety of dramatic contrasts. 
For example : — 

" Lord Craiglethorpe was, as Miss Tracey had 
described him, very stiff, cold, and high. His man- 
ners were in the extreme of English reserve ; and 
his ill-bred show of contempt for the Irish was suf- 
ficient provocation and justificaiion of Lady Geral- 
dine's ridicule. He was much in awe of his fair 
and witty cousin : and she could easily put him out 
of countenance, for he was, in his way, extremely 
bashful. Once, when he was out of the room, Lady 



Geraldine exclaimed, ' That cousin Craiglethorpe 
of mine is scarcely an agreeable man: The awk- 
wardness of mauvaise-hont might be pitied and par- 
doned, even in a nobleman,' continued her ladyship, 
'if it really proceeded from humility; but here, 
when I know it is connected with secret and inordi- 
nate arrogance, 'tis past all endurance. As the 
Frenchman said of the Englishman, for whom even 
his politeness could not find another compliment, 
"II faut avouer que ce Monsieur a un grand talent 
pour le silence ;" — he holds his tongue till people 
actually believe that he has somothing to say — a 
mistake they could never fall into if he would but 
speak.— It is not timidity ; it is all pride. I would 
pardon his dulness, and even his ignorance ; for one, 
as you say, might be the fault of his nature, and the 
other of his education : but his self-sufficiency is his 
own fault; and that I will not, and cannot pardon. 
Somebody says, that nature may make a fool, but 
a coxcomb is always of his own making. Now, 
my cousin — (as he is my cousin, I may say what I 
please of him,) — my cousin Craiglethorpe is a 
solemn coxcomb, who thinks, because his vanity is 
not talkative and sociable, that it's not vanity. 
What a mistake !' "— i. 146—148. 

These other traits of her character are given, 
on different occasions, by Lord Glenthorn : — 

"At first I had thought her merely superficial, 
and intent solely upon her own amusement ; but I 
soon found that she had a taste for literature beyond 
what could have been expected in one who lived so 
dissipated a life ; a depth of reflection that seemed 
inconsistent with the rapidity with which she 
thought ; and, above all, a degree of generous in- 
dignation against meanness and vice, which seemed 
incompatible with the selfish character of a fine 
lady ; and which appeared quite incomprehensible to 
the imitating tribe of her fashionable companions." 

i. 174. 

" Lady Geraldine was superior to manoeuvring 
little arts, and petty stratagems, to attract attention. 
She would not sloop, even to conquer. From gen- 
tlemen she seemed to expect attention as her right, 
as the right of her sex ; not to beg, or accept of it 
as a favour : if it were not paid, she deemed the gen- 
tleman degraded, not herself. Far from being 
mortified by any preference shown to other ladies, 
her countenance betrayed only a sarcastic sort of 
pity for the bad taste of the men, or an absolute in- 
difference and look of haughty absence. I saw that 
she beheld with disdain the paltry competitions of 
the young ladies her companions: as her compan- 
ions, indeed, she hardly seemed to consider them ; 
she tolerated their foibles, forgave their envy, and 
never exerted any superiority, except to show her 
contempt of vice and meanness." — i. 198, 199. 

This may suffice as a specimen of the high 
life of the piece ; which is more original and 
characteristic than that of Belinda — and alto- 
gether as lively and natural. For the low life, 
we do not know if we could extract a more 
felicitous specimen than the following de- 
scription of the equipage in which Lord Glen- 
thorn's English and French servant were com- 
pelled to follow their master in Ireland. 

" From the inn yard came a hackney chaise, in 
a most deplorably crazy state; the body mounted 
up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, 
nodding forwards, one door swinging open, three 
blinds up, because they could not be let down, 
the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels 
half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and 
ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the 
harness ; wretched little dog-tired creatures, that 
looked as if they had been driven to the last gasp, 
and as if they had never been rubbed down in their 
lives ; their bones starting through their skin ; one 
lame, the other blind ; one with a raw back, the 



516 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



o:her with a called breast ; one with his neck poking 
down over his collar, and the other with his head 
dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at 
arms' length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, 
in half a hat, and half a wig, both awry in opposite 
directions ; a long tattered coat, tied round his waist 
by a hay-rope ; the jagged rents in the skirts of this 
coat showing his bare legs, marbled of many co- 
lours ; while something like stockings hung loose 
about his ankles. The noises he made, by way of 
threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend 
not to describe. In an indignant voice I called to 
the landlord — ' I hope these are not the horses — I 
hope this is not the chaise, intended for my ser- 
vants.' The innkeeper, and the pauper who was 
preparing to officiate as postilion, both in the same 
instant exclaimed — ' Sorrow better chaise in the 
county!' 'Sorrow!' said I — what do you mean 
by sorrow?' ' That there's no better, plase your 
honour, can be seen. We have two more to be 
sure — but one has no top, and the other no bottom. 
Any way, there's no better can be seen than this 
same.' 'And these horses!' criedl — ' why this 
horse is so lame he can hardly stand.' * Oh, plase 
your honour, tho' he can't stand, he'll go fast 
enough. He has a great deal of the rogue in him, 
plase your honour. He's always that way at first 
setting out.' * And that wretched animal with the 
galled breast [' ' He's all the better for it, when 
once he warms ; it's he that will go with the speed 
of light, plase your honour. Sure, is not he Knocke- 
croghery ? and didn't I give fifteen guineas for him, 
barring the luckpenny, at the fair of Knockecrog- 
hery, and he rising four year old at the same time? ' 
44 Then seizing his whip and reins in one hand, 
he clawed up his stockings with the other : so with 
one easy step he got into his place, and seated him- 
self, coachman-like, upon a well-worn bar of wood, 
that served as a coach-box. ' Throw me the loan 
of a trusty, Bartly, for a cushion,' said he. A 
frieze coat was thrown up over the horse's heads. 
Paddy caught it. ' Where are you, Hosey !' cried 
he to a lad in charge of the leaders. • Sure I'm 
only rowling a wisp of straw on my leg,' replied 
Hosey. ' Throw me up,' added this paragon of 
postilions, turning to one of the crowd of idle by- 
standers. ' Arrah, push me up, can't ye ?' — A 
man took hold of his knee, and threw him upon the 
horse. He was in his seat in a trice. Then cling- 
ing by the mane of his horse, he scrambled for the 
bridle which was under the other horse's feet, 
reached it, and, well satisfied with himself, looked 
round at Paddy, who looked back to the chaise- 
door at my angry servants, ' secure in the last event 
of things.' In vain the Englishman, in monotonous 
anger, and the Frenchman in every note of the 
gamut, abused Paddy. Necessity and wit were on 
Paddy's side. He parried all that was said against 
his chaise, his horses, himself, and his country, 
with invincible comic dexterity ; till at last, both 
his adversaries, dumb-founded, clambered into the 
vehicle, where they were instantly shut up in straw 
and darkness. Paddy, in a triumphant .tone, called 
to my postilions, bidding them ' get on, and not be 
stopping the way any longer.' " — i. 64, 65. 

By and by the wheel horse stopped short, 
and began to kick furiously. 

" ' Never fear,' reiterated Paddy. ' I'll engage 
I'll be up wid him. Now for it, Knockecroghery ! 
Oh the rogue, he thinks he has me at a nonplush; 
but I'll show him the differ? 

" After this brag of war, Paddy whipped, Knock- 
ecroghery kicked, and Paddy, seemingly uncon- 
scious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking 
horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the 
other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, 
escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a 
mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which 
made us alternately look upon him as a madman 
and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of suc- 
cess, and of the sympathy of the spectators. 



" ' Ah ! didn't I compass him cleverly then ? Oh 
the villain, to be browbating me ! I'm too cute for 
him yet. See, there, now, he's come too; and I'll 
be his bail he'll go asy enough wid me. Ogh ! he 
has a fine spirit of his own; but it's I that can 
match him. 'Twould be a poor case if a man like 
me couldn't match a horse any way, let alone a 
mare, which this is, or it never would be so vi- 
cious/ "— i. 68, 69. 

The most delectable personage, however, 
in the whole tale, is the ancient Irish nurse 
Ellinor. The devoted affection, infantine sim- 
plicity, and strange pathetic eloquence of this 
half- savage, kind-hearted creature, afford Miss 
Edgeworth occasion for many most original 
and characteristic representations. We shall 
scarcely prepossess our English readers in 
her favour, by giving the description of her 
cottage. 

" It wa3 a wretched looking, low, mud-walled 
cabin. At one end it was propped by a buttress of 
loose stones, upon which stood a goat reared on his 
hind legs, to browse on the grass that grew on the 
housetop. A dunghill was before the only window, 
at the other end of the house, and close to the door 
was a puddle of the dirties? of dirty water, in which 
ducks were dabbling. At my approach, there came 
out of the cabin a pig, a calf, a lamb, a kid, and two 
geese, all with their legs tied ; followed by cocks, 
hens, chickens, a dog, a cat, a kitten, a beggar- 
man, a beggar-woman, with a pipe in her mouth ; 
children innumerable, and a stout girl, with a pitch- 
fork in her hand ; altogether more than I, looking 
down upon the roof as I sat on horseback, and 
measuring the superficies with my eye ; could have 
possibly supposed the mansion capable of containing. 
I asked if Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home ; but 
the dog barked, the geese cackled, the turkeys 
gobbled, and the beggars begged with one aeccrd, 
so loudly, that there was no chance of rny being 
heard. When the girl had at last succeeded in ap- 
peasing them all with her pitchfork, she answered, 
that Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home, but that she 
was out with the potatoes ; and she ran to fetch her, 
after calling to the boys, who was within in the room 
smoking, to come out to his honour. As soon as 
they had crouched under the door, and were able 
to stand upright, they welcomed me with a very 
good grace, and were proud to see me in the king- 
dom. I asked if they were all Ellinor's sons. 'All 
entirely,' was the first answer. ' Not one but one,' 
was the second answer. The third made the other 
two intelligible. ' Plase your Honour, we are all 
her sons-in-law, except myself, who am her lawful 
son.' 'Then you are my foster brother ?' ' No, 
plase your Honour, it's not me, but my brother, 
and he's not in it.* 'Not in it V ' No, plase your 
Honour ; becaase he's in the forge up above. Sure 
he's the blacksmith, my lard. ' And what are you V 
' I'm Ody, plase your honour ;' the short for Owen," 
&c— i. 94—96. 

It is impossible, however, for us to select 
any thing that could give our readers even a 
vague idea of the interest, both serious and 
comic, that is produced by this original char 
acter, without quoting more of the story than 
we can now make room for. We cannot 
leave it, however, without making our ac- 
knowledgments to Miss Edgeworth for the 
handsome way in which she has treated our 
country, and for the judgment as well as 
liberality she has shown in the character of 
Mr. Macleod, the proud, sagacious, friendly, 
and reserved agent of her hero. There is in- 
finite merit and powers of observation even in 
her short sketch of his exterior. 



MISS EDGEWORTH'S TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



51' 



" He was a hard-featured, 6trong built, perpen- 
dicular man, with a remarkable quietness of deport- 
ment : he spoke with deliberate distinctness, in an 
accent slightly Scotch ; and, in speaking, he made 
use of no gesticulation, but held himself surprisingly 
still. No part of him but his eyes, moved ; and 
they had an expression of slow, but determined 
good sense. He was sparing of his words ; but the 
tew that he used said much, and went directly to 
the point." — i. 82. 

But we must now take an abrupt and reluct- 
ant leave of Miss Edgeworth. Thinking as 
we do, that her writings are, beyond all com- 

Earison, the most useful of any that have come 
efore us since the commencement of our 
critical career, it would be a point of conscience 
with us to give them all the notoriety that they 
can derive from our recommendation, even if 
their execution were in some measure liable 
to objection. In our opinion, however, they 
are as entertaining as they are instructive; 
and the genius, and wit, and imagination they 
display, are at least as remarkable as the just- 
ness of the sentiments they so powerfully in- 



culcate. To some readers they may seem to 
want the fairy colouring of high fancy and ro- 
mantic tenderness; and it is very true that 
they are not poetical love tales, any more than 
they are anecdotes of scandal. We have 
great respect for the admirers of Rousseau and 
Petrarca; and we have no doubt that Miss 
Edgeworth has great respect for them; — but 
the world, both high and low, which she is 
labouring to mend, have no sympathy with 
this respect. They laugh at these things, and 
do not understand them; and therefore, the 
solid sense which she presses perhaps rather 
too closely upon them, though it admits of re- 
lief from wit anil direct pathos, really could 
not be combined with the more luxuriant or- 
naments of an anient and tender imagination. 
We say this merely to obviate the only objec- 
tion which we think can be made to the exe- 
cution of these stories; and to justify our 
decided opinion, that they are actually as 
perfect as it was possible to make them with 
safety to the great object of the author. 



(3uln, 1812.) 



Talcs of Fashionable Life. By 



"Belinda," 



Miss Eixjkworth, Author of "Practical Education, " 
3 vols. 12mo. pp. 1450. Johnson. London: 1812. 



Thk writings of Miss Edgeworth exhibit so i 
singular an union of sober sense ami inex- ' 
haustible invention — so minute a knowledge 
of all that distinguishes manners, or touches 
on happiness in every condition of human for- 
tune — and so just an estimate both of the real 
sources of enjoyment, and of the illusions by 
which they are obstructed, that it cannot be 
thought wonderful that we should separate 
her from the ordinary manufacturers of novels, 
and speak of her Tales as works of more se- 
rious importance than much of the true history 
and solemn philosophy that come daily under 
our inspection. The great business of life, 
and the object of all arts and acquisitions, is 
undoubtedly to be happy ; and though our 
success in this grand endeavour depends, in 
some degree, upon external circumstances, 
over which we have no control, and still more 
on temper and dispositions, which can only be 
controlled by gradual and systematic exertion, 
a very great deal depends also upon creeds 
and opinions, which may be effectually and 
even suddenly rectified, by a few hints from 
authority that cannot be questioned, or a few 
illustrations so fair and striking, as neither to 
be misapplied nor neglected. We are all, no 
doubt, formed, in a great degree, by the cir- 
cumstances in which we are placed, and the 
beings by whom we are surrounded ; but still 
we have all theories of happiness — notions of 
ambition, and opinions as to the siunmiim bo- 
num of our own — more or less developed, and 
more or less original, according to our situa- 
tion and character — but influencing our con- 
duct and feelings at every moment of our 
lives, and leading us on to disappointment, 



and away from real gratification, as powerfully 
as mere ignorance or passion. It is to the 
correction of those erroneous theories that 
Miss Edgeworth has applied herself in that 
series of moral fictions, the last portion of 
which has recently come to our hands; and 
in which, we think, she has combined more 
solid instruction with more universal enter- 
tainment, and given more practical lessons of 
wisdom, with less tediousness and less pre- 
tension, than any other writer with whom we 
are acquainted. 

When we reviewed the first part of these 
Tales which are devoted to the delineation 
of fashionable life, we ventured to express a 
doubt, whether the author was justifiable for 
expending so large a quantity of her moral 
medicines on so small a body of patients — 
and upon patients too whom she had every 
reason to fear would turn out incurable. Up- 
on reflection, however, we are now inclined 
to recall this sentiment. The vices and illu- 
sions of fashionable life are, for the most part, 
merely the vices and illusions of human nature 
— presented sometimes in their most con- 
spicuous, and almost always in only their 
most seductive form ; — and even where they 
are not merely fostered and embellished, but 
actually generated only in that exalted region, 
it is very well known that they "drop upon 
the place beneath," and are speedily propa- 
gated and diffused into the world below. To 
expose them, therefore, in this their original 
and proudest sphere, is not only to purify the 
stream at its source, but to counteract their 
pernicious influence precisely where it is 
most formidable and extensive. To point out 
2T 



518 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



the miseries of those infinite and laborious 
pursuits in which persons who pretend to 
be fasionable consume their days, would be 
but an unprofitable task ; while nobody could 
be found who would admit that they belong- 
ed to the class of pretenders; and all that 
remained therefore was to show, that the 
pursuits themselves were preposterous ; and 
inflicted the same miseries upon the unques- 
tioned leaders of fashion, as upon the hum- 
blest of their followers. For this task, too, 
Miss Edgeworth possessed certain-advantages 
of which it would have been equally unnatu- 
ral and unfortunate for her readers, if she had 
not sought to avail herself. 

We have said, that the hints by which we 
may be enabled to correct those errors of 
opinion which so frequently derange the whole 
scheme of life, must be given by one whose 
authority is not liable to dispute. Persons of 
fashion, therefore, and pretenders to fashion, 
will never derive any considerable benefit 
from all the edifying essays and apologues 
that superannuated governesses and precep- 
tors may indite for their reformation; — nor 
from the volumes of sermons which learned 
divines may put forth for the amendment of 
the age ; — nor the ingenious discourses which 
philosophers may publish, from the love of 
fame, money, or mankind. Their feeling as 
to all such monitors is, that they know nothing 
at all about the matter, and have nothing to 
do with personages so much above them ; — 
and so they laugh at their prosing and pre- 
sumption — and throw them aside, with a min- 
gled sense of contempt and indignation. Now, 
Miss Edgeworth happens fortunately to be 
born in the condition of a lady — familiar from 
eaily life with the polite world, and liable to 
no suspicion of having become an author from 
any other motives than those she has been 
pleased to assign. 

But it is by no means enough that we should 
be on a footing, in point of rank, with those 
to whom we are moved to address our instruc- 
tions. It is necessary that we should also 
have some relish for the pleasures we accuse 
them of overrating, and some pretensions to 
the glory we ask them to despise. If a man, 
without stomach or palate, takes it into his 
head to lecture against the pleasures of the 
table — or an old maid against flirtation — or a 
miser against extravagance, they may say as 
many wise and just things as they please — 
but they may be sure that they will either be 
laughed at, or not listened to ; and that all 
their dissuasives will be set down to the score 
of mere ignorance or envy. In the same way, 
a man or woman who is obviously without 
talents to shine or please in fashionable life, 
may utter any quantity of striking truths as 
to its folly or unsatisfactoriness, without ever 
commanding the attention of one of its vota- 
ries. The inference is so ready, and so con- 
solatory — that all those wise reflections are 
the fruit of disappointment and mortification 
— that they want to reduce all the world to 
their own dull level — and to deprive others 
of gratifications which they are themselves 
incapable of tasting. The judgment of Miss 



Edgeworth, however ; we think, is not in any 
very imminent danger of being disabled by 
this ingenious imputation; since, if we were 
to select any one of the traits that are indi- 
cated by her writings as peculiarly charac- 
teristic, and peculiarly entitled to praise, we 
should specify the singular force of judgment 
and self-denial, which has enabled her to re- 
sist the temptation of being the most brilliant 
and fashionable writer of her day, in order to 
be the most useful and instructive. 

The writer who conceived the characters, 
and reported the conversations of Lady Dela- 
cour — Lady Geraldine — and Lady Dashfort 
(to take but these three out of her copious 
dramatis personce), certainly need not be afraid 
of being excelled by any of her contempora- 
ries, in that faithful but flattering representa- 
tion of the spoken language of persons of wit 
and politeness of the present -day — in that 
light and graceful tone of raillery and argu- 
ment — and in that gift of sportive but cutting 
medisance. which is sure of success in those 
circles, where success is supposed to be most 
difficult, and most desirable. With the con- 
sciousness of such rare qualifications, we do 
think it required no ordinary degree of forti- 
tude to withstand the temptation of being the 
flattering delineator of fashionable manners, 
instead of their enlightened corrector; and to 
prefer the chance of amending the age in 
which she lived, to the certainty of enjoying 
its applauses. Miss Edgeworth, however, is 
entitled to the praise of this magnanimity : — 
For not only has she abstained from dressing 
any of her favourites in this glittering drapery, 
but she has uniformly exhibited it in such a 
way as to mark its subordination to the natural 
graces it is sometimes allowed to eclipse, and 
to point out the defects it still more frequently 
conceals. It is a very rare talent, certainly, 
to be able to delineate both solid virtues and 
captivating accomplishments with the same 
force and fidelity; — but it is a still rarer ex- 
ercise of that talent, to render the former both 
more amiable and more attractive than the lat- 
ter — and, without depriving wit and vivacity 
of any of their advantages, to win not only 
our affections, but our admiration away from 
them, to the less dazzling qualities of the heart 
and the understanding. By what resources 
Miss Edgeworth is enabled to perform this 
feat, we leave our readers to discover, from 
the perusal of her writings; — of which it is 
our present business to present them with a 
slender account, and a scanty sample. 

These three new volumes contain but three 
stories ; — the first filling exactly a volume, the 
second half a volume, and the last no less 
than a volume and a half. The first, which 
is entitled "Vivian," is intended to show not 
only into what absurdities, but into what guilt 
and wretchedness, a person, otherways esti- 
mable, may be brought by that " infirmity of 
purpose" which renders him incapable of 
resisting the solicitations of others, — of saying 
No, in short, on proper occasions. The moral, 
perhaps, is brought a little too constantly for- 
ward ; and a little more exaggeration is ad- 
mitted into the construction of the story, than 



MISS EDGEWORTH'S TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



519 



Miss Edgeworth generally employs ; — but it 
is full of characters and incidents and good 
sense, like all her other productions. 1 * 

But we pass at once to the last, the longest, 
and by far the most interesting of these tales 
It is entitled, "The Absentee;" and is in- 
tended to expose the folly and misery of re- 
nouncing the respectable character of country 
ladies and gentlemen, to push, through in- 
tolerable expense, and more intolerable scorn, 
into the outer circles of fashion in London. 
That the case may be sufficiently striking, 
Miss Edgeworth has taken her example in an 
Irish family, of large fortune, and consider- 
able rank in the peerage ; and has enriched 
her main story with a greater variety of col- 
lateral incidents and characters, than in any 
of her other productions. 

Lord and Lady Clonbrony are the absentees ; 
— and they are so, because Lady Clonbrony 
is smitten with the ambition of making a 
figure in the fashionable circles of London ; — 
where her very eagerness obstructs her suc- 
cess; and her inward shame, and affected 
contempt for her native country, only make 
her national accent, and all her other nation- 
alities more remarkable. She has a niece, 
however, a Miss Grace Nugent, who is full 
of gentleness, and talent, and love for Ireland 
— and a son, Lord Colambre, who, though 
educated in England, has very much of his 
cousin's propensities. The first part of the 
story represents the various mortifications and 
repulses which Lady Clonbrony encounters, 
in her grand attempt to be very fashionable 
in London — the embarrassments, and gradual 
declension into low company, of Lord Clon- 
brony — their plots to marry Lord Colambre to 
an heiress — and the growth of his attachment 
to Miss Nugent, who cordially shares both in 
his regret for the ridicule which his mother is 
at so much expense to excite, and his wish to 
snatch her from a career at once so inglorious 
and so full of peril. Partly to avoid his moth- 
er's importunities about the heiress, and partly 
to escape from the fascinations of Miss Nugent, 
whose want of fortune and high sense of duty 
seem to forbid all hopes of their union, he sets 
cut on a visit to Ireland ; where the chief in- 
terest of the story begins. There are here 
many admirable delineations of Irish charac- 
ter, in both extremes of life ; and a very natu- 
ral development of all its most remarkable 
features. At first, his Lordship is very nearly 
entangled in the spells of Lady Dashfort and 
her daughter ; and is led by their arts to form 
rather an unfavourable opinion of his country- 
men. An accidental circumstance, however, 
disclosing the artful and unprincipled charac- 
ter of these fair ladies, he breaks from his 
bondage, and travels incog, to his father's two 
estates of Colambre and Clonbrony; — the 
one flourishing under the management of a 
conscientious and active agent; the other 
going to ruin under the dominion of an un- 
principled oppressor. In both places, he sees 
a great deal of the native politeness, native 



* I now omit the original account of the two first 
tales ; and give only what relates to the last, — and 
most interesting, and characteristic. 



wit, and kind-heartedness of the lower Irish; 
and makes an acquaintance at the latter with 
one group of Catholic cottagers, more inter- 
esting, and more beautifully painted, in the 
simple colouring of nature, than all the Arca- 
dians of pastoral or romance. After detecting 
the frauds and villany of the tyrannical agent, 
he hurries back to London, to tell his story to 
his father ; and arrives just in time to hinder 
him from being irretrievably entangled in his 
snares. He and Miss Nugent now make joint 
suit to Lady Clonbrony to retire for a while 
to Ireland, — an application in which they are 
powerfully seconded by the tenors of an exe- 
cution in the house; and at last enabled to 
succeed, by a solemn promise that the yellow 
damask furniture of the great drawing-room 
shall be burnt on the very day of their arrival. 
In the mean time, Lord Colambre, whose 
wider survey of the female world had finally 
determined him to seek happiness with Grace 
Nugent, even with an humble fortune, suffers 
great agony, from a discovery maliciously 
made by Lady Dashfort, of a stain on her 
mother's reputation ; which he is enabled at 
length to remove, and at the same time to re- 
cover a splendid inheritance, which had been 
long withheld by its prevalence, from the wo- 
man of his choice. This last event, of course, 
reconciles all parties to the match; and they 
all set out, in bliss and harmony, to the para- 
dise regained, of Clonbrony; — their arrival 
and reception at which is inimitably described 
in a letter from one of their postilions, with 
which the tale is concluded. 

In this very brief abstract, we have left out 
an infinite multitude of the characters and 
occurrences, from the variety and profusion 
of which the story derives its principal attrac- 
tion ; and have only attempted indeed to give 
such a general notice of the relations and 
proceedings of the chief agents, as to render 
the few extracts we propose to make intelli- 
gible. The contrivance of the story indeed is 
so good, and the different parts of it so con- 
cisely represented, that we could not give an 
adequate epitome of it in much less compass 
than the original. We can venture on nothing, 
therefore, but a few detached specimens: 
And we take the first from a class of society, 
which we should scarcely have thought char- 
acteristic of the country in question : we mean 
the Fine ladies of the Plebeian order, who 
dash more extravagantly, it seems, in Dublin, 
than any other place in this free and com- 
mercial empire. Lord Colambre had the 
good fortune to form an acquaintance with 
one of these, the spouse of a rich grocer, 
who invited him to dine with her at her villa, 
on his way back from the county of Wick- 
low. The description, though of a different 
character from most of Miss Edgeworth's 
delineations, is so picturesque and lively, that 
we cannot help thinking it must have been 
taken from the life. We are tempted, there- 
fore, to give it at full length. 

■ After a charming tour in the county of Wiclt 
low, where the beauty of the natural scenery, ami 
the taste wiih which those natural beauties have 
been cultivated, far surpassed the sanguine expect- 



520 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



ations Lord Colambre had formed, his Lordship 
and his companions arrived at Tusculum ; where 
lie found Mrs. Raffarty, and Miss Juliana O'Leary, 
— very elegant — with a large party of the ladies and 
gentlemen of Bray assembled in a drawing-room, 
fine with bad pictures and gaudy gilding ; the win- 
dows were all shut, and the company were playing 
cards, with all their might. This was the fashion 
of the neighbourhood. In compliment to Lord 
Colambre and the officers, the ladies left the card- 
tables ; and Mrs. Raffarty, observing that his Lord- 
ship seemed partial to walking, took him out, as 
she said, ' to do the honours of nature and art.' 

" The dinner had two great faults — profusion and 
pretension. There was, in fact ten times more on 
the table than was necessary ; and the entertain- 
ment was far above the circumstances of the person 
by whom it was given : for instance, the dish of 
fish at the head of the table had been brought across 
the island from Sligo, and had cost five guineas ; 
as the lady of the house failed not to make known. 
But, after all, things were not of a piece : there 
was a disparity between the entertainment and the 
attendants ; there was no proportion or fitness of 
things. A painful endeavour at what could not be 
attained, and a toiling in vain to conceal and repair 
deficiencies and blunders. Had .the mistress of the 
house been quiet ; had she, as Mrs. Broadhurst 
would say, but let things alone, let things take their 
course; all would have passed off with well-bred 
people : but she was incessantly apologising, and 
fussing and fretting inwardly and outwardly, and 
directing and calling to her servants — striving to 
make a butler who was deaf, and a boy who was 
hair-brained, do the business of five accomplished 
footmen of parts and figure. Mrs. Raffarty called 
1 Larry ! Larry ! My Lord's plate there ! — James! 
bread, to Captain Bowles! — James! port wine, to 
the Major. — James ! James Kenny ! James !' And 
panting James toiled after her in vain. At length 
one course was fairly got through ; and after a tor- 
turing half hour, the second course appeared, and 
James Kenny was intent upon one thing, and Lar- 
ry upon another, so that the wine sauce for the hare 
was spilt by their collision ; but what was worse, 
there seemed little chance that the whole of this 
6econd course should ever be placed altogether 
rightly upon the table. Mrs. Raffarty cleared her 
throat and nodded, and pointed, and sighed, and 
set Larry after Kenny, and Kenny after Larry ; for 
what one did, the other undid ; but at last, the 
lady's anger kindled, and she spoke! — 'Kenny! 
James Kenny, set the sea-cale at this corner, and 
put down the grass, cross-corners ; and match your 
maccaroni yonder with them puddens, set — Ogh ! 
James ! the pyramid in the middle can't ye.' The 
pyramid in changing places was overturned. Then 
it was, that the mistress of the feast, falling back 
in her seat, and lifting up her hands and eyes in 
despair, ejaculated : ' Oh, James ! James !' — The 
pyramid was raised by the assistance of the mili- 
tary engineers, and stood trembling again on its 
base ; but the lady's temper could not be so easily 
restored to its equilibrium." — pp. 25 — 28. 

We hurry forward now to the cottage scene 
at Clonbrony; which has made us almost 
equally in love with the Irish, and with the 
writer who has painted them with such truth, 
pathos, and simplicity. An ingenious and 
good-natured postboy overturns his Lordship 
in the night, a few miles from Clonbrony; 
and then says, 

" ' If your honour will lend me your hand till I 
pull you up the back of the ditch, the horses will 
stand while we go. I'll find you as pretty a lodging 
for the night, with a widow of abrother of my shis- 
ter's husband that was, as ever you slept in your life ; 
and your honour will be, no compare, snugger than 
the inn at Clonbrony, which has no roof, the devil 



a stick. But where will I get your honour's hand 1 
for it's coming on so dark, I can't see rightly.- 
There ! you're up now safe. Yonder candle's the 
house.' ' Well, go and ask whether they can give 
U9 a night's lodging.' ' Is it ask ? When I see the 
light ! — Sure they'd be proud to give the traveller 
all the beds in the house, let alone one. Take care 
of the potatoe furrows, that's all, and follow me 
straight. I'll go on to meet the dog, who knows 
me, and might be strange to your honour.' 

" 'Kindly welcome !' were the first words Lord 
Colambre heard when he approached the cottage ; 
and ' kindly welcome' was in the sound of the 
voice, and in the countenance of the old woman, 
who came out shading her rush candle from the 
wind, and holding it so as to light the path. When 
he entered the cottage, he saw a cheerful fire and a 
neat pretty young woman making it blaze : she 
curtsied, put her spinning wheel out of the way, 
set a stool by the fire for the stranger ; and repeat- 
ing in a very low tone of voice, 'Kindly welcome, 
sir,' retired. ' Put down some eggs, dear, there's 
plenty in the bowl,' said the old woman, palling to 
her ; ' I'll do the bacon. Was not we lucky to be 
up ? — The boy's gone to bed, but waken him,' said 
she, turning to the postilion ; ' and he will help you 
with the chay, and put your horses in the bier for 
the night.' " 

" No: Larry chose to go on to Clonbrony with 
the horses, that he might get the chaise mended 
betimes for his honour. The table was set ; clean 
trenchers, hot potatoes, milk, eggs, bacon, and 
' kindly welcome to all.' ' Set the salt, dear ; and 
the butter, love ; where's your head, Grace, dear ?' 
' Grace !' repeated Lord Colambre, looking up ; 
and to apologise for his involuntary exclamation he 
added, ' Is Grace a common name iri Ireland ?' ' I 
can't say, plase your honour, but it was give her by 
Lady Clonbrony, from a niece of her own that was 
her foster-sister, God bless her; and a very kind 
lady she was to us and to all when she was living in 
it ; but those times are gone past,' said the old 
woman, with a sigh. The young woman sighed 
too; and silting down by the fire, began to count 
the notches in a little bit of stick, which she held in 
her hand; and after she had counted them, sighed 
again. ' But don't be sighing, Grace, now,' said 
the old woman ; ' sighs is bad sauce for the travel- 
ler's supper ; and we won't be troubling him with 
more,' added she, turning to Lord Colambre, with 
a smile — ' Is your egg done to your liking ?' ' Per- 
fectly, thank you.' ' Then I wish it was a chicken 
for your sake, which it should have been, and roast 
too, had we time. I wish I could see you eat an- 
other egg.' No more, thank you, my good lady ; 
I never ate a better supper, nor received a more 
hospitable welcome.' ' O, the welcome is all we 
have to offer.' 

" ' May I ask what that is V said Lord Colambre, 
looking at the notched stick, which the young wo- 
man held in her hand, and on which her eyes were 
still fixed. 'It's a tally, plase your honour — O 
you're a foreigner — It's the way the labourer keeps 
the account of the day's work with the overseer, 
And there's been a mistake, and is a dispute here 
between our boy and the overseer ; and she was 
counting the boy's tally, that's in bed, tired, for in 
troth he's over-worked.' 'Would you want any 
thing more from me, mother,' said the girl, rising 
and turning her head away. "' No, child ; getaway, 
for your heart's full' She went instantly. 'Is 
the boy her brother?' said Lord Colambre. ' No: 
he's her bachelor,' said the old woman, lowering 
her voice. ' Her bachelor?' ' That is, her sweet- 
heart : for she is not my daughter, though you heard 
her call me mother. The boy's my son ; but I am 
afeard they must give it up; for they're too poor, 
and the times is hard — and the agent's harder than 
the times ! There's two of them, the under and 
the upper; and they grind the substance of one 
between them, and then blow one away like chaff: 
but we'll not be talking of that, to spoil your hon- 



MISS EDGEWORTH'S TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. 



521 



our's night's rest. The room's ready, and here's 
the rush light.' She showed him into a very small, 
but neat room. ' What a comfortable looking bed,' 
said Lord Colambre. 4 Ah, these red check cur- 
iains.' said she, letting them down ; ' these have 
lasted well ; they were give me by a good friend 
now far away, over the seas, my Lady Clonbrony ; 
and made by the prettiest hands ever you see, her 
neice's, Miss Grace Nugent's, and shea little child 
that lime ; sweet love ! all gone !' The old woman 
wiped a tear from her eye, and Lord Colambre did 
what he could to appear indifferent. She set down 
the candle and left the room ; Lord Colambre went 
to bed, but he lay awake, 'revolving sweet and 
bitter thoughts.' 

"The kettle was on the fire, tea things set, 
every thing prepared for her guest, by the hospita- 
ble hostess, who, thinking the gentleman would 
take tea to his breakfast, had sent off a gossoon by 
the first light to Clonbrony, for an ounce of tea, a 
quarter of sugar, and a loaf of white bread ; and 
there was on the little table good cream, milk, 
butter, eggs — all the promise of an excellent break- 
fast. It was afresh morning, and there was a plea- 
sant fire on the hearth neatly swept up. The old 
woman was sitting in her chimney corner, behind a 
little skreen of white-washed wall, bu'lt out into 
the room, for the purpose of keeping those who sat 
at the fire from the blast of the door. There was a 
loop-hole in this wall, to let the light in, just at the 
height of a person's head, who was sitting near the 
chimney. The rays of the morning sun now came 
through if, shining across the face of the old woman, 
as she sat knitting ; Lord Colambre thought he had 
seldom seen a more agreeable countenance; intelli- 
gent eyes, benevolent smile, a natural expression 
of cheerfulness, subdued by age and misfortune. 
' A good morrow to you kindly, sir, and I hope 
you got the night well? — A fine day for us this 
Sunday morning ; my Grace is gone to early prayers, 
so your honour will he content with an old woman 
to make your breakfast. — O, let me put in plenty, 
or it will never be good ; and if your honour takes 
stirabout, an old hand will engage to make that to 
your liking any way, for by great happiness we have 
what will just answer for you, of the nicest meal 
the miller made my Grace a compliment of, last 
time she went to the mill.' " — pp. 171 — 179. 

In the course of conversation, she informs 
her guest of the precarious tenure on which 
she held the little possession that formed her 
only means of subsistence. 

" ' The good lord himself granted us the lase ; 
the life's dropped, and the years is out: but we 
had a promise of renewal in wriiing from the land- 
lord. — God bless him ! if he was not away, he'd 
oe a good gentleman, and we'd be happy and safe.' 
* But if you have a promise in writing of a renewal, 
surely, you are safe, whether your landlord is absent 
or present.'—- 4 Ah, no ! that makes a great differ, 
when there's no eye or handover the agent. — Yet, 
indeed, there,' added she, after a pause, 'as you 
say, I think we are safe ; for we have that memo- 
randum in writing, with a pencil, under his own 
hand, on the back of the lase, to me, by the same 
token when my good lord had his foot on the step 
of the coach, going away ; and I'll never forget 
ihe smile of her that got that good turn done for 
me, Miss Grace. And just when she was going to 
England and London, and young as she was, to 
have the thought to stop and turn to the likes of 
me! O, then, if you could see her, and know her 
as I did ! That was the comforting angel upon 
earth — look and voice, and heart and all ! O, that 
she was here present, this minute ! — But did you 
scald yourself *' said the widow to Lord Colambre. 
— ' Sure, you must have scalded yourself; for you 
poured the kettle straight over your hand, and it 
boiling ! O deear ! to think of so young a gentle- 
man's hand shaking so like my own. Luckily, to 



prevent her pursuing her observations from the hand 
to the face, which might have betrayed more than 
Lord Colambre wished she should know, her own 
Grace came in at this instant — ' There, it's lor you 
safe, mother dear — the lase!' said Grace, throwing 
a packet into her lap. The old woman lifted up her 
hands to heaven with the lease between them — 
' Thanks be to Heaven !' Grace passed on, and 
sunk down on the first seat she could reach. Her 
face flushed, and, looking much fatigued, she loos- 
ened the strings of her bonnet and cloak. — ' Then, 
I'm tired !' but recollecting herself, she rose, and 
curtsied to the gentleman. — ' What tired ye, dear V 
— ' Why, after prayers, we had to go — for the agent 
was not at prayers, nor at home lor us, when we 
called — we had to go all the way up to the castle ; 
and there by great good luck, we found Mr. Nick 
Garraghty himself, come from Dublin, and the lase 
in his hands ; and he sealed it up that way, and 
handed it to me very civil. I never saw him so 
good — though he offered me a glass of spirits, 
which was not manners to a decent young woman, 
in a morning — as Brian noticed after.' — ' But why 
didn't Brian come home all the way with you, 
Grace V — ' He would have seen me home,' said 
Grace, ' only that he went up a piece of the moun- 
tain for some stones or ore for the gentleman, — for 
he had the manners to think of him this morning, 
though shame for me, I had not, when I came in, 
or I would not have told you all this, and he himself 
by. See, there he is, mother.' — Brian came in very 
hot, out of breath, with his hat full of stones. 'Good 
morrow to your honour. I was in bed last night ; 
and sorry they did not call me up to be of sarvice. 
Larry was telling us, this morning, your honour's 
from Wales, and looking for mines in Ireland, and 
I heard talk that there was one on our mountain — 
may be, you'd be curious to see ; and so, I brought 
the best I could, but I'm no judge.' " 

Vol. vi. pp. 182—188. 

A scene of villainy now begins to disclose 
itself, as the experienced reader must have 
anticipated. The pencil writing is rubbed 
out : but the agent promises, that if they pay 
up their arrears, and be handsome, with their 
sealing money and glove money, &c. he will 
grant a renewal. To obtain the rent, the 
widow is obliged to sell her cow. — But she 
shall tell her story in her own words. 

" ' Well, still it was but paper we got for the cow-; 
then that must be gold before the agent would take, 
or touch it — so I was laying out to sell the dresser, 
and had taken the plates and cups, and little things 
off it, and my boy was lifting it out with Andy the 
carpenter, that was agreeing for it, when in comes 
Grace, all rosy, and out of breath — it's a wonder I 
minded her run out, and not missed her — Mother, 
says she, here's the gold for you, don't be stirring 
your dresser. — And where's your own gown and 
cloak, Grace? says I. But, I beg your pardon, 
sir; may be I'm tiring you ?' — Lord Colambre en* 
couraged her to go on. — ' Where's your gown and 
cloak, Grace, says I.' — ' Gone,' says she. ' The 
cloak was too warm and heavy, and I don't doubt, 
mother, but it was that helped to make me faint 
this morning. And as to the gown, sure I've a 
very nice one here, that you spun for me yourself, 
mother ; and that I prize above all the gowns thai 
ever came out of a loom ; and that Brian said be- 
came me to his fancy above any gown ever he see 
me wear, and what could I wish lor more.' — Now, 
I'd a mind to scold her for going to sell the gown 
unknown'st to me ; but I don't know how it was, 
I couldn't scold her just then, — so kissed her, and 
Brian the same ; and that was what no man ever 
did before. — And she had a mind to be angry with 
him, but could not, nor ought not, says I; for he's 
as good as your husband now, Grace ; and no man 
can part yees now, says I, putting their hands to- 
2t 2 



622 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



gether. — Well, I never saw her look so pretty ; nor 
there was not a happier. boy that minute on God's 
earth than my son, nor a happier mother than my- 
self ; and I thanked God that he had given them to 
me ; and down they both fell on their Tknees for my 
blessing, little worth as it was; and my heart's 
blessng they had, and I laid my hands upon them. 
'It's the priest you must get to do this for you to- 
morrow, says I.' " — Vol. vi. pp. 205 — 207. 

Next morning they go up in high spirits to 
the castle, where the villanous agent denies 
his promise ; and is laughing at their despair, 
when Lord Colambre is fortunately identified 
by Mrs. Raffarty, who turns out to be a sister 
of the said agent, and, like a god in epic 
poetry, turns agony into triumph ! 

We can make room for no more now, but 
the epistle of Larry Brady, the good-natured 
postboy, to his brother, giving an account of 
the return of the family to Clonbrony. If 
Miss Edgeworth had never written any other 
thing, this one letter must have placed her 
at the very top of our scale, as an observer of 
character, and a mistress in the simple pa- 
thetic. We give the greater part of this ex- 
traordinary production. 

_ " My dear brother, — Yours of the 16th, enclo- 
sing the five pound note for my father, came safe 
to hand Monday last ; and, with his thanks and 
blessing to you, he commends it to you herewith 
enclosed back again, on account of his being in no 
immediate necessity, nor likelihood to want in fu- 
ture, as you shall hear forthwith ; but wants you 
over, with all speed, and the note will answer for 
travelling charges ; for we can't enjoy the luck it 
has pleased God to give us, without yees: put the 
rest in your pocket, and read it when you've time. 
" Now, cock up your ears, Pat! for the great 
news is coming, and the good. The master's come 
home — long life to him ! — and family come home 
yesterday, all entirely ! The ould lord and the 
young lord, (ay there's the man. Paddy !) and my 
lady, and Miss Nugent. And I driv Miss Nugent's 
maid, that maid that was, and another; sol had 
the luck to be in it alone wid'em, and see all, from 
first to last. And first, I must tell you, my young 
Lord Colambre remembered and noiiced me the 
minute he lit at our inn, and condescended to 
beckon at me out of the yard to him, and axed me — 
' Friend Larry.' says he, 'did you keep your pro- 
mise ?' - ' My oath again the whiskey is it ?' says 
I. 'My Lord, I surely did,' said I; which was 
true, as all the country knows I never tasted a drop 
6ince. And I'm proud to see your honour, my 
lord, as good as your word too, and back again 
among us. So then there was a call for the horses ; 
and no more at that time passed betwix' my young 
lord and me, but that he pointed me out to the ould 
one, as I went off. I noticed and thanked him for 
it in my heart, though I did not know all the good 
was to come of it. Well no more of myself, for 
the present. 

" Ogh, it's I driv 'em well; and we all got to 
the great gate of the park before sunset, and as 
fine an evening as ever you see ; with the sun 
shining on the tops of the trees, as the ladies no- 
ticed the leaves changed, but not dropped, though 
so late in the season. I believe the leaves knew 
what they were about, and kept on, on purpose to 
welcome them ; and the birds were singing; and I 
stopped whistling, that they might hear them : but 
sorrow bit could they hear when they got to the 
park gate, for there was such a crowd, and such a 
shout, as you never see — and they had the horses 
off every carriage entirely, and drew 'em home, with 
blessings, through the park. And, God bless 'em, 
when they got out, they didn't go shut themselves 
up in the great drawing-room, but went straight out 
to the firrass, to satisfy the eyes and hearts that 



followed them. My lady laning on my young lord, 
and Miss Grace Nugent that was, the beautifullest 
angel that ever you set eyes on, with the finest 
complexion and sweetest of smiles, laning upon 
the old lord's arm, who had his hat off, bowing to 
all, and noticing the old tenants as he passed by 
name. O, there was great gladness, and tears in the 
midst ; for joy I could scarcely keep from myself. 

" After a turn or two upon the <*Vrass, my Lord 
Colambre quit his mother's arm for a minute, and 
he come to the edge of the slope, and looked down 
and through all the crowd for some one. ' Is it the 
widow O'Neill, my lord?' says I; 'she's yonder, 
wiih the spectacles on her nose, betwixt her son 
and daughter, as usual.' Then my lord beckoned, 
and they did not know which of the tree would stir ; 
and then he gave tree beckons with his own finger, 
and they all tree came fast enough to the bottom of 
the slope, forenent my lord ; and he went down 
and helped the widow up, (O, he's the true jantle- 
man J and brought 'em all tree upon the firrass, to 
my lady and Miss Nugent; and I was up close 
after, that I might hear, which wasn't manners, 
but I couldn't help it! So what he said I don't 
well know, for I could not get near enough after 
all. But I saw my lady smile very kind, and take 
the widow O'Neill by the hand, and then my Lord 
Colambre Produced Grace to Miss Nugent, and 
there was the word namesake, and something about 
a check curtains ; but whatever it was, they was all 
greatly pleased: then my Lord Colambre turned 
and looked for Brian, who had fell back, and took 
him with some commendation to my lord his father. 
And my lord the master said, which I didn't know 
till after, that they should have their house and farm 
at the ould rent ; and at the surprise, the widow 
dropped down dead ; and there was a cry as for ten 
herrings. ' Be qu'ite,' says I, ' she's only kill for 
joy;' and I went and lift her up, for her son had 
no more strength that minute than the child new 
born ; and Grace trembled like a leaf, as white as 
the sheet, but not long, for the mother came to, and 
was as well as ever when I brought some water, 
which Miss Nugent handed to her with her own 
hand. 

" ' That was always pretty and good,' said the 
widow, laying her hand upon Miss Nugent, 'and 
kind and good to me and mine. That minute there 
was music from below. The blind harper, O'Neill, 
with his harp, that struck up ' Gracey Nugent !' 
And that finished, and my Lord Colambre smiling 
with the tears standing in his eyes too, and the ould 
lord quire wiping his, I ran to the tirrass brink to 
bid O'Neill play it again ; but as I run, I. thought 
I heard a voice calf Larry. 

" ■ Who calls Larry ?' says I. 'My Lord Co- 
lambre calls you, Larry,' says all at once ; and four 
takes me by the shoulders, and spins me round. 
'There's my young lord calling yon, Larry — run 
for your life.' So I run back for my life, and walk- 
ed respectful, with my hat in my hand, when I got 
near. ' Put on your hat, my father desires it,' 
says my Lord Colambre. The ould lord made a 
sign to that purpose, but was too full to speak. 
' Where's your father?' continues my young lord. 
— ' He's very ould, my lord,' says I. — ' I didn't ax 
you how ould he was,' says he ; ' but where is he V 
— ' He's behind the crowd below ; on account of 
his infirmities he couldn't walk so fast as the rest, 
my lord,' says I; ' but his heart is with you, if not 
his body.' — 'I must have his body too: so bring 
him bodily before us; and this shall he your war 
rant for so doing,' said my lord, joking. For he 
knows the natur of us, Paddy, and how we love a 
joke in our hearts, as well as if he had lived all his 
life in Ireland ; and by the same token will, for that 
rason, do what he pleases with us, and more may 
be than a man twice as good, that never would 
smile on u^ . 

"But I'm telling you of my father. 'I've a 
warrant for you, father,' says I; ' and must have 
you bodily before the justice, and my lord chief 
justice.' So he changed colour a bit at first ; but 



WAVERLEY. 



523 



he saw me smile. ' And I've done no sin,' said he ; 
' and, Larry, you may lead me now, as you led me 
nil my life.' — And up rhe slope he went with me, as 
iight as fifteen ; and when we got up, my Lord Clon- 
brony said, ' I am sorry an old tenant, and a good 
old tenant, as I hear you were, should have been 
turned out of your farm.' — ' Don't fret, it's no great 
matter, my lord,' said my father. ' 1 shall be soon 
out of the way ; but if you would be so kind to 
speak a word for my boy here, and that I could af- 
ford, while the life is in me, to bring my other boy 
back out of banishment — ' 

"'Then,' says my Lord Clonbrony, 'I'll give 
you and your sons three lives, or thirty-one years, 
from this day, of your former farm. Return to it 
when you please.' * And,' added my Lord Co- 
lambre, ' the flaggers, I hope, will soon be banish- 
ed.' O, how could I thank him — not a word could 
I proffer — but I know I clasped my two hands and 
prayed for him inwardly. And my father was 
dropping down on his knees, but the master would 
not let him ; and obsarved, that posture should only 
be for his God ! And, sure enough, in that posture, 
when he was out of sight, we did pray for him that 
night, and will all our days. 

*' But before we quit his presence, he call me 
back, and bid me write to my brother, and bring 
you back, if you've no objections to your own 
country. — So come, my dear Pat, and make no 
delay, for joy's not joy complete till you're in it — 
my father sends his blessing, and Peggy her love. 
The family entirely is to settle for good in Ireland ; 
and there was in the castle yard last night a bonfire 
made by my lord's orders of the ould yellow da- 
mask furniture, to plase my lady, my lord says. 



And the drawing-rooms, the butler was telling me, 
is new hung ; and the chairs, with velvet, as whito 
as snow, and shaded over with natural flowers, by 
Miss Nugent. — Oh 1 how I hope what I guess will 
come true, and I've rason to believe it will, for I 
dream't in my bed last night, it did. But keep 
yourself to yourself — that Miss Nugent (who is no 
more Miss Nugent, they say. but Miss Reynolds, 
and has a new-found grandfather, and is a big 
heiress, which she did not want in my eyes, nor in 
my young lord's,) I've a notion, will be sometime, 
and may be sooner than is expected, my Lady Vis- 
countess Colambre — so haste to the wedding ! And 
there's another thing : they say the rich ould grand- 
father's coming over ; — and another thing, Pat, you 
would not be out of the fashion. And you see it's 
growing the fashion, not to be an Absentee !'' 

If there be any of our readers who is not 
moved with delight and admiration in the 
perusal of this letter, we must say, that we 
have but a poor opinion either of his taste or 
his moral sensibility ; and shall think all the 
better of ourselves, in future, for appearing 
tedious in his eyes. For our own parts, we 
do not know whether we envy the author 
most, for the rare talent she has shown in 
this description, or for the experience by which 
its materials have been supplied. She not 
only makes us know and love the Irish nation 
far better than any other writer, but seems to 
us more qualified than most others to promote 
i the knowledge and the love of mankind. 



(Jtfoaemlur, 1814.) 

Tt'averly, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since. In three volumes 12mo. 

Edinburgh: 1814* 



pp. 



1112. Third Edition. 



It is wonderful what genius and adherence 
to nature will do, in spite of all disadvan- 
tages. Here is a thing obviously very hastily, 
and, in many places, somewhat unskilfully 

* I have been a good deal at a loss what to do with 
these famous novels of Sir Waller. On the one 
hand, I could not bring myself to let this collection 
go forth, without some notice of works which, for 
many years together, had occupied and delighted 
me more than any thing else that ever came under 
my critical survey: While, on the other, I could 
not but feel that it would be absurd, and in some 
sense almost dishonest, to fill these pages with long 
citations from books which, for the last twenty-five 
years, have been in the hands of at least fifty times 
as many readers as are ever likely to look into this 
publication — and are still as familiar to the genera- 
tion which has last come into existence, as to those 
who can yet remember the sensation produced by 
their first appearance. In point of fact I was in- 
formed, but the other day, by Mr. Caddell, that he 
had actually sold not less than sixty thousand 
volumes of these extraordinary productions, in the 
course of the preceding year! and that the demand 
for them, instead of slackening — had been for some 
time sensibly on the increase. In these circum- 
stances 1 think I may safely assume that their con- 
tents are still so perfectly known as not to require 
any citations to introduce such of the remarks orig- 
inally made on them as I may now wish to repeat. 
And I have therefore come to the determination of 
omitting almost all the quotations, and most of the 
detailed abstracts which appeared in the original 



written — composed, one half of it, in a dia- 
lect unintelligible to four-fifths of the reading 
population of the country — relating to a period 
too recent to be romantic, and too far gone by 



reviews ; and to retain only the general criticism, 
and character, or estimate of each performance — 
together with such incidental observations as may 
have been suggested by the tenor or success of 
these wonderful productions. By this course, no 
doubt, a sad shrinking will be effected in the primi- 
tive dimensions of the articles which are here re- 
produced ; and may probably give to what is re- 
tained something of a naked and jejune appear- 
ance. If it should be so, I can only say that I do 
not see how I could have helped it : and after all it 
may not be altogether without interest to see, from 
a contemporary record, what were the first impres- 
sions produced by the appearance of this new lu- 
minary on our horizon; while the secret of the 
authorship was yet undivulged, and before the rapid 
accumulation of its glories had forced on the dullest 
spectator a sense of its magnitude and power. I 
may venture perhaps also to add, that some of the 
general speculations of which these reviews sug- 
gested the occasion, may probably be found as well 
worth preserving as most of those which have been 
elsewhere embodied in this experimental, and some- 
what hazardous, publication. 

Though living in familiar intercourse with Sir 
Walter, 1 need scarcely say that I was not in the 
secret of his authorship ; and in truth had no 
assurance of the fact, till the time of its promul- 
gation. 



52* 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



to be familiar — and published, moreover, in a 
quarter of the island where materials and 
talents for novel-writing have been supposed 
to be equally wanting : And yet, by the mere 
force and truth and vivacity of its colouring, 
already casting the whole tribe of ordinary no- 
vels into the shade, and taking its place rather 
with the most popular of our modern poems, 
than with the rubbish of provincial romances. 
'The secret of this success, we take it, is 
merely that the author is a man of Genius: 
and that he has, notwithstanding, had virtue 
enough to be true to Nature throughout ; and 
to content himself, even in the marvellous 
parts of his story, with copying from actual 
existences, rather than from the phantasms 
of his own imagination. The charm which 
this communicates to all works that deal in 
the representation of human actions and char- 
acter, is more readily felt than understood ; 
and operates with unfailing efficacy even upon 
those who have no acquaintance with the 
originals from which the picture has been bor- 
rowed. It requires no ordinary talent, indeed, 
to choose such realities as may outshine the 
bright imaginations of the inventive, and so to 
combine them as to produce the most advan- 
tageous effect ; but when this is once accom- 
plished, the result is sure to be something 
more firm, impressive, and engaging, than can 
ever be produced by mere fiction. 

The object of the work before us, was evi- 
dently to present a faithful and animated pic- 
ture of the manners and state of society that 
prevailed in this northern part of the island, in 
the earlier part of last century ; and the au- 
thor has judiciously fixed upon the era of the 
Rebellion in 1745, not only as enriching his 
pages with the interest inseparably attached 
to the narration of such occurrences, but as 
affording a fair opportunity for bringing out all 
the contrasted principles and habits which 
distinguished the different classes of persons 
who then divided the country, and formed 
among them the basis of almost all that was 
peculiar in the national character. That un- 
fortunate contention brought conspicuously to 
light, and, for the last time, the fading image 
of feudal chivalry in the mountains, and vul- 
gar fanaticism in the plains ; and startled the 
more polished parts of the land with the wild 
but brilliant picture of the devoted valour, in- 
corruptible fidelity, patriarchal brotherhood, 
and savage habits of the Celtic Clans, on the 
one hand, — and the dark, intractable, and do- 
mineerina' bigotry of the Covenanters on the 
other. Both aspects of society had indeed 
been formerly prevalent in other parts of the 
country, — but had there been so long super- 
seded by more peaceable habits, and milder 
manners, that their vestiges were almost ef- 
faced, and their very memory nearly extin- 
guished. The feudal principalities had been 
destroyed in the South, for near three hundred 
years, — and the dominion of the Puritans from 
the time of the Restoration. When the glens. 
and banded clans, of the central Highlands, 
therefore, were opened up to the gaze of the 
English, in the course of that insurrection, it 
seemed as if they were carried back to the 



days of the Heptarchy; — and when they saw 
the array of the West country Whigs, they 
might imagine themselves transported to the 
age of Cromw r ell. The effect, indeed, is al- 
most as startling at the present moment : and 
one great source of the interest which the 
volumes before us undoubtedly possess, is to 
be sought in the surprise that is excited by 
discovering, that in our own country, and al- 
most in our own age, manners and characters 
existed, and were conspicuous, which we had 
been accustomed to consider as belonging to 
remote antiquity, or extravagant romance. 

The way in w T hich they are here represent- 
ed must satisfy every reader, we think, by an 
inward tact and conviction, that the delinea- 
tion has been made from actual experience 
and observation; — experience and observation 
employed perhaps only on a few surviving 
rel'cs and specimens of what was familiar a 
little earlier — but generalised from instances 
sufficiently numerous and complete, to war- 
rant all that may have been added to the por- 
trait : — And, indeed, the existing records and 
vestiges of the more extraordinary parts of 
the representation are still sufficiently abund- 
ant, to satisfy all who have the means of con- 
sulting them, as to the perfect accuracy of the 
picture. The great traits of Clannish depend- 
ence, pride, and fidelity, may still be detected 
in many districts of the Highlands, though 
they do not now adhere to the chieftains when 
they mingle in general society ; and the ex- 
isting contentions of Burghers and Antiburgh- 
ers, and Cameronians, though shrunk into 
comparative insignificance, and left, indeed, 
without protection to the ridicule of the pro- 
fane, may still be referred to, as complete 
verifications of all that is here stated about 
Gifted Gilfillan, or Ebenezer Cruickshank. 
The traits of Scottish national character in the 
lower ranks, can still less be regarded as an- 
tiquated or traditional ; nor is there any thing 
in the whole compass of the work which 
gives us a stronger impression of the nice ob- 
servation and graphical talent of the author, 
than the extraordinary fidelity and felicity 
with which all the inferior agents in the story 
are represented. No one who has not lived 
extensively among the lower orders of all de- 
scriptions, and made himself familiar with 
their various tempers and dialects, can per- 
ceive the full merit of those rapid and char- 
acteristic sketches; but it requires only a 
general knowledge of human nature, to feel 
that they must be faithful copies from known 
originals : and to be aware of the extraordi- 
nary facility and flexibility of hand which has 
touched, for instance, with such discriminat- 
ing shades, the various gradations of the Celtic 
character, from the savage imperturbability 
of Dugald Mahony, who stalks grimly about 
with his battle-axe on his shoulder, without 
speaking a word to any one. — to the lively un- 
principled activity of Callum Beg. — the coarse 
unreflecting hardihood and heroism of Evan 
Maccombich. — and the pride, gallantry, ele- 
gance, and ambition of Fergus himself. In 
the lower class of the Lowland characters, 
again, the vulgarity of Mrs. Flockhart and ot 



WAVERLEY. 



525 



Lieutenant Jinker is perfectly distinct and 
original : — as well as the puritanism of Gilfil- 
lan and Cruickshank — the atrocity of Mrs. 
Muckle wrath — and the slow solemnity of 
Alexander Saunderson. The Baron of Brad- 
wardine. and Baillie Macwheeble, are carica- 
tures no doubt, after the fashion of the carica- 
tures in the novels of Smollet, — or pictures, at 
the best, of individuals who must always have 
been unique and extraordinary: but almost 
all the other personages in the history are fair 
representatives of classes that are still exist- 
ing, or may be remembered at least to have 
existed, by many whose recollections do not 
extend quite so far back as to the year 1745. 
Waverley is the representative of an old and 
opulent Jacobite family in the centre of Eng- 
land — educated at home in an irregular man- 
ner, and living, till the age of majority, mostly 
in the retirement of his paternal mansion — 
where he reads poetry, feeds his fancy with 
romantic musings, and acquires amiable dis- 
positions, and something of a contemplative, 
passive, and undecided character. All the 
English adherents of the abdicated family 
having renounced any serious hopes of their 
cause long before the year 1745. the guardians 
of young Waverley were induced, in that cele- 
brated year, to ailow him to enter into the 
army, as the nation was then engaged in for- 
eign war — and a passion for military glory had 
always been characteristic of his line. He ob- 
tains a commission, accordingly, in a regiment 
of horse, then stationed in Scotland, and 
proceeds forthwith to head-quarters. Cosmo 
Comyne Bradwardine, Esq., of Tully-Veolan 
in Perthshire, had been an ancient friend of 
the house of Waverley, and had been enabled, 
by their good offices, to get over a very awk- 
ward rencontre with the King's Attorney- 
General soon after the year 1715. The young- 
heir was accordingly furnished with creden- 
tials to this faithful ally; and took an early 
opportunity of paying his respects at the an- 
cient mansion of Tully-Veolan. The house 
and its inhabitants, and their way of life, are 
admirably described. The Baron himself 
had been bred a lawyer ; and was. by choice, 
a diligent reader of the Latin classics. His 
profession, however, was that of arms; and 
having served several campaigns on the Con- 
tinent, he had superadded, to the pedantry 
and jargon of his forensic and academical 
studies, the technical slang of a German mar- 
tinet — and a sprinkling of the coxcombry of a 
French mousquetaire. He was, moreover, 
prodigiously proud of his ancestry ; and, with 
all his peculiarities, which, to say the truth, 
are rather more than can be decently accu- 
mulated in one character, was a most honour- 
able, valiant, and friendly person. He had 
one fair daughter, and no more — who was 
gentle, feminine, and affectionate. Waverley, 
though struck at first with the strange man- 
ners of this northern baron, is at length do- 
mesticated in the family ; and is led, by curi- 
osity, to pay a visit to the cave of a famous 
Highland robber or freebooter, from which he 
is conducted to the castle of a neighbouring 
chieftain, and sees the Highland life in all its 



barbarous but captivating characters. This 
chief is Fergus Vich Ian Vohr — a gallant and 
ambitious youth, zealously attached to the 
cause of the exiled family, and busy, at the 
moment, in fomenting the insurrection, by 
which his sanguine spirit never doubted that 
their restoration was to be effected. He has 
a sister still more enthusiastically devoted to 
the same cause — recently returned from a re- 
sidence at the Court of France, and dazzling 
the romantic imagination of Waverley not less 
by the exaltation of her sentiments, than his 
eyes by her elegance and beauty. While he 
lingers in this perilous retreat, he is suddenly 
deprived of his commission, in consequence 
of some misunderstandings and misrepresen- 
tations which it is unnecessary to detail ; and 
in the first heat of his indignation, is almost 
tempted to throw himself into the array of 
the Children of Ivor, and join the insurgents, 
whose designs are no longer seriously disguis- 
ed from him. He takes, however, the more 
prudent resolution of returning, in the first 
place, to his family; but is stopped, on the 
borders \)f the Highlands, by the magistracy, 
whom rumours of coming events had made 
more than usually suspicious, and forwarded 
as a prisoner to Stirling. On the march he is 
rescued by a band of unknown Highlanders, 
who ultimately convey him in safety to Edin- 
burgh, and deposit him in the hands of his 
friend Fergus Mac-Ivor, who was mounting 
guard with his Highlanders at the ancient pal- 
ace of Holyrood, where the Boyal Adventurer 
was then actually holding his court. A com- 
bination of temptations far too powerful for 
such a temper, now beset Waverley; and, 
inflamed at once by the ill-usage he thought 
he had received from the government — the 
recollection of his hereditary predilections — 
his friendship and admiration of Fergus — his 
love for his sister — and the graceful conde- 
scension and personal solicitations of the un- 
fortunate Prince. — he rashly vows to unite his 
fortunes with theirs, and enters as a volunteer 
in the ranks of the Children of Ivor. 

During his attendance at the court of Holy- 
rood, his passion for the magnanimous Flora 
is gradually abated by her continued indiffer- 
ence, and too entire devotion to the public 
cause ; and his affections gradually decline 
upon Miss Bradwardine, who has leisure for 
less important concernments. He accom- 
panies the Adventurer's army, and signalises 
himself in the battle of Preston, — where he 
has the good fortune to save the life of an 
English officer, who turns out to be an inti- 
mate friend of his family, and remonstrates 
with him with considerable effect on the rash 
step he has taken. It is now impossible, 
however, he thinks, to recede with honour; 
and he pursues the disastrous career of the 
invaders into England — during which he 
quarrels with, and is again reconciled to Fer- 
gus — till he is finally separated from his corps 
in the confusion and darkness of the night- 
skirmish at Clifton — and, after lurking for 
some time in concealment, finds his way to 
London, where he is protected by the grate- 
ful friend who§e life he had saved at Preston, 



526 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



and sent back to Scotland till some arrange- 
ments could be made about his pardon. Here 
he learns the final discomfiture of his former 
associates — is fortunate enough to obtain both 
his own pardon, and that of old Bradwardine 
— and ; after making sure of his interest in the 
heart of the young lady, at last bethinks him 
of going to give an account of himself to his 
family at Waverley-Honour. — In his way, he 
attends the assizes at Carlisle, where ail his 
efforts are ineffectual to avert the fate of his 
gallant friend Fergus — whose heroic demean- 
our in that last extremity, is depicted with 
great feeling ; — has a last interview with the 
desolated Flora — obtains the consent of his 
friends to his marriage with Miss Bradwar- 
dine — puts the old Baron in possession of his 
forfeited manor, and. in due time, carries his 
blooming bride to the peaceful shades of his 
own paternal abode. 

Such is the outline of the story; — although 
it is broken and diversified with so many sub- 
ordinate incidents, that what we have now 
given, will afford but a very inadequate idea 
even of the narrative part of the performance. 
Though that narrative is always lively and 
easy, the great charm of the work consists, 
undoubtedly, in the characters and descrip- 
tions — though w r e can scarcely venture to pre- 
sent our readers with more than a single 
specimen; and we select, as one of the most 
characteristic, the account of Waverley's night 
visit to the cave of the Highland freebooter. 

" In a short time, he found himself on the banks 
of a large river or lake, where his conductor gave 
him to understand they must sit down for a little 
while. The moon, which now began to rise, 
showed obscurely the expanse of water which 
spread before them, and the shapeless and indistinct 
forms of mountains, with which it seemed to be 
surrounded. The cool, and yet mild air of the sum- 
mer night, refreshed Waverley after his rapid and 
toilsome walk;* and the perfume Which it wafted 
from the birch trees, bathed in the evening dew, 
was exquisitely fragrant. 

" He had now time to give himself up to the full 
romance of his situation. Here he sat on the banks 
of an unknown lake, under the guidance of a wild 
native, whose language was unknown to him, on a 
visit to i tie den of some renowned outlaw, a second 
Robin Hood perhaps, or Adam o' Gordon, and that 
at deep midnight, through scenes of difficulty and 
toil, separated from his attendant, and left by his 
guide. 

" While wrapt in these dreams of imagination, 
his companion gently touched him, and poiniing in 
a direction nearly straight across the lake, sad, 
' Yon's ta cove.' A small point of light was seen 
to twinkle in ihe direction in which he pointed, and, 
gradually increasing in size and lustre, seemed to 
flicker like a meteor upon the verge of the horizon. 
While Edward watched this phenomenon, the dis- 
tant dash of oars was heard. The measured splash 
arrived near and more near ; and presently a loud 
whistle was heard in the same direction. His 
friend with the battle-axe immediately whistled 
clear and shrill, in reply to the signal ; and a boat, 
manned with four or five Highlanders, pushed for 
a little inlet, near which Edward was seated. He 
advanced to meet them with his attendant ; was 
immediately assisted into the boat by the officious 
attention of two stout mountaineers; and had no 
sooner seated himself, than they resumed their 
oars, ana began to row across the lake with great 
rapidity. 



" The party preserved silence, interrupted only 
by the monotonous and murmured chant of a Gaelic 
song, sung in a kind of low recitative by the steers- 
man, and by the dash of the oars, which the notes 
seemed to regulate, as they dipped to them in ca 
dence. The light, which they now approached 
more nearly, assumed a broader, redder, and more 
irregular splendour. It appeared plainly to be a 
large fire; but whether kindled upon an islander 
the mainland, Edward could not determine. As he 
saw it, the red glaring orb seemed to rest on the 
very surface of the lake itself, and resembled the 
fiery vehicle in which the Evil Genius of an oriental 
tale traverses land and sea. They approached 
nearer; and the light of the fire sufficed to show 
that it was kindled at the bottom of a huge dark crag 
or rock, rising abruptly from the very edge of the 
water ; its front, changed by the reflection to dusky 
red, formed a strange and even awlul contrast to 
the banks around, which were from time to time 
faintly and partially enlightened by pallid moonlight. 

" The boat now neared the shore, and Edward 
could discover that this large fire was kindled in 
the jaws of a lofty cavern, into which an inlet from 
the lake seemed to advance ; and he conjectured, 
which was indeed true, that the fire had been kin. 
died as a beacon to the boatmen on their return. 
They rowed right for the mouth of the cave ; and 
then shipping their oars, permitted the boat to enter 
with the impulse which it had received. The skiff 
passed the little point, or platform of rock on which 
the fire was blazing, and running about two boats' 
length farther, stopped where the cavern, for it was 
already arched overhead, ascended from the water 
by five or six broad ledges of rock, so easy and 
regular that they might be termed natural steps. 
At this moment, a quantity of water was suddenly 
flung upon the fire, which sunk with a hissing noise, 
and with it disappeared the light it had hitherto af- 
forded. Four or five active arms lifted Waverley 
out of the boat, placed him on his feet, and almost 
carried him into the recesses of the cave. He made 
a few paces in darkness, guided in this manner ; and 
advancing towards a hum of voices, which seemed 
to sound from the centre of the rock, at an acute 
turn Donald Bean Lean and his whole establish- 
ment were before his eyes. 

" The interior of the cave, which here rose very 
high, was illuminated by torches made of pine-tree, 
which emitted a bright and bickering light, attended 
by a strong, though not unpleasant odour. Their 
light was assisted by the red glare of a large char- 
coal fire, round which were seated five or six armed 
Highlanders, while others were indistinctly seen 
couched on their plaids, in the more remote recesses 
of the cavern. In one large aperture, which the 
robber facetiously called his spence (or pantry), 
there hung by the heels the carcases of a sheep or 
ewe, and two cows, lately slaughtered. 

" Being placed at a convenient distance from the 
charcoal fire, the heat of which the season rendered 
oppressive, a strapping Highland damsel placed be- 
fore Waverley, Evan, and Donald Bean, three 
cogues, or wooden vessels, composed of staves and 
hoop3, containing imrigh, a sort of strong soup 
made out of a particular part of the inside of the 
beeves. After this refreshment, which, though 
coarse, fatigue and hunger rendered palatable, 
steaks, roasted on the coals, were supplied in libe- 
ral abundance, and disappeared before Evan Dhu 
and their host with a promptitude that seemed like 
magic, and astonished Waverley, who was much 
puzzled to reconcile their voracity with what he had 
heard of the abstemiousness of the Highlanders.— 
A heath pallet, with the flowers stuck uppermost, 
had been prepared for him in a recess of the cave; 
and here, covered with such spare plaids as could 
be mustered, he lay for some time watching the 
motions of the other inhabitants of the cavern. 
Small parties of two or three entered or left the 
place without any other ceremony than a few words 
in Gaelic to the principal outlaw, and when he fell 



WAVERLEV. 



527 



nsiecp, to a tall Highlander who acted as his lieuten- 
ant, and seemed to keep watch during his repose. 
Those who entered, seemeJ to have returned from 
some excursion, of which they reported the success, 
and went without farther ceremony to the larder, 
where cutting with their dirks their rations from 
the carcases which were there suspended, they pro- 
ceeded to broil and eat them at their own time and 
leisure. 

*' At length the fluctuating groupes began to 
swim before the eyes of our hero as they gradually 
closed; nor did he reopen them till the morning 
sun was high on the" lake without, though there was 
but a faint and glimmering twilight in the recesses 
of Uaimh an Ri, or the King's cavern, as the abode 
of Donald Bean Lean, was proudly denominated. 

11 When Edward had collected his scattered recol- 
lection, he was surprised to observe the cavern to- 
tally deserted. Having arisen and put his dress in 
some order, he looked more accurately around him, 
but all was still solitary. If it had not been for the 
decayed brands of the fire, now sunk into grey 
ashes, and the remnants of the festival, consisting 
of bones half burned and half gnawed, and an empty 
keg or two, there remainedno traces of Donald and 
his band. 

"Near to the mouth of the cave he heard the 
notes of a lively Gaelic song, guided by which, in 
a sunny recess, shaded by a glittering "birch tree, 
and carpetted with a bank of firm white sand, he 
found the damsel of the cavern, whose lay had 
already reached him, busy to the best of her power, 
in arranging to advantage a morning repast of milk, 
eggs, barley bread, fresh butter, and honeycomb. 
The poor girl had made a circuit of four miles that 
morning in search of the eggs, of the meal which 
baked her cakes, and of the other materials of the 
breakfast, being all delicacies which she had to beg 
or borrow from distant cottagers. The followers 
of Donald Bean Lean used little food except the 
flesh of the animals which they drove away from 
the Lowlands; bread itself was a delicacy seldom 
thought of, because hard to be obtained ; and all 
the domestic accommodations of milk, poultry, but- 
ter, &c. were out of the question in this Scythian 
camp. Yet it must not be omitted, that although 
Alice had occupied a part of the morning in provi- 
ding those accommodations for her guest which the 
cavern did not afford, she had secured time also to 
arrange her own person in her best trim. Her 
finery was very simple. A short russet-coloured 
jacket, and a petticoat of scanty longitude, was her 
whole dress: but these were clean, and neatly ar- 
ranged. A piece of scarlet embroidered cloth, called 
the snood, confined her hair, which fell over it in a 
profusion of rich dark curls. The scarlet plaid, 
which formed part of her dress, was laid aside, that 
it might not impede her activity in attending the 
stranger. I should forget Alice's proudest orna- 
ment were I to omit mentioning a pair of gold ear- 
rings, and a golden rosary which her father, (for 
6he was the daughter of Donald Bean Lean) had 
brought from France — the plunder probably of some 
battle or storm. 

" Her form, though rather large for her years, 
was very well proportioned, and her demeanour 
had a natural and rustic grace, with nothing of the 
sheepishness of an ordinary peasant. The smiles, 
displaying a row of teeth of exquisite whiteness, and 
the laughing eyes, with which, in dumb-show, she 
gave Waverlev that morning greeting which she 
wanted English words to express, might have been 
interpreted by a coxcomb, or perhaps a young 
soldier, who, without being such, was conscious of 
a handsome person, as meant to convey more than 
the courtesy of a hostess. Nor do I take it upon 
me to say, that the little wild mountaineer would 
have welcomed any staid old gentleman advanced 
in life, the Baron of Bradwardine, for example, 
with the cheerful pains which she bestowed upon 
Edward's accommodation. She seemed eager to 
place him by the meal which she had so sedulous- 



ly arranged, and to which she now added a few 
bunches of cranberries, gathered in an adjacent mo 
rass. Having had the satisfaction of seeing him 
seated at breakfast, she placed herself demurely 
upon a stone at a lew yards' distance, and appeared 
to watch with great complacency for some oppor 
tunity of serving him. 

"Meanwhile Alice had made up in a small baa 
ket what she thought worth removing, and flinging 
her plaid around her, she advanced up to Edward, 
and, with the utmost simplicity, taking hold of his 
hand, offered her cheek to his salute, dropping, at 
the same time, her little courtesy. Evan, whowas 
esteemed a wag among the mountain fair, advanced, 
as if to secure a similar favour; but Alice, snatch- 
ing up her basket, escaped up the rocky bank a9 
fleetly as a deer, and, turning round and laughing, 
called something out to him in Gaelic, which he 
answered in the same tone and language ; then 
waving her hand to Edward, she resumed her road, 
and was soon lost among the thickets, though they 
continued for some time to hear her lively carol, as 
she proceeded gailv on her solitary journey." — 
Vol. i. pp. 240—270. 

The gay scenes of the Adventurer's courl 
— the breaking up of his army from Edin- 
burgh — the battle of Preston — and the whole 
process of his disastrous advance and retreat 
from the English provinces, are given with 
the greatest brilliancy and effect — as well as 
the scenes of internal disorder and rising dis- 
union that prevail in his scanty army — the 
quarrel with Fergus — and the mystical visions 
by which that devoted chieftain foresees his 
disastrous fate. The lower scenes again with 
Mrs. Flockhart, Mrs. Nosebag, Callum-Beg, 
and the Cumberland peasants, though to some 
fastidious readers they may appear coarse and 
disgusting, are painted with a force and a 
truth to nature, which equally bespeak the 
powers of the artist, and are incomparably 
superior to any thing of the sort which has 
been offered to tho^public for the last ll sixty 
years." There are also various copies of 
verses scattered through the work, which 
indicate poetical talents of no ordinary de- 
scription — though bearing, perhaps still more 
distinctly than the prose, the traces of consid- 
erable carelessness and haste. 

The worst part of the book by far is that 
portion of the first volume which contains the 
history of the hero's residence in England — 
and next to it is the laborious, tardy, and ob- 
scure explanation of some puzzling occur- 
rences in the story, which the reader would, 
in general, be much better pleased to be per- 
mitted to forget — and which are neither well 
explained after all, nor at all worth explaining. 

There has been much speculation, at least 
in this quarter of the island, about the author- 
ship of this singular performance — and cer- 
tainly it is not easy to conjecture why it is 
still anonymous. — Judging by internal evi- 
dence, to which alone we pretend to have 
access, we should not scruple to ascribe it to 
the highest of those authors to whom it has 
been assigned by the sagacious conjectures 
of the public ; — and this at least we will ven- 
ture to say, that if it be indeed the work of 
an author hitherto unknown, Mr. Scott would 
do well to look to his laurels, and to rouse 
himself for a sturdier competition than any 
he has yet had to encounter ! 



528 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



(JHard), 1817.) 

Talcs of My Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and 
Parish Cleric of the Parish of Gandercleugh. 4 vols. 12mo. Edinburgh: 1816. 



This, we think, is beyond all question a 
new coinage from the mint which produced 
Waverley, Guy Mannering, and the Antiquary: 
— For though it does not bear the legend and 
superscription of the Master on the face of 
the pieces, there is no mistaking either the 
quality of the metal or the execution of the 
die — and even the private mark, we doubt 
not, may be seen plain enough, by those who 
know how to look for it. It is quite impos- 
sible to read ten pages of this work, in short, 
without feeling that it belongs to the same 
school with those very remarkable produc- 
tions j and no one who has any knowledge of 
nature, or of art, will ever doubt that it is an 
original. The very identity of the leading 
characters in the whole set of stories, is a 
stronger proof, perhaps, that those of the last 
series are not copied from the former, than 
even the freshness and freedom of the drape- 
ries with which they are now invested — or 
the ease and spirit of the new groups into 
which they are here combined. No imitator 
would have ventured so near his originals, 
and yet come off so entirely clear of them : 
And we are only the more assured that the 
old acquaintances we continually recognise in 
these volumes, are really the persons they 
pretend to be, and no false mimics, that we 
recollect so perfectly to have seen them be- 
fore, — or at least to have been familiar with 
some of their near relations ! 

We have often been astonished at the 
quantity of talent — of invention, observation, 
and knowledge of character, as well as of 
spirited and graceful composition, that may 
be found in those works of fiction in our lan- 
guage, which are generally regarded as 
among the lower productions of our litera- 
ture, — upon which no great pains is under- 
stood to be bestowed, and which are seldom 
regarded as titles to a permanent reputation. 
If Novels, however, are not fated to last as 
long as Epic poems, they are at least a great 
deal more popular in their season ; and, slight 
as their structure, and imperfect as their fin- 
ishing may often be thought in comparison, 
we have no hesitation in saying, that the better 
specimens of the art are incomparably more 
entertaining, and considerably more instruc- 
tive. The great objection to them, indeed, is, 
that they are too entertaining — and are so 
pleasant in the reading, as to be apt to pro- 
duce a disrelish for other kinds of reading, 
which may be more necessary, and can in 
no way be made so agreeable. Neither sci- 
ence, nor authentic history, nor political nor 
professional instruction, can be rightly con- 
veyed, we fear, in a pleasant tale ; and, there- 
fore, all those things are in danger of appear- 



ing dull and uninteresting to the votaries of 
these more seductive studies. Among the 
most popular of these popular productions 
that have appeared in our times, we must 
rank the works to which we just alluded ; 
and we do not hesitate to say, that they are 
well entitled to that distinction. They are 
indeed, in many respects, very extraordinary 
performances — though in nothing more extra- 
ordinary than in having remained so long un- 
claimed. There is no name, we think, in our 
literature, to which they would not add lustre 
— and lustre, too, of a very enviable kind; 
for they not only show great talent, but in 
finite good sense and good nature, — a morf> 
vigorous and wide-reaching intellect than ij 
often displayed in novels, and a more power- 
ful fancy, and a deeper sympathy with va 
rious passion, than is often combined witL 
such strength of understanding. 

The author, whoever he is, has a trulj 
graphic and creative power in the invention 
and delineation of characters — which he 
sketches with an ease, and colours with a 
brilliancy, arid scatters about with a pro- 
fusion, which reminds us of Shakespeare 
himself: Yet with all this force and felicity 
in the representation of living agents, he has 
the eye of a poet for all the striking aspects 
external of nature; and usually contrives, 
both in his scenery and in the groups with 
which it is enlivened, to combine the pictur- 
esque with the natural, with a grace that has 
rarely been attained by artists so copious and 
rapid. His narrative, in this way, is kept con- 
stantly full of life, variety, and colour; and 
is so interspersed with glowing descriptions, 
and lively allusions, and flying traits of sa- 
gacity and pathos, as not only to keep our 
attention continually awake, but to afford a 
pleasing exercise to most of our other facul- 
ties. The prevailing tone is very gay and 
pleasant ; but the author's most remarkable, 
and, perhaps, his most delightful talent, is 
that of representing kindness of heart in union 
with lightness of spirits and great simplicity 
of character, and of bending the expression 
of warm and generous and exalted affections 
with scenes and persons that are in themselves 
both lowly and ludicrous. This gift he shares 
with his illustrious countryman Burns — as he 
does many of the other qualities we have 
mentioned with another living poet, — who is 
only inferior perhaps in that to which we have 
last alluded. It is very honourable indeed, 
we think, both to the author, and to the readers 
among whom he is so extremely popular, that 
the great interest of his pieces is for the most 
part a Moral interest— that the concern we 
take in his favourite characters is less on ac- 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. 



529 



count of their adventures than of their amia- 
bleness — and that the great charm of his works 
is derived from the kindness of heart, the 
capacity of generous emotions, and the lights 
of native taste which he ascribes, so lavishly, 
and at the same time with such an air of truth 
and familiarity, even to the humblest of these 
favourites. With all his relish for the ridicu- 
lous, accordingly, there i3 no tone of misan- 
thropy, or even of sarcasm, in his representa- 
tions; but, on the contrary, a great indulgence 
and relenting even towards those who are to 
be the objects of our disapprobation. There 
is no keen or cold-blooded satire — no bitter- 
ness of heart, or fierceness of resentment, in 
any part of his writings. His love of ridicule 
is iittle else than a love of mirth; and savours 
throughout of the joyous temperament in 
which it appears to have its^origin ; while the 
buoyancy of a raised and poetical imagination 
lifts him continually above the region of mere 
jollity and good humour, to which a taste, by- 
no means nice or fastidious, might otherwise 
be in danger of sinking him. He is evidently 
a person of a very sociable and liberal spirit 
— with great habits of observation — who has 
ranged pretty extensively through the varie- 
ties of human life and character, and mingled 
with them all, not only with intelligent famili- 
arity, but with a free and natural sympathy 
for all the diversities of their tastes, pleasures, 
and pursuits — one who has kept his heart as 
w r ell as his eyes open to all that has offered 
itself to engage them : and learned indulgence 
for human faults and follies, not only from 
finding kindred faults in their most intolerant 
censors, but also for the sake of the virtues by 
which they are often redeemed, and the suf-. 
ferings by which they have still oftener been 
chastised. The temper of his writings, in 
short, is precisely the reverse of those of our 
Laureates and Lakers, who, being themselves 
the most whimsical of mortals, make it a con- 
science to loathe and abhor all with whom 
they happen to disagree ; and labour to pro- 
mote mutual animosity and all manner of 
uucha-ritableness among mankind, by refer- 
ring every supposed error of taste, or pecu- 
liarity of opinion, to some hateful corruption 
of the heart and understanding. 

With all the indulgence, however, which 
we so justly ascribe to him, we are far from 
complaining of the writer before us for being 
too neutral and undecided on the great sub- 
jects which are most apt to engender exces- 
sive zeal and intolerance — and we are almost 
as far from agreeing with him as to most of 
those subjects. In politics it is sufficiently 
manifest, that he is a decided Tory — and, we 
are afraid, something of a latitudinarian both 
in morals and religion. He is very apt at least 
to make a mock of all enthusiasm for liberty 
or faith — and not only gives a decided prefer- 
ence to the social over the austerer virtues — 
but seldom expresses any warm or hearty ad- 
miration, except for those graceful and gentle- 
man-like principles, which can generally be 
acted upon with a gay countenance — and do 
not imply any great effort of self-denial, or 
any deep sense of the rights of others, or the 
57 



helplessness and humility of our common 
nature. Unless we misconstrue very grossly 
the indications in these volumes, the author 
thinks no times so happy as those in which an 
indulgent monarch awards a reasonable por- 
tion of liberty to grateful subjects, who do 
not call in question his right either to give or 
to withhold it — in which a dignified and de- 
cent hierarchy receives the homage of their 
submissive and uninquiring flocks — and a 
gallant nobility redeems the venial immo- 
ralities of their gayer hours, by brave and 
honourable conduct towards each other, and 
spontaneous kindness to vassals, in whom 
they recognise no independent rights, and not 
many features of a common nature. 

It is very remarkable, however, that, with 
propensities thus decidedly aristocratical, the 
ingenious author has succeeded by far the 
best in the representation of rustic and homely 
characters; and not in the ludicrous or con- 
temptuous representation of them — but by 
making them at once more natural and more 
interesting than they had ever been made 
before in any work of fiction ; by showing 
them, not as clowns to be laughed at — or 
wretches, to be pitied and despised — but as 
human creatures, with as many pleasures and 
fewer cares than their superiors — with affec- 
tions not only as strong, but often as delicate 
as those whose language is smoother — and 
with a vein of humour, a force of sagacity, 
and very frequently an elevation of fancy, as 
high and as natural as can be met with among 
more cultivated beings. The great merit of 
all these delineations, is their admirable truth, 
and fidelity — the whole manner and cast of 
the characters being accurately moulded on 
their condition — and the finer attributes that 
are ascribed to them so blended and harmonis- 
ed with the native rudeness and simplicity of 
their life and occupations, that they are made 
interesting and even noble beings, without the 
least particle of foppery or exaggeration, and 
delight and amuse us, without trespassing at 
all on the province of pastoral or romance. 

Next to these, we think, he has found his 
happiest subjects, or at least displayed his 
greatest powers, in the delineation of the grand 
and gloomy aspects of nature, and of the dark 
and fierce passions of the heart. The natural 

faiety of his temper does not indeed allow 
im to dwell long on such themes; — but the. 
sketches he occasionally introduces, are exe- 
cuted with admirable force and spirit — and 
give a strong impression both of the vigour of 
his imagination, and the variety of his talent. 
It is only in the third rank that we would place 
his pictures of chivalry and chivalrous char- 
acter — his traits of gallantry, nobleness, and. 
honour — and that bewitching combination of 
gay and gentle manners, with generosity, can- 
dour, and courage, which has long been fa- 
miliar enough to readers and writers of novels, 
but has never before been represented with 
such an air of truth, and so much ease and 
happiness of execution. 

Among his faults and failures, we must give 
the first place to his descriptions of virtuous 
young ladies — and his representations of thfl 



530 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



ordinary business of courtship and conversa- 
tion in polished life. We admit that those 
things, as they are commonly conducted in 
real life, are apt to be a little insipid to a mere 
critical spectator ; — and that while they conse- 
quently require more heightening than strange 
adventures or grotesque persons, they admit 
less of exaggeration or ambitious ornament: 
— Yet we cannot think it necessary that they 
should be altogether so tame and mawkish as 
we generally find them in the hands of this 
spirited writer, — whose powers really seem 
to require some stronger stimulus to bring 
them into action, than can be supplied by the 
flat realities of a peaceful and ordinary exist- 
ence^ His love of the ludicrous, it must also 
be observed, often betrays him into forced 
and vulgar exaggerations, and into the repeti- 
tion of common and paltry stories, — though it 
is but fair to add, that he does not detain us 
long with them, and makes amends by the 
copiousness of his assortment for the indiffer- 
ent quality of some of the specimens. It is 
another consequence of this extreme abund- 
ance in which he revels and riots, and of the 
fertility of the imagination from which it is 
supplied, that he is at all times a little apt to 
overdo even those things which he does best 
His most striking and highly coloured char- 
acters appear rather too often, and go on rather 
too long. It is astonishing, indeed, with what 
spirit they are supported, and how fresh and 
animated they are to the very last ; — but still 
there is something too much of them — and 
they would be more waited for and welcomed, 
if they were not quite so lavish of their pres- 
ence. — It was reserved for Shakespeare alone. 
to leave all his characters as new and unworn 
as he found them, — and to carry Falstaff 
through the business of three several plays, 
and leave us as greedy of his sayings as at the 
moment of his first introduction. It is no 
light praise to the author before us, that he 
has sometimes reminded us of this, as well 
as other inimitable excellences in that most 
gifted of all inventors. 

To complete this hasty and unpremeditated 
sketch of his general characteristics, we must 
add, that he is above all things national and 
Scottish, — and never seems to feel the pow T ers 
of a Giant, except when he touches his native 
soil. His countrymen alone, therefore, can 
have a full sense of his merits, or a perfect 
relish of his excellences; — and those only, 
indeed, of them, who have mingled, as he 
has done, pretty freely with the lower orders, 
and made themselves familiar not only with 
their language, but with the habits and traits 
of character, of which it then only becomes 
expressive. It is one thing to understand the 
meaning of words, as they are explained by 
other words in a glossary, and another to know 
their value, as expressive of certain feelings 
and humours in the speakers to whom they 
are native, and as signs both of temper and 
condition among those who are familiar with 
their import. 

We must content ourselves, we fear, with | 
this hasty and superficial sketch of the gene- J 
"al character of this author's performances, in 



the place of a more detailed examination ot 
those which he has given to the public since 
we first announced him as the author of 
Waverley. The time for noticing his two 
intermediate works, has been permitted to go 
by so far, that it would probably be difficult 
to recal the public attention to them with any 
effect; and, at all events, impossible to affect, 
by any observations of ours, the judgment 
which has been passed upon them, with very 
little assistance, we must say, from professed 
critics, by the mass of their intelligent readers, 
— by whom, indeed, we have no doubt that 
they are, by this time, as well known, and as 
correctly estimated, as if they had been in- 
debted to us for their first impressions on the 
subject. For our own parts we must confess, 
that Waverley still has to us all the fascination 
of a first love ! aUd that we cannot help think- 
ing, that the greatness of the public transac- 
tions in which v that story was involved, as 
well as the wiklness and picturesque graces 
of its Highland scenery and characters, have 
invested it with a charm, to wrLch the more 
familiar attractions of the other pieces have 
not quite come up. In this, peihaps, our 
opinion differs from that of better judges; — 
but we cannot help suspecting, that the latter 
publications are most admired by many, at 
least in the southern part of the island, only 
because they are more easily and perfectly 
understood, in consequence of the training 
which had been gone through in the perusal 
of the former. But, however that be, we are 
far enough from denying that the two suc- 
ceed irg works are performances of extraordi- 
nary merit, — and are willing even to admit, 
that they show quite as much power and 
genius in the author — though, to our taste at 
least, the subjects are less happily selected. 

Dandie Dinmont is, beyond all question, we 
think, the best rustic portrait that has ever 
yet been exhibited to the public — the most 
honourable to rustics, and the most creditable 
to the heart, as well as the genius of the artist 
— the truest to nature — the most interesting 
and the most complete in all its lineaments. 
— Meg Merrilees belongs more to the depart- 
ment of poetry. She is most akin to the 
witches of Macbeth, with some traits of the 
ancient Sybil engrafted on the coarser stock 
of a Gipsy of the last century. Though not 
absolutely in nature, however, she must be 
allowed to be a very imposing and emphatic 
personage; and to be mingled, both with the 
business and the scenery of the piece, with 
the greatest possible skill and effect. — Pley- 
dell is a harsh caricature ; and Dirk Hatteric 
a vulgar bandit of the German school. The 
lovers, too, are rather more faultless and more 
insipid than usual. — and all the genteel per- 
sons, indeed, not a little fatiguing. Yet there 
are many passages of great merit, of a gentler 
and less obtrusive character. The grief of 
old Ellengowan for the loss of his child, and 
the picture of his own dotage and death, are 
very touching and natural ; while the many 
descriptions of the coast scenery, and of the 
various localities of the story, are given with 
a freedom, force, and effect, that bring erery 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. 



531 



feature before our eyes, and impress us with 
an irresistible conviction of their reality. 

The Antiquary is, perhaps, on the whole, 
less interesting, — though there are touches in 
it equal, if not superior, to any thing that 
occurs in either of the other works. The 
adventure of the tide and nigh): storm under 
the cliffs, we do not hesitate to pronounce the 
very best description we ever met with, — in 
verse or in prose, in ancient or in modern 
writing. Old Edie is of the family of Meg 
Merrilees, — a younger brother, we confess, 
with less terror and energy, and more taste 
and gaiety, but equally a poetical embellish- 
ment of a familiar character; and yet resting 
enough on the great points of nature, to be 
blended without extravagance in the trans- 
actions of beings so perfectly natural and 
thoroughly alive that no suspicion can be en- 
tertained of their reality. The Antiquary him- 
self is the great blemish of the work, — at 
least in so far as he is an Antiquary ; — though 
we must say for him, that, unlike most oddi- 
ties, he wearies us most at first ; and is so 
managed, as to turn out both more interesting 
and more amusing than we had any reason 
to expect. The low characters in this book 
are not always worth drawing; but they are 
exquisitely finished; and prove the extent and 
accuracy of the author's acquaintance with 
human life and human nature. — The family 
of the fisherman is an exquisite group through- 
out ; and, at the scene of the funeral, in the 
highest degree striking and pathetic. Dous- 
terswivel is as wearisome as the genuine 
Spurzheim himself: And the tragic story of 
the- Lord is, on the whole, a miscarriage ; 
though interspersed with passages of great 
force and energy. The denouement which con- 
nects it with the active hero of the piece, is al- 
together forced and unnatural.— We come now, 
at once, to the work immediately before us. 

The tales of My Landlord, though they fill 
four volumes, are, as yet, but two in number; 
the one being three times as long, and ten 
limes as interesting as the other. The intro- 
duction, from which the general title is de- 
rived, is as foolish and clumsy as may be ; 
and is another instance of that occasional im- 
becility, or self-willed caprice, which every 
now and then leads this author, before he 
gets afloat on the full stream of his narration, 
into absurdities which excite the astonish- 
ment of the least gifted of his readers. This 
whole prologue of My Landlord, which is 
vulgar in the conception, trite and lame in the 
execution, and utterly out of harmony with 
the stories to which it is prefixed, should be 
entirely retrenched in the future editions; 
and the two novels, which have as little con- 
nection with each other as with this ill-fancied 
prelude, given separately to the world, each 
under its own denomination. 

The first, which is comprised in one volume, 
is called "The Black Dwarf" — and is, in 
every respect, the least considerable of the 
family — though very plainly of the legitimate 
race — and possessing merits, which, in any 
other company, would have entitled it to no 
slight distinction. The Dwarf himself is a 



little too much like the hero of a fairy tale , 
and the structure and contrivance of the story, 
in general, would bear no small affinity to 
that meritorious and edifying class of compo- 
sitions, was it not for the nature of the details, 
and the quality of the other persons to whom 
they relate — who are as real, intelligible, and 
tangible beings as those with whom we are 
made familiar in the course of the author's 
former productions. Indeed they are very 
apparently the same sort of people, and come 
here before us again with all the recommenda- 
tions of old acquaintance. The outline of the 
story is soon told. The scene is laid among the 
Elliots and Johnstons of the Scottish border, 
and in the latter part of Queen Anne's reign ; 
when the union then newly effected between 
the two kingdoms, had revived the old feel- 
ings of rivalry, and held out, in the general 
discontent, fresh encouragement to the parti- 
zans of the banished family. In this turbulent 
period, two brave, but very peaceful and loyal 
persons, are represented as plodding their way 
homewards from deer-stalking, in the gloom 
of an autumn evening, when they are encoun- 
tered, on a lonely moor, by a strange mis- 
shapen Dwarf, who rejects their ptoffered 
courtesy, in a tone of insane misanthropy, and 
leaves Hobbie Elliot, who is the successor of 
Dandie Dinmont in this tale, perfectly per- 
suaded that he is not of mortal lineage, but a 
goblin of no amiable dispositions. He, and 
his friend Mr. Earnscliff, who is a gentleman 
of less credulity, revisit him again, however, 
in daylight ; when they find him laying the 
foundations of a small cottage in that dreary 
spot. With some casual assistance the fabric 
is completed; and the Solitary, who still 
maintains the same repulsive demeanour, 
fairly settled in it. Though he shuns all so- 
ciety and conversation, he occasionally ad- 
ministers to the diseases of men and cattle ; 
and acquires a certain awful reputation in the 
country, half between that of a wizard and a 
heaven-taught cow-doctor. In the mean time 
poor Hobbie's house is burned, and his cattle 
and his bride carried off by the band of one 
of the last Border foragers, instigated chiefly 
by Mr. Vere, the profligate Laird of Ellieslaw, 
who wishes to raise a party in favour of the 
Jacobites ; and between whose daughter and 
young Earnscliff there is an attachment, which 
her father disapproves. The mysterious Dwarf 
gives Hobbie an oracular hint to seek for his 
lost bride in the fortress of this plunderer, 
which he and his friends, under the command 
of young Earnscliff, speedily invest ; and 
when they are ready to smoke him out of 
his inexpugnable tower, he capitulates, and 
leads forth, to the astonishment of all the be- 
siegers, not Grace Armstrong, but Miss Vere, 
who, by some unintelligible refinement of 
iniquity, had been sequestered by her worthy 
father in that appropriate custody. The Dwarf, 
who, with all his misanthropy, is the most 
benevolent of human beings, gives Hobbie a 
fur bag full of gold, and contrives to have his 
bride restored to him. He is likewise con- 
sulted in secret by Miss Vere, who is sadly 
distressed, like all other fictitious c'kmsels, bv 



53S 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



her father's threats to solemnise a forced 
marriage between her and a detestable ba- 
ronet. — and promises to appear and deliver 
her, however imminent the hazard my ap- 
pear. Accordingly, when they are all ranged 
for the sacrifice before the altar in the castle 
chapel, his portentous figure pops out from 
behind a monument, — when he is instantly 
recognised by the guilty Ellieslaw, for a cer- 
tain Sir Edward Mauley, who was the cousin 
and destined husband of the lady he had af- 
terwards married, and who had been plunged 
into temporary insanity by the shock of that 
fair one's inconstancy, on his recovery from 
which he had allowed Mr. Vere to retain the 
greatest part of the property to which he suc- 
ceeded by her death ; and had been supposed 
to be sequestered in some convent abroad, 
w T hen he thus appears to protect the daughter 
of his early love. The desperate Ellieslaw at 
first thinks of having recourse to force, and 
calls in an armed band which he had that 
day assembled, in order to favonr a rising of 
the Catholics — when he is suddenly surround- 
ed by Hobbie Elliot and EarnsclifT, at the 
head of a more loyal party, who have just 
overpowered the insurgents, and taken pos- 
session of the castle. Ellieslaw and the Ba- 
ronet of course take horse and shipping forth 
of the realm ; while his fair daughter is given 
away. to EarnsclifT by the benevolent Dwarf; 
who immediately afterwards disappears, and 
seeks a more profound retreat, beyond the 
reach of their gratitude and gaiety. 

The other and more considerable story, 
which fills the three remaining volumes of 
this publication, is entitled, though with no 
great regard even to its fictitious origin, '• Old 
Mortality ;" — for, at most, it should only have 
been called the tale or story of Old Mortality 
— being supposed to be collected from the in- 
formation of a singular person who is said at 
one time to have been known by that strange 
appellation. The redacteur of his interesting- 
traditions is here supposed to be a village 
schoolmaster; and though his introduction 
brings us again in contact with My Landlord 
and his parish clerk, we could have almost 
forgiven that unlucky fiction, if it had often 
presented us in company with sketches, as 
graceful as we find in the following passage, 
of the haunts and habits of this singular per- 
sonage. After mentioning that there was, on 
the steep and heathy banks of a lonely rivulet. 
a deserted burying ground to which he used 
frequently to turn his walks in the evening, 
the gentle pedagogue proceeds — 

" One summer evening as, in a stroll such as I 
have described, I approached this deserted mansion 
of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to hear 
sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its 
solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, 
and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three 
gigantic ash trees, which mark the cemetery. The 
clink of a hammer was, upon this occasion, dis- 
tinctly heard ; and I entertained some alarm that a 
march-dike, long meditated by the two proprietors 
whose estates were divided by my favourite brook, 
was about to be drawn up the \?len, in order to sub- 
stitute its rectilinear deformity/ )r the graceful wind- 
ing of the natural boundary. As I approached T 
was agreeably undeceived. A old man v.ag seated 



upon the monument of the slaughtered Presbyte- 
rians ; and busily employed in deepening, will) hia 
chisel, the letters of the inscription, which announc- 
ing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings 
of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized 
the murderers with corresponding violence. A blue 
bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the grey hairs 
of the pious workman. His dress was a large old- 
fashioned coat, of the coarse cloth called hoddin- 
grey, usually worn by the elder peasants, with 
waistcoat, and breeches of the same ; and the whole 
suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously 
seen a train of long service. Strong clouted shoes 
studded with hob- nails, and gramoches or leegins 
made of thick black cloth, completed his equip- 
ment. Beside him, fed among the graves, a pony, 
the companion of his journey, whose extreme white- 
ness, as well as its projeecting bones and hollow 
eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in 
the most simple manner, with a pnir of branks, and 
hair tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of 
straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass 
pouch hung round the neck of the animal, for the pur- 
pose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and 
any thing else he might have occasion to carry with 
him. Ahhough I had never seen the old man be- 
fore, yet, from the singularity of his employment, 
and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in 
recognising a religious itinerant whom I had often 
heaid talked of, and who was known in various 
parts of Scotland by the name of Old Mortality. 

" Where this man was born, or what was his 
real name, I have never been able to learn, nor are 
the motives which made him desert his home, and 
adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, 
known to me except very generally. He is said to 
have held, at one period ot his life, a small moor- 
land farm ; but, whether from pecuniary losses, or 
domestic misfortune, he had long renounced that 
and every other gainful calling. In the language 
of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his 
kindred, and wandered about until the day of his 
deaih — a period, it is said, of nearly thirty years. 

" During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusi- 
ast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the 
graves of the unfortunate Covenanters, who suffered 
by the sword, or by the executioner, during the 
reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stuart line. 
These tombs are often apart from all human habit- 
ation, in the remote moors and wilds to which the 
wanderers had fled for concealment. But whereve. 
they existed, Old Mortality was sure to visit them, 
when his annual round brought them within his 
reach. In the most lonely recesses of the moun- 
tains, the moorfowl shooter has been often sur- 
prised to find him busied in cleaning the moss from 
the grey stones, renewing with his chisel the half- 
defaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of 
death with which these simple monuments are 
usually adorned. 

" As the wanderer was usually to be seen ber, 
on this pious task within the precincts of som 
country churchyard, or reclined on the solitar 
tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plove 
and the blackcock with the clink of his chisel ane 
mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, 
he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the 
popular appellation of Old Mortality." 

Vol. ii. pp ? — 16. 

The scene of the story thus strikingly intro- 
duced is laid — in Scotland of course — in those 
disastrous times which immediately preceded 
the Revolution of 1688; and exhibits a lively 
picture, both of the general state of manners 
at that period, and of the conduct and temper 
and principles of the two great parties in poli- 
tics and religion that were then engaged in 
unequal and rancorous hostility. There yre 
no times certainly, within the reach of authen- 
tic history, on which it ife more painful to look 



TALES OF MY LANDLORD. 



533 



back — which show a government more base 
and tyrannical, or a people more helpless and 
miserable : And though all pictures of the 
greater passions are full of interest, and a 
lively representation of strong and enthusiastic 
emotions never fails to be deeply attractive, 
the piece would have been too full of distress 
and humiliation, if it had been chiefly engaged 
with the course of public events, or the record 
of public feelings. So sad a subject would 
not nave suited many readers — and the author, 
we suspect, less than any of them. Accord- 
ingly, in this, as in his other works, he has 
made use of the historical events which came 
in his way, rather to develope the characters, 
and bring out the peculiarities of the individu- 
als whose adventures he relates, than for any 
purpose of political information ; and makes 
us present to the times in which he has placed 
them, less by his direct notices of the great 
transactions by which they were distinguished, 
than by his casual intimations of their effects 
on private persons, and by the very contrast 
which their temper and occupations often ap- 
pear to furnish to the colour of the national 
story. Nothing, indeed, in this respect is more 
delusive, or at least more woefully imperfect, 
than the suggestions of authentic history, as 
it is generally — or rather universally written 
— and nothing more exaggerated than the im- 
pressions it conveys of the actual state and 
condition of those who live in its most agitated 
periods. The great public events of which 
alone it takes cognisance, have but little direct 
influence upon the body of the people ; and 
do not, in general, form the principal business, 
or happiness or misery even of those who art) 
in some measure concerned in them. Even 
in the worst and most disastrous times — in 
periods of civil war and revolution, and public 
discord and oppression, a great part of the 
time of a great part of the people is still spent 
in making love and money — in social amuse- 
ment or professional industry — in schemes for 
worldly advancement or personal distinction, 
just as in periods of general peace and pros- 
perity. Men court and marry very nearly as 
much in the one season as in the other ; and 
are as merry at weddings and christenings — 
as gallant at balls and races — as busy in their 
studies and counting houses — eat as heartily, 
in short, and sleep as sound — prattle with 
their children as pleasantly — and thin their 
plantations and scold their servants as zeal- 
ously, as if their contemporaries were not fur- 
nishing materials thus abundantly for the 
Tragic muse of history. The quiet under- 
current of life, in short, keeps its deep and 
steady course in its eternal channels, unaf- 
fected, or but slightly disturbed, by the storms 
that agitate its surface ; and while long tracts 
of time, in the history of every country, seem, 
to the distant student of its annals, to be dark- 
ened over with one thick and oppressive cloud 
of unbroken misery, the greater part of those 
who have lived through the whole acts of the 
tragedy will be found to have enjoyed a fair 
average share of felicity, and to have been 
much less impressed by the shocking events 
of their day than those who know nothing 



I else of it than that such events took place in 
I its course. Few men, in short, are historical 
j characters — and scarcely any man is always, 
J or most usually, performing a public part. 
The actual happiness of every life depends 
far more on things that regard it exclusively, 
than on those political occurrences which are 
the common concern of society ) and though 
nothing lends such an air, both of reality and 
importance, to a fictitious narrative, as to con- 
nect its persons with events in real history, 
still it is the imaginary individual himself that 
excites our chief interest throughout, and we 
care for the national affairs only in so far as 
they affect him. In one sense, indeed, this 
is the true end and the best use of history ; 
for as all public events are important only as 
they ultimately concern individuals, if the in- 
dividual selected belong to a large and com- 
prehensive class, and the events, and their 
natural operation on him, be justly represent- 
ed, we shall be enabled, in following out his 
adventures, to form no bad estimate of their 
true character and value for all the rest of the 
community. 

The author before us has done all this, we 
think ; and with admirable talent and effect : 
and if he has not been quite impartial in the 
management of his historical persons, has con- 
trived, at any rate, to make them contribute 
largely to the interest of his acknowledged 
inventions. His view of the effects of great 
political contentions on private happiness, is 
however, we have no doubt, substantially 
true ; and that chiefly because it is not exag- 
gerated — because he does not confine himself 
to show how gentle natures may be roused 
into heroism, or rougher tempers exasperated 
into rancour, by public oppression. — but turns 
still more willingly to show with what ludi- 
crous absurdity genuine enthusiasm may be 
debased, how little the gaiety of the light- 
hearted and thoughtless may be impaired by 
the spectacle of public calamity, and how, in 
the midst of national distraction, selfishness 
will pursue its little game of quiet and can- 
ning speculation — and gentler affections find 
time to multiply and to meet ! 

It is this, we think, that constitutes the great 
and peculiar merit of the work before us. It 
contains an admirable picture of manners and 
of characters; and exhibits, we think, with 
great truth and discrimination, the extent and 
the variety of the shades which the stormy 
aspect of (he political horizon would be likely 
to throw on such objects. And yet, though 
exhibiting beyond all doubt the greatest pos- 
sible talent and originality, we cannot help 
fancying that we can trace the rudiments of 
almost all its characters in the very first of the 
authors publications. — Morton is but another 
edition of Waverley ; — taking a bloody part in 
political contention, without caring much about 
the cause, and interchanging high offices of 
generosity with his political opponents. — 
Claverhouse has many of the features of the 
gallant Fergus. — Cuddie Headrigg, of whose 
merits, by the way, we have given no fan- 
specimen in our extracts, is a Dandie Dinmont 
of a considerably lower species ; — and even 
2v2 



S34 



WORKS OF FICTION, 



the Covenanters and their leaders were sha- 
dowed out, though afar off. in the gifted Gil- 
fillan, and mine host of the Candlestick. It is 
in the picture of these hapless enthusiasts, 
undoubtedly, that the great merit and the 
great interest of the work consists. That in- 
terest, indeed, is so great, that we perceive it 
has even given rise to a sort of controversy 
among the admirers and contemners of those 
ancient worthies. It is a singular honour, no 
doubt, to a work of fiction and amusement, to 
be thus made the theme of serious attack and 
defence upon points of historical and theologi- 
cal discussion ; and to have grave dissertations 
written by learned contemporaries upon the 
accuracy of its representations of public events 
and characters, or the moral effects of the style 
of ridicule in which it indulges. It is difficult 
for us, we confess, to view the matter in so 
serious a light; nor do we feel much disposed, 
even if we had leisure for the task, to venture 
ourselves into the array of the disputants. 
One word or two, however, we shall say, be- 
fore concluding, upon the two great points 
of difference. First, as to the author's pro- 
fanity, in making scriptural expressions ridicu- 
lous by the misuse of them he has ascribed to 
the fanatics ; and, secondly, as to the fairness 
of his general representation of the conduct 
and character of the insurgent party and their 
opponents. 

As to the first, we do not know very well 
what to say. Undoubtedly, all light or jocu- 
lar use of Scripture phraseology is in some 
measure indecent and .profane : Yet we do not 
know in what other way those hypocritical 
pretences to extraordinary sanctity which 
generally disguise themselves in such a garb, 
can be so effectually exposed. And even where 
the ludicrous misapplication of holy writ arises 
from mere ignorance, or the foolish mimicry 
of more learned discoursers, as it is impossible 
to avoid smiling at the folly when it actually 
occurs, it is difficult for witty and humorous 
writers, in whose way it lies, to resist fabri- 
cating it for the purpose of exciting smiles. 
In so far as practice can afford any justification 
of such a proceeding, we conceive that its 
justification would be easy. In all our jest- 
books, and plays and works of humour for two 
centuries back, the characters of Quakers and 
Puritans and Methodists, have been constantly 
introduced as fit objects of ridicule, on this 
very account. The Reverend Jonathan Swift 
is full of jokes of this description ; and the 
pious and correct Addison himself is not a little 
fond of a sly and witty application of a text 
from the sacred writings. When an author, 
therefore, whose aim was amusement, had to 
do with a set of people, all of whom dealt in 
familiar applications of Bible phrases and Old 
Testament adventures, and who, undoubtedly, 
very often made absurd and ridiculous appli- 
cations of them, it would be rather hard, we 
think, to interdict him entirely from the repre- 
sentation of these absurdities; or to put in 
force, for him alone, those statutes against 
profaneness which so many other people have 
been allowed to transgress, in their hours of 
gaiety, without censure or punishment. 



On the other point, also, we ratner lean fo 
the side of the author. He is a Tory, we 
think, pretty plainly in principle, and scarcely 
disguises his preference for a Cavalier over a 
Puritan: But, with these propensities, we 
think he has dealt pretty fairly with both 
sides— especially when it is considered that, 
though he lays his scene in a known crisis of 
his national history, his work is professedly a 
work of fiction, and cannot well be accused 
of misleading any one as to matters of fact. 
He might have made Claverhouse victorious 
at Drumclog, if he had thought fit — and no- 
body could have found fault with him. The 
insurgent Presbyterians of 1666 and the sub- 
sequent years, were, beyond all question, a 
pious, brave, and conscientious race of men — 
to whom, and to whose efforts and sufferings, 
their descendants are deeply indebted for the 
liberty both civil and religious which they 
still enjoy, as well as for the spirit of resist- 
ance to tyranny, which, we trust, they have 
inherited along with it. Considered generally 
as a party, it is impossible that they should 
ever be remembered, at least in Scotland, but 
with gratitude and veneration — that their suf- 
ferings should ever be mentioned but with 
deep resentment and horror — or their heroism, 
both active and passive, but with pride and 
exultation. At the same time, it is impos- 
sible to deny, that there were among them 
many absurd and ridiculous persons — and 
some of a savage and ferocious character — 
old women, in short, like Mause Headrigg — 
preachers like Kettledrummle — or despera- 
does like Balfour or Burley. That a Tory 
novelist should bring such characters promi- 
nently forward, in a tale of the times, appears 
to us not only to be quite natural, but really 
to be less blameable than almost any oiher 
way in which party feelings could be shown. 
But, even he, has not represented the bulk of 
the party as falling under this description, or 
as fairly represented by such personages. He 
has made his hero — who, of course, possesses 
all possible virtues — of that persuasion ; and 
has allowed them, in general, the courage of 
martyrs, the self-denial of hermits, and the 
Zealand sincerity of apostles. His representa- 
tion is almost avowedly that of one who is 
not of their communion ; and yet we think it 
impossible to peruse it, without feeling the 
greatest respect and pity for those to whom it 
is applied. A zealous Presbyterian might, 
no doubt, have said more in their favour, with- 
out violating, or even concealing the truth; — 
but, while zealous Presbyterians will not 
write entertaining novels themselves, they 
cannot expect to be treated in them with ex- 
actly the same favour as if that had been the 
character of their authors. 

With regard to the author's picture of their 
opponents, we must say that, with the excep- 
tion of Claverjiouse himself, whom he has 
invested gratuitously with many graces and 
liberalities to which we are persuaded he nas 
no title, and for whom, indeed, he has a fool- 
ish fondness, with which it would be absurd 
to deal seriously — he has shown no signs of a 
partiality that can be blamed, nor exhibited 



ROB ROY. 



535 



many traits in them with which their enemies 
have reason to quarrel. If any person can 
read his strong and lively pictures of military 
insolence and oppression, without feeling his 
blood boil within him, we must conclude the 
fault to be in his own apathy, and not in any 
softenings of the partial author; — nor do we 
know any Whig writer who has exhibited the 
baseness and cruelty of that wretched gov- 
ernment, in more naked and revolting de- 
formity, than in his scene of the torture at 
the Privy Council. The military executions 
of Claverhouse himself are admitted without 



palliation : and the bloodthirstiness of Dalzell, 
and the brutality of Lauderdale, are repre- 
sented in their true colours. In short, if this 
author has been somewhat severe upon the 
Covenanters, neither has he spared their op- 
pressors ; and the truth probably is, that never 
j dreaming of being made responsible for his- 
torical accuracy or fairness in a composition 
of this description, he has exaggerated a little 
on both sides, for the sake of effect — and been 
carried, by the bent of his humour, most fre- 
quently to exaggerate on that which afforded 
the greatest scope for ridicule. 



(i^bructrti, ISIS.) 

Rob Roy. By the author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary. 12mo. 3 vols. 

pp. 930. Edinburgh: 1818. 



This is not so good, perhaps, as some others 
of the family ; — but it is better than any thing- 
else; and has a charm and a spirit about it 
that draws us irresistibly away from our graver 
works of politics and science, to expatiate 
upon that which every body understands and 
agrees in : and after setting us diligently to 
read over again what we had scarce finished 
reading, leaves us no choice but to tell our 
readers what they all know already, and to 
persuade them of that of which they are most 
intimately convinced. 

Such, we are perfectly aware, is the task 
which we must seem to perform to the greater 
part of those who may take the trouble of ac- 
companying us through this article. But there 
may still be some of our readers to whom the 
work of which we treat is unknown : — and 
we know there are many who are far from 
being duly sensible of its merits. The public, 
indeed, is apt now and then to behave rather 
unhandsomely to its greatest benefactors ; and 
to deserve the malison which Milton has so 
emphatically bestowed on those impious per- 
sons, who, 

" with senseless base ingratitude, 

Cram, and blaspheme their feeder.'' 

— nothing, we fear, being more common, than 
to see the bounty of its too lavish providers 
repaid by increased captiousness at the quality 
of the banquet, and complaints of imaginary 
fallings off — which should be imputed entirely 
to the distempered state of their own pam- 
pered appetites. We suspect, indeed, that we 
were ourselves under the influence of this 
illaudable feeling when he wrote the first 
line of this paper: For, except that the sub- 
ject seems to us somewhat less happily 
chosen, and the variety of characters rather 
less than in some of the author's former pub- 
lications, we do not know what right we had 
to say that it was in any respect inferior to 
them. Sure we are, at all events, that it has 
the same brilliancy and truth of colouring — 
the same gaiety of tone, rising every now 
and then into feelings both kindly and exalt- 



ed — the same dramatic vivacity — the same 
deep and large insight into human nature — 
and the same charming facility which distin- 
guish all the other works of this great master; 
and make the time in which he flourished an 
era never to be forgotten in the literary history 
of our country. 

One novelty in the present WO*k is, that it 
is thrown into the form of a continued and 
unbroken narrative, by one of the persons 
principally concerned in the story — and who 
is represented in his declining age, as detail- 
ing to an intimate friend the most interesting 
particulars of his early life, and all the recol- 
lections with which they were associated. 
We prefer, upon the whole, the communica- 
tions of an avowed author; who, of course, 
has no character to sustain but that of a 
pleasing writer — and can praise and blame, 
and wonder and moralise, in all tones and 
directions, without subjecting himself to any 
charge of vanity, ingratitude, or inconsistency. 
The thing, however, is very tolerably man- 
aged on the present occasion ; and the hero 
contrives to let us into all his exploits and 
perplexities, wdthout much violation either of 
heroic modesty or general probability; — to 
which ends, indeed, it conduces not a little, 
that, like most of the other heroes of this inge- 
nious author, his own character does not rise 
very notably above the plain level of medi- 
ocrity — being, like the rest of his brethren, a 
well-conditioned, reasonable, agreeable young 
gentleman — not particularly likely to do any 
thing which it would be very boastful to speak 
of, and much better fitted to be a spectator and 
historian of strange doings, than a partaker in 
them. 

This discreet hero, then, our readers will 
probably have anticipated, is not Rob Roy — 
though his name stands alone in the title — but 
a Mr. Francis Osbaldistone, the only son of 
a great London Merchant or Banker, and 
nephew of a Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, a 
worthy Catholic Baronet, who spent his time 
in hunting, and drinking Jacobite toasts in 
Northumberland, some time about the yeai 



536 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



1714. The young gentleman having been 
educated among the muses abroad, testifies 
a decided aversion to the gainful vocations in 
which his father had determined that he 
should assist aud succeed him; — and as a 
punishment for this contumacy, he banishes 
him for a season to the Siberia of Osbaldistone 
Hall, from which he himself had been es- 
tranged ever since his infancy. The young 
exile jogs down on horseback rather merrily, 
riding part of the way with a stout man, who 
was scandalously afraid of being robbed, and 
meeting once with a sturdy Scotchman, whose 
resolute air and energetic discourses make a 
deep impression on him. — As he approaches 
the home of his fathers, he is surrounded by 
a party of fox hunters, and at the same mo- 
ment electrified by the sudden apparition of 
a beautiful young woman, galloping lightly 
at the head of the field, and managing her 
sable palfrey with all the grace of an Angelica. 

Making up to this etherial personage, he 
soon discovers that he is in the heart of his 
kinsfolks — that the tall youths about him are 
the five sons of Sir Hildebrand : and the virgin 
huntress herself, a cousin and inmate of the 
family, by the name of Diana Vernon. She 
is a very remarkable person this same Diana. 
Though only eighteen years of age, and ex- 
quisitely lovely, she knows all arts and sci- 
ences, elegant and inelegant — and has, more- 
over, a more than masculine resolution, and 
more than feminine kindness and generosity 
of character — wearing over all this a playful, 
free, and reckless manner, more characteristic 
of her age than her various and inconsistent 
accomplishments. The rest of the household 
are comely savages; who hunt all day, and 
drink all night, without one idea beyond those 
heroic occupations — all, at least, except Rash- 
leigh, the youngest son of this hopeful family 
— who, having been designed for the church, 
and educated among the Jesuits beyond seas, 
had there acquired all the knowledge and the 
knavery which that pious brotherhood was so 
long supposed to impart to their disciples. — 
Although very plain in his person, and very 
depraved in his character, he has great talents 
and accomplishments, and a very insinuating 
address. He had been, in a good degree, the 
instructor of Diana, who, we should have 
mentioned, was also a Catholic, and having 
lost her parents, w r as destined to take the veil 
in a foreign land, if she did not consent to 
marry one of the sons of Sir Hildebrand, for 
all of whom she cherished the greatest aver- 
sion and contempt. 

Mr. Obaldistone, of course, can do nothing 
but fall in love with this wonderful infant ; 
for which, and some other transgressions, he 
incurs the deadly, though concealed, hate of 
Rashleigh, and meets w T ith several unpleasant 
adventures through his means. But we will 
not be tempted even to abridge the details of 
a story with which we cannot allow ourselves 
to doubt that all our readers have long been 
familiar : and indeed it is not in his story that 
this author's strength ever lies; and here he 
lias lost sight of probability even in the con- 
ception of some of his characters ; and dis- 



played the extraordinary talent of being tru^ 
to nature, even in the representation of im- 
possible persons. 

The serious interest of the work rests on 
Diana Vernon and on Rob Roy : the comic 
effect is left chiefly to the ministrations of 
Baillie Nicol Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice, 
with the occasional assistance of less regular 
performers. Diana is, in our apprehension, a 
very bright and felicitous creation — though it 
is certain that there never could have been 
any such person. A girl of eighteen, not 
only with more wit and learning than any 
man of forty, but vuth more sound sense, 
and firmness of character, than any man 
whatever — and with perfect frankness and 
elegance of manners, though bred among 
boors and bigots — is rather a more violent 
fiction, we think, than a king with marble 
legs, or a youth with an ivory shoulder. In 
spite of all this, however, this particular fic- 
tion is extremely elegant and impressive ; 
and so many features of truth are blended 
with it. that we soon forget the impossibility, 
and are at least as much interested as by a 
more conceivable personage. The combina- 
tion of fearlessness with perfect purity and 



del 



icacy. 



as well as that of the inextinguish- 



able gaiety of youth with sad anticipations 
and present suffering, are all strictly natural, 
and are among the traits that are wrought out 
in this portrait with the greatest talent and 
effect. In the deep tone of feeling, and the 
capacity of heroic purposes, this heroine bears 
a family likeness to the Flora of Waverley; 
but her greater youth, and her unprotected 
situation, add prodigiously to the interest of 
these qualities. Andrew Fairservice is a new, 
and a less interesting incarnation of Cuddle 
Headrigg; with a double allowance of selfish- 
ness, and a top-dressing of pedantry and con- 
ceit — constituting a very admirable and just 
representation of the least amiable of our 
Scottish vulgar. The Baillie, we think, is an 
original. It once occurred to us, that he 
might be described as a mercantile and town- 
ish Dandie Dinmont ; but the points of resem- 
blance are really fewer than those of contrast. 
He is an inimitable picture of an acute, saga- 
cious, upright, and kind man, thoroughly low 
bred, and beset with all sorts of vulgarities. 
Both he and Andrew are rich mines of the 
true Scottish language ; and afford, in the 
hands of this singular writer, not only an ad- 
ditional proof of his perfect familiarity with 
all its dialects, but also of its extraordinary 
copiousness, and capac : ty of adaptation to all 
tones and subjects. The reader may take a 
brief specimen of Andrew's elocution in the 
following characteristic account of the pur- 
gation of the Cathedral Church of Glasgow, 
and its consequent preservation from the 
hands of our Gothic reformers. 

M 'Ah! it's a brave kirk — nane o' yere whig- 
maleeries and curlie-wurlies and open-steek hems 
about it — a' solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that 
will stand as long as the warld, keep hands and 
eunpowther affit. It had amaisf a doun-come lang 
syne at the Reformation, when they pn'd doun the 
kirks of St. Andrews and Perth, and thereawa, 
to cleanse ihem o' Papery, and idolatry, and image 



WAVERLEY NOVELS. 



537 



worship, and surplices, and sic like rags o' the 
mui-kle hoor that sitteth on seven hills, as if ane 
was na braid aneugh for her auld hinder end. Sae 
the commons o' Renfrew, and o' the Barony, and 
the Gorbals, and a' about, they behooved to come 
into Glasgow ae fair morning to try their hand on 
purging the High Kirk o' Popish nick-nackets. 
But the townsmen o' Glasgow, they were feared 
their auld edifice might slip the girths in gaun 
through sicran rough physic, sae they rang the 
common bell, and assembled the train bands wi' 
took o' drum — By good luck, the worthy James 
Rabat was Dean o' Guild that year — (and a gude 
mason he was hims>ell, made him the keener to 
keep up the auld bigging), and the trades assem- 
bled, and offered downright battle to the com- 
mons, raiher than their kirk should coup the crans, 



as they had done elsewhere. It was na for luve 
o' Paparie — na, na ! — nane could ever say that o' 
the trades o' Glasgow — Sae they sune cam to an 
agreement to take a' the idolatrous statutes of sanis 
(sorrow be on them) out o' their neuks — And 
sae the bits o' static idols were broken in pieces by 
Scripture warrant, and flung into the Molendinar 
Burn, and the auld kirk stood as cnmse as a cat 
when the fleas are caimed aff her, and a'body was 
alike pleased. And I hae heard wise folk say, 
that if the same had been done in ilka kirk in Scot- 
land, the Reform wad just hae been as pure as it 
is e'en now, and we wad had mair Christian like 
kirks ; for I hae been sae lang in England, that 
naething will drive it out o' my head, that the d<>g- 
kennell at Osbaldistone-Hall is better than mouy 
a house o' God in Scotland.' " 



(Jcutttarg, 1820.) 

1. Ivanhoe. A Romance. By the Author of Waverley, &c. 3 vols. Edinburgh, Constable & Co. 

2. The Novels and Tales of the Author' of Waverley ; comprising Waverley, Guy Mannering, 
Antiquary, Rob Roy, Tales of My Landlord, First, Second, and Third Series: New Edition, 
with a copious Glossary. Edinburgh, Constable & Co. : 1820. 



Since the time when Shakespeare wrote his 
thirty-eight plays in the brief space of his 
early manhood — besides acting in them, and 
drinking and living idly with the other actors 
— and then went carelessly to the country, 
and lived out his days, a little more idly, and 
apparently unconscious of having done any 
thing at all extraordinary — there has been no 
such prodigy of fertility as the anonymous 
author before us. In the period of little more 
than five years, he has founded a new school 
of invention ; and established and endowed it 
with nearly thirty volumes of the most ani- 
mated and original compositions that have 
enriched English literature for a century — 
volumes that have cast sensibly into the shade 
all contemporary prose, and even all recent 
poetry — (except perhaps that inspired by the 
Genius — or the Demon, of Byron) — and, by 
their force of colouring and depth of feeling — 
by their variety, vivacity, magical facility, 
and living presentment of character, have 
rendered conceivable to this later age the 
miracles of the Mighty Dramatist. 

Shakespeare, to be sure, is more purely 
original ; but it should not be forgotten, that, 
in his time, there was much less to borrow — 
and that he too has drawn freely and largely 
from the sources that were open to him, at 
least for his fable and graver sentiment ; — for 
his wit and humour, as well as his poetry, are 
always his own. In our times, all the higher 
walks of literature have been so long and so 
often trodden, that it is scarcely possible to 
keep out of the footsteps of some of our pre- 
cursors ; and the ancients, it is well known, 
have stolen most of our bright thoughts — and 
not only visibly beset all the patent ap- 
proaches to glory — but swarm in such am- 
bushed multitudes behind, that when we 
think we have gone fairly beyond their pla- 
giarisms, and honestly worked out an original 
excellence of our own, up starts some deep- 
read antiquary, and makes it out, much to his 



own satisfaction, that heaven knows how 
many of these busy bodies have been before- 
hand with us, both in the genus and the species 
of our invention ! 

The. author before us is certainly in less 
danger from such detections, than any other 
we have ever met with ; but, even in him, the 
traces of imitation are obvious and abundant; 
and it is impossible, therefore, to give him the 
same credit for absolute originality as those 
earlier writers, who, having no successful 
author to imitate, were obliged to copy direct- 
ly from nature. In naming him along with 
Shakespeare, we meant still less to say that 
he was to be put on a level with Him, as to 
the richness and sweetness of his fancy, or 
that living vein of pure and lofty poetry which 
flows with such abundance through every part 
of his compositions. On that level no other 
writer has ever stood — or will ever stand — 
though we do think that there is fancy and 
poetry enough in these contemporary pages, 
if not to justify the comparison we have ven- 
tured to suggest, at least to save it, for the 
first time for two hundred years, from being 
altogether ridiculous. In saying even ths, 
however, we wish to observe, that we have in 
view the prodigious variety and facility of the 
modern writer — at least as much as the qual- 
ity of his several productions. The variety 
stands out on the face of each of them ; and 
the facility is attested, as in the case of 
Shakespeare himself, both by the inimitable 
freedom and happy carelessness of the style 
in which they are executed, and by the match- 
less rapidity with which they have been lav- 
ished on the public. 

Such an author would really require a re- 
view to himself — and one too of swifter than 
quarterly recurrence ; and accordingly we have 
long since acknowledged our inability to keep 
up with him, and fairly renounced the task 
of keeping a regular account of his successive 
publications ; contenting ourselves with greet- 



538 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



ing him now and then in the pauses of his 
brilliant career, and easting, when we do 
meet, a hurried glance over the wide field he 
has traversed since we met before. 

We gave it formerly, we think, as our reason 
for thus passing over, without special notice, 
soi.ie of the most remarkable productions of 
the age, that they were in fact too remarkable 
to need any notice of ours — that they were as 
soon, and as extensively read, as we could 
hope our account of them to be — and that in 
reality all the world thought just what we 
were inclined to say of them. These reasons 
certainly remain in full force ; and we may 
now venture to mention another, which had 
in secret, perhaps, as much weight with us as 
all the rest put together. We mean simply, 
that when we began with one of those works, 
we were conscious that we never knew how 
to leave off; but, finding the author's words 
so much more agreeable than our own, went 
on in the most unreasonable manner copying 
out description after description, and dialogue 
after dialogue, till we were abused, not alto- 
gether without reason, for selling our readers 
in small letter what they had already in large, 
— and for the abominable nationality of filling 
up our pages with praises of a Scottish author, 
and specimens of Scottish pleasantry and pa- 
thos. While we contritely admit the justice 
of these imputations, we humbly trust that 
our Southern readers will now be of opinion 
that the offence has been in some degree ex- 
piated, both by our late forbearance, and our 
present proceeding: For while we have done 
violence to our strongest propensities, in pass- 
ing over in silence two very tempting publi- 
cations of this author, on Scottish subjects and 
in the Scottish dialect, we have at last recur- 
red to him for the purpose of noticing the only 
work he has produced on a subject entirely 
English ; and one which is nowhere graced 
either with a trait of our national character, or 
a (voluntary) sample of our national speech. 

Before entering upon this task, however, we 
must be permitted, just for the sake of keep- 
ing our chronology in order, to say a word or 
two on those neglected works, of which we 
constrained ourselves to say nothing, at the 
time when they formed the subject of all other 
disceptation. 

'•'The Heart of Mid-Lothian" is remarkable 
for containing fewer characters, and less va- 
riety of incident, than any of the author's 
former productions: — and it is accordingly, in 
some places, comparatively languid. The 
Porteous mob is rather heavny described : and 
the whole part of George Robertson, or Stan- 
ton, is extravagant and unpleasing. The final 
catastrophe, too, is needlessly improbable and 
startling" j and both Saddletrees and Davie 
Deans become at last somewhat tedious and 
unreasonable ; while we miss, throughout, the 
character of the generous "and kindhearted 
rustic, which, in one form or another, gives 
such spirit and interest to most of the other 
stories. But with all these defects, the work 
has both beauty and power enough to vindi- 
cated title to a legitimate descent from its 
mighty father — and even to a place in " the 



valued file" of his productions. The trial and 
condemnation of Effie Deans are pathetic and 
beautiful in the very highest degree; and the 
scenes with the Duke of Argyle are equally 
full of spirit; and strangely compounded of 
perfect knowledge of life and of strong and 
deep feeling. But the great boast of the 
piece, and the great exploit of the author — 
perhaps the greatest of all his exploits — is the 
character and history of Jeanie Deans, from 
the time she first reproves her sister's flirta- 
tions at St. Leonard''s ? till she settles in the 
manse in Argylesnire. The singular talent 
with which he has engrafted on the humble 
and somewhat coarse stock of a quiet unas- 
suming peasant girl, the heroic affection, the 
strong sense, and lofty purposes, which dis- 
tinguish this heroine — or rather, the art with 
which he has so tempered and modified those 
great qualities, as to make them appear no- 
ways unsuitable to the station or ordinary 
bearing of such a person, and so ordered and 
disposed the incidents by which they are 
called out, that they seem throughout adapted, 
and native as it were, to her condition, — is 
superior to any thing we can recollect in the 
history of invention ; and must appear, to any 
one who attentively considers it, as a remark- 
able triumph over the greatest of all difficul- 
ties in the conduct of a fictitious narrative. 
Jeanie Deans, in the course of her adventurous 
undertaking, excites our admiration and sym- 
pathy a great deal more powerfully than most 
heroines, and is in the highest degree both 
pathetic and sublime; — and yet she never 
sa}-s or does any one thing that the daughter 
of a Scotch co\vfeeder might not be supposed 
to say — and scarcely any thing indeed that is 
not characteristic of her rank and habitual 
occupations. She is. never sentimental, nor 
refined, nor elegant; and though acting al- 
ways, and in very difficult situations, with 
the greatest judgment and propriety, never 
seems to exert more than that downright and 
obvious good sense which is so often found to 
rule the conduct of persons of her condition. 
This is the great ornament and charm of the 
work. Dumbiedykes, however, is an admir- 
able sketch in the grotesque way; — and the 
Captain of Knockdunder is a very spirited, 
and, though our Saxon readers will scarcely 
believe it. a very accurate representation of a 
Celtic deputy. There is less description of 
scenery, and less sympathy with external na- 
ture, in this, than in any of the other tales. 

" The Bride of Lammermoor" is more 
sketchy and romantic than the usual vein of 
the author — and loses, perhaps, in the exag- 
geration that is incident to that style, some of 
the deep and heartfelt interest that belongs to 
more familiar situations. The humours of 
Caleb Balderstone, too, are to our taste the 
least successful of this author's attempts at 
pleasantry — and belong rather to the school 
of French or Italian buffoonery, than to that 
of English humour : — and yet, to give scope 
to these farcical exhibitions, the poverty of 
the Master of Ravenswood is exaggerated be- 
yond all credibility, and to the injury even of 
his personal dignity. Sir W. Ashton is tedious 



WAVERLEV NOVELS. 



338 



and Buoklaw and his Captain, though excel- 
lently drawn, take up rather too much room 
lor subordinate agents. — There are splendid 
things, however, in this work also. — The pic- 
ture of old Ailie is exquisite — and beyond the 
reach of any other living writer. — The hags 
that convene in the churchyard, have all the 
terror and sublimity, and more than the na- 
ture of Macbeth's witches; and the courtship 
at the Mermaiden's well, as well as some of 
the immediately preceding scenes, are full of 
dignity and beauty. There is a deep pathos 
indeed, and a genuine tragic interest in the 
whole story of the ill-omened loves of the two 
victims. The final catastrophe of the Bride, 
however, though it may be founded on fact, 
is too horrible for fiction. — But that of Ravens- 
wood is magnificent — and, taken along with 
the prediction which it was doomed to fulfil, 
and the mourning and death of Balderstone, 
is one of the finest combinations of supersti- 
tion and sadness which the gloomy genius of 
our fiction has ever put together. 

" The Legend of Montrose " is also of the 
nature of a sketch or fragment, and is still 
more vigorous than its companion. — There is 
too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty — or, rather, he 
engrosses too great a proportion of the work, 
— for, in himself, we think he is uniforrnly 
entertaining ; — and the author has nowhere 
shown more affinity to that matchless spirit 
who could bring out his FalstafTs and his Pis- 
tols, in act after act, and play after play, and 
exercise them every time in scenes of un- 
bounded loquacity, without either exhausting 
their humour, or varying a note from its char- 
acteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated 
specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted 
Rittmaster. The general idea of the charac- 
ter is familiar to our comic dramatists after 
the Restoration — and may be said in some 
measure to be compounded of Captain Fluel- 
len and Bobadil ; — but the ludicrous combi- 
nation of the soldado with the Divinity student 
of Marischal college, is entirely original ; and 
the mixture of talent, selfishness, courage, 
coarseness, and conceit, was never so happily 
exemplified. Numerous as his speeches are, 
there is not one that is not characteristic — 
and, to our taste, divertingly ludicrous. An- 
not Lyle, and the Children of the Mist, are in 
a very different manner — and, though extrava- 
gant, are full of genius and poetry. The 
whole scenes at Argyle's Castle, and in the 
escape from it — though trespassing too far 
beyond the bounds of probability — are given 
with great spirit and effect; and the mixture 
of romantic incident and situation, with the 
tone of actual business and the real transac- 
tions of a camp, give a life and interest to the 
warlike part of the story, which belong to the 
fictions of no other hand. There is but little 
made of Montrose himself; and the wager 
about the Candlesticks — though said to be 
founded in fact, and borrowed from a very 
well known and entertaining book, is one of 
the few things in the writings of this author, 
to which we are constrained to apply the epi- 
thets of s1uf)id and silly. 

Having .thus hastily set our mark on those I 



productions of which we have been prevented 
from speaking in detail, we proceed, without 
further preface, to give an account of the 
work before us. 

The story, as we have already stated, is en- 
tirely English ; and consequently no longer pos- 
sesses the charm of that sweet Doric dialect, 
of which even strangers have been made of 
late to feel the force and the beauty. But our 
Southern neighbours will be no great gainers, 
after all, in point of familiarity with the per- 
sonages, by this transference of the scene of 
action : — For the time is laid as far back as 
the reign of Richard I. — and we suspect that 
the Saxons and Normans of that age are rather 
less known to them than even the Highlanders 
and Cameronians of the present. This was 
the great difficulty the author had to contend 
with, and the great disadvantage of the sub- 
ject with which he had to deal. Nobody now- 
alive can have a very clear or complete con- 
ception of the actual way of life and manure 
cPttrcoi our ancestors in the year 1194. Some 
of the more prominent outlines of their chiv-. 
airy, their priesthood, and their villenage, 
may be known to antiquaries, or even to gen- 
eral readers ; but all the filling up, and de- 
ta.ls, which alone could give body and life to 
the picture, have been long since effaced by 
time. We have scarcely any notion, in short, 
of the private life and conversation of any 
class of persons in that remote period ; and, 
in fact, know less how the men and women 
occupied or amused themselves — what they 
talked about — how they looked — or -u hat they 
habitually thought or felt, at that time in Eng- 
land, than we know of what they did or 
thought at Rome in the time of Augustus, or 
at Athens in the time of Pericles. The me- 
morials and relics of those earlier ages and 
remoter nations are greatly more abundant 
and more familiar to us, than those of our an- 
cestors at the distance of seven centuries. 
Besides ample histories and copious orations, 
we have plays, poems, and familiar letters of 
the former periods; while of the latter we 
have only some vague chronicles, some su- 
perstitious legends, and a few fragments of 
foreign romance. We scarcely know, indeed, 
what language was then either spoken or 
written. Yet, with all these helps, how cold 
and conjectural a thing would a novel be, of 
which the scene was laid in ancient Rome ' 
The author might talk with perfect propriety 
of the business of the Forum, and the amuse- 
ments of the Circus — of the baths and the 
suppers,.and the canvass for office — and the 
sacrifices, and musters, and assemblies. He 
might be quite correct as to the dress, furni- 
ture, and utensils he had occasion to mention ; 
and might even engross in his work various 
anecdotes and sayings preserved in contem- 
porary authors. But when he came to repre- 
sent the details of individual character and 
feeling, and to delineate the daily conduct, 
and report the ordinary conversation of his 
persons, he would find himself either frozen 
in among naked and barren generalities, ei 
engaged with modern Englishmen in the mas- 
querade habits of antiquity. 



540 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



really mean less to account for the defects, 
than to enhance the merits of the work before 
us. For though the author has not worked 
impossibilities, he has done wonders with his 
subject; and though we do sometimes miss 
those fresh and Jiving pictures of the charac- 
ters which we know, and the nature with 
which we are familiar — and that high and 
deep interest which the home scenes of our 
own times, and our own people could alone 
generate or sustain, it is impossible to deny 
that he has made marvellous good use of the 
scanty materials at his disposal — and eked 
them out both by the greatest skill and dex- 
terity in their arrangement, and by all the re- 
sources that original genius could render sub- 
servient to such a design. For this purpose 
he has laid his scene in a period when the 
rivalry of the victorious Norman and the con- 
quered Saxon, had not been finally composed ; 
and when the courtly petulance, and chival- 
rous and military pride of the one race, might 
yet be set in splendid opposition to the manly 
steadiness, and honest but homely simplicity 
of the other: And has, at the same time, 
given an air both of dignity and of reality to 
his story, by bringing in the personal prowess 
of Coeur de Lion himself, and other person- 
ages of historical fame, to assist in its devel- 
opment. — Though reduced, in agreat measure, 
to the vulgar staple of armed knights, and 
jolly friars or woodsmen, imprisoned damsels, 
lawless barons, collared serfs, and household 
fools — he has made such admirable use of his 
great talents for description, and invested 
those traditional and theatrical persons with 
bo much of the feelings and humours that are 
of all ages and all countries, that we frequent- 
ly cease to regard them — as it is generally 
right to regard them — as parts of a fantastical 
pageant ; and are often brought to consider 
the knights who joust in panoply in the lists, 
and the foresters who shoot deer with arrows, 
and plunder travellers in the woods, as real 
individuals, with hearts of flesh and blood 
beating in their bosoms like our own — actual 
existences, in short, into whose views we may 
still reasonably enter, and with whose emo- 
tions we are bound to sympathise. To all 
th's he has added, out of the prodigality of 
his high and inventive genius, the grace and 
the interest of some lofty, and sweet, and 
superhuman characters — for which, though 
evidently fictitious, and unnatural in any 
stage of society, the remoteness of the scene 
on which they are introduced, may serve as 
an apology — if they could need any other 
than what they bring along with them in 
their own sublimity and beauty. 

In comparing this work then with the former 
productions of the same master-hand, it is 
impossible not to feel that we are passing in 
a good degree from the reign of nature and 
reality, to that of fancy and romance ; and ex- 
changing for scenes of wonder and curiosity, 
those more homefelt sympathies and deeper 
touches of delight that can only be excited by 
the people among whom we live, and the ob- 
ects that are constantly around us. A far 



greater proportion of the work is accordingly 
made up of splendid descriptions of arms and 
dresses — moated and massive castles — tourna- 
ments of mailed champions — solemn feasts — 
formal courtesies, and other matters of external 
and visible presentment, that are only entitled 
to such distinction as connected with the olden 
time, and new only by virtue of their antiquity 
— while the interest of the story is maintained, 
far more by surprising adventures and extra- 
ordinary situations, the startling effect of ex- 
aggerated sentiments, and the strong contrast 
of exaggerated characters, than by the sober 
charms of truth and reality, — the exquisite 
representation of scenes with which we are 
familiar, or the skilful development of affec- 
tions which we have often experienced. 

These bright lights and deep shadows — this 
succession of brilliant pictures, addressed as 
often to the eye as to the imagination, and 
oftener to the imagination than the heart — this 
preference of striking generalities to homely 
details, all belong more properly to the pro- 
vince of Poetry than of Prose; and Ivanhoe 
accordingly seems to us much more akin to 
the most splendid of modern poems, than the 
most interesting of modern novels; and savours 
more of Marmion, or the Lady of the Lake, 
than of Waverley, or Old Mortality. For our 
part we prefer, and we care not who knows 
it, the prose to the poetry — whether in metre 
or out of it; and would willingly exchange, if 
the proud alternative were in our choice, even 
the great fame of Mr. Scott, for that which 
awaits the mighty unknown who has here 
raised his standard of rivalry, within the an- 
cient limits of his reign. We cannot now, 
however, give even an abstract of the story; 
and shall venture, but on a brief citation, from 
the most striking of its concluding scenes. 
The majestic Rebecca, our readers will recol- 
lect, had been convicted before the grand 
master of the Templars, and sentenced to die, 
unless a champion appeared to do battle with 
her* accuser, before an appointed day. The 
appointed day at last arrives. Rebecca is led 
out to the scaffold*— faggots are prepared by 
the side of the lists — and in the lists appears 
the relentless Templar, mounted and armed 
for the encounter. No champion appears for 
Rebecca ; and the heralds ask her if she yields 
herself as justly condemned. 

" ' Say to the Grand Master,' replied Rebecca, 
' that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me 
as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mne 
own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such de- 
lay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose 
opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up 
a deliverer ; and when such uttermost space is 
passed, may his Holy will be done!' The herald 
retired to carrv this answer to the Grand Master. — 
4 God forbid,' said Lucas Beaumanoir, * that Jew or 
Pagan should impeach us of injustice. — Until the 
shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will 
we wait to see if a champion will appear for this 
unfortunate woman.' 

The hours pass away — and the shadows 
begin to pass to the eastward . The assembled 
multitudes murmur with impatience and com- 
passion — and the Judges whisper to each other, 
that it is time to proceed to doom. 



WAVERLEV NOVELS. 



541 



"At this instant a knight, urging his horse to 
speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the 
lists. An hundred voices exclaimed. ' A champion ! 
a champion !' And. despite the prepossession and 
prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unani- 
mously as the knight rode rapidly into the tilt-yard. 
To the summons of the herald, who demanded his 
rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight 
answered readily and boldly, 'I am a good knight 
and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and 
sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, 
Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York ; to uphold the 
doom pronounced against her to be false and truth- 
less ; and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, as a 
traitor, murtherer, and liar.' 4 The stranger must 
first show,' said Malvoisin, 'that he is a good 
Knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple 
sendeth not forth her champions against nameless 
men.' — 'My name.' said the Knight, raising his 
helmet, 'is better known, my lineage more pure, 
Malvoisin, than thine own. I am Wilfred of Ivan- 
hoe.' — ' I will not fight with thee,' said the Templar, 
in a changed and hollow voice. ' Get thy wounds 
healed, and purvey thee a better horse, and it may 
be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of 
thee ibis boyish spirit of bravade.' — 'Ha! proud 
Templar,' said Ivanhoe, 'hast thou forgotten that 
twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember 
the lists at Aero — remember the Passage of Arms 
at Ashby — remember thy proud vaunt in the halls 
of Rotherwood, and the gige of your gold chain 
against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle 
w'vh Wilfred of Ivanhoe, and recover the honour 
thou hadst lost! By that reliquary, and the holy 
rehque it contains, I will proclaim thee, Templar, 
a coward in every court in Europe — in every Pre- 
ceptoiy of thine Order — unless thou do battle with- 
out farther delay.' — Bois-Gnilbert turned his coun- 
tenance irresolutely towards Rebecca, and then ex- 
claimed, looking fiercely at Tvanhoe, ' Dog of a 
Saxon, take thy lance, and prepare for the death 
thou hast drawn upon thee!' — 'Does the Grand 
Master allow me the combat?' said Ivanhoe. — 'I 
may not deny what you have challenged,' said the 
Grand Master, 'yet I would thou wert in better 
plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast 
thou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably 
B.dt with ' ' Thus — thus as I am, and not other- 
wise,' said Ivanlioe ; ' it is the judgment of God !— 
to his keeping I commend myself.' " 

We cannot make room for the whole of this 
catastrophe. The overtired horse of Ivanhoe 
falls in the shock ; but the Templar, though 
scarcely touched by the lance of his adver- 
sary, reels, and fails also ; — and when they 
seek to raise him, is found to be utterly dead ! 
a victim to his own contending passions. 

We will give but one scene more — and it is 
in honour of the divine Rebecca — for the fate of 
all the rest may easily be divined. Richard for- 
gives his brother ; and Wilfred weds Rowena. 

" 1; was upon the second morning after this happy 
bridal, that the Lady Rowena was made acquainted 
by her handmaid Elgi'ha. that a damsel desired ad- 
mission to her presence, and solicited that their par- 
lev might be without witness, Rowena wondered, 
hesitated, became curious, and ended by command- 
ing the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants 
to withdraw. — She entered — a noble and command- 
ing figure ; the long white veil in which she was 
shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing 
the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her de- 
meanonr was that of respect, unmingled by the 
,east shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate 
favour. Rowena was ever ready to acknowledge 
\be claims, and attend to the feelings of others. She 
arose, and would hove conducted the lovely stranger 
to a seat : but she looked at Elgiiha. and again in- 
timated a wish to discourse with the Lady Rowena 



alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling 
s'eps, than, to the surprise of the Lady of Ivanhoe, 
her fair visitant kneeled suddenly on one knee, 
pressed her hands to her forehead, and. bending her 
head to the ground, in spile of Rowena's resistance, 
kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic. — ' What 
means this ?' said the surprised bride ; ' or why do 
you offer to me a deference so unusual?' — 'Be- 
cause to you, Lady of Ivanhoe,' said Rebecca, 
rising up and resuming the usual qu,et dignity of 
her manner, ' I may lawfully, and wi bout rebuke, 
pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to Wilfred of 
Ivanhoe. 1 am — forgive the boldness which has 
offered to you the homage of my couirry — I am the 
unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded 
his life against such fearful odds in the tilt-yard of 
Templestowe. — ' Damsel,' said Rowena, ' Wilfred 
of Ivanhoe on that day rendered back but in a slight 
measure your unceasing charity towards him in his 
wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught 
remains in which he and I can serve thee?' — ' Noth- 
ing,' said Rebecca, calmly, ' unless you will trans- 
mit to him my grateful farewell.' — ' You leave Eng- 
land, then,' said Rowena, scarce recovering the sur- 
prise of this extraordinary visit. — 'I leave it, lady, 
ere this moon again changes. My father hath a 
brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, 
King of Grenada — thither we go, secure of peace 
and protection, for the payment of such ransom as 
the Moslem exact from our people.' — ' And are you 
not then as well protected in England ?' said Rowe- 
na. ■ ' My husband has favour with the King — the 
King himself is just and generous.' — ' Lady,' said 
Rebecca, ' I doubt it not — but England is no safe 
abode for the children of my people. Epbraim is an 
heartless dove — Issachar an over-laboured drudge, 
which s'oops between two burthens. Not in a land 
of warand blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, 
and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope 
to rest during her wanderings.' — ' But you, maiden,' 
said Rowena — ' you surely can have nothing to fear. 
She who nursed the sick-bed of Ivanhoe.' she con- 
tinued, rising with enthusiasm — ' she can have noih- 
ing to fear in England, where Saxon and Norman 
will contend who shall most do her honour.' — ' Thy 
speech is fair, lady,' said Rebecca, ' and thy pur- 
pose fairer; but it may not be — there is a gulf be- 
twixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either 
to pass over it. Farewell ! — yet, ere I go, indulge 
me one request. The bridal veil hangs over thy 
face ; raise it, and let me see the features of which 
fame speaks so highly.' — ' They are scarce worthy 
of being looked upon,' said Rowena; ' but, expect- 
ing the same from my visitant. I remove the veil.'— 
She took it off accordingly, and partly from the con- 
sciousness of beauty, partly from has! fulness, she 
blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and 
bosom, were suffused with crimson. Rebecca blush- 
ed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mas- 
tered by higher emotions, passed slowly from her 
features like the crimson cloud, which changes co- 
lour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon. 

"'Lady, she said, 'the countenance you have 
deigned to show me will long dwell in my remem- 
brance. There reigns in it gentleness and good- 
ness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities 
may mix with an expression so lovely, how may we 
chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour 
of its original ? Long, long shall I remember your 
features, and bless God that ] leave my noble de- 
liverer united with' — She stopped short — her eyes 
filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and an- 
swered to the anxious inquiries oi Rowena — ' I am 
well, lady — well. But my brart swells when I think 
of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe ! — 
Farewell ! One, the most trifling part of my duty, 
remains undischarged. Accept this casket — startle 
not at its contents.' — Rowena opened the small sil 
ver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or 
necklace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were 
visibly of immense value. — ' It is impossible,' she 
said, tendering back the casket, ' I dare not accept 
2 V 



542 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



a gift of such consequence.' — ' Yet keep it, lady,' 
returned Rebecca. — ' Let me not think you deem 
60 wretchedly ill of my nati-in as your commons be- 
lieve. Think ye that I prize these spirkling frag- 
ments of stone above my liberty ? or that my father 
values them in comparison to the honour of his only 
child ? Accept them, lady — to me they are valueless. 
I will never wear jewels more.' — ' You are then 
unhappy,' said Rowena. struck with the manner in 
which Rebecca uttered the last words. ' O, remain 
with us — the counsel of holy men will wean you 
from your unhappy law, and I will be a sister to 
you.' — ' No, lady,' answered Rebecca, the same 
calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beau- 
tiful features, — ' that may not be. I may not change 
the faith of my fathers, like a garment unsuited to 
the climate in which I seek to dwell ; and unhappy, 
lady, I will not be. He, to whom T dedicate my 
future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.' — 
4 Have you then convents, to one of which you 
mean to retire?' asked Rowena. — ' No, lady,' said 
the Jewess; ' but among our people, since the time 
of Abraham downward, have been women who 
have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their 
actions to works of kindness to men, tending the 
sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distress- 
ed. Among these will Rebecca be numbered. Say 
this to thy lord, should he inquire after the fate of 
her whose life he saved !' — There was an involun- 
tary tremor in Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness 
of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she 
would willingly have expressed. She hastened to 
bid Rowena adieu. — ' Farewell,' she said, ' may 
He. who made both Jew and Christian, shower 
down on you his choicest blessings!' 

" She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena 
surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The 
fair Saxon rela f ed the singular conference to her 
husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. 
He lived long and happily with Rowena; for they 
were attached to each other by the bonds of early 
affection, and they loved each other the more, from 
recollection of the obstacles whii-h had impeded 
their union. Yet it would be inquiring too curiously 
to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty 
and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more 
frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might 
altogether have approved." 

The work before us shows at least as much 
genius as any of those with which it must now 
be numbered — and excites, perhaps, at least 
on the first perusal, as strong an interest : But 
it does not delight so deeply — and we rather 
think it will not please so long. Rebecca is 
almost the only lovely being in the story — and 
she is evidently a creature of the fancy — a 
mere poetical personification. Next to her — 
for Isaac is but a milder Shylock, and by no 
means more natural than his original — the 
heartiest interest is excited by the outlaws and 
their merry chief — because the tone and man- 
ners ascribed to them are more akin to those 
that prevailed among the yeomanry of later 
days, than those of Ihe Knights, Priors, and 
Princes, are to any thing with which a more 
recent age has been acquainted. — Cedric the 
Saxon, with his thralls, and Bois-Guilbert the 
Templar with his Moors, are to us but theoreti- 
cal or mythological persons. We know noth- 
ing about them — and never feel assured that 
we fully comprehend their drift, or enter 
rightly into their feelings. The same genius 
wh ; ch now busies us with their concerns, 
might have excited an equal interest for the 
adventures of Oberon and Pigwiggin — or for 
any imaginary community of Giants, Amazons,- 



or Cynocephali. The interest we do take is in 
the situations — and the extremes of peril, he- 
roism, and atrocity, in which the great lati- 
tude of the fiction enables the author to in- 
dulge. Even with this advantage, we soon 
feel, not only that the characters he brings be- 
fore us are contrary to our experience, but that 
they are actually impossible. There could in 
fact have been no such state of society as that 
of which the story before us professes to give 
us but samples and ordinary results. In a 
country beset with such worthies as Front-de- 
Boeuf, Malvoisin, and the rest, Isaac the Jew- 
could neither have grown rich, nor lived to old 
age ; and no Rebecca could either have ac- 
quired her delicacy, or preserved her honour. 
Neither could a plump Prior Aymer have fol- 
lowed venery in woods swarming with the 
merry men of Robin Hood. — Rotherwood must 
have been burned to the ground two or three 
times in every year — and all the knights and 
thanes of the land been killed off nearly as 
often. The thing, in short, when calmly con- 
sidered, cannot be received as a reality ; and, 
after gazing for a while on the splendid pageant 
which it presents, and admiring the exagger- 
ated beings who counterfeit, in their grand 
style, the passions and feelings of our poor hu- 
man nature, we soon find that we must turn 
again to our Waverleys, and Antiquaries, and 
Old Mortalities, and become acquainted with 
our neighbours and ourselves, and our duties, 
and dangers, and true felicities, in the exqui- 
site pictures which our author there exhibits 
of the follies we daily witness or display, and 
of the prejudices, habits, and affections, by 
which we are still hourly obstructed, govern- 
ed, or cheered. 

We end, therefore, as we began — by pre- 
ferring the home scenes, and the copies of 
originals which we know — but admiring, in 
the highest. degree, the fancy and judgment 
and feeling by which this more distant and 
ideal prospect is enriched. It is a splendid 
Poem — and contains matter enough for six 
good Tragedies. As it is, it will make a glo- 
rious melodrame for the end of the season. — 
Perhaps the author does better — for us and 
for himself — by writing more novels : But we 
have an earnest wish that he would try his 
hand in the actual bow of Shakespeare — ven- 
ture fairly within his enchanted circle — and 
reassert the Dramatic Sovereignty of England, 
by putting forth a genuine Tragedy of passion, 
fancy, and incident. He has all the qualifica- 
tions to insure success* — except perhaps the 
art of compression; — for we suspect it would 
cost him no little effort to confine his story, 
and the development of his characters, to 
some fifty or sixty small pages. But the at- 
tempt is worth making ; and he may be cer- 
tain that he cannot fail without glory. 

* We take it for granted, that the charming ex- 
tracts from " Old Plays," that are occasionally 
given as mottoes to the chapters of this and some 
of his other works, are original compositions of the 
author whose prose they garnish : — and they show 
that he is not less a master of the most beautiful 
style of Dramatic versification, than of all the higher 
and more inward secrets of that forgotten art. 



WAVERLEY NOVELS, 



549 



(Stint, 1622.) 



The Fort.ines of Nigel. 
12mo. 



By the Author of "Waverley," 



pp. 950. Edinburgh 



11 Kenilworth, 
Constable & Co. 1822. 



&c. In 3 vols. 



It was a happy thought in us to review this 
author's works in groups, rather than in single 
pieces ; for we should never otherwise have 
been able to keep up both with him and with 
our other business. Even as it is, we find we 
have let him run so far ahead, that we have 
now rather more of him on hand than we can 
well get through at a sitting ; and are in dan- 
ger of forgetting the early part of the long 
series of stories to which we are thus obliged 
to look back, or of finding it forgotten by the 
public — or at least of having the vast assem- 
blage of events and characters that now lie 
before us something jumbled and confounded, 
both in our own recollections, and that of our 
admiring readers. 

Our last particular notice, we think, was of 
Ivanhoe, in the end of 1819 ; and in the two 
years that have since elapsed, we have had 
the Monastery, the Abbot, Kenil worth, the 
Pirates, and Nigel, — one, two, three, four, five 
— large original works from the same fertile 
and inexhaustible pen. It is a strange manu- 
facture ! and, though depending entirely on 
invention and original fancy, really seems to 
proceed with all the steadiness and regularity 
of a thing that was kept in operation by in- 
dustry and application alone. Our whole 
fraternity, for example, with all the works of 
all other writers to supply them with mate- 
rials, are not half so sure of bringing out their 
two volumes in the year, as this one author, 
with nothing but his own genius to depend 
on, is of bringing out his six or seven. There 
is no instance of any such experiment being 
so long continued with success; and, accord- 
ing to all appearances, it is just as far from a 
termination now, as it was at the beginning. 
If it were only for the singularity of the thing, 
it would be worth while to chronicle the ac- 
tual course and progress of this extraordinary 
adventure. 

Of the two first works we have mentioned, 
the Monastery and the Abbot, we have the 
least to say ; and we believe the public have 
the least curiosity to know our opinion. They 
are certainly the least meritorious of the whole 
series, either subsequent or preceding; and 
while they are decidedly worse than the other 
works of the same author, we are not sure 
that we can say, as we have done of some of 
his other failures, that they are better than 
those of any other recent writer of fiction. — 
So conspicuous, indeed, was their inferiority, 
that we at one time apprehended that we 
should have been called upon to interfere 
before our time, and to admonish the author 
of the hazard to which he was exposing his 
fame. But as he has since redeemed that 
Flip, we shall now pass it over lightly, and 



merely notice one or two things that still live 
in our remembrance. 

We do not think the White Lady, and the 
other supernatural agencies, the worst blemish 
of "The Monastery." On the contrary, the 
first apparition of the spirit by her lonely 
fountain (though borrowed from Lord Byron's 
Witch of the Alps in Manfred), as well as the 
effect of the interview on the mind of the 
young aspirant to whom she reveals herself, 
have always appeared to us to be very beau- 
tifully imagined : But we must confess, that 
their subsequent descent into an alabaster 
cavern, and the seizure of a stolen Bible from 
an altar blazing with cold flames, is a fiction 
of a more ignoble stock ; and looks very like 
an unlucky combination of a French fairytale 
and a dull German romance. The Euphuist 
too, Sir Piercie Shaft on, is a mere nuisance 
throughout. Nor can we remember any in- 
cident in an unsuccessful farce more utterly 
absurd and pitiable, than the remembrance 
of,tailorship that is supposed to be conjured 
up in the mind of this chivalrous person, by 
the presentment of the fairy's bodkin to his 
eyes. There is something ineffably poor at 
once, and extravagant, in the idea of a solid 
silver implement being taken from the hair of 
a spiritual and shadowy being, for the saga 
purpose of making an earthly coxcomb angry 
to no end ; — while our delight. at this happy 
imagination is not a little heightened by re- 
flecting that it is all the time utterly unintelli- 
gible, how the mere exhibition of a lady's 
bodkin should remind any man of a tailor in 
his pedigree — or be thought to import such a 
disclosure to the spectators. 

But, notwithstanding these gross faults, and 
the general flatness of the monkish parts — 
including that of the Sub-prior, which is a 
failure in spite of considerable labour — it 
would be absurd to rank this with common 
novels, or even to exclude it from the file of 
the author's characteristic productions. It has 
both humour, and fancy and pathos enough, 
to maintain its title to such a distinction. — 
The aspiring temper of Halbert Glendinning, 
the rustic establishment of Glendearg, the 
picture of Christie of Clinthill, and, above all, 
the scenes at the castle of Aver.el. are all 
touched with the hand of a master. Julian's 
dialogue, or soliloquy rather, to his hawk, in 
presence of his paramour, with its accompani- 
ments and sequel, is as powerful as any thing 
the author has produced ; and the tragic and 
historical scenes that lead to the conclusion 
are also, for the most part, excellent. It is a 
work, in short, which pleases more upon a 
second reading than at first — as we not only 
pass over the Euphuism and other dull pas- 



544 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



fages, but, being* aware of its defects, no 
longer feel the disappointment and provoca- 
1 ion which are apt, on their first excitement, 
to make ns unjust to its real merits. 

In point of real merit, " The Abbot" is not 
much better, we think, than the Monastery — 
but it is fuller of historical painting, and, in 
the higher scenes, has perhaps a deeper and 
more exalted interest. The Popish zealots, 
whether in the shape of prophetic crones or 
heroic monks, are very tiresome personages. 
Catherine Seyton is a wilful deterioration of 
D ana Vernon, and is far too pert and con- 
fident ; while her paramour Roland Grseme is, 
for a good part of the work, little better than 
a blackguard boy, who should have had his 
head broken twice a day, and been put nightly 
in the stocks, for his impertinence. Some of 
the scenes at Lochleven are of a different 
pitch; — though the formal and measured sar- 
casms which the Queen and Lady Douglas 
interchange with such solemn verbosity, have 
a very heavy and unnatural effect. These 
faults, however, are amply redeemed by the 
beauties with which they are mingled. There 
are some grand passages, of enthusiasm and 
devoted courage, in Catherine Seyton. The 
escape from Lochleven is given with great 
effect and spirit — and the subsequent muster- 
ing of the Queen's adherents, and their march 
to Langside, as well as the battle itself, are 
full of life and colouring. The noble bearing 
and sad and devoted love of George Douglas 
— the brawl on the streets of Edinburgh, and 
the scenes at Holyrood, both serious and 
comic, as well as many of the minor charac- 
ters, such as the Ex-abbot of St. Mary's me- 
tamorphosed into the humble gardener of 
Lochleven, are all in the genuine manner of 
the author, and could not have proceeded from 
any other hand. On the whole, however, the 
work is unsatisfactory, and too deficient in 
design and unity. We do not know why it 
should have been called "The Abbot." as 
that personage has scarcely any thing to do 
with it. As an historical sketch, it has nei- 
ther beginning nor end ; — nor does the time 
which it embraces possess any peculiar inter- 
est : — and for a history of Roland GrEeme ; 
which is the only denomination that can give 
it coherence, the narrative is not only far too 
slight and insignificant in itself, but is too 
much broken in upon by higher persons and 
weightier affairs, to retain any of the interest 
which it might otherwise have possessed. 

"Kenil worth," however, is a flight of an- 
other wing — and rises almost, if not alto- 
gether, to the level of Ivanhoe ; — displaying, 
perhaps, as much power in assembling to- 
gether, and distributing in striking groups, 
the copious historical materials of that ro- 
mantic age, as the other does in eking out 
their scantiness by the riches of the author's 
imagination. Elizabeth herself, surrounded 
as she is with lively and imposing recollec- 
tions, was a difficult personage to bring promi- 
nently forward in a work of fiction : But the 
task, we think, is here not only fearlessly, 
but admirably performed ; and the character 
brought out. not merely with the most un- 



sparing fulness, but with the most brilliant 
and seducing effect. Leicester is less happy, 
and we have certainly a great deal too much 
both of the blackguardism of Michael Lam- 
bourne, the atrocious villany of Varney and 
Foster, and the magical dealings of Alasco 
and Way land Smith. Indeed, almost all the 
lower agents in the performance have a sort 
of Demoniacal character; and the deep and 
disgusting guilt by which most of the main 
incidents are developed, make a splendid pas- 
sage of English history read like the New gate 
Calendar, and give a certain horror to the 
story, which is neither agreeable to historical 
truth, nor attractive in a work of imagination. 
The great charm and glory of the piece, 
however, consists in the magnificence ana 
vivacity of the descriptions with which it 
abounds ; and which set before our eyes, with 
a freshness and force of colouring which can 
scarcely ever be gained except by actual ob- 
servation, all the pomp and stateliness, the 
glitter and solemnity, of that heroic reign. 
The moving picture of Elizabeth's night entry 
to Kenilworth is given with such spirit, rich- 
ness, and copiousness of detail, that we seem 
actually transported to the middle of the 
scene. We feel the press, and hear the music 
and the din— and descry, amidst the fading 
lights of a summer eve, the majestical pacings 
and waving banners that surround the march 
of the heroic Queen; while the mixture of 
ludicrous incidents, and ihe ennui that steals 
on the lengthened parade and fatiguing prepa- 
ration, give a sense of truth and reality to the 
sketch that seems to belong rather to recent 
recollection than mere ideal conception. We 
believe, in short, that we have at this moment 
as lively and distinct an impression of the 
whole scene, as we shall have in a few weeks 
of a similar Joyous Entry, for which prepara- 
tions are now making* in this our loyal me- 
tropolis, — and of which we hope, before that 
time, to be spectators. The account of Lei- 
cester's princely hospitality, and of the royal 
diver tisements that ensued, — the f eastings 
and huntings, the flatteries and dissemblings, 
the pride, the jealousy, the ambition, the re- 
venge, — are all portrayed with the same ani- 
mating pencil, and leave every thing behind, 
but some rival works of the same unrivalled 
artist. The most surprising piece of mere 
description, however, that we have ever seen, 
is that of Amy's magnificent apartments at 
Cumnor Place, and of the dress and beauty 
of the lovely creature for whom they we:e 
adorned. We had no idea before that up- 
holstery and millinery could be made so en- 
gaging; and though we are aware that it is 
the living Beauty that gives its enchantment 
to the scene, and breathes over the whole an 
air of voluptuousness, innocence, and pity, it 
is impossible not to feel that the vivid and 
clear presentment of the visible objects by 
which she is surrounded, and the antique 
splendour in which she is enshrined, not only 
strengthen our impressions of the reality, but 



* The visit of George IV. to Edinburgh in Ju!y } 

1822. 



WAVERLEY NOVELS. 



545 



actually fascinate and delight us in them- 
selves, — just as the draperies and still-life in 
a grand historical picture often divide our ad- 
miration with the pathetic effect of the story 
told by the principal figures. The catastro- 
phe of the unfortunate Amy herself is too 
sickening and full of pity to be endured ; and 
we shrink from the recollection of it, as we 
would from that of a recent calamity of our 
own. The part of Tressilian is unfortunate on 
the whole, though it contains touches of in- 
terest and beauty. The sketch of young Ra- 
leigh is splendid, and in excellent keeping 
with every thing beside it. More, we think, 
might have been made of the desolate age 
and broken-hearted anguish of Sir Hugh Rob- 
sart ; though there are one or two little traits 
of his paternal love and crushed affection, 
that are inimitably sweet and pathetic, and 
which might have lost their effect, perhaps, 
if the scene had been extended. We do not 
care much about the goblin dwarf, nor the host, 
nor the mercer, — nor any of the other charac- 
ters. They are all too fantastical and affected. 
They seem copied rather from the quaintness 
of old plays, than the reality of past and pres- 
ent nature ; and serve better to show what 
manner of personages were to be met with in 
the Masks and Pageants of the age, than what 
were actually to be found in the living popu- 
lation of the land. 

li The Pirates " is a bold attempt to furnish 
out a long and eventful story, from a very nar- 
row circle of society, and a scene so circum- 
scribed as scarcely to admit of any great scope 
or variety of action; and its failure, in so far 
as it may be thought to have failed, should, 
in fairness, be ascribed chiefly to this scanti- 
ness and defect of the materials. The author, 
accordingly, has been obliged to borrow pretty 
largely from other regions. The character 
and story of Mertoun (which is at once com- 
mon-place and extravagant), — that of the 
Pirate himself,— and that of Halcro the poet, 
have no connection with the localities of Shet- 
land, or the peculiarities of an insular life. 
Mr. 'Yellowlees, though he gives occasion to 
some strong contrasts, is in the same situa- 
tion. The great blemish, however, of the 
work, is the inconsistency in Cleveland's 
character, or rather the way in which he dis- 
appoints us, by turning out so much better 
than we had expected — and yet substantially 
so ill. So great, indeed, is this disappoint- 
ment, and so strong the grounds of it, that we 
cannot help suspecting that the author him- 
self must have altered his design in the course 
of the work; and, finding himself at a loss 
how to make either a demon or a hero of the 
personage whom he had introduced with a 
view to one or other of these characters, be- 
took himself to the expedient of leaving him 
in that neutral or mixed state, which, after 
all, suits the least with his conduct and situa- 
tion, or with the effects which he is supposed 
to produce. All that we see of him is a dar- 
ing, underbred, forward, heartless fellow — 
very unlikely, we should suppose, to capti- 
vate the affections of the high-minded, ro- 
mantic Minna, or even to supplant an old 
€9 



friend in the favour of the honest UdalUr. 
The charm of the book is in the pictuie of 
his family. Nothing can be more beautiful 
than the description of the two sisters, and 
the gentle and innocent affection that con- 
tinues to unite them, even after love has come 
to divide their interests and wishes. The visit 
paid them by Noma, and the tale she tells 
them at midnight, lead to a fine display of 
the perfect purity of their young hearts, and 
the native gentleness and dignity of their 
character. There is, perhaps, still more ge- 
nius in the development and full exhibition of 
their father's character; who is first introduced 
to us as little else than a jovial, thoughtless, 
hospitable housekeeper, but gradually dis- 
closes the most captivating traits, not only of 
kindness and courage, but of substantia] gene- 
rosity and delicacy of feeling, without ever 
departing, for an instant, from the frank home- 
liness of his habitual demeanour. Noma is a 
new incarnation of Meg Merrilees, and palpa- 
bly the same in the spirit. Less degraded in 
her habits and associates, and less lofty and 
pathetic in her denunciations, she reconciles 
fewer contradictions, and is, on the whole, 
inferior perhaps to her prototype ; but is far 
above the rank of a mere imitated or borrowed 
character. The Udaller's visit to her dwell- 
ing on the Fitful-head is admirably managed, 
and highly characteristic of both parties. Of 
the humorous characters, Yellowlees is the 
best. Few things, indeed, are better than 
the description of his equestrian progression 
to the feast of the Udaller. Claud Halcro is 
too fantastical; and peculiarly out of place, 
we should think, in such a region. A man 
who talks in quotations from common plays, 
and proses eternally about glorious John Dry- 
den, luckily is not often to be met with any- 
where, but least of all in the Orkney Islands. 
Bunce is liable to the same objection, — though 
there are parts of his character, as well as 
that of Fletcher and the rest of the crew, 
given with infinite spirit and effect. The de- 
nouement of the story is strained and im- 
probable, and the conclusion rather unsatis- 
factory: But the work, on the whole, opens 
up a new world to our curiosity, and affords 
another proof of the extraordinary pliability, 
as well as vigour, of the author's genius. 

We come now to the work which has af- 
forded us a pretext for this long retrospection, 
and which we have approached, as befit teth 
a royal presence, through this long vista of 
preparatory splendour. Considering that it 
has now been three months in the hands of 
the public — and must be about as well known 
to most of our readers as the older works to 
which we have just alluded — we do not very 
well see why we should not deal with it as 
summarily as we have done with them ; and, 
sparing our dutiful readers the fatigue of toil- 
ing through a detail with which they are al- 
ready familiar, content ourselves with marking 
our opinion of it in the same general and 
comprehensive manner that we have ventured 
to adopt as to those earlier productions. This 
accordingly is the course which, in the main, 
we propose to follow ; though, for the sake of 
2v2 



546 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



our distant readers, as well as to give more 
force and direct application to our general re- 
marks, we must somewhat enlarge the scale 
of our critical notice. 

This work, though dealing abundantly in 
invention, is, in substance, like Old Mortality 
and Kenilworth, of an historical character, 
and may be correctly represented as an at- 
tempt to describe and illustrate, by examples, 
the manners of the court, and generally speak- 
ing, of the age, of James I. of England. And 
this, on the whole, is the most favourable as- 
pect under which it can be considered ; for. 
while it certainly presents us with a very 
brilliant, and, we believe, a very faithful sketch 
of the manners and habits of the time, we 
cannot say that it either embodies them in a 
very interesting story, or supplies us with any 
rich variety of particular characters. Except 
King James himself, and Richie Moniplies, 
there is but little individuality in the person- 
ages represented. We should perhaps add 
Master George Heriot ; except that he is too 
staid and prudent a person to engage very 
much of our interest. The story is of a very 
simple structure, and may soon be told. 

Lord Glenvarloch, a young Scottish noble- 
man, whose fortunes had been ruined by his 
father's profusion, and chiefly by large loans 
to the Crown, comes to London about the mid- 
dle of James' reign, to try what part of this 
debt may be recovered from the justice of his 
now opulent sovereign. From want of patron- 
age and experience, he is unsuccessful in his 
first application ; and is about to withdraw in 
despair, when his serving man. Richard Moni- 
plies, falling accidentally in the way of George 
Heriot, the favourite jeweller and occasional 
banker of the King, that benevolent person (to 
whom, it may not be known to our Southern 
readers, Edinburgh is indebted for the most 
flourishing and best conducted of her founded 
schools or charities) is pleased to take an in- 
terest in his affairs, and not only represents 
his case in a favourable way to the Sovereign, 
but is the means of introducing him to another 
nobleman, with whose son, Lord Dalgarno, he 
speedily forms a rather inauspicious intimacy. 
By this youth he is initiated into all the gaie- 
ties of the town; of which, as well of the 
manners and bearing of the men of fashion of 
the time, a very lively picture is drawn. 
Among other things, he is encouraged to try 
his fortune at play ; but, being poor and pru- 
dent, he plays but for small sums, and, rather 
unhandsomely we must own, makes it a prac- 
tice to come away after a moderate winning. 
On this account he is slighted by Lord Dal- 
garno and his more adventurous associates; 
and. having learned that they talked con- 
temptuously of him, and that Lord D. had 
prejudiced the King and the Prince against 
him, he challenges him for his perfidy in the 
Park, and actually draws on him, in the pre- 
cincts of the royal abode. This was, in those 
days, a very serious offence : and, to avoid its 
immediate consequences, he'is advised to take 
refuge in Whitefriars, then known by the cant 
name of Alsatia. and understood to possess the 
privileges of a sanctuary against ordinary ar- 



rests. A propos of this retirement, we have 
a very striking and animated picture of the 
bullies and bankrupts, and swindlers and petty 
felons by whom this city of refuge was chiefly 
inhabited — and among whom trie young Lord 
has the good Juck to witness a murder, com- 
mitted on the person of his miserly host. He 
then bethinks himself of repairing to Green- 
wich, where the court was, throwing himself 
upon the clemency of the King, and insisting 
on being confronted with his accusers; but 
happening unfortunately to meet with his 
Majesty in a retired part of the Park to which 
he had pursued the stag, ahead of all his at- 
tendants, his sudden appearance so startles 
and alarms that pacific monarch, that he ac- 
cuses him of a treasonable design on his life, 
and has him committed to the Tower, under 
that weighty accusation. In the mean time, 
however, a certain Margaret Ramsey, a daugh- 
ter of the celebrated watchmaker of that name, 
who had privately fallen in love with him at 
the table of George Heriot her god- father, and 
had, ever since, kept watch over his proceed- 
ings, and aided him in his difficulties by va- 
rious stratagems and suggestions, had repaired 
to Greenwich in male attire, with the roman- 
tic design of interesting and undeceiving the 
King with regard to him. By a lucky acci- 
dent, she does obtain an opportunity of making 
her statement to James ; who, in order to put 
her veracity to the test, sends her, disguised 
as she was, to Glenvarloch/ s prison in the 
Tower, and also looses upon him in the same 
place, first his faithful Heriot, and afterwards 
a sarcastic courtier, while he himself plays 
the eavesdropper to their conversation, from an 
adjoining apartment constructed for that pur- 
pose. The result of this Dionysian experi- 
ment is, to satisfy the sagacious monarch both 
of the innocence of his young countryman, 
and the malignity of his accusers; who are 
speedily brought to shame by his acquittal 
and admittance to favour. 

There is an underplot of a more extravagant 
and less happy structure, about a sad and 
mysterious lady who inhabits an inaccessible 
apartment in Heriot's house, and turns out to 
be the deserted wife of Lord Dalgarno, and a 
near relation of Lord Glenvarloch. The former 
is compelled to acknowledge her by the King, 
very much against his will ; though he is con- 
siderably comforted when he finds that, by 
this alliance, he acquires right to an ancient 
mortgage over the lands of the latter, which 
nothing but immediate payment of a large 
sum can prevent him from foreclosing. This 
is accomplished by the new-raised credit and 
consequential agency of Richie Moniplies, 
though not without a scene of pettifogging 
difficulties. The conclusion is something tra- 
gical and sudden. Lord Dalgarno, travelling 
to Scotland with the redemption-money in a 
portmanteau, challenges Glenvarloch to meet 
and fight him, one stage from town; and, 
while he is waiting on the common, is him- 
self shot dead by one of the Alsatian bullies, 
who had heard of the precious cargo with 
which he was making the journey. His an- 
tagonist comes up soon enough to revenge 



WAVERLEY NOVELS. 



547 



mm ; and, soon after, is married to Miss Ram- 
sey, for whom the King finds a suitable pedir 
gree, and at whose marriage-dinner he conde- 
scends to preside; while Richard Moniplies 
marries the heroic daughter of the Alsatian 
miser, and is knighted in a very characteristic 
manner by the good-natured monarch. 

The best things in the book, as we have 
already intimated, are the pictures of King 
James and of Richard Moniplies — though my 
Lord Dalgarno is very lively and witty, and 
well represents the gallantry and profligacy 
of the time; while the worthy Earl, his father, 
is very successfully brought forward as the 
type of the ruder and more uncorrupted age 
that preceded. We are sorely tempted to pro- 
duce a sample of Jin Vin the smart apprentice, 
and of the mixed childishness and heroism of 
Margaret Ramsay, and the native loftiness 
and austere candour of Martha Trapbois, and 
the humour of Dame Suddlechops, and divers 
other inferior persons. But the rule we have 
laid down to ourselves, of abstaining from 
citations from well-known books, must not be 
farther broken, in the very hour of its enact- 
ment ) — and we shall therefore conclude, with 
a few such general remarks on the work be- 
fore us as we have already bestowed on some 
other performances, probably no longer so 
familiar to most of our readers. 

We do not think, then, that it is a work 
either of so much genius or so much interest 
as Kenilworth or Ivanhoe, or the earlier his- 
torical novels of the same author — and yet 
there be readers who will in all likelihood 
prefer it to those books, and that for the very 
reasons which induce us to place it beneath 
them. These reasons are, — First, that the 
scene is all in London — and that the piece is 
consequently deprived of the interest and 
variety derived from the beautiful descriptions 
of natural scenery, and the still more beautiful 
combination of its features and expression, 
w T ith the feelings of the living agents, which 
abound in those other works ; and next, that 
the characters are more entirely borrowed 
from the written memorials of the age to 
which they refer, and less from that eternal 
and universal nature which is of all ages, 
than in any of his former works. The plays 
of that great dramatic era. and the letters and 
memoirs which have been preserved in such 
abundance, have made all diligent readers 
familiar with the peculiarities by which it was 
marked. But unluckily the taste of the writers 
of that a<re was quaint and fantastical ; and 
though their representations necessarily give 
us a true enough picture of its fashions and 
follies, it is obviously a distorted and exagge- 
rated picture — and their characters plainly 
both speak and act as no living men ever 
did speak or act. Now, this style of carica- 
ture is too palpably copied in the work before 
us . — and, though somewhat softened and re- 
laxed by the good sense of the author, is still 
so prevalent, that most of his characters strike 
us rather as whimsical humourists or affected 
maskers, than as faithful copies of the actual 
society of any historical period ; and though 
they may afford great delight to such slender 



wits as think the commentators on Shake- 
speare the greatest men in the world, and here 
find their little archaeological persons made 
something less inconceivable than usual, they 
cannot fail to offend and disappoint all those 
who hold that nature alone musi be the source 
of all natural interest. 

Finally, we object to this work, as com- 
pared with those to which we have alluded, 
that the interest is more that of situation, and 
less of character or action, than in any of the 
former. The hero is not so much an actor or 
a sufferer, in most of the events represented, 
as a spectator. With comparatively little to 
do in the business of the scene, he is merely 
placed in the front of it, to look on with the 
reader as it passes. He has an ordinary and 
slow-moving suit at court — and, a propos of 
this — all the humours and oddities of the 
sovereign are exhibited in rich and splendid 
detail. He is obliged to take refuge for a day 
in Whitefriars — and all the horrors and atro- 
cities of the Sanctuary are spread out before 
us through the greater part of a volume. Two 
or three murders are committed, in w hich he 
has no interest, and no other part than that of 
being accidentally present. His own scanty 
part, in short, is performed in the vicinity of 
a number of other separate transactions ; and 
this mere juxtaposition is made an apology 
for stringing I hem all up together into one his- 
torical romance. We should not care very 
much if this only destroyed the unity of the 
piece — but it also sensibly weakens its interest 
— and reduces it from tne rank of a compre- 
hensive and engaging narrative, in which 
every event gives and receives importance 
from its connection with the rest, to that of a 
mere collection of sketches, relating to the 
same period and state of society. 

The character of the hero, we also think, 
is more than usually a failure. He is not only 
a reasonable and discreet person, for whose 
prosperity we need feel no great apprehen- 
sion, but he is gratuitously debased by certain 
infirmities of a mean and somewhat sordid 
description, which suit remarkably ill with 
the heroic character. His prudent deport- 
ment at the gaming table, and his repeated 
borrowings of money, have been already 
hinted at ; and we may add, that when in- 
terrogated by Heriot about the disguised dam- 
sal who is found with him in the Tower, he 
makes up a false story for the occasion, with 
a cool promptitude of invention, which re- 
minds us more of Joseph Surface and bis- 
French milliner, than of the high-minded son 
of a stern puritanical Baron of Scotland. 

These are the chief faults of the work, and 
they are not slight ones. Its merits do not 
require to be specified. They embrace all 
to which we have not specially objected. The 
general brilliancy and force of the colouring, 
the ease and spirit of the design, and the 
strong touches of character, are all such as 
we have have long admired in the best works 
of the author. Besides the King and Richie 
Moniplies, at whose merits we have already 
hinted, it would be unjust to pass over trie 
prodigious strength of writing that distin 



548 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



guishes the part of Mrs. Martha Trapbois, and 
the inimitable scenes, though of a coarse and 
revolting complexion, with Duke Hildebrod 
and the miser of Alsatia. The Templar 
LowestofFe, and Jin Vin, the aspiring appren- 
tice, are excellent sketches of their kind. 
So are John Christie and his frail dame. Lord 
Dalgarno is more questionable. There are 
passages of extraordinary spirit and ability in 
this part ; but he turns out too atrocious. Sir 
Mungo Malagrowther wearies us from the 
beginning, and so does the horologist Ramsay 
— because they are both exaggerated and un- 
natural characters. We scarcely see enough 
of Margaret Ramsay to forgive her all her ir- 
regularities, and her high fortune ; but a great 
deal certainly of what we do see is charm- 
ingly executed. Dame Ursula is something 



between the vulgar gossipping of Mrs. Quickly 
in the merry Wives of Windsor, and the 
atrocities of Mrs. Turner and Lady Suffolk , 
and it is rather a contamination of Margaret's 
purity to have used such counsel. 

We have named them all now, or nearly — 
and must at length conclude. Indeed, nothing 
but the fascination of this author's pen, and 
the difficulty of getting away from him, could 
have induced us to be so particular in our 
notices of a story, the details of which will so 
soon be driven out of our heads by other de- 
tails as interesting — and as little fated to be re- 
membered. There are other two books coming, 
we hear, in the course of the winter; and by 
the time there are four or five, that is, in aboLt 
eighteen months hence, we must hold our- 
selves prepared to give some account of then? . 



(©ttobtr, 1823.) 

1. Annals of the Parish, or the Chronicle of Dalmailing, during the Ministry of the Rev 
MicahBalwhidder. Written by Himself. 1vol. 12mo. pp.400. Blackwood. Edin. :1819 

2. The Ayrshire Legatees, or the Pringle Family. By the Author of " Annals of the Parish,' 
&c. 1vol. 12mo. pp. 395. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 

3. The Provost. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "Ayrshire Legatees," &c 
lvol. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 

4. Sit Andrew Wyllie of that Ilk. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 3 vols 
12mo. Blackwood. Edin. : 1822. 

5. The Steam Boat. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. Black 
wood. Edinburgh: 1822. 

6. The Entail, or the Lairds of Grippy. By the Author of "'Annals of the Parish," "Sil 
Andrew Wyllie," &c. 3 vols. 18mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh : 1823. 

7. Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &o. 
3 vols. ]2mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823. 



' 8. Valerius, a Roman Story. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 
9* Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh : 1822. 
10. Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross- MeiEe 

1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822. 
iU The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. By the Author of "Lights and Shadows of Scottish 

Life." 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh : 1823. 
12. Reginald Dalton. By the Author of "Valerius," and "Adam Blair." 3 vols. 8vo 

Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823* 



We have been sometimes accused, we ob- 
serve, of partiality to the writers of our own 
country, and reproached with helping mid- 
dling Scotch works into notice, while far more 
meritorious publications in England and Ire- 
land have been treated with neglect. We 
take leave to say, that there could not possi- 
bly be a more unjust accusation : and the list 
of books which we have prefixed to this arti- 
cle, affords of itself, we now conceive, the 
most triumphant refutation of it. Here is a 

* I have retained most of the citations in this 
article : — the books from which they are taken not 
being so universally known as those of Sir Walter 
Scott — and yet deserving, I think, of being thus 
recalled to the attention of general readers. The 
whole seem to have been originally put out anony- 
mously : — But the authorship has been long ago 
acknowledged ; — so that it is scarcely necessary for 
me to mention that the first seven in the list are the 
works of the late Mr. Gait, Valerius and Adam 
Blair of Mr. Lockhart — and the Lights and Sha- 
dows, and Margaret Lindsay, of Professor Wilson. 



set of lively and popular works, that have at- 
tracted, and very deservedly, a large share of 
attention in every part of the empire — issuing 
from the press, successively for four or five 
years, in this very city, and under our eyes, 
and not hitherto honoured by us with any in- 
dication of our being even conscious of their 
existence. The causes of this long neglect it 
can now be of no importance to explain. Bu* 
sure we are, that our ingenious countrymen 
have far greater reason to complain of it, than 
any aliens can have to impute this tardy repa- 
ration to national partiality. 

The works themselves are evidently too 
numerous to admit of our now giving more 
than a very general account of them : — and 
indeed, some of their authors emulate their 
great prototype so successfully in the rapid 
succession of their performances, that, even 
if they had not been so far ahead of us at the 
starting, we must soon have been reduced to 
deal with them as we have done with him, 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



549 



find only to have noticed their productions [ 
when they had grown up into groups and fa- ! 
milies — as they increased and multiplied in j 
the land. In intimating that we regard them ( 
as imitations of the inimitable novels, — which 
we, who never presume to peep under masks, 
still hold to be by an author unknown, — we 
have already exhausted more than half their 
general character. They are inferior certainly 
(and what is not?) to their great originals. 
But they are the best copies which have 
yet been produced of them ; and it is not 
a little creditable to the genius of our be- 
loved countiy, that, even in those gay and 
airy walks of literature from which she had 
been so long estranged, an opening was no 
sooner made, by the splendid success of one 
gifted Scotsman, than many others were found 
ready to enter upon them, with a spirit of en- 
terprise, and a force of invention, that prom- 
ised still farther to extend their boundaries — 
and to make these new adventurers, if not form- 
idable rivals, at least not unworthy followers 
of him by whose example they were roused. 

There are three authors, it seems, to the 
works now before us; — so at least the title- 
pages announce ; and it is a rule with us, to 
give implicit faith to those solemn intimations. 
We think, indeed, that without the help of 
that oracle, we should have been at no loss to 
ascribe all the works which are now claimed 
by the author of the Annals of the Parish, to 
one and the same hand ; But we should cer- 
tainly have been inclined to suppose, that 
there was only one author for all the rest, — 
with the exception, perhaps, of Valerius, 
which has little resemblance, either in sub- 
stance or manner, to any of those with which 
it is now associated. 

In the arduous task of imitating the great 
novelist, they have apparently found it neces- 
sary to resort to the great principle of division 
of labour ; and yet they have not, among 
them, been able to equal the work of his single 
hand ! The author of the Parish Annals seems 
to have sought chiefly to rival the humorous 
and less dignified parts of his original; by 
large representations of the character and 
manners of the middling and lower orders in 
Scotland, intermingled with traits of sly and 
sarcastic sagacity, and occasionally softened 
and relieved by touches of unexpected ten- 
derness and simple pathos, all harmonised by 
the same truth to nature and fine sense of 
national peculiarity. In these delineations 
there is. no doubt, more vulgarity, both of 
style and conception, and less poetical inven- 
tion, than in the corresponding passages of 
the works he aspires to imitate ; but, on the 
other hand, there is more of that peculiar 
humour which depends on the combination of 
great naivete, indolence, and occasional ab- 
surdity, with natural good sense, and taste, 
and kind feelings in the principal characters — 
such combinations as Sir Roger de Coverley, 
the Vicar of Wakefield, and My Uncle Toby, 
have made familiar to all English readers, but 
of which we have not hitherto had any good 
Scottish representative. There is also more 
systematic, though very good-humoured, sar- 



casm, and a more distinct moral, or unity of 
didactic purpose, in most of his writings, than 
it would be easy to discover in the playful, ca- 
pricious, and fanciful sketches of his great 
master. 

The other two authors have formed them- 
selves more upon the poetical, reflective, and 
Eathetic parts of their common model; and 
ave aimed at emulating such beautiful pic- 
tures as that of Mr. Peter Pattison, the blind 
old women in Old Mortality and the Bride of 
Lammermoor, the courtship at the Mermaid- 
en's Well, and, generally, his innumerable 
and exquisite descriptions of the soft, simple, 
and sublime scenery of Scotland, as viewed 
in connection with the character of its better 
rustic population. Though far better skilled 
than their associate, in the art of composition, 
and chargeable, perhaps, with less direct imi- 
tation, we cannot but regard them as much 
less original, and as having performed, upon 
the whole, a far easier task. They have no 
great variety of style, and but little of actual 
invention. — and are mannerists in the strongest 
sense of that term. Though unquestionably 
pathetic in a very powerful degree, they are 
pathetic, for the most part, by the common 
recipes, which enable any one almost, to draw 
tears, who will condescend to employ them. 
They are mighty religious too, — but appa- 
rently on the same principle ; and. while their 
laboured attacks on our sympathies are felt, at 
last, to be somewhat importunate and puerile, 
their devotional orthodoxies seem to tend, 
every now and then, a little towards cant. 
This is perhaps too harshly said ; and is more, 
we confess, the result of the second reading 
than the first; and suggested rather by a com- 
parison with their great original, than an im- 
pression of their own independent merits. 
Compared with that high standard, it is im- 
possible not to feel that they are somewhat 
wanting in manliness, freedom, and liberality; 
and, while they enlarge, in a sort of pastoral, 
emphatic, and melodious style, on the virtues 
of our cottagers, and the apostolical sanctity 
of our ministers and elders, the delights of 
pure affection, and the comforts of the Bible, 
are lamentably deficient in that bold and free 
vein of invention, that thorough knowledge 
of the world, and rectifying spirit of good 
sense, which redeem all that great author's 
flights from the imputation either of extrava- 
gance or affectation, and give weight, as well 
as truth, to his most poetical delineations of 
nature and of passion. But, though they can- 
not pretend to this rare merit, which has 
scarcely fallen to the share of more than one 
since the days of Shakespeare, there is no 
doubt much beautiful, writing, much admi- 
rable description, and much both of tender 
and of lofty feeling, in the volumes of which 
we are now speaking; and though their infe- 
rior and borrowed lights are dimmed in the 
broader blaze of the luminary, who now fills 
our Northern sky with his glory, they still hold 
their course distinctly within the orb of his at 
traction, and make a visible part of the splen- 
dour which draws to that quarter of the hea 
vens the admiration of so many distant eyes 



550 



WORKS OF FICTION-. 



We must now, however, say a word or two 
on the particular works we have enumerated j 
among which, and especially in the first series, 
there is a very great difference of design, as 
well as inequality of merit. The first with 
which we happened to become acquainted, 
and, after all, perhaps the best and most in- 
teresting of the whole, is that entitled "An- 
nals of the Parish." comprising in one little 
volume of about four hundred pages the do- 
mestic chronicle of a worthy minister, on the 
coast of Ayrshire, for a period of no less than 
fifty-one years, from 1760 to 1810. The 
primitive simplicity of the pastor's character, 
tinctured as it is by his professional habits and 
sequestered situation, form but a part of the 
attraction of this work. The brief and natural 
notices of the public events which signalised 
the long period through which it extends, and 
the slight and transient effects they produced 
on the tranquil lives and peaceful occupations 
of his remote parishioners, have not only a 
natural, we think, but a moral and monitory 
effect; and, while they revive in our own 
breasts the almost forgotten impressions of our 
childhood and early youth, as to the same 
transactions, make us feel the actual insignifi- 
cance of those successive occurrences which, 
each in its turn, filled the minds of his con- 
temporaries, — and the little real concern which 
the bulk of mankind have in the public history 
of their day. This quiet and detailed retro- 
spect of fifty years, brings the true moment 
and value of the events it embraces to the 
test, as it were, of their actual operation on 
particular societies ; and helps to dissipate the 
illusion, by which private persons are so fre- 
quently led to suppose, that they have a per- 
sonal interest in the wisdom of cabinets, or 
the madness of princes. The humble sim- 
plicity of the chronicler's character assists, no 
doubt, this sobering effect of his narrative. 
The natural and tranquil manner in which he 
puts down great things by the side of little — 
and considers as exactly on the same level, 
the bursting of the parish mill-dam and the 
commencement of the American troubles — 
the victory of Admiral Rodney and the dona- 
tion of 50/. to his kirk-session, — are all equally 
edifying and agreeable ; and illustrate, in a 
very pleasing way, that law of intellectual, as 
well as of physical optics, by which small 
things at hand uniformly appear greater than 
large ones at a distance. 

The great charm of the work, however, is 
in the traits of character which it discloses, 
and the commendable brevity with which 
the whole chronicle is digested. We know 
scarcely any instance in which a modern 
writer has shown such forbearance and con- 
sideration for his readers. With very consider- 
able powers of humour, the ludricous incidents 
are never dwelt upon with any tediousness, 
nor pushed to the length of burlesque or caric- 
ature — and the more seducing touches of 
pathos with which the work abounds, are 
intermingled and cut short, with the same 
sparing and judicious hand ; — so that the tem- 
perate and natural character of the pastor is 
thus ; by a rare merit and felicity, made to 



preponderate over the tragi* - ana jomic genius 
of the author. That chaiacter is, as we havu 
already hinted, as happily conceived as it is 
admirably executed — contented, humble, and 
perfectly innocent and sincere— very orthodox, 
and zealously Presbyterian, without learning 
or habits of speculation — soft-hearted and full 
of indulgence and ready sympathy, without 
any enthusiasm or capacity of devoted attach- 
ment — given to old-fashioned prejudices, with 
an instinctive sagacity in practical affairs — 
and unconsciously acute in detecting the char- 
acters of others, and singularly awake to the 
beauties of nature, without a notion either of 
observation or of poetry — very patient and 
primitive in short, indolent and gossiping, and 
scarcely ever stirring either in mind or person, 
beyond the limits of his parish. The style 
of the book is curiously adapted to the char- 
acter of the supposed author — very genuine 
homely Scotch in the idiom and many of the 
expressions — but tinctured with scriptural 
phrases, and some relics of college learning — 
and all digested in the grave and methodical 
order of an old-fashioned sermon. 

After so much praise, we are rather afraid 
to make any extracts — for the truth is, that 
there is not a great deal of matter in the book, 
and a good deal of vulgarity — and that 4t is 
only good-natured people, with something of 
the annalist's own simplicity, that will be as 
much pleased with it as we have been. For 
the sake of such persons, however, we will 
venture on a few specimens. Here is the 
description of Mrs. Malcolm. 

" Secondly. I have now to speak of the coming 
of Mrs. Malcolm. She was the widow of a Clyde 
shipmaster, that was lost at sea wiih his vessel. She 
was a genty body, calm and methodical. From 
morning to night she sat at her wheel, spinning the 
finest lint, which suited well wiih her pule hands. 
She never changed her widow's weeds, and she 
was aye as if she had just been ta'en out of a band- 
box. The tear was aft en in her e'e when the bairns 
were at the school ; but when they came home, her 
spirit was lighted up with gladness, although, poor 
woman, she had many a time very little to give 
them. They were, however, wonderful well-bred 
things, and took with thankfulness whatever she 
set before them, for they knew that their lather, the 
breadwinner, was away, and that she had to work 
sore for their bit and drap. I dare say, the only 
vexation that ever she had from any of them, on 
their own account, was when Charlie, the eldest 
laddie, had won fourpence at pitch and toss at the 
school, which he brought home with a proud heart 
to his mother. I happened to be daunrin' bye at 
the time, and just looked in at the door to .-ay gude 
night. And there was she sitting with the silent 
tear on her cheek, and C harlie greeting as if he had 
done a great fault, and the other four looking on 
with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did Charlie 
Malcolm gamble after that night. 

"I often wondered what brought Mrs. Malcolm 
to our clachan, instead of going to a populous town, 
where she might have taken up a huxtry-shop, as 
she was but of a silly constitution, the which would 
have been better for her than spinning from morning 
to far in the night, as if she was in verity drawing 
the thread of lite. But it was, no doubt, from an 
honest pride to hide her poverty ; for when her 
daughter Effie was ill wiih the measles — the poor 
lassie was very ill — robody thought she could come 
through ; and when she did get the turn, she was 
for many a day a heavy handful ; — our session being 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



551 



rich, and nobody on it but cripple Tammy Daidles, 
that was at that time known through all the country 
side for begging on a horse, I thought it my duty to 
call upon Mrs. Malcolm in a sympathising way, and 
offer her some assistance — but she refused it. ' No, 
sir,' said she. ' I carina take help from the poor's 
box, although it's very true that I am in great need ; 
for it might hereafter be cast up to my bairns, whom 
it may please God to restore to better circumstances 
when I am no to see't; but I would fain borrow 
five pounds, and if, sir, you will write to Mr. Mait- 
land, that is now the Lord Provost of Glasgow, and 
tell him that Marion Shaw would be obliged to 
him for the lend of that soom, I think he will not 
fail to send it.' 

"I wrote the letter that night to Provost Mait- 
land, and, by the retourof the post, I got an answer, 
with twenty pounds for Mrs. Malcolm, saying, ' that 
it was with sorrow lie heard so small a trifle could 
be serviceable.' When I took the letter and the 
money, which was in a bank-bill, she said, ' This 
is just like himsel.' She then told me, that Mr. 
Maitland had been a gentleman's son of the east 
country, but driven out of his father's house, when 
a laddie, by his step-mother ; and that he had served 
as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird 
of Yillcogie, but ran through his estate, and left 
her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary 
with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, 
her husband that was. Provost Maitland in his 
servitude, had ta'en a notion of her; and when he 
recovered his patrimony, and had become a great 
Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by 
her father, he offered to marry her, but she had 
promised herself to her cousin the Captain, whose 
widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and 
in time grew, as he was, Lord Provost of the Cily : 
but his letter with the twenty pounds to me, showed 
that he had not forgotten his first love. It was a 
short, but a well-written letter, in a fair hand of 
write, containing much of the true gentleman ; and 
Mrs. Malcolm said, ' Who knows but out of the 
regard he once had for their mother, he may do 
something: for my five helpless orphans,' " — Annals 
of the Parish, pp. 16—21. 

Charles afterwards goes to sea, and comes 
home unexpectedly. 

J< One evening, towards the gloaming, as I was 
taking my walk of meditation, I saw a brisk sailor 
laddie coming towards me. He had a pretty green 
parrot, sitting on a bundle, tied in a Barcelona silk 
handkerchief, which he carried with a stick over his 
shoulder, and in this bundle was a wonderful big 
nut. such as no one in our parish had ever seen. It 
was called a cocker-nut. This blithe callant was 
Charlie Malcolm, who had come all the way that 
day his leaful lane, on his own legs from Greenock, 
where the Tobacco trader was then 'livering her 
cargo. I told him how his mother, and his brothers, 
and his sisters were all in good health, and went to 
convoy him home ; and as we were going along, he 
told me many curious things : and he gave me six 
beautiful yellow limes, that he had brought in his 
pouch all the way across the seas, for me to make 
a bowl of punch with ! and I thought more of them 
than if they had been golden guineas — it was so 
mindful of the laddie. 

" When we got to the door of his mother's house, 
she was sitting at the fire-side, with her three other 
bairns at their bread and milk, Kate being then with 
Lady Skimmilk, at the Breadland, sewing. It was 
between the day and dark, when the shuttle stands 
still till the lamp is lighted. But such a shout of joy 
and thankfulness as rose from that hearth, when 
Charlie went in ! The very parrot, ye would have 
thought, was a participator, for the beast gied a 
skraik that made my whole head dirl ; and the 
neighbours came flying and flocking to see what 
was the matter, for it was the first parrot ever 
geen within the bounds of the parish, and some 



thought it was but a foreign hawk, with a yellow 
head and green feathers." — Ibid. pp. 44, 45. 

The good youth gets into the navy, and dis- 
tinguishes himself in various actions. This is 



the catastrophe. 

"But, oh! the wicked wastry of life in war ! In 
less than a month after, the news came of a victory 
over the French fleet, and by the same post I got a 
letter from Mr. Howard, that was the midshipman 
who came to see us with Charles, telling me that 
poor Charles had been mortally wounded in the ac- 
tion, and had afterwards died of his wounds. ' He 
was a hero in the engagement,' said Mr. Howard, 
' and he died as a good and a brave man should.' — 
These tidings gave me one of the sorest hearts I 
ever suffered ; and it was long before I could gather 
fortitude to disclose the tidings to poor Charles' 
mother. But the callants of the schoo) had heard of 
the victory, and were going shouting about, and had 
set the steeple bell a-ringing, by which Mrs. Mal- 
colm heard the news; and knowing that Charles' 
ship was with the fleet, she came over to the Manse 
in great anxiety, to hear the particulars, somebody 
telling her that there had been a foreign letter to me 
by the post-man. 

" When I saw her I could not speak, but looked 
at her in pity ! and the tear fleeing up into my eyes, 
she guessed what had happened. After giving a 
deep and sore sigh, she inquired, ' How did he be- 
have ? I hope well, for he was aye a gallant lad- 
die •' — and then she wept very bitterly. However, 
growing calmer, I read to her the letter, and when 
I had done, she begged me to give it her to keep, 
saying, * It's all that I have now left of my pretty 
boy ; but it's mair precious to me than the .wealth 
of the Indies;' and she begged me to return thanks 
to the Lord, for all the comforts and manifold mer- 
cies with which her lot had been blessed, since the 
hour she put her trust in Him alone, and that was 
when she was left a pennyless widow, with her five 
fatherless bairns. It was just an edification of the 
spirit, to see the Christian resignation of this wor- 
thy woman. Mrs. Balwhidder was confounded, 
and said, there was more sorrow in seeing the deep 
grief of her fortitude, than tongue could tell. 

" Having taken a glass of wine with her, I walk- 
ed out to conduct her to her own house, but in the 
way we met with a severe trial. All the weans 
were out parading with napkins and kail-blades oa 
sticks, rejoicing and triumphing in the glad tidings 
of victory. But when they saw me and Mrs. Mal- 
colm coming slowly along, they guessed what had 
happened, and threw away their banners of joy ; 
and, standing all up in a row, with silence and sad- 
ness, along the kirk-yard wall as we passed, show- 
ed an instinct of compassion that penetrated to my 
very soul. The poor mother burst into fresh afflic- 
tion, and some of the bairns into an audible weep- 
ing ; and, taking one another by the hand, they fol- 
lowed us to her door, like mourners at a funeral. 
Never was such a sight seen in any town before. 
The neighbours came to look at it, as we walked 
along ; and the men turned aside to hide their faces, 
while the mothers pressed their babies fondlier to 
their bosoms, and watered their innocent faces with 
their tears. 

"I prepared a suitable sermon, taking as the 
words of my text, * Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, foi 
your strength is laid waste.' But when I saw around 
me so many of my people, clad in complimentary 
mourning for the gallant Charles Malcolm and that 
even poor daft Jenny Gaffaw, and her daughter, had 
on an old black ribbon ; and when I thought of him, 
the spirited laddie, coming home from Jamaica, with 
his parrot on his shoulder, and his limes for me, my 
heart filled full, and I was obliged to sit down in th» 
pulpit and drop a tear.'' — Ibid. pp. 214 — 218. 

We like these tender passages the best — 
but the reader should have a specimen of ike 



552 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



The following we think 



humorous vein also, 
excellent. 

" In the course of the summer, just as the roof 
was closing in of the school-house, my lord came to 
the castle \viih a great company, and was not there 
a day till he sent for me to come over on the next 
Sunday, to dine with him ; but I sent him word that 
I could not do so, for it would be a transgression of 
the Sabbath ; which made him send his own gentle- 
man, to make his apology for having taken so great 
a liberty with me, and to beg me to come on the 
Monday, which I accordingly did, and nothing could 
be better than the discretion with which I was used. 
There was a vast company of English ladies and 
gentlemen, and his lordship, in a most jocose man- 
ner, told them all how he had fallen on the midden, 
and how I had clad him in my clothes, and there 
was a wonder of laughing and diversion : But the 
most particular thing in the company, was a large, 
round-faced man, with a wig, that was a dignitary 
in some great Episcopalian church in London, who 
was extraordinary condescending towards me, 
drinking wine with me at the table, and saying 
weighty sentences in a fine style of language, about 
the becoming grace of simplicity and innocence of 
heart, in the clergy of all denominations of Chris- 
tians, which I was pleased to hear ; for really he 
had a proud red countenance, and I could not have 
thought he was so mortified to humility within, had 
I not heard with what sincerity he delivered him- 
self, and seen how much reverence and attention 
was paid to him by all present, particularly by my 
lord's chaplain, who was a pious and pleasant young 
divine, though educated at Oxford for the Episco- 
palian persuasion. 

"One day soon after, as I was sitting in my 
closet conning a sermon for the next Sundav, I was 
surprised by a visit from the dean, as the dignitary 
was cajled. He had come, he said, to wait on me 
as rector of the parish, for so it seems they call a 
pastor in England, and to say, that, if it was agree- 
able, he would take a family dinner with us before 
he left the castle. I could make no objection to his 
kindness, but said I hoped my lord would come 
with him, and that we would do our best to enter- 
tain them with all suitable hospitality. About an 
hour or so after he had returned to the castle, one of 
the flunkies brought a letter from his lordship to 
say, that not only he would come with the dean, 
but that they would bring the other guests with 
them, and that, as they could only drink London 
wine, the butler would send me a hamper in the 
morning, assured, as he was pleased to say. that Mrs. 
Balwhidder would otherwise provide good cheer. 

*• This notification, however, was a great trouble 
to my wife, who was only used to manufacture the 
produce of our glebe and yard to a profitable pur- 

{>ose, and not used to the treatment of deans and 
ords, and other persons of quality. However, she 
was determined to stretch a point on this occasion, 
and we had, as all present declared, a charming 
dinner ; for fortunately one of the sows had a litter 
of pigs a few days before, and, in addition to a goose, 
that Is but a boss bird, we had a roasted pig, with 
an apple in its mouth, which was just a curiosity to 
gee; and my lord called it a tythe pig, but I told 
him it was one of Mrs. Balwhidder's own decking, 
which saying of mine made no little sport when 
•expounded to the dean." — Annals of the Parish, 
pp. 136—141. 

We add the description of the first dancing- 
master that had been seen in these parts in 
the year 1762. 

41 Also a thing happened in this year, which de- 
serves to be recorded, as manifesting what effect the 
■smuggling was beginning to take on the morals of 
the country side. One Mr. Macskipnish, of High- 
land parentage, who had been a valet-de-chambre 
-with a Major in the campaigns, and taken a prisoner 
with him by the French, he having come home in 



a cartel, took up a dancing-school at Ireville, the 
which art he had learned in the genteelest fashion, 
in the mode of Paris, at the French court. Such a 
thing as a dancing-school had never, in the memory 
of man, been known in our country side ; and there 
was such a sound about the steps and cotillions of 
Mr. Macskipnish, that every lad and lass, that could 
spare time and siller, went to him, to the great ne- 
glect of their work. The very bairns on the loan, 
instead of their wonted play, gaed linking and loup- 
ing in the steps of Mr. Macskipnish, who was, to be 
sure, a great curiosity, with long spindle legs, his 
breast shot out like a duck's, and his head powder- 
ed and frizzled up like a tappit-hen. He was, in- 
deed, the proudest peacock that could be seen, and 
he had a ring on his finger, and when he came to 
drink his tea at the Breadland, he brought no hat on 
his head, but a droll cockit thing under his arm, 
which, he said, was after the manner of the courtiers 
at the petty suppers of one Madame Pumpadour, who 
was at that time the concubine of the French king. 
"I do not recollect any other remarkable thing 
that happened in this year. The harvest was very 
abundant, and the meal so cheap, that it. caused a 
great defect in my stipend, so that I was obligated to 
postpone the purchase of a mahogany scrutoire for 
my study, as I had intended. But I had not the 
heart to complain of this ; on the contrary, T rejoiced 
thereat, for what made me want my scrutoire titf 
another year, had carried blitheness into the hearth 
of the cotter, and made the widow's heart sing with 
joy; and I would have been an unnatural creature, 
had I not joined in the universal gladness, because 
plenty did abound." — Ibid. pp. 30 — 32. 

We shall only try the patience of_our read- 
s farther with the death c ~ 
old parish school-mistress. 



ers farther with the death of Nanse Banks ; the 



" She had been long in a weak and frail state, 
but, being a methodical creature, still kept on the 
school, laying the foundation for many a worthy wife 
and moiher. However, about the decline of the 
year her complaints increased, and she sent for me 
to consult about her giving up the school; and I 
went to see her on a Saturday afternoon, when the 
bit lassies, her scholars, had put the house in order, 
and gone home till the Monday. 

" She was sitting in the window-nook, reading 
the word to herself, when I entered ; but she clos- 
ed the book, and put her spectacles in for a mark 
when she saw me : and, as it was expected I would 
come, her easy chair, with a clean cover, had been 
set out for me by the scholars, by which I discerned 
that there was something more than common to 
happen, and so it appeared when I had taken my 
seat. ' Sir,' said she, ' I hae sent for you on a thing 
troubles me sairly. I have warsled with poortilh in 
this shed, which it has pleased the Lord to allow me 
to possess; but my strength is worn out, and I fear 
I maun yield in the strife;' and she wiped her eye 
with her apron. I told her, however, to be of good 
cheer ; and then she said, ' that she could no longer 
thole the din of the school ; and that she was weary, 
and ready to lay herself down to die whenever the 
Lord was pleased to permit. But,' continued she, 
'what can I do without the school? and, alas! I 
can neither work nor want ; and I am wae to go on 
the Session, for I am come of a decent family.' I 
comforted her, and told her, that I thought she had 
done so much good in the parish, that the Session 
was deep in her debt, and that what they might 
give her was but a just payment for her service. ' I 
would rather, however, sir,' said she, ' try first 
what some of my auld scholars will do, and it was 
for that I wanted to speak with you. If some of 
them would but just, from time to time, look in 
upon me, that I may not die alane ; and the little 
pick and drap that I require would not be hard upon 
them — I am more sure that in this way their grati- 
tude would be no discredit, than I am of having any 
claim on the Session-' 

" As I had always a great respect for an honest 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



563 



pride, I assured her that I would do what she 
wauled ; and accordingly, the very morning afier, 
being Sabba'h, I preached a sermon on the help- 
lessness of them that have no help of man ; mean- 
ing aged single women, living in garret-rooms, 
whose forlorn slate, in the gloaming of life, I made 
manifest to the hearts and understandings of the 
congregation, in such a manner that many shed 
tears, and went away sorrowful. 

" Having thus roused the feelings of my people, 
I went round the houses on the Monday morning, 
and mentioned what I had to say more particularly 
about poor old Nanse Banks the schoolmistress, 
and truly I was rejoiced at the condition of the 
hearts of my people. There was a universal sym- 
pathy among them ; and it was soon ordered that, 
what with one and another, her decay should be 
provided for. But it was not ordained that she 
should be long heavy on their good will. On the 
Monday the school was given up, and there was 
nothing but wailing among the bit lassies, the 
scholars, for getting the vacance, as the poor things 
said, because the mistress was going to lie down 
to dee. And, indeed, so it came to pass ; for she 
took to her bed the same afternoon, and, in the 
course of the week, dwindled away, and slippet 
out of this howling wilderness into the kingdom of 
heaven, on the Sabbath following, as quietly as a 
blessed saint could do. And here I should men- 
tion, that the Lady Macadam, when I told her of 
Nanse Banks' case, inquired if she was a snuffer, 
and, being answered by me that she was, her lady- 
ship sent her a pretty French enamel box full of 
Macabaw, a fine snuff that she had in a bottle ; and, 
among the Macabaw, was found a guinea, at the 
bottom of the box, after Nanse Banks had departed 
this life, which was a kind thing of Lady Macadam 
to do." — Annals of the Parish, pp. 87 — 91. 

The next of this author's publications, we 
believe, was "The Ayrshire Legatees," also 
in one volume, and a work of great, and 
similar, though inferior merit, to the former. 
It is the story of the proceedings of a worthy 
Scottish clergyman and his family, to whom 
a large property had been unexpectedly be- 
queathed by a relation in India, in the course 
of their visit to London to recover this prop- 
erty. The patriarch himself and his wife, 
and his son and daughter, who form the party, 
all write copious accounts of what they see, 
to their friends in Ayrshire — and being all 
lowly and simply bred, and quite new to the 
scenes in which they are now introduced, 
make up among them a very entertaining- 
miscellany, of original, naive and preposterous 
observations. The idea of thus making a 
family club, as it were, for a varied and often 
contradictory account of the same objects — 
each tinging the picture with his own peculi- 
arities, and unconsciously drawing his own 
character in the course of the description, 
was first exemplified, we believe, in the Hum- 
phrey Clinker of Smollett, and has been since 
copied with success in the Bath Guide, Paul's 
Letters to his Kinsfolk, the Fudge Family. 
and other ingenious pieces, both in prose and 
verse. Though the conception of the Ayr- 
shire Legatees, however, is not new, the exe- 
cution and details must be allowed to be 
original ; and, along with a good deal of 
twaddle^ and too much vulgarity, certainly 
display very considerable powers both of 
humour, invention, and acute observation. 

The author's next w r ork is " The Provost," 
which is decidedly better than the Legatees,, 
70 



and on a level nearly with the Annals of the 
Parish. There is no inconsiderable resem- 
blance, indeed, it appears to us, in the char- 
acter of the two Biographies : for if we sub- 
stitute the love of jobbing and little manage- 
ment, which is inseparable from the situation 
of a magistrate in one of our petty Burghs, 
for the zeal for Presbyterian discipline which 
used to attach to our orthodox clergy, and 
make a proper allowance for the opposite 
efFects of their respective occupations, we 
shall find a good deal of their remaining pe- 
culiarities common to both those personages, 
— the same kindness of nature with the same 
tranquillity of temper — and the same practi- 
cal sagacity, with a similar deficiency of large 
views or ingenious speculations. The Provost, 
to be sure, is a more worldly person than the 
Pastor, and makes no scruple about using in- 
direct methods to obtain his ends, from which 
the simplicity of the other would have re- 
coiled ; — but his ends are not, on the whole, 
unjust or dishonest ; and his good nature, and 
acute simplicity, with the Burghal authority 
of his tone, would almost incline us to con- 
clude, that he was somehow related to the 
celebrated Bailie Nicol Jarvie of the Salt- 
market ! The style of his narrative is ex- 
ceedingly meritorious ; for while it is pitched 
on the self-same key of picturesque homeli- 
ness and deliberate method with that of the 
parish Annalist, it is curiously distinguished 
from it, by a sensible inferiority in literature, 
and an agreeable intermixture of malaprovs } 
and other figures of rhetoric befitting the 
composition of a loyal chief magistrate. By 
far the most remarkable and edifying thing, 
however, in this volume, is the discovery, 
which the worthy Provost is represented as 
having gradually made, of the necessity of 
consulting public opinion in his later transac- 
tions, and the impossibility of managing pub- 
lic affairs, in the present times, with the same 
barefaced assertion, and brave abuse, of au- 
thority, which had been submitted to by a 
less instructed generation. As we cannot nut 
suspect, that this great truth is not yet suffi- 
ciently familiar with all in authority among 
us. and as there is something extremely en- 
gaging in the Provost's confession of his slow 
and reluctant conversion, and in the honest 
simplicity with which he avows his adherence 
to the principles of the old school of corrup- 
tion, though convinced that the manner of 
advancing them must now be changed, we 
are tempted to extract a part of his lucubra- 
tions on this interesting subject. After notic- 
ing the death of old Bailie M -Lucre, he takes 
occasion to observe : — 

11 And now that he is dead and gone, and also all 
those whom I found conjunct with him, when I 
first came into power and office, I may venture to 
say, that things in yon former times were not guided 
so thoroughly by the hand of a disinterested integ- 
rity as in these latter years. On the contrary, it 
seemed to be the use and wont of men m public 
trusts, to think they were free to indemnify them' 
selves, in a left-handed way, for the time and 
trouble they bestowed in the same. But the thing 
was not so far wrong in principle, as in the hug- 
germuggering way in which it was done, and which 



554 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



gave to it a guilty colour, that, by the judicious 
stratagem of a right system, it would never have 
had. And, sooth to say, through the whole course 
of my public life, I met with no greater difficulties 
and trials, than in cleansing myself from the old 
habitudes of office. For I must, in verity, confess, 
that I myself partook, in a degree, at my beginning, 
of the caterpillar nature, &c. — While, therefore, I 
think it has been of a great advantage to the public 
to have survived that method of administration in 
which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, 
I would not have it understood that I think the 
men who held the public trust in those days a whit 
less honest than the men of my own time. The 
spirit of their own age was upon them, as that of 
ours is upon us ; and their ways of working the 
wherry entered more or less into all their traffick- 
ing, whether for the commonality, or for their own 
particular behoof and advantage. 

" I have been thus large and frank in my re- 
flections anent the death of the Bailie, because, 
poor man, he had outlived the times for which he 
was qualified ; and instead of the merriment, and 
jocularity that his wily by-hand ways used to cause 
among his neighbours, the rising generation began 
to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had 
he been much longer spared, it is' to be feared he 
would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings 
both with ease and honour." 

The Provost, pp. 171—174. 

Accordingly, afterwards, when a corps of 
volunteers was raised in his Burgh, he ob- 
serves — 

" I kept myself aloof from all handling in the 
pecuniaries of the business ; but I lent a friendly 
countenance to every feasible project that was likely 
to strengthen the confidence of the King in the 
loyally and bravery of his people. For by this 
time I had learnt, that there was a wakerife Com- 
mon Sense abroad among the opinions of men ; 
and that the secret of the new way of ruling the 
world was to follow, not to control, the evident 
dictates of the popular voice ; and I soon had rea- 
son to felicitate myself on this prudent and season- 
able discovery ; for it won me great reverence 
among the forward young men, who started up at 
the call of their country. — The which, as I tell 
frankly, was an admonition to me, that the peremp- 
tory will of authority wns no longer sufficient for 
the rule of mankind ; and, therefore, I squared my 
after conduct more by a deference to public opinion, 
than byany laid down maxims and principles of my 
own. The consequence of which was, that my 
influence still continued to grow and gather strength 
in the community, and I was enabled to accomplish 
many things that my predecessors would have 
thought it was almost beyond the compass of man 
to undertake.'' — Ibid, pp.' 208—217. 

Upon occasion of his third and last promo- 
motion l ) the Provostry, he thus records his 
own final conversion. 

"When I returned home to my own house, I 
retired into my private chamber for a time, to con- 
sult with myself in what manner my deportment 
should be regulated ; for T was conscious that here- 
tofore I had been overly governed with a disposition 
to do things my own way ; and although not in an 
avaricious temper, yet something, I must confess, 
with a sort of sinister respect for my own interests. 
It may be, that standing now clear and free of the 
world, I had less incitement to be so grippy, and so 
was thought of me, I very well know; but in so- 
briety and truth I conscientiously affirm, and herein 
record, that I had lived to partake of the purer spirit 
which the great mutations of the age had conjured 
into public affairs ; and I saw that there was a ne- 
cessity to carry into all dealings with the concerns 
of the community, the same probity which helps a 



man to prosperity, in the sequestered traffic ot pri- 
vate life."— Ibid. pp. 315, 316. 

Trusting that these lessons from a person 
of such prudence, experience, and loyalty, 
will not be lost on his successors, we shall 
now indulge ourselves by quoting a few speci- 
mens of what will generally be regarded as 
his more interesting style ; and. with our usual 
predilection for the tragic vein, shall begin 
with the following very touching account of 
the execution of a fair young woman for the 
murder of her new-born infant. 

" The heinousness of the crime can by no possi- 
bility be lessened ; but the beauty of the mother, 
her tender years, and her light-headedness, had 
won many favourers, and there was a great leaning 
in the hearts of all the town to compassionate her, 
especially when they thought of the ill example that 
had been set to her in the walk and conversation of 
her mother. It was not, however, within the power 
of the magistrates to overlook the accusation ; so 
we were obligated to cause a precognition to be 
taken, and the search left no doubt of the wilfulness 
of the murder. Jeanie was in consequence removed 
to the Tolbooth, where she lay till the Lords were 
coming to Ayr, when she was sent thither to stand 
her. trial before them ; but, from the hour she did 
the deed, she never spoke. 

" Her trial was a short procedure, and she was 
cast to be hanged — and not only to be hanged, but 
ordered to be executed in our town, and her body 
given to the doctors to make an Atomy. The exe- 
cution of Jeanie was what all expected would hap- 
pen ; but when the news reached the town of the 
other parts of the sentence, the wail was as the 
sough of a pestilence, and fain would the council 
have got it dispensed with. But the Lord Advocate 
was just wud at the crime, both because there had 
been no previous concealment, so as to have been 
an extenuation for the shame of the birth, and be- 
cause Jeanie would neither divulge the name of the 
father, nor make answer to all the interrogatories 
that were put to her, standing at the bar like a 
dumhie, and looking round her, and at the judges, 
like a demented creature — and beautiful as a Flan- 
ders baby ! It was thought by many that her ad- 
vocate might have made great use of her visible 
consternation, and plead that she was by herself; 
for in truth she had every appearance of being so. 
He was, however, a dure man, no doubt well 
enough versed in the particulars and punctualities 

Of the law for an ordinary plea, but no of the light 
sort of knowledge and talent to take up the case 
of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill example and a win- 
some nature, and clothed in the allurement of love- 
liness, as the judge himself said to the jury. 

" On the night before the day of execution, she 
was brought over in a chaise from Ayr between 
two town-officers, and placed again in our hands, 
and still she never spoke. Nothing could exceed 
the compassion that every one had for poor Jeanie ; 
so she was na committed to a common cell, but 
laid in the council room, where the ladies of the 
town made up a comfortable bed for her, and some 
of them sat up all night and prayed for her: But 
her thoughts were gone, and she sat silent. In the 
morning, by break of day, her wanton mother that 
had been trolloping in Glasgow came to the Tol- 
booth door, and made a dreadful wally waeing; and 
the ladies were obligated, for the sake of peace, to 
bid her be let in. But Jeanie noticed her not, still 
sitting with her eyes'cast down, waiting the coming 
on of the hour of her doom. 

" There had not been an execution in the town 
in the memory of the oldest person then living; the 
last that suffered was one of the martyrs in the 
time of the persecution, so that we were not skilled 
in the business, and had besides no hangman, but 
were necessitated to borrow the Ayr one. Indeed, 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



55 



1 being the youngest bailie, was in terror that the 
obligation might have fallen on rne. A scaffold 
was erected at the Trnn just under the Tolbooth 
windows, by Thomas Gimblet, the Mast er-of- work, 
who had a good penny of profit by the job ; for he 
contracted with the town council, and had the boards 
after the business was done to the bargain ; but 
Thomas was then deacon of the Wrights, and him- 
self a member of our body. 

" At the hour appointed, Jeanie, dressed in white, 
was led out by the town-officers, and in the midst 
of the magistrates from among the ladies, with her 
hands tied behind her with a black ribbon. At the 
first sight of her at the Tolbooth stairhead, a uni- 
versal sob rose from all the multitude, and the stern- 
est ee could na refrain from shedding a tear. We 
marched slowly down the stair, and on to the foot 
of the scaffold, where her younger brother, Willy, 
that was stable-boy at my lord's, was standing by 
himself, in an open ring made round him in the 
crowd ; every one compassionating the dejected 
laddie, for he was a fine youth, and of an orderly 
spirit. As his sister came towards the foot of the 
ladder, he ran towards her, and embraced her with 
a wail of sorrow that melted every heart, and made 
us all stop in the middle of our solemnity. Jeanie 
looked at him (for her hands were tied), and a silent 
tear was seen to drop from her cheek. But in the 
course of little more than a minute, all was quiet, 
and we proceeded to ascend the scaffold. Willy, 
who had by this time dried his eyes, went up with 
us, and when Mr. Pittle had said the prayer, and 
sung the psalm, in which the whole multitude join- 
ed, as it were with the contrition of sorrow, the 
hangman stepped forward to put on the fatal cap, 
but Willy took it out of his hand, and placed it on 
his sister himself, and then kneeling down, witkhis 
bach towards her, closing his eyes and shutting his 
ears with his hands, he saw not nor heard when 
6he was launched into eternity ! 

" When the awful act was over, and the stir was 
for the magistrates to return, and the body to be 
cut down, poor Willy rose, and, without looking 
round, went down the steps of the scaffold ; the 
multitude made a lane for him to pass, and he went 
on through them hiding his face, and gaed straight 
out of the town." — The Provost, pp. 67 — 73. 

This is longer than we had expected — and 
therefore, omitting all the stories of his wiles 
and jocosities, we shall take our leave of the 
Provost, with his very pathetic and picturesque 
description of the catastrophe of the Windy 
Yule, which we think would not discredit the 
pen of the great novelist himself. 

" In the morning, the weather was blasty and 
sleety, waxing more and more tempestuous, till 
about mid-day, when the wind checked suddenly 
round from the nor-east to the sou-west, and blew 
a gale, as if the prince of the powers of the air was 
doing his utmost to work mischief. The rain blat- 
tered, the windows clattered, the shop shutters flap- 
ped, pigs from the lum-heads came rattling down 
like thunder-claps, and the skies were dismal both 
with cloud and carry. Yet, for all that, there was 
in the streets a stir and a busy visitation between 
neighbours, and every one went to their high win- 
dows to look at the five poor barks, that were wars- 
ling against the strong arm of the elements of the 
storm and the ocean. 

" Still the lift gloomed, and ihe wind roared ; and 
it was as doleful a sight as ever was seen in any 
town afflicted with calamity, to see the sailor's 
wives, with their red cloaks about their heads, fol- 
lowed by their hirpling and disconsolate bairns, 
going one after another to the kirkyard, to look at 
the vessels where their helpless breadwinners were 
battling with the tempest. My heart w?s really 
sorrowful, and full of a sore anxiety to think of 
what might happen to the town, whereof so many 
were in peril, and to whom no human magistracy 



could extend the arm of protection. Seeing no 
abatement of the wrath ot heaven, that howled 
and roared around us, I put on my big coat, and 
taking my staff in my hand, having lied down my 
hat with a silk handkerchief, towards gloaming 1 
walked likewise to the kirkyard, where I beheld 
such an assemblage of sorrow, as few men in situ- 
ation have ever been put to the trial to witness. 

"In the lea of the kirk many hundreds of the 
town were gathered together; but there was no 
discourse among them. The major part were sai- 
lors' wives and weans, and at every new thud of 
the blast, a sob rose, and the mothers drew their 
bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the 
visible hand of a foe raised to smite them. Apart 
from the multitude, I observed three or four young 
lasses, standing behind the VVhinnyhill families' 
tomb, and I jealoused that they had joes in the 
ships, for they often looked to the bay, with long 
necks and sad faces, from behind the monument. 
But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful 
evening, none troubled my thoughts more than 
three motherless children, that belonged to the 
mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He 
was an Englishman that had been settled some 
years in the town, where his family had neither 
kith nor kin; and his wife having died about a 
month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest was 
but nine or so, were friendless enough, though 
both my gudewife, and other well-disposed ladies, 
paid them all manner of attention till their father 
would come home. The three poor little things, 
knowing that he was in one of the ships, had been 
often out and anxious, and they were then sitting 
under the lea of a headstone, near their mother's 
grave, cluttering and creeping closer and closer at 
every squall ! Never was such an orphan-like 
sight seen. 

" When it began to be so dark, that the vessels 
could no longer be discerned from the churchyard, 
many went down to the shore, and I took the three 
babies home with me, and Mrs. Pawkie made tea 
for them, and they soon began to play with our own 
younger children, in blythe forget fulness of the 
storm; every now and then, however, the eldest 
of them, when the shutters rattled, and the lum- 
head roared, would pau^e in his innocent dafling, 
and cower in towards Mrs. Pawkie, as if he was 
daunted and dismayed by something he knew not 

" Many a one tnat mgiu rroiko^ the sounding 
shore in sorrow, and fires were lighted along n io a 
great extent, but the darkness and the noise ot the 
raging deep, and the howling wind, never intermit- 
ted till about midnight; at which time a message 
was brought to me, that it might be needful to send 
a guard of soldiers to the beach, for that broken 
masts and tackle had come in, and that surely some 
of the barks had perished. 1 lost no time in obey- 
ing this suggestion, which was made to me by one 
of the owners of the Louping Meg ; and to show 
that I sincerely sympathised with all those in afflic- 
tion, I rose and dressed myself, and went down to 
the shore, where I directed several old boats to be 
drawn up by the fires, and blankets to be brought, 
and cordials prepared, for them that might be spared 
with life to reach the land ; and I walked the beach 
with the mourners till the morning. 

" As the day dawned, the wind began to abate 
in its violence, and to wear away from Ihe sou- west 
into the norit ; but it was soon discovered, that 
some of the vessels with the corn had perished-! 
for the first thing seen, was a long fringe of tangle 
and grain, along the line of the highwater mark, 
and every one strained with greedy and grieved 
eyes, as the daylight brightened, to discover which 
had suffered. But I can proceed no farther with 
the dismal recital of that doleful morning! Let it 
suffice here to be known, that, through the haze, 
we at last saw three of the vessels lying on their 
beam-ends, with their masts broken, and the waves 
riding like the furiou9 horses of destruction over 
them. What had become of the other two, waa 



556 



>VORKS OF FICTION. 



never known ; but it was supposed that they had 
foundered at their anchors, and that all on board 
perished. 

" The day being now Sabbath, and the whole 
town idle, every body in a manner was down on 
the beach, to help, and mourn, as the bodies, one 
after another, were cast out by the waves. Alas! 
few were the better of my provident preparation, 
and it was a thing not to be described, to see. for 
more than a mile along the coast, the new-made 
widows and fatherless bairns, mourning and weep- 
ing over the corpses of those they loved ! Seventeen 
bodies were, before ten o'clock, carried to the deso- 
lated dwellings of their families; and when old 
Thomas Pull, the betherel, went to ring the bell 
for public worship, such was the universal sorrow 
of the town, that Nanse Donsie, an idiot natural, 
ran up the s'reet to stop him, crying, in the voice 
of a pardonable desperation, ' Wha, in sic a time, 
can praise the Lord ?' " — The Provost, pp. 177-184. 

The next work on our list is the history of 
11 Sir Andrew Wylie," in three volumes — and 
this, we must say. is not nearly so good as any 
of the former. It contains, however, many 
passages of great interest and originality, and 
displays, throughout, a power which we think 
ought naturally to have produced something 
better ; but the story is clumsily and heavily 
managed, and the personages of polite life 
very unsuccessfully dealt with. The author's 
great error, we suspect, was in resolving to 
have three volumes instead of one — and his 
writing, which was full of spirit, while he 
was labouring to confine his ideas within the 
space assigned to them, seems to have be- 
come flat and languid, the moment his task 
was to find matter to fill that space. 

His next publication, however, though only 
in one volume, is undoubtedly the worst of 
the whole — we allude to the thing called the 
u The Steam-Boat," which has really no merit 
at all; and should never have been trans- 
planted from the Magazine in which we are 
informed it first made its appearance. With 
the exception of some trash ahnnt tho Ooiuna- 
tion ; which nobody of course could ever look 
at three months after the thing itself was 
over, it consists of a series of vulgar stories, 
with little either of probability or originality 
to recommend them. The attempt at a paral- 
lel or paraphrase on the story of Jeanie Deans, 
is, without any exception, the boldest and the 
most unsuccessful speculation we have ever 
6een in literary adventure. 

The piece that follows, though in three 
volumes, is of a far higher order — and though 
m many points unnatural, and on the whole 
rather tedious, is a work undoubtedly of no 
ordinary merit. We mean "The Entail." It 
contains many strong pictures, much sarcastic 
observation, and a great deal of native and 
effective .lumour, though too often debased 
by a tone of wilful vulgarity. The ultimate 
conversion of the Entailer himself into a 
sublime and sentimental personage, is a little 
too romantic — the history of poor Watty, the 
innocent imbecile, and his Betty Bodle. is 
perhaps the best full-length narrative — and 
the drowning of honest Mr. Walkinshaw the 
most powerful single sketch in the work. We 
can afford to mak° no extracts. 

"Ringan Gilhaize/' also in three volumes, 



is the last, in so far as we know, of this ready 
writer's publications; and is a bold attempt 
to emulate the fame of the Historical novels 
of his original; and to combine a striking 
sketch of great public occurrences, with the 
details of individual adventure. By the as- 
sistance of his grandfather's recollections, 
which fill nearly half the book, the hero con- 
trives to embrace the period both of the Ref- 
ormation from Popery, in the Reign of Queen 
Mary, and of the sufferings of the Covenanters 
from that of King Charles till the Revolution. 
But with all the benefit of this wide range, 
and the interest of those great events, we 
cannot say that he' has succeeded in making 
a good book ; or shown any spark of that spirit 
which glows in the pages of Waver] ey and 
Old Mortality. The work, however, is written 
with labour and care : and, besides a full nar- 
rative of all the remarkable passages of our 
ecclesiastical story, from the burning of Mr. 
Wishart at St. Andrew's, to the death of Dun- 
dee at Killicrankie, contains some animated 
and poetical descriptions of natural scenery, 
and a few sweet pictures of humble virtue 
and piety. Upon the whole, however, it is a 
heavy work — and proves conclusively, that 
the genius of the author lies much more in 
the quieter w r alks of humorous simplicity, in- 
termixed with humble pathos, than the lofty 
paths of enthusiasm or heroic emotion. In 
the first part we meet with nothing new or 
remarkable, but the picture of the Archbishop 
of St. Andrews' luxurious dalliance with his 
paramour, and of the bitter penitence and 
tragical death of that fair victim of his seduc- 
tions, both which are sketched with consider- 
able power and effect. In the latter part, 
there is some good and minute description of 
the perils and sufferings which beset the poor 
fugitive Covenanters, in the days of their long 
and inhuman persecution. The cruel desola- 
tion of Gilhaize's own household is also given 
with great force and pathos ; as well as the de- 
scription of that irresistible impulse of zeal and 
vengeance that drives the sad survivor to rush 
alone to the field of Killicrankie. and to repay 
at last, on the head of the slaughtered victor 
of that fight, the accumulated wrongs and op- 
pressions of his race. But still the book is tire- 
some, and without effect. The narrative'is nei- 
ther pleasing nor probable, and the calamities 
are too numerous, and too much alike; while 
the uniformity of the tone of actual suffering 
and dim religious hope, w r eighs like a load on 
the spirit of the reader. There is no interest- 
ing complication of events or adventure, and 
no animating development or catastrophe. In 
short, the author has evidently gone beyona 
his means in entering the lists with the master 
of historical -romance : and must be contented, 
hereafter, to follow his footsteps in the more 
approachable parts of his career. 

Of the other set of publications before us, 
••Valerius" is the first in point of date; and 
the most original in conception and design. 
It is a Roman story, the scene of which is laid 
in the first age of Christianity ; and its object 
seems to be, partly to present us with a living 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



557 



picture of the manners and characters of those 
ancient times, and partly to trace the effects 
of the true faith on the feelings and affections 
of those who first embraced it, in the dangers 
and darkness of expiring Paganism. It is a 
work to be excepted certainly from our gene- 
ral remark, that the productions before us 
were imitations of the celebrated novels to 
which we have so often made reference, and 
their authors disciples of that great school. 
Such as it is, Valerius is undoubtedly original ; 
or at least owes nothing to that new souice of 
inspiration. It would be more plausible to 
say, that the author had borrowed something 
from the travels of Anacharsis, or the ancient 
romance of Heliodorus and Charielea — or the 
later effusions of M. Chateaubriand. In the 
main, however, it is original; and it is written 
with very considerable power and boldness. 
But we cannot, on the whole, say that it has 
been successful; and ev3n greater powers 
could not have insured success for such an 
undertaking. We must know the daily life 
and ordinary habits of the people in whose 
domestic adventures we take an interest : — 
and we really know nothing of the life and 
habits of the ancient Romans and primitive 
Christians. We may patch together a cento 
out of old books, and pretend that it exhibits 
a view of their manners and conversation: 
But the truth is, that all that is authentic in 
such a compilation can amount only to a few 
fragments of such a picture; and that any 
thing like a complete and living portrait must 
be made up by conjecture, and inferences 
drawn at hazard. Accordingly, the work be- 
fore us consists alternately of enlarged tran- 
scripts of particular acts and usages, of which 
accounts have been accidentally transmitted 
to us, and details of dialogue and observation 
in which there is nothing antique or Roman 
but the names, — and in reference to which, 
the assumed time and place of the action is 
felt as a mere embarrassment and absurdity. 
To avoid or disguise this awkwardness, the 
only resource seems to be, to take shelter in 
a vague generality of talk and description, — 
and to save the detection of the modern in 
his masquerade of antiquity, by abstaining 
from every thing that is truly characteristic 
either of the one age or the other, and conse- 
quently from every thing by which either 
character or manners can be effectually de- 
lineated or distinguished. The very style of 
the work before us affords a curious example 
of the necessity of this timid indefiniteness, 
under such circumstances, and of its awkward 
effect. To exclude the tone of modern times, 
it is without idiom, without familiarity, with- 
out any of those natural marks by which 
alone either individuality of character, or the 
stamp and pressure of the time, can possibly 
be conveyed, — and runs on, even m the gay 
and satirical passages, in a rumbling, round- 
about, rhetorical measure, like a translation 
from solemn Latin, or some such academical 
exercitation. It is an attempt, in short, which, 
though creditable to the spirit and talents of 
the author, we think he has done wisely in 
not seeking to repeat, — and which, though it 



has not failed through any deficiency of his, 
has been prevented, we think, from succeed- 
ing by the very nature of the subject. 

The next in order, we believe, is " Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life." — an affected, 
or at least too poetical a title, — and, standing 
before a book, not very natural, but bright 
with the lights of poetry. It is a collection 
of twenty-five stories or little pieces, half 
novels half idylls, characteristic of Scottish 
scenery and manners — mostly pathetic, and 
mostly too favourable to the country to which 
they relate. They are, on the whole, we 
think, very beautifully and sweetly written, 
and in a soft spirit of humanity and gentleness. 
But the style is too elaborate and uniform; — • 
there is occasionally a gx>d deal of weakness 
and commonplace in the passages that are 
most emphatically expressed, — and the poet- 
ical heightenings are often introduced where 
they hurt both the truth and the simplicity of 
the picture. Still, however, they have their 
foundation in a fine sense of the peculiarities 
of our national character and scenery, and a 
deep feeling of their excellence and beauty — 
and, though not executed according to the dic- 
tates of a severe or correct taste, nor calcu- 
lated to make much impression on those who 
have studied men and books, "with a learned 
spirit of observation," are yet well fitted to 
minister delight to less fastidious spirits, — 
and to revive, in many world-wearied hearts, 
those illusions which had only been succeeded 
by illusions less innocent and attractive, and 
those affections in which alone there is neither 
illusion nor disappointment. 

As the author's style of narration is rather 
copious, we cannot now afford to present our 
readers with any of his stories — but, as a 
specimen of his tone and manner of composi- 
tion, we may venture on one or two of his in- 
troductory descriptions. The following, of a 
snowy morning, is not the least characteristic. 

" It was on a fierce and howling winter day that 
I was crossing the dreary moor of Auchindown, on 
my way to the Manse of that parish, a solitary pe- 
destrian. The snow, which had been incessantly 
falling for a week past, was drifted into beautiful 
but dangerous wreaths, far and wide, over the 
melancholy expanse — and the scene kept visibly 
shifting before me, as the strong wind that blew 
from every point of the compass struck the dazzling 
masses, and heaved them up and down in endless 
transformation. There was something inspiriting 
in the labour with which, in the buoyant strength 
of youth, I forced my way through the storm — and 
I could not but enjoy those gleamings of sunlight 
that ever and anon burst through some unexpected 
opening in the sky, and gave a character of cheer- 
fulness, and even warmth, to the sides or summits 
of the stricken hills. As the momentary cessations 
of the sharp drift allowed my eyes to look onwards 
and around, I saw here and there up the little open- 
ing valleys, cottages just visible beneath the black 
stems of their snow-covered clumps of trees, or be- 
side some small spot of green pasture kept open for 
the sheep. These intimations of life and happiness 
came delightfully to me in the midst of the desola- 
tion ; and the barking of a dog, attending som« 
Shepherd in his quest on the hill, put fresh vigour 
into my limbs, telling me that, lonely as I seemed 
to be, I was surrounded by cheerful though unseen 
company, and that I was not the only wanderer 
over the snows. 

2w2 



558 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



"As I walked along, my mind was insensibly 
filled with a crowd of pleasant images of rural win- 
ter life, that helped me gladly onwards over many 
miles of moor. I thought of the severe but cheerful 
labours of the barn — the mending of farm-gear by 
the fireside — the wheel turned by the foot of old 
age, less for gain than as a thrifty pastime — the skil- 
ful mother, making ' auld claes look amaist as 
weel's the new 5 — the ballad unconsciously listened 
to by the family, all busy at their own tasks round 
the singing maiden — the old traditionary tale told 
by some wayfarer hospitably housed till the storm 
should blow by — the unexpected visit of neighbours, 
on need or friendship — or the fooistep of lover un- 
deterred by the snow-drifts that have buried up his 
flocks ; — but above all, I thought of those hours of 
religious worship that have not yet escaped from 
the domestic life of the Peasantry of Scotland — of 
the sound of psalms that the depth of snow cannot 
deaden to the eur of Him to whom they are chanted 
— and of that sublime Sabbath-keeping, which, on 
days too tempestuous for the kirk, changes the cot- 
tage of the Shepherd into the Temple of God. 

" With such glad and peaceful images in my 
heart, I travelled along that dreary moor, with the 
cutting wind in my face, and my feet sinking in the 
snow, or sliding on the hard blue ice beneath it — as 
cheerfully as 1 ever walked in the dewy warmth 
of a summer morning, through fields of fragrance 
and of flowers. And now I could discern, within 
half an hour's walk before me, the spire of the 
church, close to which stood the Manse of my aged 
friend and benefactor. My heart burned within me 
as a sudden gleam of stormy sunlight tipt it with 
fire — and I felt, at that moment, an inexpressible 
sense of the sublimity of the character of that gray- 
headed Shepherd who had, for fifty years, abode in 
the wilderness, keeping together his own happy 
little flock." — Lights and Shadows, pp. 131 — 133. 

The next, of a summer storm among the 
mountains, is equally national and appropriate. 

" An enormous thunder-cloud had lain all day 
over Ben-Nevis, shrouding its summit in thick 
darkness, blackening its sides and base, wherever 
they were beheld from the surrounding country, 
with masses of deep shadow, and especially flinging 
down a weight of gloom upon that magnificent Glen 
that bears the same name with the Mountain ; till 
now the afternoon was like twilight, and the voice 
of all the streams was distinct in the breathlessness 
of the vast solitary hollow. The inhabitants of all 
the straths, vales, glens, and dells, round and about 
the Monarch of Scottish mountains, had, during 
each successive hour, been expecting the roar of 
thunder and the deluge of rain ; but the huge con- 
glomeration of lowering clouds would not rend 
asunder, although it was certain that a calm blue 
sky could not be restored till all that dreadful as- 
semblage had melted away into torrents, or been 
driven off by a strong wind from the sea. All the 
cattle on the hills, and on the hollows, stood still or 
lay down in their fear, — the wild deer sought in 
herds the shelter of the pine-covered cliffs — the 
raven hushed his hoarse croak in some grim cavern, 
and the eagle left the dreadful silence of the upper 
heavens. Now and then the shepherds looked 
from their huts, while the shadow of the thunder- 
clouds deepened the hues of their plaids and tar- 
tans ! and at every creaking of the heavy branches 
of the pines, or wide-armed oaks in the solitude of 
their inaccessible birth-place, the hearts of the lone- 
ly dwellers quaked, and thev lifted up their eyes to 
see the first wide flash — the disparting of the masses 
of darkness — and paused to hear the long loud rat- 
tle of heaven's artillery shaking the foundation of 
the everlasting mountains. But all was yet silent. 

" The peal came at last ! and it seemed as if an 
earthquake had smote the silence. Not a tree — not 
a blade of grass moved ; but the blow stunned, as 
it were, the heart of the solid globe. Then was 
there a low, wild, whispering, wailing voice, as of 



many spirits all joining togetner from every point 
of heaven : It died away — and (hen the rushing of 
rain was heard through the darkness ; and, in a lew 
minutes, down came all the mountain torrents in 
their power, and the sides of all the steeps were 
suddenly sheeted, far and wide, with waterfalls. 
The element of water was let loose to run its re- 
joicing race — and that of fire lent it illumination, 
whether sweeping in floods along the great open 
straths, or tumbling in cataracts from cliffs over- 
hanging the eagle's eyrie. 

" Great rivers were suddenly flooded — and the 
little mountain rivulets, a few minutes before only 
silver threads, and in whose fairy basins the minnow 
played, were now scarcely fordable to shepherd's 
feet. It was time for :he strongest to lake shelter, 
and none now would have liked to issue from it ; 
for while there was real danger to life and limb in 
the many ranging torrents, and in the lightning's 
flash, the imagination and the soul themselves were 
touched with awe in the long resounding glens, and 
beneath the savage scowl of the angry sky. 

"It was not a time to be abroad: Yet all by 
herself was hastening down Glen-Nevis, from a 
shealingfar up the river, a little Girl, not more than 
twelve years of age — in truth, a very child. Grief 
and fear, not for herself, but for another, bore her 
along as upon wings, through the storm ; she 
crossed rivulets from which, on any other occasion, 
she would have turned back trembling ; and she 
did not even hear many of the crashes of thunder 
that smote the smoking hills. Sometimes at a 
fiercer flash of lightning she just lilted her hand to 
her dazzled eyes, and then, unappalled, hurried on 
through the hot and sulphurous air. Had she been 
a maiden of that tender age from village or city, her 
course would soon have been fatally stopt short ; 
but she had been born among the hills; had first 
learned to walk among the heather, holding by ita 
blooming branches, and many and many a solitary 
mile had she tripped, young as she was, over most 
and moor, glen and mountain, even like the roe that 
had its lair in the coppice beside her own beloved 
Shealing."— Ibid. pp. 369—372. 

We must add a part of the story of a fair 
child's sickness, in the family of one of our 
cheerful and pious cottagers. 

" The surgeon of the parish lived some miles dis- 
tant, but they expected him now every moment, 
and many a wistful look was directed by tearful eyes 
along the moor. The daughter, who was out at 
service, came anxiously home on this night, the 
only one that could be allowed her, for the poor 
must work in their grief, and servants must do their 
duty to those whose bread they eat, even when na- 
ture is sick, — sick at heart. Another of the daugh- 
ters came in from the potatoe-field beyond the brae, 
with what was to be their frugal supper. The calm 
noiseless spirit of life was in and around the house, 
while death seemed dealing with one who, a few 
days ago, was like light upon the floor, and the 
sound of music, that always breathed up when most 
wanted. — 4 Do you think the child is dying?' said 
Gilbert with a calm voice to the surgeon, who, on 
his wearied horse, had just arrived from another 
sick-bed, over the misty range of hills, and had 
been looking stedfastly for some minutes on the 
little patient. The humane man knew the family 
well, in the midst of whom he was standing, and 
replied, ' While there is life there is hope ; but my 
pretty little Margaret is, I fear, in the last extremi- 
ty.' There wa=* no loud lamentation at these worda 
— all had before known, though they would no* 
confess it to themselves, what they now were told — 
and though the certainty that was in the words of 
the skilful man made their hearts beat for a little 
with sicker throbbings, made their pale faces paler, 
and brought out from some eyes a greater gush of 
tears, yet death had been before in this house, and 
in this case he came, as he always does, in awe, 
but not in terror. 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



35t 



" The child was now left with none but her 
mother by the bedside, for it was said to be best so; 
and Gilbert and liis family sat down round the 
kitchen fire, for a while in silence. In about a 
quarter of an hour, they began to rise calmly, and 
to go each to his allotted work. One of the daugh- 
ters went forth wiih the pail to milk the cow. and 
another began to set out the table in the middle of 
ihe floor for supper, covering it with a white cloth. 
Gilbert viewed the usual household arrangements 
with a solemn and untroubled eye; and there was 
almost the faint light of a grateful smile on his 
cheek, as he said to the worthy surgeon, ' You will 
partake of our fare after your day's travel and toil 
of humanity.' In a short silent half hour, the po- 
tatoes and oat-cakes, butter and milk, were on the 
board ; and Gilbert, lifting up his toil-hardened, 
but manly hand, with a slow motion, at which the 
room was as hushed as if it had been empty, closed 
his eyes in reverence, and asked a blessing. There 
was a little stool, on which no one sat, by the old 
man's side ! It had been put there unwittingly, 
when the other seats were all placed in their usual 
order; but the golden head that was wont to rise 
at that part of the table was now wanting. There 
was silence — not a word wa3 said — their meal was 
before them, — God had been thanked, and they 
began to eat. 

" Another hour of trial passed, and the child was 
still swimming for its life. The very dogs knew there 
was grief in the house ; and lay without s'irring, 
as if hiding themselves, below the long table at the 
window. One sister sat with an unfinished gown 
on her knees, that she had been sewing for the 
dear child, and still continued at the hopeless work, 
she scarcely knew why ; and often, often putting up 
her hand to wipe away a tear. ' What is that V 
said the old man to his eldest daughter — 'what is that 
you are laying on the shelf?' She could scarcely 
reply that it was a riband and an ivory comb that she 
had brought for little Margaret, against the night 
of the dancing-school ball. And, at these words, 
the father could not restrain a long, deep, and bitter 
groan ; at which the boy, nearest in age to his dying 
sister, looked up weeping in his face, and letting 
the tattered book of old ballads, which he had 
been poring on, but not reading, fall out of his hands, 
he rose from his seat, and. going into his father's 
bosom, kissed him, and asked God to bless him ; 
for the holy heart of the boy was moved within 
him; and the old man, as he embraced him, felt 
that, in his innocence and simplicity, he was indeed 
a comforter. Scarcely could Gilbert reply to his 
first question about his child, when the surgeon 
came from the bed-room, and said, 'Margaret seems 
lifted up by God's hand above death and the grave ; 
I think she will recover. She has fallen asleep; 
and, when she wakes, I hope — I believe — that the 
danger will be past, and that your child will live.' 
They were all prepared for death ; but now they 
were found unprepared for life. One wept that had 
till then locked up all her tears within her heart ; 
another gave a short palpitating shriek ; and the 
tender-hearted Isobel, who had nursed the child 
when it was a baby, fainted away. The youngest 
brother give way to gladsome smiles; and, calling 
out his di>2 Hector, who used to sport with him and 
his little sister on the moor, he told the tidings to 
the dumb irrational creature, whose eyes, it is cer- 
tain, sparkled with a sort of joy." — Lights and 
Shadows, pp. 36 — 43. 

There are many things better than«ihis in 
the book — and there are many not so good. 
We had marked some passages for censure, 
and some for ridicule — but the soft-hearted- 
ness of the author has softened our hearts to- 
wards him— and we cannot, just at present, 
say any thing but good of him. 

The next book is "Adam Blair," which, it 
seems, is by the author of Valerius, though it 



is much more in the manner of the Lights and 
Shadows. It is a story of great power and in- 
terest, though neither very pleasing, nor very 
moral, nor very intelligible. Mr. Blair is an ex- 
emplary clergyman in Scotland, who, while yet 
in the prime of life, loses a beloved wife, and 
is for a time plunged in unspeakable afflic- 
tion. In this state he is visited by Mrs. Camp- 
bell, the intimate friend of his deceased wife, 
who had left her husband abroad — and soon 
after saves his little daughter, and indeed 
himself, from drowning. There are evident 
marks of love on the lady's part, and much 
affection on his — but both seem unconscious 
of the true state of their hearts, till she is 
harshly ordered home to the Highland tower 
of her husband, and he is left alone in the 
home she had so long cheered with her smiles. 
With nothing but virtue and prudence, as the 
author assures us, in his heart — he unaccount- 
ably runs off from his child and his parish, 
and makes a clandestine visit to her Celtic 
retreat — arrives there in the night — is raptur- 
ously welcomed — drinks copiously of wine — 
gazes with her on the moonlight sea — is again 
pressed to the wine cup — and finds himself 
the next morning — and is found by her ser- 
vants, clasped in her embraces ! His remorse 
and horror are now abundantly frantic — he 
flies from her into the desert — and drives her 
from him with the wildest execrations. His 
contrition, however, brings on frenzy and 
fever — he is carried back to her tower, and 
watched over by her for a while in his deli- 
rium. As he begins, after many days, to re- 
cover, he hears melancholy music, and sees 
slow boats on the water beneath his window — 
and soon after learns that she had caught the 
fever from him, and died ! and that it was the 
ceremony of her interment he had seen and 
heard on the water. He then journies slowly 
homeward ; proclaims "his lapse to the presby- 
tery, solemnly resigns his office, and betakes 
himself to the humble task of a day-labourer 
in his own former parish. In this state of 
penitence and humiliation he passes ten lonely 
and blameless years — gradually winning back 
the respect and esteem of his neighbours, by 
the depth of his contrition and the zeal of his 
humble piety — till at last his brethren of the 
presbytery remove the sentence of depriva- 
tion, and, on the next vacancy, restore him to 
the pastoral charge of his afflicted and affec- 
tionate flock. 

There is no great merit in the des : gn of this 
story, and there are many things both absurd 
and revolting in its details: but there is no 
ordinary power in the execution ; and there is 
a spirit and richness in the writing, of which 
no notion can be formed from our little ab- 
stract of its substance. It is but fair, there- 
fore, to the author, to let him speak for nimself 
in one specimen ; and we take the account, 
with which the book opens, of the death of 
the pastor's wife, and his own consequent des- 
olation. She had suffered dreadfully from 
the successive loss of three children, and her 
health had gradually sunk under her affliction. 

" The long melancholy summer passed away, 
and the songs of the harvest reapers were heard in 



560 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



the surrounding fields ; while all, from day to day, 
was becoming darker and darker within the Manse 
of Cross- MeFkle. Worn to a shadow — as pale as 
a9hes — feeble as a child — the dying mother had, for 
many weeks, been unable to quit her chamber; and 
the long-hoping husband at last felt his spirit faint 
within him ; for even he perceived that the hour of 
separation could not much farther be deferred. He 
watched — he prayed by her bed-side — he strove 
even yet to smile and to speak of hope, but his lips 
trembled as he spake ; and neither he nor his wife 
were deceived; for their thoughts were the same, 
and years of love had taught them too well all the 
secrets of each other's looks as well as hearts. 

" Nobody witnessed their last parting; the room 
was darkened, and no one was wiihin it but them- 
selves and their child, who sat by the bed-side, 
weeping in silence she knew not wherefore — for of 
death she knew little, except the terrible name ; 
and her father had as yet been, if not brave enough 
to shed no tears, at least strong enough to conceal 
them. — Silently and gently was the pure spirit re- 
leased from its clay ; but manly groans were, for 
the first time, heard above the sobs and waitings of 
the infant ; and the listening household shrunk back 
from the door, for they knew that the blow had been 
stricken ; and the voice of humble sympathy feared 
to make itself be heard in the sanctuary of such 
affliction. The village doctor arrived just at that 
moment ; he listened for a few seconds, and being 
satisfied that all was over, he also turned away. 
His horse had been fastened to the hook by the 
Manse door ; he drew out the bridle, and led the 
animal softly over the turf, but did not mount again 
until he had far passed the outskirts of the green. 

" Perhaps an hour might have passed before Mr. 
Blair opened the window of the room in which his 
wife had died. His footstep had been heard for 
some time hurriedly traversing and re-traversing the 
floor ; but at last he stopped where the nearly fas- 
tened shutters of the window admitted but one 
broken line of light into the chamber. He threw 
every thing open with a bold hand, and the uplifting 
of the window produced a degree of noise, to the 
like of which the house had for some time been un- 
accustomed : he looked out, and saw the external 
world bright before him, with all the rich colourings 
of a September evening. — The hum of the village 
sent an occasional echo -through the intervening 
hedge-rows; all was quiet and beautiful above and 
below ; the earth seemed to be clothed all over with 
sights and sounds of serenity ; and the sky, deep- 
ening into darker and darker blue overhead, show- 
ed the earliest of its stars intensely twinkling, as if 
ready to harbinger or welcome the coming moon. 

" The widowed man gazed for some minutes in 
silence upon the glorious calm of nature, and then 
turned with a sudden start to the side of the room 
where the wife of his bosom had so lately breathed ; 
— he saw the pale dead face ; the black ringlets 
parted on the brow ; the marble hand extended 
upon the sheet ; the unclosed glassy eyes ; and the 
little girl leaning towards her mother in a gaze of 
half-horrified bewilderment ; he closed the stiffen- 
ing eyelids over the soft but ghastly orbs ; kissed 
the brow, the cheek, the lips, the bosom, and then 
rushed down the stairs, and went out, bare-headed, 
into the fields, before any one could stop him, or 
ask whither he was going. 

11 There is an old thick grove of pines almost 
immediately behind the house ; and after staring 
about him for a moment on the green, he leapt hastily 
over the little brook that skirts it, and plunged 
within the shade of the trees. The breeze was 
rustling the black boughs high over his head, and 
whistling along the bare ground beneath him. He 
rushed he knew not whither, on and on, between 
those naked brown trunks, till he was in the heart 
of the wood ; and there, at last, he tossed himself 
down on his back among the withered fern leaves 
and mouldering fir-cones. All the past things of 
life floated before him, distinct in their lineaments, 



yet twined together, the darkest and the gayest, 
into a sort of union that made them all appear alike 
dark. The mother, that had nursed his years of 
infancy — the father, whose grey heirs he had long 
before laid in the grave — sisters, brothers, friends, 
all dead and buried — the angel forms ot his own 
early-ravished offspring — all crowded round and 
round him, and then rushing away, seemed to bear 
from him, as a prize and a trophy, the pale image 
of his expiring wife. Again she returned, and she 
alone was present with him — not the pale expiring 
wife, but the young radiant woman — blushing, 
trembling, smiling, panting, on his bosom, whisper 
ing to him all her hopes, and fears, and pride, and 
love, and tenderness, and meekness, like a bride ! 
and then again all would be black as night. He 
would start up and gaze around, and see nothing 
but the sepulchral gloom of the wood, and hear 
nothing but the cold blasts among the leaves. He 
lay insensible alike to all things, stretched out at all 
his length, with his eyes fixed in a stupid steadfast- 
ness upon one great massy branch that hung over 
him — his bloodless lips fastened together as if they 
had been glued — his limbs like things entirely des- 
titute of life and motion — every thing about him 
cold, stiff, and senseless. Minute after minute passed 
heavily away as in a dream — hour after hour rolled 
unheeded into the abyss — the stars twinkled through 
the pine tops, and disappeared — the moon arose in 
her glory, rode through the clear autumn heaven, 
and vanished — and all alike unnoted by the pros- 
trate widower. 

" Adam Blair came forth from among the fir- 
trees in the grey light of the morning, walked leis- 
urely and calmly several times round the garden- 
green, which lay immediately in front of his house, 
then lifted the latch for himself, and glided with 
light and hasty footsteps up stairs to the room, 
where, for some weeks past, he had been ac- 
customed to occupy a solitary bed. The wakeful 
servants heard him shut his door behind him ; one 
of them having gone out anxiously, had traced him 
to his privacy, but none of them had ventured to 
think of disturbing it. Until he came back, not 
one of them thought of going to bed. Now, how- 
ever, they did so, and the house of sorrow was all 
over silent.'' — Adam Blair, pp. 4 — 12. 

There is great merit too, though of a differ- 
ent kind, in the scenes with Strahan and 
Campbell, and those with the ministers and 
elders. But the story is clumsily put to- 
gether, and the diction, though strong and 
copious, is frequently turgid and incorrect. 

"The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay," by the 
author of Lights and Shadows, is the last of 
these publications of which we shall now say 
any thing ; and it is too pathetic and full of 
sorrow for us to say much of it. It is very 
beautiful and tender ; but something cloying, 
perhaps, in the uniformity of its beauty, and 
exceedingly oppressive in the unremitting 
weight of the pity with which it presses on 
our souls. Nothing was ever imagined more 
lovely than the beauty, the innocence, and 
the sweetness of Margaret Lyndsay, in the 
earlier part of her trials ; and nothing, we be- 
lieve, is more true, than the comfortable les- 
son which her tale is meant to inculcate, — 
that a gentle and affectionate nature is never 
inconsolable nor permanently unhappy, but 
easily proceeds from submission to new enjoy 
ment. But the tale of her trials, the accu- 
mulation of suffering on the heads of the 
humblest and most innocent of God's crea- 
tures, is too painful to be voluntarily recalled; 
and we cannot now undertake to give oui 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



561 



readers any account of her father's desertion 
of his helpless family — of their dismal ban- 
ishment from the sweet retreat in which they 
had been nurtured — their painful struggle 
with poverty and discomfort, in the darksome 
lanes of the city — the successive deaths of all 
this affectionate and harmless household, and 
her own ill-starred marriage to the husband 
of another wife. Yet we must enable them 
to form some notion of a work, which has 
drawn more tears from us than any we have 
had to peruse since the commencement of 
our career. This is the account of the migra- 
tion of the ruined and resigned family from 
the scene of their early enjoyments. 

" The twenty-fourth day of November came at 
last — a dim, dull, dreary, and obscure day, fit for 
parting everlastingly from a place or person ten- 
derly beloved. 1 here was no sun — no wind — no 
sound in the misty and unechoing air. Adeadness 
lay over the wet earth, and there was no visible 
Heaven. Their goods and chattels were few ; but 
many little delays occurred, some accidental, and 
more in the unwillingness of their hearts to take a 
final farewell. A neighbour had lent his cart for 
the flitting, and it was now standing loaded at the 
door, ready to move away. The fare, which had 
been kindled in the morning with a few borrowed 
peats, was now out — the shutters closed — the door 
was locked — and the key put into the hand of the 
person sent to receive it. And now there was 
nothing more to be said or done, and the impatient 
horse started briskly away from Braehead. The 
blind girl, and poor Marion, were sitting in the catt 
—Margaret and her mother were on foot. Esther 
had two or three small flower-pots in her lap, for 
in her blindness she loved the sweet fragrance, 
and the felt forms and imagined beauty of flowers ; 
and the innocent carried away her tame pigeon in 
her bosom. Just as Margaret lingered on the 
threshold, the Robin red-breast that had been her 
boarder for several winters, hopped upon the stone- 
seat at the side of the door, and turned up its merry 
eyes to her face. ' There,' said she, ' is your last 
crumb from us, sweet Roby, but there is a God 
who takes care o' us a'. The widow had by this 
time shut down the lid of her memory, and left all 
the hoard of her thoughts and feelings, joyful or 
despairing, buried in darkness. The assembled 
group of neighbours, mostly mothers with their 
children in their arms, had given the ' God bless 
you, Alice, God bless you, Margaret, and the 
lave,' and began to disperse ; each turning to her 
own cares and anxieties, in which, before night, the 
Lyndsays would either be forgotten, or thought on 
with that unpainful sympathy which is all the poor 
can afford or expect, but which, as in this case, 
often yields the fairest fruits of charity and love. 

" A cold sleety rain accompanied the cart and the 
foot travellers all the way to the city. Short as the 
distance was, they met with several other flittings, 
some seemingly cheerful, and from good to better, 
— others with woe-begone faces, going like them- 
selves down the path of poverty, on a journey from 
which they were to rest at night in a bare and hun- 
gry house. And now they drove through the sub- 
urbs, and into the city, passing unheeded among 
crowds of people, all on their own business of 
pleasure or profit, laughing, jibing, shouting, curs- 
ing. — the stir, and tumult, and torrent of concrre- 
'gated life. Margaret could hardly help feeling 
elated with the glitter of all the shining windows, 
and the hurry of thy streets. Marion sat silent 
with her pigeon warm in her breast below her brown 
cloak, unknowing she of change, of time, or of 
place, and reconciled to sit patiently there, with 
the soft plumage touching her heart, if the cart had 
gone on, through the cold and sleet, to midnight ! 

" The cart stopt at the foot of a lane too narrow 
71 



to admit the wheels, and also too steep for a laden 
horse. Two or three of their new neighbours, — 
persons in the very humblest condition, coarsely 
and negligently dressed, but seemingly kind and 
decent people, came out from their houses at the 
stopping of the cart-wheels. The cart was soon 
unladen, and the furniture put into the empty room. 
A cheerful fire was blazing, and the animated and 
interested faces of the honest folks who crowded 
into it, on a slight acquaintance, unceremoniously 
and curiously, but without rudeness, gave a cheer- 
ful welcome to the new dwelling. In a quarter of 
an hour the beds were laid down, — the room de- 
cently arranged, — one and all of the neighbours 
said ' Gude night,' — and the door was closed upon 
the Lyndsays in their new dwelling. 

" They blessed and eat their bread in peace. The 
Bible was then opened, and Margaret read a chap- 
ter. There was frequent and loud noise in the lane, 
of passing merriment or anger, — but this little con- 
gregation worshipped Gocf in a hymn, Esther's 
sweet voice leading the sacred melody, and they 
knelt together in prayer." — Trials of Margaret 
Lyndsay, pp. 66 — 70. 

Her brother goes to sea, and returns, affec- 
tionate and happy, with a young companion, 
whom the opening beauty of Margaret Lynd- 
say charms into his first dream of love, and 
whose gallant bearing and open heart, cast 
the first, and almost the last gleam of joy and 
enchantment over the gentle and chastened 
heart of the maiden. But this, like all her 
other dawnings of joy, led only to more bitter 
affliction. She had engaged to go with him 
and her brother to church, one fine summer 
Sunday, and — the author shall tell the rest 
of the story himself. 

" Her heart was indeed glad within her, when 
she saw the young sailor at the spot. His brown 
sun-burnt face was all one smile of exulting joy — 
and his bold clear eyes burned through the black 
hair that clustered over his forehead. There wag 
not a handsomer, finer-looking boy in the British 
navy. Although serving before the mast, as many, 
a noble lad has done, he was the son of a poor gen- 
tleman ; and as he came up to Margaret Lyndsay, 
in his smartest suit, with his white straw hat, his 
clean shirt- neck tied with a black riband, and a 
small yellow cane in his hand, a brighter boy 'and a 
fairer girl never met in affection in the calm sun- 
shine of a Scottish Sabbath-day. 

" ' Why have not you brought Laurence with 
you?' Harry made her put her arm within his, 
and then told her that it was not her brother's day 
on shore. Now all the calm air was filled with the 
sound of bells, and Leith Walk covered with well- 
dressed families. The nursery-gardens on each 
side were almost in their greatest beauty — so soft 
and delicate the verdure of the young imbedded 
trees, and so bright the glow of intermingled eariy 
flowers. 4 Let us go to Leith by a way I have dis- 
covered,' said the joyful sailor — and he drew Mar- 
garet gentiy away from the public walk, into a re- 
ared path winding with many little white gales 
through these luxuriantly cultivated enclosures. 
The insects were dancing in the air — birds singing 
all about them — the sky was without a cloud — ana 
a bright dazzling line of light was all that was now 
seen for the sea. The youthful pair loitered in their 
happiness — they never marked that the bells had 
ceased ringing ; and when at last they hurried to 
reach the chapel, the door was closed, and they 
heard the service chanting. Margaret durst not 
knock at the door, or go in so long after worship 
was begun ; and she secretly upbraided herself for 
her forgetfulness of a well-known and holy hour. 
She felt unlike herself walking on the street during 
the time of church, and beseeched Harry to go with 
her out of the sight of the windows, that all seemed 



662 



WORKS OF FICTION. 



watching her in her neglect of Divine worship. So 
they bent their steps towards the shore. 

" Harry Needham had not perhaps had any pre- 
conceived intention to keep Margaret from church ; 
but he was very well pleased, that, instead of being 
with her in a pew there, in a crowd, he was now 
walking alone with her on the brink of his own 
element. The tide was coming fast in, hurrying 
on its beautiful little bright ridges of variegated 
foam, by short successive encroachments over the 
smooth hard level shore, and impatient, as it were, 
to reach the highest line of intermingled sea- weed, 
silvery sand, and deep-stained or glittering shells. 
The friends, or lovers — and their short dream was 
both friendship and love — retreated playfully from 
every little watery wall that fell in pieces at their 
feet, and Margaret turned up her sweet face in the 
sun-light to watch the slow dream-like motion of 
the sea-mews, who seemed sometimes to be yield- 
ing to the breath of the shifting air, and sometimes 
obeying only some wavering impulse of joy within 
their own white-plumaged breasts. Or she walked 
softly behind them, as they alighted on the sand, 
that she might come near enough to observe that 
beautifully wild expression that is in the eyes of all 
winged creatures whose home is on the sea. 

" Alas! home — church — every thing on earth 
was forgotten — for her soul was filled exclusively 
with its present joy. She had never before, in all 
her life, been down at the sea-shore — and she never 
again was within hearing of its bright, sunny, hol- 
low-sounding and melancholy waves ! 

" ' See.' said Harry, with a laugh, ' the kirks 
have scaled, as you say here in Scotland — the pier- 
head is like a wood of bonnets. — Let us go there, 
and I think I can show them the bonniest face 
among them a'.' The fresh sea breeze had tinged 
Margaret's pale face with crimson, — and her heart 
now sent up a sudden blush to deepen and brighten 
that beauty. They mingled with the cheerful, but 
calm and decent crowd, and stood together at the 
end of the pier, looking towards the ship. ' Tl at 
is our frigate, Margaret, the Tribune ; — she sits like 
a bird on the water, and sails well, both in calm 
and storm.' The poor girl looked at the ship with 
her flags flying, till her eyes filled with tears. ' If 
we had a glass, like one my father once had, we 
might, perhaps, see Laurence.' And for the mo- 
ment she used the word ' father' without remem- 
bering what and where he was in his misery. — 
* There is one of our jigger-rigged boats coming 
right before the wind. — Why, Margaret, this is the 
last opportunity you may have of seeing your 
brother. We may sail to-morrow ; nay to-night.' 
—A sudden wish to go on board the ship seized 
Margaret's heart. Harry saw the struggle — and 
wiling her down a flight of steps, in a moment lifted 
her into the boat, which, with the waves rushing in 
foam within an inch of the gunwale, went dancing 
out of harbour, and was soon half-way over to the 
anchored frigate. 

" The novelty of her situation, and of all the 
scene around, at first prevented the poor girl from 
thinking deliberately of the great error she had 
committed, in thus employing her Sabbath hours 
in a way so very different to what she had been ac- 
customed; but she soon could not help thinking 
what she was to say to her mother when she went 
home, and was obliged to confess that she had not 
been at church at all, and had paid a visit to her 
brother on board the ship. It was very sinful in 
her thus to disobey her own conscience and her 
mother's will, and the tears came into her eyes. — 
The young sailor thought she was afraid, and only 
pressed her closer to him, with a few soothing 
words. At that moment a sea-mew came winnow- 
ing its way towards the boat, and one of the sailors 
rising up with a musquet, took aim as it flew over 
their heads. Margaret suddenly started up, crying. 
' Do not kill the pretty bird,' and stumbling, fell 
forward upon the man, who also lost his balance. — 
A flaw of wind struck the mainsail — the helmsman 



was heedless — the sheet fast — and the boat instantiy 
filling, went down in a moment, head foremost, in 
twenty faihorn water ! 

" The accident was seen both from the shore and 
ship ; and a crowd of boats put off to their relief 
But death was beforehand with them all; ana. 
when the frigate's boat came to the place, nothing 
was seen upon the waves. Two of the men, it 
was supposed, had gone to the bottom entangled 
with ropes or beneath the sail, — in a few moments 
the grey head of the old steersman was apparent, 
and he was lifted up with an oar — drowned. A 
woman's clothes were next descried ; and Margaret 
was taken up with something heavy weighing down 
the body. It was Harry Needham, who had sunk 
in trying to save her ; and in one of his hands was 
grasped a tress of her hair that had given way in 
the desperate struggle. There seemed to be faint 
symptoms of life in both ; but they were utterly 
insensible. The crew, among which was Laurence 
Lyndsay, pulled swiftly back to the ship; and the 
bodies were first of all laid down together side by 
side in the captain's cabin." — Trials of Margaret 
Lyndsay, pp. 125 — 130. 

We must conclude with something less 
desolating — and we can only find it in the 
account of the poor orphan's reception from 
an ancient miserly kinsman, to whom, after 
she had buried all her immediate family, she 
went like Ruth, in the simple strength of her 
innocence. After walking all day, she comes 
at night within sight of his rustic abode. 

" With a beating heart, she stopt for a little while 
at the mouth of the avenue, or lane, that seemed 
to lead up to the house. It was much overgrown 
with grass, and there were but few marks of wheels ; 
the hedges on each side were thick and green, but 
undipped, and with frequent gaps ; something 
melancholy lay over all about ; and the place had 
the air of being uninhabited. But still it was beau- 
tiful ; for it was bathed in the dews of a rich mid- 
summer gloaming, and the clover filled the air with 
fragrance that revived the heart of the solitary 
orphan, as she stood, for a few minutes, irresolute, 
and apprehensive of an unkind reception. 

"At last she found heart, and the door of the 
house being open, Margaret walked in, and stood 
on the floor of the wide low-roofed kitchen. An 
old man was sitting, as if half asleep, in a high- 
backed arm-chair, by the side of the chimney.— 
Before she had time or courage to speak, her sha- 
dow fell upon his eyes, and he looked towards her 
with strong visible surprise, and, as she thought, 
with a slight displeasure. ' Ye hae got off your 
road, I'm thinking, young woman ; what seek you 
here ?' Margaret asked respectfully if she might 
sit down. 4 Aye, aye, ye may sit down, but we 
keep nae refreshment here — this is no a public- 
house. There's ane a mile west in the Clachan.' 
The old man kept looking upon her, and with a 
countenance somewhat relaxed from its inhospita- 
ble austerity. Her appearance did not work as a 
charm or a spell, for she was no enchantress in a 
fairy tale ; but the tone of her voice, so sweet and 
gentle, the serenity of her face, and the meekness 
of her manner, as she took her seat upon a stool 
not far from the door, had an effect upon old Daniel 
Craig, and he bade her come forward, and take a 
chair ' farther ben the house.' 

'"lam an Orphan, and have perhaps but little 
claim upon you, but I have ventured to come here 
— my name is Margaret Lyndsay, and my mother's' 
name was Alice Craig.' The old man moved upon 
his chair, as if a blow had struck him. and looked 
long and earnestly into her face. Her features con- 
firmed her words. Her countenance possessed that 
strong power over him that goes down mysteriously 
through the generations of perishable man, con- 
necting love with likeness, so that the child 'n its 
cradle may be smiling almost with the self- tame 



SCOTCH NOVELS. 



563 



expression that belonged to some one of its fore- 
fathers mouldered into ashes many hundred years 
ago. ' Nae doubt, nae doubt, ye are the daughter 
o' Walter Lyndsay and Alice Craig. Never v\Vre 
twa faces mair unlike than theirs, yet yours is like 
them baith. Margaret — that is your name — I give 
you my blessing. Hae you walked far ? Mysie's 
doun at the Rashy-riggs, wi' milk to the calf, but 
will be in belyve. Come, my bonny bairn, take a 
shake o' your uncle's hand.' 

"Margaret told, in a few words, the principal 
events of the last three years, as far as she could ; 
and the old man, to whom they had been almost 
all unknown, heard her story with attention, but 
said little or nothing. Meanwhile, Mysie came in 
-an elderly, hard-featured woman, but with an 
expression of homely kindness, that made her dark 
face not unpleasant. 

" Margaret felt herself an inmate of her uncle's 
house, and her heart began already to warm towards 
the old grey-headed solitary man. His manner ex- 
hibited, as she thought, a mixture of curiosity and 
kindness ; but she did not disturb his taciturnity, 
and only returned immediate and satisfactory an- 
swers to his few short and abrupt questions. He 
evidently was thinking over the particulars which 
6he had given him of her life at Braehead, and in 
the lane ; and she did not allow herself to fear, but 
that, in a day or two, if he permitted her to stay, 
she would be able to awaken in his heart a natural 
interest in her behalf. Hope was a guest that never 
left her bosom — and she rejoiced when on the return 
of the old domestic from the bed-room, her uncle 
requested her to read aloud a chapter of the Bible. 
She did so, — and the old man took the book out of 
her hand with evident satisfaction, and, fastening 
the clasp, laid it by in the little cupboard in the wall 
near his chair, and wished her good night. 

" Mysie conducted her into the bed-room, where 
every thing was neat, and superior, indeed, to the 
ordinary accommodation of a farm-house. ' Ye 
need na fear, for feather-bed and sheets are a' as 
dry as last year's hay in the stack. I keep a' things 
in the house weel aired, for damp's a great disaster. 
But, for a' that, sleepin' breath has na been drawn 
in that bed these saxteen years !' Margaret thanked 
her for the trouble she had taken, and soon laid 
down her limbs in grateful rest. A thin calico cur- 
tain was before the low window ; but the still serene 
radiance of a midsummer night glimmered on the 
floor. All was silent — and in a few minutes Mar- 
garet Lyndsav was asleep. 



" In the quiet of the succeeding evening, the old 
man took her with him along the burn-side, and 
into a green ewe-bught, where they sat down for a 
while in silence. At last he said, 'I have nae wife 
— nae children— nae friends, 1 may say, Margaret 
— nane that cares for me, but the servant in the 
house, an auld friendless body like mysel* ; but if 
you choose to bide wi' us, you are mair than wel- 
come ; for I know not what is in that face o' thine ; 
but this is the pleasantest day that has come to me 
these last thirty years.' 

"Margaret was now requested to tell her uncle 
more about her parents and herself, and she com- 
plied with a full heart. She went back with all the 
power of nature's eloquence, to the history of her 
young years at Braehead — recounted all her lather's 
miseries' — her mother's sorrows — and her own trials. 
All the while she spoke, the tears were streaming 
from her eyes, and her sweet bosom heaved with a 
crowd of heavy sighs. The old man sat silent ; 
but more than once he sobbed, and passed his 
withered toil-worn hands across his forehead. — 
They rote up together, as by mutual consent, and 
returned to the house. Before the light had too far 
died away, Daniel Craig asked Margaret to read a 
chapter in the Bible, as. she had done the night be- 
fore ; and when she had concluded, he said, 'I 
never heard the Scriptures so well read in all 
my days — did you, Mysie?' The quiet creature 
looked on Margaret with a smile of kindness and 
admiration, and said, that 'she had never un- 
derstood that chapter sae weel before, although, 
aiblins, she had read it a hundred times.' — ' Ye can 
gang to your bed without Mysie to show you the 
way to-night, my good niece — ye are one of the 
family now — and Nether-Place will after this be 
as cheerfu' a house as in a' the parish.' " — Trials 
of Margaret Lyudsay, pp. 251, 252. 

We should now finish our task by saying 
something of "Reginald Dalton;" — but such 
of our readers as have accompanied us througn 
this long retrospect, will readily excuse us, 
we presume, for postponing our notice of that 
work till another opportunity. There are two 
decisive reasons, indeed, against our proceed- 
ing with it at present, — one, that we really 
have not yet read it fairly thro ugh — the other, 
that we have no longer room to say all of it 
that we foresee it will require. 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



A great deal that should naturally come under this title has been unavoidably given 
already, under that of History ; and more, I fear, may be detected under still less appropriate 
denominations. If any unwary readers have been thus unwittingly decoyed into Politics, 
while intent on more innocent studies, I can only hope that they will now take comfort, from 
rinding how little of this obnoxious commodity has been left to appear in its proper colours; 
and also from seeing, from the decorous title now assumed, that all intention of engaging 
them in Party discussions is disclaimed. 

I do not think that I was ever a violent or (consciously) uncandid partisan J and at all 
events, ten years of honest abstinence and entire segregation from party contentions (to say 
nothing of the sobering effects of threescore antecedent years!), should have pretty much 
effaced the vestiges of such predilections, and awakened the least considerate to a sense of 
the exaggerations, and occasional unfairness, which such influences must almost unavoidably 
impart to political disquisitions. In what I now reprint I have naturally been anxious to se- 
lect what seemed least liable to this objection : and though I cannot flatter myself that a tone 
of absolute, Judicial impartiality is maintained in all these early productions, I trust that 
nothing will be found in them that can suggest the idea either of personal animosity, or of an 
ungenerous feeling towards a public opponent. 

To the two first, and most considerable, of the following papers, indeed, I should wish 
particularly to refer, as fair exponents both of the principles I think I have always maintained, 
and of the temper in which I was generally disposed to maintain them. In some of the 
others a more vehement and contentious tone may no doubt be detected. But as they touch 
upon matters of permanent interest and importance, and advocate opinions which I still think 
substantially right, I have felt that it would be pusillanimous now to suppress them, from a 
poor fear of censure, which, if just, I cannot but know that I deserve — or a still poorer distrust 
of those allowances which I have no reason to think will be withheld from me by the better 
part of my readers. 



(3To»embtr, 1812.) 

Essay on the Practice of the British Government, distinguished from the abstract Theory en 
which it is supposed to be founded n By Gould Francis Leckie. 8vo. London: 1812.* 



This is the most direct attack which we 
have ever seen in English, upon the free con- 
stitution of England ; — or rather upon political 
liberty in general, and upon our government 
only in so far as it is free : — and it consists 
partly in an eager exposition of the inconveni- 
ences resulting from parliaments or represen- 
tative legislatures, and partly in a warm de- 
fence and undisguised panegyric of Absolute, 
or, as the author more elegantly phrases it, of 
Simple monarchy. 



* I used to think that this paper contained a very 
good defence of our free constitution ; and especially 
the most complete, temperate, and searching vindi- 
cation of our Hereditary Monarchy that was any 
where to be met with : And, though it now appears 
to me rather more elementary and elaborate than 
was necessary, I am still of opinion that it may be 
of use to young politicians, — and suggest cautions 
and grounds of distrust, to rash discontent and 
thoughtless presumption. 
564 



The pamphlet which contains these con- 
solatory doctrines, has the further merit of 
being, without any exception, the worst writ- 
ten,, and the worst reasoned, that has ever 
fallen into our hands ; and there is nothjng in- 
deed but the extreme importance of the sub- 
ject, and of the singular complexion of the 
times in which it appears, that could induce 
us to take any notice of it. The rubbish that 
is scattered in our common walks, we merely 
push aside and disregard; but, when it defiles 
the approaches to the temple, or is heaped on 
the sanctuary itself, it must be cast out with 
other rites of expiation, and visited with se- 
verer penalties. When the season is healthy, 
we may walk securely among the elements 
of corruption, and warrantably decline the in- 
glorious labour of sweeping them away : — 
but, when the air is tainted and the blood 
impure, we should look with jealousy upon 
every speck, and consider that the slightest 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 



565 



WRiitfsSon of our police may spread a pesti- 
lence through all the borders of the land. 

There are two periods, it appears to us, 
when tne promulgation of such doctrines as 
are maintained by this author may be con- 
sidered as dangerous, or at least as of evil 
omen, in a country like this. The one, when 
the friends of arbitrary power are strong and 
flaring, and advantageously posted ; and when, 
meditating some serious attack on the liber- 
ties of the people, they send out their emis- 
saries and manifestoes, to feel and to prepare 
their way : — the other, when they are sub- 
stantially weak, and unfit to maintain a con- 
flict with their opponents, but where the great 
body of the timid and the cautious are alarmed 
at the prospect of such a conflict, and half 
disposed to avert the crisis by supporting 
whatever is in actual possession of power. 
Whether either of these descriptions may suit 
the aspect of the present times, we w T illingly 
leave it to our readers to determine : But be- 
fore going farther, we think it proper to say, that 
we impute no corrupt motives to the author 
before us ; and that there is, on the contrary, 
every appearance of his being conscientious- 
ly persuaded of the advantages of arbitrary 
power, and sincerely eager to reconcile the 
minds of his countrymen to the introduction 
of so great a blessing. The truth indeed 
seems to be, that having lived so long^broad 
as evidently to have lost, in a great degree, 
the use of his native language, it is not sur- 
prising that he should have lost along with 
it, a great number of those feelings, without 
which it really is not possible to reason, in 
this country, on the English constitution ; and 
has gradually come, not only to speak, but to 
feel, like a foreigner, as to many of those 
things which still constitute bbth the pride 
and the happiness of his countrymen. We 
have no doubt that he would be a very useful 
and enlightened patriot in Sicily; but we 
think it was rather harsh in him to venture 
before the public with his speculations on the 
English government, with his present stock 
of information and habits of thinking. Though 
we do not, however, impute to him any thing 
worse than these disqualifications, there are 
persons enough in the country to whom it 
will be a sufficient recommendation of any 
work, that it inculcates principles of servility; 
and who w T ill be abundantly ready to give it 
every chance of making an impression, which 
it may derive from their approbation ; and in- 
deed we have already heard such testimonies 
in favour of this slender performance, as seem 
to impose it upon us as a duty to give some 
little account of its contents, and some short 
opinion of its principles. 

The first part of the task may be performed 
in a very moderate compass ; for though the 
learned author has not always the gift of 
writing intelligibly, it is impossible for a dili- 
gent reader not to see w ? hat he would be at ; 
and his doctrine, when once fairly understood, 
may readily be reduced to a few very simple 
propositions. After preluding on a variety 
of minor topics, and suggesting some curious 
enough reme dies for our present unhappy con- 



dition, he candidly admits that none of those 
would reach to the root of the evil; which 
consists entirely, it seems, in our "too great 
jealousy of the Crown :" and accordingly pro- 
ceeds to draw a most seducing picture of his 
favourite Simple monarchy ; and indirectly in- 
deed, but quite unequivocally, to intimate, 
that the only effectual cure for the evils under 
which we now suffer is to be found in the total 
abolition of Parliaments, and the conversion 
of our constitution into an absolute monarchy : 
or, shortly to "'advert," as he expresses him- 
self, "to the advantages which a Monarchy, 
such as has been described, has over our 
boasted British Constitution." These advan- 
tages, after a good deal of puzzling, he next 
settles to be — First, that the sovereign will be 
" more likely to feel a pride, as well as a zeal, 
to act a great and good part ;" — secondly, that 
the ministers will have more time to attend, to 
their duties when they have no parliamentary 
contentions to manage ; — thirdly, that the pub- 
lic councils will be guided by fixed and steady 
principles; — fourthly, that if the Monarch 
should act in an oppressive manner, it will be 
easier for the people to get the better of him 
than of a whole Parliament who might act in 
the same manner; — fifthly, that the heir ap- 
parent might then be allowed to travel in 
foreign countries for the improvement of his 
manners and understanding; — sixthly, and 
lastly, that there would be no longer any pre- 
text for a cry against " what is styled back- 
stair influence!" 

Such is the sum of Mr. Leekie's publica- 
tion ; of which, as a curious specimen of the 
infinite diversity of human opinions and en- 
dowments, and of the license of political specu- 
lation that is still occasionally indulged in in 
this country, we have thought it right that 
some memorial should be preserved — a little 
more durable than the pamphlet itself seemed 
likely to afford. But though what we have 
already said is probably more than enough to 
settle the opinion of all reasonable persons 
with regard to the merits of the work, we 
think w T e can trace, even in some of the most 
absurd and presumptuous of its positions, the 
operation of certain errors, which we have 
found clouding the views, and infecting the 
opinions of persons of far sounder understand- 
ing; and shall presume, therefore, to offer a 
few very plain and simple remarks upon some 
of the points which w r e think we have most 
frequently found either misrepresented or 
misunderstood. 

The most important and radical of those, is 
that which relates to the nature and uses of 
Monarchy, and the rights and powers of a 
sovereign ; upon which, therefore; we beg 
leave to begin with a few observations. And 
here we shall take leave to consider Boyalty 
as being, on the whole, but a Human Institu- 
tion, — originating in a view to the general 
good, and not to the gratification of the indi- 
vidual upon whom the office is conferred ; 01 
at least only capable of being justified, or de- 
serving to be retained, where it is found, or 
believed, to be actually beneficial to the whohi 
society. Now we think that, generally speak 
2X 



566 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



ing, it is a highly beneficial institution: and 
that the benefits which it is calculated to confer 
are great and obvious. 

From the first moment that men began to 
associate together, and to act in concert for 
their general good and protection, it would be 
found that all of them could not take a share 
in consulting and regulating their operations, 
and that the greater part must submit to the 
direction of certain managers and leaders. 
Among these, again, some one would naturally 
assume a pre-eminence ; and in time of war 
especially, would be allowed to exercise a great 
authority. Struggles would as necessarily en- 
sue for retaining this post of distinction, and 
for supplanting its actual possessor; and 
whether there was a general acquiescence in 
the principle of having one acknowledged 
chief, or a desire to be guided and advised by 
a plurality of those w r ho seemed best qualified 
for the task, there would be equal hazard, or 
rather certainty, of perpetual strife, tumult, 
and dissension, from the attempts of ambitious 
individuals, either to usurp an ascendancy 
over all their competitors, or to dispute with 
him who had already obtained it, his right to 
continue its possession. Every one possessed 
of any considerable means of influence would 
thus be tempted to aspire to a precarious 
Sovereignty ; and while the inferior persons 
of the community would be opposed to each 
other as adherents of the respective pretenders, 
not only would all care of the general good be 
omitted, but the society would become a prey 
to perpetual feuds, cabals, and hostilities, 
subversive of the first principles of its insti- 
tution . 

Among the remedies which would naturally 
present themselves for this great evil, the 
most efficacious, though not perhaps at first 
sight the most obvious, would be to provide 
some regular and authentic form for the elec- 
tion of One acknowledged chief, by a fair but 
pacific competition ; — the term of whose au- 
thority would be gradually prolonged to that 
of his natural life, — and afterwards extended 
to the lives of his remotest descendants. The 
advantages which seem to us to be peculiar 
to this arrangement are, first, to disarm the 
ambition of dangerous and turbulent indi- 
viduals, by removing the great prize of Su- 
preme authority, at all times, and entirely, 
from competition ; and, secondly, to render 
this authority itself more manageable, and 
less hazardous, by delivering it over peace- 
ably, and upon expressed or understood con- 
ditions, to an hereditary prince ; instead of 
. etting it be seized upon by a fortunate con- 
queror, who would think himself entitled to 
use it — as conquerors commonly use their 
booty — for his own exclusive gratification. 

The steps, then, by which we are conducted 
to the justification of Hereditary Monarchy, 
ire shortly as follows. Admitting all men to 
be equal in rights, they can never be equal in 
natural endowments, — nor long equal in wealth 
and other acquisitions: — Absolute liberty, 
therefore, or equal participation of power, is 
Altogether out of the question j and a kind of 
Aristocracy or disorderly and fluctuating su- 



premacy of the richest and most accomplished, 
may be considered as the primeval state of 
society. Now this, even if it could be sup- 
posed to be peaceable and permanent, is by 
no means a desirable state for the persons 
subjected to this multifarious and irregular 
authority. But it is plain that it could not be 
peaceable, — that even among the rich, and 
the accomplished, and the daring, some would 
be more rich, more daring, and more accom- 
plished than the rest ; and that those in the 
foremost Tanks who were most nearly on an 
equality, w^ould be armed against each other 
by mutual jealousy and ambition ; while those 
who were a little lower, would combine, out 
of envy and resentment, to defeat or resist, by 
their junction, the pretensions of the few who 
had thus outstripped their original associates. 
Thus there would not only be no liberty or 
security for the body of the people, but the 
whole would be exposed to the horror and 
distraction of perpetual intestine contentions. 
The creation of one Sovereign, therefore, 
whom the whole society would acknowledge 
as supreme, was a great point gained for tran- 
quillity as well as individual independence; 
and in order to avoid the certain evils of per- 
petual struggles for dominion, and the immi- 
nent hazard of falling at last under the abso- 
lute will of an exasperated conqueror, nothing 
could be so wisely devised as to agree upon 
the nomination of a King : and thus to get rid 
of a multitude of petty tyrants, and the risk 
of military despotism, by the establishment 
of a legitimate monarchy. The first king 
would probably be the most popular and pow- 
erful individual in the community ; and the 
first idea w r ould in all likelihood be to appoint 
his successor on account of the same qualifi- 
cations : But it w-ould speedily be discovered, 
that this would give rise at the death of every 
sovereign — and indeed, prospectively, long be- 
fore it — to the same fatal competitions and 
dissensions, which had formerly been per- 
petual ; and not only hazard a civil war on 
every accession, but bring the successful com- 
petitor, to the throne, w T ith feelings of extreme 
hostility towards one half of his subjects, and 
of extreme partiality to the other. The 
chances of not finding eminent talents for 
command in the person of the sovereign, 
therefore, would soon be seen to be a far less 
evil than the sanguinary competitions that 
would ensue, if merit were made the sole 
ground of preferment ; and a very little reflec- 
tion, or experience, would also serve to show, 
that the sort of merit which w r as most likely 
to succeed in such a competition, did not pro- 
mise a more desirable sovereign, than might 
be probably reckoned on, in the common 
course of hereditary succession. The only 
safe course, therefore, was, to take this Great 
Prize altogether out of the Lottery of human 
life — to make the supreme dignity in the state, 
professedly and altogether independent of 
merit or popularity ; and to fix it immutably 
in a place quite out of the career of ambition. 
This great point then was gained by the 
mere institution of Monarchy, and by render* 
ing it hereditary : The chief cause of internal 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 



567 



discord was removed, and the most dangerous 
incentive to ambition placed in a great mea- 
sure beyond the sphere of its operation ; — and 
this we have always considered to be the pe- 
culiar and characteristic advantage of that 
form of government. A pretty important chap- 
ter, however, remains, as to the extent of the 
Powers that ought to be vested in the Mon- 
arch, and the nature of the Checks by which 
the limitation of those powers should be ren- 
dered effectual. And here it will be readily 
understood, that considering, as we do, the 
chief advantage of monarchy to consist in its 
taking away the occasions of contention for 
the First Place in the state, and in a manner 
neutralizing that place by separating it entirely 
from any notion of merit or popularity in the 
possessor — we cannot consistently be for al- 
lotting a greater measure of actual power to it 
than is absolutely necessary for answering 
this purpose. Our notions of this measure, 
however, are by no means of a jealous or pe- 
nurious description. We must give enough of 
real power, and distinction and prerogative, to 
make it truly and substantially the first place 
in the State, and also to make it impossible 
for the occupiers of inferior places to endan- 
ger the general peace by their contentions; — 
for, otherwise, the whole evils which its in- 
stitution was meant to obviate would recur 
with accumulated force, and the same fatal 
competitions be renewed among persons of 
disorderly ambition, for those other situations, 
by whatever name they might be called, in 
which, though nominally subordinate to the 
throne, the actual powers of sovereignty were 
embodied. But, on the other hand, we would 
give no powers to the Sovereign, or to any 
other officer in the community, beyond what 
were evidently required for the public good; 
— and no powers at all, on the exercise of 
which there was not an efficient control, and 
for the use of which there was not a substan- 
tial responsibility. It is in the reconciling of 
these two conditions that the w T hole difficulty 
of the theory of a perfect monarchy consists. 
If you do not control your sovereign, he will 
be in danger of becoming a despot ; and if 
you do control him, there is danger, unless 
you choose the depository of this control with 
singular caution, that you create anotheivpow- 
er, that is uncontrolled and uncontrollable — 
to be the prey of audacious leaders and out- 
rageous factions, in spite of the hereditary set- 
tlement of the nominal sovereignty. Though 
there is some difficulty, however, in this pro- 
blem, and though we learn from history, that 
various errors have been committed in an at- 
tempt at its practical solution, yet we do not 
conceive it as by any means insoluble ; and 
think indeed that, with the lights which we 
may derive from the experience of our own 
constitution, its demonstration may be effected 
by a very moderate exertion of sagacity. It 
will be best understood, however, by a short 
view of the nature of the powers to be control- 
led, and of the system of checks which have, 
at different times, been actually resorted to. 

In the first place, then, we must beg leave 
?o remind our readers, however superfluous it 



may appear, that as kings are now generally 
allowed to be mere mortals, they cannot of 
themselves have any greater powers, either 
of body or mind, than other individuals, and 
must in fact be inferior in both respects to 
very many of their subjects. Whatever powers 
they have, therefore, must be powers confer- 
red upon them by the consent of the stronger 
part of their subjects, and are in fact really 
and truly the powers of those persons. The 
most absolute despot accordingly, of whom his- 
tory furnishes any record, must have govern- 
ed merely by the free will of those who chose 
to obey him, in compelling the rest of his sub- 
jects to obedience. The Sultan, as Mr. Hume 
remarks, may indeed drive the bulk of his 
unarmed subjects, like brutes, by mere force ; 
but he must lead his armed Janissaries like 
men, by their reason and free will. And so it 
is in all other governments : The power of the 
sovereign is nothing else than the power — the 
actual force of muscle or of mind — which a 
certain part of his subjects choose to lend for 
carrying his orders into effect; and the check 
or limit to this power is, in all cases, ultimately 
and in effect, nothing else than their refusal 
to act any longer as the instruments of his 
pleasure. The check, therefore, is substan- 
tially the same in kind, in all cases whatever ; 
and must necessarily exist in full vigour in 
every country in the world ; though the like- 
lihood of its beneficial application depends 
greatly on the structure of society in each par- 
ticular nation ; and the possibility of applying 
it with ease and safety must result wholly 
from the contrivances that have been adopted 
to make it bear, at once gradually and steadily, 
on the power it is destined to regulate. It is 
here accordingly, and here only, that there is 
any material difference between a good and a 
bad constitution of Monarchical government. 

The ultimate and only real limit to what is 
called the power of the sovereign, is the re- 
fusal or the consent or co-operation of those 
who possess the substantial power of the com- 
munity, and who, during their voluntary con- 
cert with the sovereign, allow this power of 
theirs to pass under his name. In considering 
whether this refusal is likely to be wisely and 
beneficially interposed, it is material therefore 
to inquire in whom, in any particular case, 
the power of interposing it is vested : or, in 
other words, in what individuals the actual 
power of coercing and compelling the submis- 
sion of the bulk of the community is intrinsic- 
ally vested. If every individual were equally 
gifted, and equally situated ; the answer would 
be, In the numerical majority: But as this 
never can be the case, this pow r er will fre- 
quently be found to reside in a very small 
proportion of the whole society. 

In rude times, when there is little intelli- 
gence or means of concert and communication, 
a very moderate number of armed and disci- 
plined forces will be able, so long as they 
keep together, to overawe, and actually over- 
power the whole unarmed inhabitants, even 
of an extensive region ; and accordingly, in 
such times, the necessity of procuring the 
good will and consent of the Soldiery, is the 



568 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



only check upon the power of the Sovereign ; 
or, in other words, the soldiers may do what 
they choose — and their nominal master can 
do nothing which they do not choose. Such 
is the state of the worst despotisms. The 
check upon the royal authority is the same in 
substance as in the best administered mon- 
archies, viz. the refusal of the consent or co- 
operation of those who possess for the time the 
natural power of the community : But, from 
the unfortunate structure of society, which (in 
the case supposed) vests this substantial power 
in a few bands of disciplined ruffians, the 
check will scarcely ever be interposed for the 
benefit of the nation, and will merely operate 
to prevent the king from doing any thing to 
the prejudice or oppression of the soldiery 
themselves. 

When civilisation has made a little further 
progress, a number of the leaders of the army, 
or their descendants, acquire landed property, 
and associate together, not merely in their 
military capacity, but as guardians of their 
new acquisitions and hereditary dignities. — 
Their soldiers become their vassals in time of 
peace: and the real power of the State is 
gradually transferred from the hands of de- 
tached and mercenary battalions, to those of 
a Feudal Nobility. The check on the royal 
authority comes then to lie in the refusal of 
this body to co-operate in such of his measures 
as do not meet with their approbation ; and the 
king can now do nothing to the prejudice of 
the order of Nobility. The body of the peo- 
ple fare a little better under the operation of 
this check; — because their interest is much 
more identified with that of their feudal lords, 
than with that of a standing army of regular 
or disorderly forces. 

As society advances in refinement, and the 
arts of peace are developed, men of the lower 
orders assemble, and fortify themselves in 
Towns and Cities, and thus come to acquire a 
power independent of their patrons. Their 
consent also accordingly becomes necessary 
to the development of the public authority 
within their communities ; and hence another 
check to what is called the power of the sove- 
reign. And, finally, to pass over some inter- 
mediate stages, when society has attained its 
full measure of civility and intelligence, and 
is filled fiom top to bottom with wealth and 
industry, and reflection; when every thing 
that is done or felt by any one class, is com- 
municated on the instant to all the rest, — and 
a vast proportion of the whole population takes 
an interest in the fortunes of the country, and 
possesses a certain intelligence as to the public 
conduct of its rulers, — then the substantial 
power of the nation maybe said to be vested 
in tne Nation at large ; or at least in those 
individuals who can habitually command the 
good- will and support of the greater part of 
them ; — and the ultimate check to the power 
of the sovereign comes to consist in the gen- 
eral unwillingness of The People to comply 
with those orders, which, if at all united in 
their resolution, they may now effectually 
disobey and resist. This check, when ap- 
plied a< all, is likely, of course, to be applied 



for the general good ; and, though the same 
in substance with those which have been 
already considered, namely, the refusal of 
those in whom the real power is vested, to 
lend it to the monarch for purposes which 
they do not approve, is yet infinitely more 
beneficial in its operation, in consequence of 
the more fortunate position of those to whom 
that power now belongs. 

Thus we see that Kings have no power of 
their own; and that, even in the purest des- 
potisms, they are the mere organs or directors 
of that power which they who truly possess 
the physical and intellectual force of the na- 
tion may choose to put at their disposal ; and 
are at all times, and under every form of 
monarchy, entirely under the control of that 
only virtual and effective power. There is at 
bottom, therefore, no such thing, as an un- 
limited monarchy ; or indeed as a monarchy 
that is potentially either more or less limited 
than every other. All kings must act by the 
consent of that order or portion of the nation 
which can really command all the rest, and 
may generally do whatever these substantial 
masters do not disapprove of: But as it is 
their power which is truly exerted in the 
name of the sovereign, so, it is not so much 
a necessary consequence as an identical pro- 
position to say, that where they are clearly 
opposed to the exercise of that power, the 
king has no means whatever of asserting the 
slightest authority. This is the universal law 
indeed of all governments; and though the 
different constitution of society, in the vari- 
ous stages of its progress, may give a differ- 
ent character to the controlling power, the 
principles which regulate its operation are 
substantially the same in all. There is nc 
room, therefore, for the question, whether 
there should be any control on the power of 
a king, or what that control should be ; be- 
cause, as the power really is not the king r s, 
but belongs inalienably to the stronger part 
of the nation itself, whether it derive that 
strength from discipline, talents, numbers, or 
situation, it is impossible that it should be 
exercised at his instigation, without the con- 
currence, or acquiescence at least, of those in 
whom it is substantially vested. 

Such, then, is the abstract and fundamental 
doctrine as to the true nature of Monarchical, 
and indeed of every other species of Political 
power: and, abstract as it is, we cannot help 
thinking that it goes far to settle all contro- 
versies as to the rights of sovereigns, and 
ought to be kept clearly in mind in proceed 
ing to the more practical views of the subject. 
For, though what we have now said as to all 
actual power belonging to the predominant 
mass of physical and intellectual force in every 
community, and the certainty of its ultimately 
impelling the public authority in the direction 
of its interests and inclinations, be unquestion- 
ably true in itself; it is still of infinite impor- 
tance to consider what provisions are made by 
the form of the government, or what is called 
its Constitution, for the ready operation of 
those interests and inclinations upon the im- 
mediate agents of the public authority. That 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 



569 



they will operate with full effect in the long- 
run, whether those provisions be good or bad, 
or whether there be any such provision for- 
mally recognised in the government or not, 
we take to be altogether indisputable : But, in 
the one case, they will operate only after long 
intervals of suffering, — and by means of much 
suffering; while, on the other, they will be 
constantly and almost insensibly in action, 
and will correct the first declination of the 
visible index of public authority, from the 
natural line of action of the radical power of 
which it should be the exponent, er rather 
will prevent any sensible variation or discon- 
formity in their respective movements. The 
whole difference, indeed, between a good and 
a bad government, appears to us to consist in 
this particular, viz. in the greater or the less 
facility which it affords for the early, the gra- 
dual and steady operation of the substantial 
Power of the community upon its constituted 
Authorities; while the freedom, again, and 
ultimate happiness of the nation depend on 
the degree in which this substantial power is 
possessed by a greater or a smaller, and a 
more or less moral and instructed part of the 
whole society — a matter almost independent 
of the form or name of the government, and 
determined in a great degree by the progress 
which the society itself has made in civilisa- 
tion and refinement 
Thus, to take th 
governments — a ferocious despotism, such as 
that of Morocco — where an Emperor, in con- 
cert with a banditti of armed ruffians, butch- 
ers, plunders, and oppresses the whole un- 
armed population, — the check to the monar- 
chical power is complete, even there, in the 
disobedience or dissatisfaction of the banditti ; 
although, from the character of that body, it 
affords but little protection to the community, 
and, from the want of any contrivance for its 
early or systematic operation, can scarcely 
ever be applied, even for its own objects, but 
with irreparable injury to both the parties 
concerned. As there is no arrangement by 
which the general sense of this lawless sol- 
diery can be collected, upon any proposed 
measures of their leader, or the moment ascer- 
tained when the degree of his oppression ex- 
ceeds that of their patience, they never begin 
to act till his outrages have gone far beyond 
what was necessary to decide their resistance ; 
and accordingly, he on the one hand, goes on 
decapitating and torturing, for months after 
all the individuals, by whose consent alone he 
was enabled to take this amusement, were 
truly of opinion that it should have been dis- 
continued ; and, on the other, receives the 
intimation at last, not in the form of a re- 
monstrance, upon which he might amend, 
but in the shape of a bow-string, a dose of 
poison, or a stroke of the dagger. Thus, from 
the mere want of any provision for ascertain- 
ing the sentiments of the individuals possess- 
ing the actual power of the state, or for com- 
municating them to the individual appointed 
to administer it, infinite evils result to both 
parties. The first suffer intolerable oppres- 
sion? oefore they feel such confidence in their 
72 



unanimity as to interfere at all; and then, 
they do it at last, in the form of brutal vio- 
lence and vindictive infliction. Every admo- 
nition, in short, given to their elected leader 
is preceded by their suffering, and followed 
by his death; and every application of the 
check which nature itself has provided for 
the abuse of all delegated power, is accom- 
panied by a total dissolution of the govern- 
ment, and the hazard of a long series of revo- 
lutionary tumults. 

This is the history of all Military despo- 
tisms, in barbarous and uninstructed commu- 
nities. When they get on to Feudal aristoc- 
racies, matters are a little mended ; both by 
the transference of the actual power to a 
larger and worthier body, and by the intro- 
duction of some sort of machinery or contri- 
vance, however rude, to insure or facilitate 
the operation of this power upon the ostensible 
agents of the government. The person of the 
Sovereign is now surrounded by some kind 
of Council or parliament ; and threats and 
remonstrances are addressed to him, with 
considerable energy, by such of its members 
as take offence at the measures he proposes. 
Such, however, is the imperfection of the 
means devised for these communications, and 
such the difficulty of collecting the sentiments 
of those who can make them with effect, that 
this necessary operation is still performed in 
a very clumsy and hazardous manner. These 
are the times, accordingly, when Barons enter 
their protests, by openly waging war on their 
Sovereign, or each other; and, even when 
they are tolerably agreed among themselves, 
can think of no better way of controlling or 
enlightening their monarch, than by marching 
down in arms to Runnymede, and compelling 
him, by main force, and in sight of all his 
people, to sign a charter of their liberties. 
The evils, in short, are the same in substance 
as in the sanguinary revolutions of Morocco. 
The mischief goes to a dangerous length be- 
fore any remedy is applied ; and the remedy 
itself is a great mischief : Although, from the 
improved state of intelligence and civilisation, 
the outrages are not on either side so horrible. 

The next stage brings us to commercial and 
enlightened times, in which the real strength 
and power of the nation is scattered pretty 
widely through the whole of its population, 
and in which, accordingly, the check upon 
the misapplication of that power must arise 
from the dissatisfaction of that great body. 
The check must always exist, — and is sure, 
sooner or later, to operate with sufficient 
efficacy; but the safety and the promptitude 
of its operation depend, in this case as in all 
the others, upon the nature of the contrivances 
which the Constitution has provided, first, for 
collecting and ascertaining the sentiments of 
that great and miscellaneous aggregate in 
whom the actual power is now vested ; and, 
secondly, for communicating this in an au- 
thentic manner to the executive officers of 
the government. The most effectual and 
complete way of effecting this, is undoubtedly 
by a Parliament, so elected as to represent 
pretty fairly the views of all the considerable 
2x2 



570 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



ciasses of the people, and so constituted as 
to have at all times the means, both of sug- 
gesting those views to the executive, and of 
effectually checking or preventing its malver- 
sations. Where no such institution exists, the 
iranquillity of the state will always be ex- 
posed to considerable hazard; and the danger 
of great convulsions will unfortunately become 
greater, exactly in proportion as the body of the 
people become more wealthy and intelligent. 

Under the form of society, however, of 
which we are now speaking, there must 
always be some channels, however narrow 
and circuitous, by w T hich the sense of the peo- 
ple may be let in to act upon the administrators 
of their government. The channel of the press, 
for example, and of general literature — provin- 
cial magistracies and assemblies, such as the 
States and Parliaments of old France — even 
the ordinary courts of law — the stage — the 
pulpit — and all the innumerable occasions of 
considerable assemblages for deliberation on 
local interests, election to local offices, or for 
mere solemnity and usage of festivity — which 
must exist in all large, ancient, and civilised 
communities, may afford indications of that 
general sentiment, which must ultimately gov- 
ern all things ; and may serve to admonish ob- 
servant kings and courtiers how far the true 
possessors of the national power are likely to 
sanction any of its proposed applications. — 
Where those indications, however, are ne- 
glected or misconstrued, or where, from other 
circumstances, institutions that may seem 
better contrived, fail either to represent the 
true sense of the ruling part of the commu- 
nity, or to convince ttie Executive magistrate 
that they do represent it, there, even in the 
most civilised and intelligent countries, the 
most hazardous and tremendous distractions 
may ensue ; — such distractions as broke the 
peace, and endangered the liberties of this 
country in the time of Charles the First — or 
such as have recently torn in pieces the frame 
of society in France ; and in their conse- 
quences still threaten the destiny of the world. 

Both those convu'sions, it appears to us, 
arose from nothing else than the want of some 
proper or adequate contrivance for ascertain- 
ing the sentiments of those holding the actual 
strength of the nation, — and for conveying 
those sentiments, with the full evidence of 
their authenticity, to the actual administrators 
of their affairs. And the two cases, we take 
't, were more nearly alike than has generally 
!>een imagined ; for though the House of Com- 
mons had an existence long before the time 
of King Charles, it had not previously been 
recognised as the vehicle of commanding 
opinions, nor the proper organ of that great 
body to whom the actual power of the State 
had been recently and insensibly transferred. 
The Court still considered the effectual power 
to reside in the feudal aristocracy, by the 
greater part of which it was supported ; and, 
when the Parliament, or rather the House of 
Commons, spoke in name of the People of 
England, thought it might safely disregard the 
admonitions of a body which had not hitherto 
advanced any such authoritative claims to at- 



tention. It refused, therefore, to acknowledge 
this body as the organ of the supreme power 
of the State; and was only undeceived when 
it fell before its actual exertion. In Franco 
again, the error, though more radical, was of 
the very same nature. The administration 
of the government was conducted, up to the 
very eve of the Revolution, upon the same 
principles as when the Nobles were every 
thing, and the People nothing ; — though the 
people, in the mean time, had actually become 
far more than a match for the nobility, in 
wealth, in intelligence, and in the knowledge 
of their own importance. The Constitution, 
however, provided no means for the peaceable 
but authoritative intimation of this change to 
the official rulers ; or for the gradual develop- 
ment of the new power which had thus been 
generated in the community; and the conse- 
quence was, that its more indirect indications 
were overlooked, and nothing yielded to its 
accumulating pressure, till it overturned the 
throne, — and overwhelmed with its wasteful 
flood the whole ancient institutions of the 
country. If there had been any provision in 
the structure of the government, by which the 
increasing power of the lower orders had been 
enabled to make itself distinctly felt, and to 
bear upon the constituted authorities, as gradu- 
ally as it was generated, the great calamities 
which have befallen that nation might have 
been entirely avoided, — the condition of the 
monarchy might have insensibly accommo 
dated itself to the change in the condition of 
the people, — and a most beneficial alteration 
might have taken place in its administration, 
without any shock or convulsion in any part 
of the community. For want of some such 
provision, however, the Court was held in ig- 
norance of the actual power of the people, till 
it burst in thunder on their heads. The pent- 
up vapours disploded with the force of an 
earthquake; and those very elements that 
would have increased the beauty and strength 
of the constitution by their harmonious com- 
bination, crumbled its whole fabric into ruin 
by their sudden and untempered collision. 
The bloody revolutions of the Seraglio were 
acted over again in the heart of the most 
polished and enlightened nation of Europe : — 
and from the very same cause — the want of a 
channel for conveying, constantly and temper- 
ately and effectually, the sense of those who 
possess power, to those whose office it was to 
direct its application ; — and the outrage was 
only the greater and more extensive, that the 
body among whom this power was diffused 
was larger, and the period of its unsuspected 
accumulation of longer duration. 

The great point, then, is to insure a free, 
an authoritative, and an uninterrupted com- 
munication between the ostensible adminis- 
trators of the national power and its actual 
constituents and depositories ; and the chief 
distinction between a good and a bad govern- 
ment consists in the degree in which it affords 
the means cf such a communication. The 
main end of government, to be sure is, that 
wise laws should be enacted and enforced 
but such is the condition of human infirmity 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 



57J 



that the hazards of sanguinary contentions 
about the exercise of power, is a much greater 
and more imminent evil than a considerable 
obstruction in the making or execution of the 
laws ; and the best government therefore is, 
not that which promises to make the best 
laws, and to enforce them most vigorously, 
but that which guards best against the tre- 
mendous conflicts to which all administrations 
of government, and all exercise of political 
power is so apt to give rise. It happens, for- 
tunately indeed, that the same arrangements 
which most effectually insure the peace of 
society against those disorders, are also, on 
the w T hole, the best calculated for the pur- 
poses of wise and efficient legislation. But 
we do not hesitate to look upon their negative 
or preventive virtues as of a far higher cast 
than their positive and active ones; and to 
consider a representative legislature as incom- 
parably of more value, when it truly enables 
the efficient force of the nation to control and di- 
rect the executive, than when it merely enacts 
wholesome statutes in its legislative capacity. 

The result of the whole then is, that in a 
civilised and enlightened country, the actual 
power of the State resides in the great body 
of the people, and especially among the more 
wealthy and intelligent in all the different 
ranks of which it consists; and consequently, 
that the administration of a government can 
never be either safe or happy, unless it be 
conformable to the wishes and sentiments of 
that great body; while there is little chance 
of its answering either of these conditions, 
unless the forms of the Constitution provide 
some means for the regular, constant, and au- 
thentic expression of their sentiments, — to 
which, when so expressed, it is the undoubted 
duty, as well as the obvious interest of the 
executive to conform. A Parliament, there- 
fore, which really and truly represents the 
sense and opinions — we mean the general and 
mature sense, not the occasional prejudices 
and fleeting passions — of the efficient body 
of the people, and which watches over and 
effectually controls every important act of the 
executive magistrate, is necessary, in a coun- 
try like this, for the tranquillity of the govern- 
ment, and the ultimate safety of the Monarchy 
itself, — much more even than for the enact- 
ment of laws ; and, in proportion as it varies 
from this description, or relaxes in this con- 
trol, will the peace of the country and the 
security of the government be endangered. 

But then comes Mr. Leckie, and a number 
of loyal gentlemen, from Sicily, or other places, 
exclaiming that this is mere treason and re- 
publicanism, — and asking whether the king is 
to have no will or voice of his own 1 — what is 
to become of the balance of the Constitution 
if he is to be reduced to a mere cypher added 
to the end of every ministerial majority? — 
and how, if the office is thus divested of all 
real power, it can ever fulfil the purposes for 
which we ourselves have preferred Monarchy 
to all other constitutions 1 We shall endeavour 
to answer these questions ; — and after the pre- 
ceding full exposition of our premises, we 
think they may be answered very briefly. 



In the first place, then, it does not appear 
to us that it can be seriously maintained that 
any national or salutary purpose can ever be 
served by recognising the private will or voice 
of the King as an individual, as an element in 
the political government, especially in an He- 
reditary monarchy. The person upon whom 
that splendid lot may fall, not having been 
selected for the office on account of any proof 
or presumption of his fitness for it, but being 
called to it as it were by mere accident, may 
be fairly presumed to have less talent or ca- 
pacity than any one of the individuals who 
have made their own way to a place of in- 
fluence or authority in his councils ; and his 
voice or opinion therefore, considered naturally 
and in itself, must be of less value or intrinsic 
authority than that of any other person in high 
office under him : And when it is farther 
considered that this Sovereign may be very 
young or very old — almost an idiot — almost a 
madman — and altogether a dotard, w-hile he 
is still in the full possession and the lawful 
exercise of the whole authority of his station, 
it must seem perfectly extravagant to main- 
tain that it can be of advantage to the nation, 
that his individual wishes or opinions should 
be the measure or the condition of any one 
act of legislation or national policy. — Assured- 
ly it is not for his wisdom or his patriotism, 
and much less for his own delight and gratifi- 
cation, that an hereditary monarch is placed 
upon the throne of a free people; and this 
obvious consideration alone might lead us at 
once to the true end and purpose of royalty. 

But the letter and theory of the English 
Constitution recognise the individual will of 
the Sovereign, just as little as reason and 
common sense can require it, as an integral 
element in that constitution. It declares that 
the King as an individual can do no wrong, 
and can be made accountable for nothing — 
but that his ministers and advisers shall be 
responsible for all his acts without any excep- 
tion — or at least with the single exception of 
the act of naming those advisers. In every 
one act of his peculiar and official Prerogative, 
in which, if in any thing, his individual and 
private will must be understood to have been 
exerted, the Constitution sees only the will 
and the act of his ministers. The King's speech 
— the speech pronounced by his own lips, and 
as his voluntary act in the face of the whole 
nation — is the speech of the minister ; and as 
such, is openly canvassed, and condemned if 
need be, by the houses of Parliament, in the 
ordinary course of their duty. The King's 
personal answers to addresses — his declara- 
tions of peace or war — the honours he person- 
ally confers — the bills he personally passes or 
rejects — are all considered by the Constitution 
as the acts only of his counsellors. It is not 
only the undoubted right, but the unquestion- 
able duty of the Houses of Parliament, to con- 
sider of their propriety — to complain of them 
if they think them inexpedient — to get them 
rescinded if they admit of such a correction ; 
and at all events to prosecute, impeach, and 
punish those advisers — to whom, and not to 
the Sovereign in whose name they run, they 



572 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



are exclusively attributed.. This great doc- 
trine, then, of ministerial responsibility, an- 
swer's the first question of Mr. Leckie and his 
adherents, as fo the enormity of subjecting the 
personal will and opinion of the Sovereign at 
all times to the control of those who represent 
the efficient power of the community. Mr. 
.Leckie himself, it is to be observed, is for leav- 
ing this grand feature of ministerial responsi- 
bility, even when he is for dispensing with 
the attendance of Parliaments; — though, to be 
sure, among his other omissions, he has for- 
gotten to tell us by whom, and in what man- 
ner, it could be enforced, after the abolition 
of those troublesome assemblies. 

The next question relates to the theoretical 
balance of the Constitution, which they say 
implies that the will and the power of the 
Monarch is to be a. separate and independent 
element in the government. We have not left 
ourselves room now to answer this at large; 
nor indeed do we think it necessary ; and ac- 
cordingly we shall make but two remarks in 
regard to it, and that in the most summary 
manner. The first is, that the powers ascribed 
to the Sovereign, in the theory of the Consti- 
tution, are not supposed to be vested in him 
as an insulated and independent individual — 
but in him as guided and consubstantiated 
with his responsible counsellors — that the King, 
in that balance, means not the person of the 
reigning prince, but the department of the 
Executive government — the whole body of 
ministers and their dependants — to whom, for 
the sake of convenience and dispatch, the ini- 
tiative of many important measures is entrust- 
ed ; and who are only entitled or enabled to 
carry on business, under burden of their re- 
sponsibility to Parliament, and in reliance on 
its ultimate support. The second remark is, 
that the balance of the Constitution, in so far 
as it has any real existence, will be found to 
subsist almost entirely in the House of Com- 
mons, which possesses exclusively both the 
power of impeachment, and the power of 
granting supplies; and has besides, the most 
natural and immediate communication with 
that great body of the Nation, in whom the 
power of control over all the branches of the 
Legislature is ultimately vested. The Execu- 
tive, therefore, has its chief Ministers in that 
House, and exerts in that place all the influ- 
ence which is attached to its situation. If it 
is successfully opposed there, it would for the 
most part be infinitely dangerous for it to think 
of resisting in any other quarter. But if it 
were to exercise its legal prerogative, by re- 
fusing a series of favourite bills, or disregard- 
ing an unanimous address of the Commons, 
the natural consequence would be, that the 
Commons would retort, by exercising their 
legal privilege of withholding the supplies ; 
and as things could not go on for a moment on 
such a footing, the King must either submit 
at discretion, or again bethink himself of rais- 
ing his royal standard against that of a Parlia- 
mentary army. The general view, indeed, 
which we have taken above of the true nature 
of that which is called the power of the Mon- 
arch, is enough to snow, that it can only be 



upon the very unlikely, but not \mpossibU 

supposition, that the nominal representatives 
of the people are really more estranged from 
their true sentiments than the ministers of the 
Crown, that it can ever be safe or allowable 
for the latter to refuse immediate compliance 
with the will of those representatives. 

There remains then but one other question, 
viz. Whether we are really for reducing the 
King to the condition of a mere tool in the 
hands of a ministerial majority, without any 
real power or influence whatsoever; and whe- 
ther, upon this supposition, there can be any 
use in the institution of monarchy — as the 
minister, on this view of things, must be re- 
garded as the real sovereign, and his office is 
still open to competition, as the reward of dan- 
gerous and disorderly ambition? Now, the an- 
swer to this is a denial of the assumption upon 
which the question is raised. The King, upon 
our view of his office — which it has been seen 
is exactly that taken by the Constitution — 
would still hold, indisputably, the first place 
in the State, and possess a substantial power, 
not only superior to that which any minister 
could ever obtain under him, but sufficient to 
repress the pretensions of any one who, under 
any other form of government, might be 
tempted to aspire to the sovereignty. The 
King of England, it will be remembered, is a 
perpetual member of the cabinet — and per- 
petually the First Member of it. No disap- 
probation of its measures, whether expressed 
by votes of the Houses, or addresses from the 
people, can turn. Aim. out of his situation; and 
he has also the power of nominating its other 
members; not indeed the power of maintain- 
ing them in their offices against the sense of 
the nation — but the power of trying the ex- 
periment, and putting it on the country to take 
the painful and difficult step of insisting on 
their removal. If he have any portion of 
ministerial talents, therefore, he must have, 
in the first place, all the power that could at- 
tach to a Perpetual Minister — with all the pe- 
culiar influence that is inseparable from the 
splendour of his official station : and, in the 
second place, he has the actual power, if not 
absolutely to make or unmake all the other 
members of his cabinet at his pleasure, at least 
to choose, at his own ^discretion, among all 
who are not upon very strong grounds excep- 
tionable to the country at large. 

Holding it to be quite clear, then, that the 
private and individual will of the sovereign is 
not to be recognised as a separate element in 
the actual legislation, or administrative gov- 
ernment of the country, and that it must in 
all cases give way to the mature sense of the 
nation, we shall still find, that his place is 
conspicuously and beyond all question the 
First in the State, and that it is invested with 
quite as much substantial power as is necessa- 
ry to maintain all other offices in a condition of 
subordination. To see this clearly, indeed, it 
is only necessary to consider, a little in detail, 
what is the ordinary operation of the regal 
power, and on what occasions the necessary 
checks to which we have alluded come in to 
control it. The King, then, as the presiding 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT 



673 



member of the cabinet, can not only resist, 
Dut suggest, or propose, or recommend any 
tiling which he pleases for the adoption of 
that executive council ; — and his suggestions 
must at all times be more attended to than 
tnose of any other person of the same know- 
ledge or capacity. Such, indeed, are the in- 
destructible sources of influence belonging to 
his situation, that, if he be only compos mentis, 
he may rely upon having mere authority than 
any two of the gravest and most experienced 
individuals with whom he can communicate ; 
and that there will be a far greater disposition 
to adopt his recommendations, than those of 
the wisest and most popular minister that the 
country has ever seen. He may, indeed, be 
outvoted even in the cabinet ; — the absurdity 
of his suggestions may be so palpable, or their 
danger so great, that no habitual deference, 
or feeling of personal dependence, may be 
sufficient to induce his advisers to venture on 
their adoption. This, however, we imagine, 
will scarcely be looked upon as a source of 
national weakness or hazard ; and is, indeed, 
an accident that may befal any sovereign, 
however absolute — since the veriest despot 
cannot work without tools — and even a mili- 
tary sovereign at the head of his army, must 
submit to abandon any scheme which that 
army positively refuses to execute. If he is 
baffled in one cabinet, however, the King of 
England may in general repeat the experi- 
ment in another; and change his counsellors 
over and over, till he find some who are more 
courageous or more complying. 

But, suppose that the Cabinet acquiesces: — 
the Parliament also may no doubt appose, and 
defeat the execution of the project. The 
Cabinet may be outvoted in the House of 
Commons, as the Sovereign may be outvoted 
in the Cabinet; and all its other members 
may be displaced by votes of that House. 
The minister who had escaped being dis- 
missed by the King through his compliance 
with the Royal pleasure, may be dismissed 
for that compliance, by the voice of the 
Legislature. But the Sovereign, with whom, 
upon this supposition, the objectionable mea- 
sure originated, is not dismissed; and may 
not only call another minister to his councils 
to try this same measure a second time, but 
may himself dismiss the Parliament by which 
it had been censured; and submit its pro- 
ceedings to the consideration of another as- 
sembly ! We really cannot see any want of 
effective power in such an order of things; 
nor comprehend how the royal authority is 
rendered altogether nugatory and subordinate, 
merely by requiring it to have ultimately the 
concurrence of the Cabinet and of the Legis- 
lature. The last stage of this hypothesis, 
however, will clear all the rest. 

The King's measure may triumph in par- 
liament as well as in the council — and yet it 
may be resisted by the Nation. The parlia- 
ment may be outvoted in the country, as well 
as the cabinet in the parliament ; and if the 
measure, even in this last stage, and after all 
these tests of its safety, be not abandoned, 
the most dreadful consequences may ensue. 



If addresses and .clamours are disregarded, 
recourse may be had to arms ; and an open 
civil war be left again to determine, whether 
the sense of the people at large be, or be not, 
resolutely against its adoption. This last 
species of check on the power of the Sove- 
reign, no political arrangement, and no change 
in the Constitution, can obviate or prevent, 
and as all the other checks of which we have 
spoken refer ultimately to this, so, the defence 
of their necessity and justice is complete, 
when we merely say, that their use is to pre- 
vent a recurrence to this last extremity — and, 
by enabling the sense of the nation to repress 
pernicious counsels in the outset, through the 
safe and pacific channels of the cabinet and 
the parliament, to remove the necessity of re- 
sisting them at last, by the dreadful expedient 
of actual force and compulsion. 

If a king, under any form of monarchy, 
attempt to act against the sense of the com- 
manding part of the population, he will inev- 
itably be resisted and overthrown. This is 
not a matter of institution or policy; but a 
necessary result from the nature of his office, 
and of the power of which he is the adminis- 
trator — or rather from the principles of human 
nature. But that form of monarchy is the 
worst — both for the monarch and for the peo- 
ple — which exposes him the most to the shock 
of such, ultimate resistance ) and that is the 
best, which interposes the greatest number 
of intermediate bodies between the oppressive 
purpose of the king and his actual attempt to 
carry it into execution, — which tries the pro- 
jected measure upon the greatest number of 
selected samples of the public sense, before 
it comes into collision with its general mass, — 
and affords the most opportunities for retreat, 
and the best cautions for advance, before the 
battle is actually joined. The cabinet is pre- 
sumed to know more of the sentiments of the 
nation than the king ; — and the parliament to 
know more than the cabinet. Both these 
bodies, too, are presumed to be rather more 
under the personal influence of the king than 
the great body of the nation ; and therefore, 
whatever suggestions of his are ultimately 
rejected in those deliberative assemblies, 
must be held to be such as would have been 
still less acceptable to the bulk of the com- 
munity. By rejecting them there, however, 
by silent votes or clamorous harangues, the 
nation is saved from the necessity of rejecting 
them, by actual resistance and insurrection in 
the field. The person and the office of the 
monarch remain untouched, and untainted for 
all purposes of good ; and the peace of the 
country is maintained, and its rights asserted, 
without any turbulent exertion of its power. 
The whole frame and machinery of the con- 
stitution, in short, is contrived for the express 
purpose of preventing the kingly power from 
dashing itself to pieces against the more rad- 
ical power of the people : and those institu- 
tions that are absurdly supposed to restrain 
the authority of the sovereign within too nar- 
row limits, are in fact its great safeguards 
and protectors, by providing for the timely 
and peaceful operation of that great control- 



574 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



ling power, which it could only elude for a 
season, at the expense of much certain mis- 
ery to the people, and the hazard of final 
destruction to itself. 

Mr. Leckie, however, and his adherents, 
can see nothing of all this. The facility of 
casting down a single tyrant, we have already 
seen, is one of the prime advantages which 
he ascribes to the institution of Simple mon- 
archy ; — and so much is this advocate of 
kingly power enamoured of the uncourtly 
doctrine of resistance, that he not only recog- 
nises it as a familiar element in the constitu- 
tion, but lays it down in express terms, that 
it affords the only remedy for all political cor- 
ruption. " History," he observes, "has fur- 
nished us with no example of the reform of a 
corrupt and tyrannical government, but either 
from intestine war, or conquest from without. 
Thus, the objection against a simple mon- 
archy, because there is no remedy for its 
abuse, holds the same, but in a greater de- 
gree, against any other form. Each is borne 
with as long as possible ; and when the evil is 
at its greatest height, the nation either rises 
agalast it, or, not having the means of so doing, 
sinks into abject degradation and misery." 

Such, however, are not our principles of 
policy ; on the contrary, we hold, that the 
cmef use of a free constitution is to prevent 
the recurrence of these dreadful extremities : 
and that the excellence of a limited monarchy 
consists less in the good laws, and the good 
administration of law, to which it naturally 
gives birth, than in the security it affords 
against such a melancholy alternative. To 
some, we know, who have been accustomed 
to the spectacle of long-established despo- 
tisms, the hazards of such a terrific regenera- 
tion appear distant and inconsiderable ; and, 
if they could only prolong the intervals of 
patient submission, and polish away some 
of the harsher features of oppression, they 
imagine a state of things would result more 
tranquil and desirable than can ever be pre- 
sented by the eager and salutary contentions 
of a free government. To such persons we 
shall address but two observations. The first, 
that though the body of the people may in- 
deed be kept in brutish subjection for ages, 
where the state of society, as to intelligence 
and property, is such that the actual power 
and command of the nation is vested in a few 
bands of disciplined troops, this could never 
be done in a nation abounding in independent 
wealth, very generally given to reading and 
reflection, and knit together in all its parts 
by a thousand means of communication and 
ties of mutual interest and sympathy; and 
least of all could it be done in a nation already 
accustomed to the duties and enjoyments of 
freedom, and regarding the safe and honour- 
able struggles it is constantly obliged to main- 
tain in its defence, as the most ennobling and 
delightful of its exercises. The other remark 
is, that even if it were possible, as it is not. 
to rivet and shackle down an enlightened na- 
tion in such a way as to make it submit for 
some time, in apparent quietness, to the abuses 
of arbitrary power, it is never to be forgotten 



that this submission is itself an evil — and an 
evil only inferior to those through which it 
must ultimately seek its relief. If any form 
of tyranny, therefore, were as secure from 
terrible convulsions as a regulated freedom, 
it would not cease for that to be a far less de- 
sirable condition of existence ; and as the 
mature sense of a whole nation may be fairly 
presumed to point more certainly to the true 
means of their happiness than the single 
opinion even of a patriotic king, so it must be 
right and reasonable, in all cases, that his 
opinion should give way to theirs; and that a 
power should be generated, if it did not natu- 
rally and necessarily exist, to insure its pre- 
dominance. 

We have still a word, or two to say on the 
alleged inconsistency and fluctuation of all 
public councils that are subjected to the con- 
trol of popular assemblies, and on the unprin- 
cipled violence of the factions to which they 
are said to give rise. The first of these topics, 
however, need not detain us long. If it be 
meant, that errors in public measures are 
more speedily detected, and more certainly 
repaired, when they are maturely and freely 
discussed by all the wisdom and all the talent 
of a nation, than when they are left to the 
blind guidance of the passions or conceit of 
an individual; — if it be meant, that, under a 
Simple monarchy, we should have persevered 
longer and more steadily in the principles of 
the Slave Trade, of Catholic Proscription, and 
of the Orders in Council : — then we cheerfully 
admit the justice of the charge — we readily 
yield to those governments the praise of such 
consistency and such perseverance — and offer 
no apology for that change from folly to wis- 
dom, and from cruelty to mercy, which is pro- 
duced by the variableness of a free consti- 
tution. But if it be meant that an absolute 
monarch keeps the faith which he pledges 
more religiously than a free people, or that he 
is less liable to sudden and capricious varia- 
tions in his policy, we positively deny the 
truth of the imputation, and boldly appeal to 
the whole .course of history for its confutation. 
What nation, we should like to know, ever stood 
half so high as our own, for the reputation of 
good faith and inviolable fidelity to its allies 1 
Or in what instance has the national honour 
been impeached, by the refusal of one set of 
ministers to abide by the engagements enter- 
ed into by their predecessors 1 — With regard 
to mere caprice and inconsistency again, will 
it be seriously maintained, that councils, de- 
pending upon the individual will of an abso- 
lute sovereign — who may be a boy, or a girl, 
or a dotard, or a driveller — are more likely 
to be steadily and wisely pursued, than those 
that are taken up by a set of experienced 
statesmen, under the control of a vigilant and 
intelligent public ? It is not by mere popular 
clamour — by the shouts or hisses of an igno- 
rant and disorderly mob — but by the deep, the 
slow, and the collected voice of the intelligent 
and enlightened part of the community, that 
the councils of a free nation are ultimately 
guided. But if they were at the disposal of a 
rabble— what rabble, we would ask, is so ig- 



LECKIE ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT. 



57* 



norant, so contemptible, so fickle, false, and 
empty of all energy of purpose or principle, 
as the rabble that invests the palaces of arbi- 
trary kings — the favourites, the mistresses, 
the panders, the flatterers and intriguers, who 
succeed or supplant each other in the crum- 
bling soil of his favour, and so frequently dis- 
pose of all that ought to be at the command 
of wisdom and honour ? 

Looking only to the eventful history of our 
own day, will any one presume to say, that 
the conduct of the simple monarchies of Eu- 
rope has afforded us, for the last twenty years, 
any such lessons of steady and unwavering- 
policy as to make us blush for our own demo- 
cratical inconstancy 1 What, during that pe- 
riod, has been the conduct of Prussia — of 
Russia — of Austria herself — of every state, in 
short, that has not been terrified into constan- 
cy by the constant dread of French violence'? 
And where, during all that time, are we to look 
for any traces of manly firmness, but in the 
conduct and councils of the only nation whose 
measures were at all controlled by the influ- 
ence of popular sentiments ? If that nation 
too was not exempt from the common charge 
of va3illation — if she did fluctuate between 
designs to restore the Bourbons, and to enrich 
herself by a share of their spoils — if she did 
contract one deep stain on her faith and her 
humanity, by encouraging and deserting the 
party of the Royalists -in La Vendee — if she 
did waver and wander from expeditions* into 
Flanders to the seizure of West Indian islands, 
and from menaces to extirpate Jacobinism to 
missions courting its alliance — will any man 
pretend to say, that these signs of infirmity 
of purpose were produced by yielding to the 
varying impulses of popular opinions, or the 
alternate preponderance of hostile factions in 
the state ? Is it not notorious, on the contra- 
ry, that they all occurred during that lament- 
able but memorable period, when the alarm 
excited by the aspect of new dangers had in 
a manner extinguished the constitutional spirit 
of party, and composed the salutary conflicts 
of the nation — that they occurred in the first 
ten years of Mr. Pitt's war administration, 
when opposition was almost extinct, and when 
the government was not only more entirely in 
the hands of one man than it had been at any 
time since the days of Cardinal Wolsey, but 
when the temper and tone of its administra- 
tion approached very nearly to that of an ar- 
bitrary monarchy'? 

On the doctrine of parties and party dissen- 
sions, it is now too late for us to enter at 
large ; — and indeed when we recollect what 
Mr. Burke has written upon that subject,* we 
do not know why we should wish for an op- 
portunity of expressing our feeble sentiments. 
Parties are necessary in all free governments 
—and are indeed the characteristics by which 
such governments may be known. One party, 
that of the Rulers or the Court, is necessarily 
formed and disciplined from the permanence 
of its chief, and the uniformity of the interests 



* See his " Thoughts on the Cause of the present 
Discontents." Sub initio — el passim. 



it has to maintain ; — the party in Opposition, 
therefore, must be marshalled in the same 
way. When bad men combine, good men 
must unite : — and it wuuld not be less hope- 
less for a crowd of worthy citizens to take the 
field without leaders or discipline, against a 
regular army, than for individual patriots to 
think of opposing the influence of the Sove- 
reign by their separate and uncombined ex- 
ertions. As to the length which they should 
be permitted to go in support of the common 
cause, or the extent to which each ought to 
submit his private opinion to the general sense 
of his associates, it does not appear to us — 
though casuists may varnish over dishonour, 
and purists startle at shadows — either that 
any man of upright feelings can be often at a 
loss for a rule of conduct, or that, in point of 
fact, there has ever been any blameable ex 
cess in the maxims upon which the great par 
ties of this country have been generally con 
ducted. The leading principle is. that a man 
should satisfy himself that the party to which 
he attaches himself means well to the coun- 
try, and that more substantial good will ac- 
crue to the nation from its coming into power, 
than from the success of any other body of 
men whose success is at all within the limits 
of probability. Upon this principle, therefore, 
he will support that party in all things which 
he approves — in all things that are indifferent 
— and even in some things which he partly 
disapproves, provided they neither touch the 
honour and vital interests of the country, nor 
imply any breach of the ordinary rules of 
morality. — Upon the same principle he will 
attack not only all that he individually disap- 
proves in the conduct of the adversary, but all 
that might appear indifferent and tolerable 
enough to a neutral spectator, if it afford an 
opportunity to weaken this adversary in the 
public opinion, and to increase the chance of 
bringing that party into powder from which 
alone he sincerely believes that any sure or 
systematic good is to be expected. Farther 
than this we do not believe that the leaders 
or respectable followers of any considerable 
party, intentionally allow themselves to go. 
Their zeal, indeed, and the heats and passions 
engendered in the course of the conflict, may 
sometimes hurry them into measures for 
which an impartial spectator cannot find this 
apology : — but to their own consciences and 
honour we are persuaded that they generally 
stand acquitted ; — and, on the score of duty or 
morality, that is all that can be required of 
human beings. For the baser retainers of the 
party indeed — those marauders who follow in 
the rear of every army, not for battle but for 
booty — who concern themselves in no way 
about the justness of the quarrel, or the fair- 
ness of the field — who plunder the dead, 
and butcher the wounded, and desert the un- 
prosperous, and betray the daring ; — for those 
wretches who truly belong to no party, and aie 
a disgrace and a drawback upon all, we shall 
assuredly make no apology, nor propose any 
measures of toleration. The spirit by which 
they are actuated is the very opposite of that 
spirit which is generated by the parties of a 



57< 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



free people ; ami accordingly it is among the 
advocates of arbitrary power that such per- 
sons, after they have served their purpose by 
a pretence of patriotic zeal, are ultimately 
found to range themselves. 

We positively deny, then, that the interests 
<jf the country have ever been sacrificed to a 
vindictive desire to mortify or humble a rival 
party; — though we freely admit that a great 
deal of the time and the talent that might be 
devoted more directly to her service, is wasted 
in such an endeavour. This, however, is un- 
avoidable — nor is it possible to separate those 
discussions, which are really necessary to ex- 
pose the dangers or absurdity of the practical 
measures proposed by a party, from those 
which have really no other end but to expose 
it to general ridicule or odium. This too, 
however, it should be remembered, is a point 
in which the country has a still deeper, though 
a more indirect interest than in the former ; 
since it is only by such means that a system 
that is radically vicious can be exploded, or a 
set of men fundamentally corrupt and incapa- 
pable removed. If the time be well spent, 
therefore, which is occupied in preventing or* 
palliating some particular act of impolicy or 
oppression, it is impossible to grudge that by 
which the spring and the fountain of all such 
acts may be cut off. 

With regard to the tumult — the disorder — 
the danger to public peace — the vexation and 
discomfort which certain sensitive persons 
and great lovers of tranquillity represent as 
the fruits of our political dissensions, we can- 
not help saying that we have no sympathy 
with their delicacy or their timidity. What 
they look upon as a frightful commotion of the 
elements, we consider as no more than a whole- 
some agitation; and cannot help regarding 
the contentions in which freemen are engaged 
by a conscientious zeal for their opinions, as 
an invigorating and not ungenerous exercise. 
What serious breach of the public peace has 
it occasioned 1 — to w-hat insurrections, or con- 
spiracies, or proscriptions has it ever given 
rise 1 — what mob even, or tumult, has been 
excited by the contention of the two great 
parties of the state, since their contention has 
been open, and their weapons appointed, and 
their career marked out in the free lists of the 
constitution? — Suppress these contentions, in- 
deed — forbid these weapons, and shut up 
these lists, and you will have conspiracies 
and insurrections enough. — These are the 
short-sighted fears of tyrants. — The dissen- 
sions of a free people are the preventives 
and not the indications of radical disorder — 
and the noises which make the weak-hearted 
tremble, are but the natural murmurs of those 
mighty and mingling currents of public opin- 
ion, which are destined to fertilize and unite 
the country, and can never become danger- 
ous till an attempt is made to obstruct their 
course, or to disturb their level. 

Mr. Leckie has favoured his readers with 



an enumeration of the advantages of absolute 
monarchy; — and we are tempted to follow his 
example, by concluding with a dry catalogue 
of the advantages of free government — each 
of which would require a chapter at least as 
long as that which we have now bestowed 
upon one of them. Next, then, to that of its 
superior security from great reverses and atro- 
cities, of which we have already spoken at 
sufficient length, we should be disposed to 
rank that pretty decisive feature, of the su- 
perior Happiness which it confers upon all 
the individuals who live under it. The con- 
sciousness of liberty is a great blessing and en- 
joyment in itself. — The occupation it affords 
— the importance it confers — the excitement 
of intellect, and the elevation of spirit which 
it implies, are all elements of happiness pe- 
culiar to this condition of society, and quite 
separate and independent of the external ad- 
vantages with which it may be attended. 
In. the second place, however, liberty makes 
men more Industrious, and consequently more 
generally prosperous and Wealthy ; the result 
of which is, both that they have among them 
more of the good things that wealth can pro- 
cure, and that the resources of the State are 
greater for all public purposes. In the third 
place, it renders men more Valiant and High- 
minded, and also promotes the development 
of Genius and Talents, both by the unbounded 
career it opens up to the emulation of every 
individual in the land, and by the natural ef- 
fect of all sorts of intellectual or moral ex- 
citement to awaken all sorts of intellectual 
and moral capabilities. In the fourth place, 
it renders men more Patient, and Docile, and 
Resolute in the pursuit of any public object , 
and consequently both makes their chance of 
success greater, and enables them to make 
much greater efforts in every way, in propor- 
tion to the extent of their population. No 
slaves could ever have undergone the toils to 
which the Spartans or the Romans tasked 
themselves for the good or the glory of their 
country ; — and no tyrant could ever have ex- 
torted the sums in which the Commons of 
England have voluntarily assessed themselves 
for the exigencies of the state. These are 
among the positive advantages of freedom : 
and, in our opinion, are its chief advantages. 
—But we must not forget, in the fifth and last 
place, that there is nothing else but a free 
government by which men can be secured 
from those arbitrary invasions of their Persons 
and Properties — those cruel persecutions, op- 
pressive imprisonments, and lawless execu- 
tions, which no formal code can prevent an 
absolute monarch from regarding as a part of 
his prerogative; and, above all, from those 
provi cial exactions and oppressions, and 
those universal Insults, and Contumelies, and 
Indignities, by which the inferior minions of 
power spread misery and degradation among 
the whole mass of every people which has no 
political independence. 



RESTORATION OF THE BOITRBOISS. 



971 



(aprtl f 1814.) 

A Song of Triumph. By W. Sothebv, Esq. 8vo. London: 1814. 
VActe Constitution/id, en la Seance clu 9 Avril, 1814. 8vo. Londres : 1814. 
Of Bonaparte, the Bourbons, and the Necessity of rallying round our legitimate Princes, for the 
Happiness of France and of Europe. By F. A. Chateaubriand. 8vo. London: 1814.* 



It would be strange indeed, we think, if 
pages dedicated Lke ours to topics of present 
interest, and the discussions of the passing 
hour, should be ushered into the world at such 
a moment as this, without some stamp of that 
common joy and anxious emotion with which 
the wsnderful events of the last three months 
are still filling all the regions of the earth. In 
such a situation, it must be difficult for any 
one who has the means of being heard, to re- 
frain from giving utterance to his sentiments: 
But to us, whom- it has assured, for the first 
time, of the entire sympathy of all our coun- 
trymen, the temptation, we own, is irresisti- 
ble ; and the good-natured part of our readers, 
we are persuaded, will rather smile at our 
simplicity, than fret at our presumption, when 
we add, that we have sometimes permitted 
ourselves to fancy that, if any copy of these 
our lucubrations should go down to another 
generation, it may be thought curious to trace 
in them the first effects of events that are pro- 
bably destined to fix the fortune of succeed- 
ing: centuries, and to observe the impressions 
which were made on the minds of contempo- 
raries, by those mighty transactions, which 
will appear of yet greater moment in the eyes 
of a distant posterity. We are still too near 
that great image of Deliverance and Reform 
which the Genius of Europe has just set up 
before us. to discern with certainty its just 
lineaments, or construe the true character of 
the Aspect with which it looks onward to fu- 
turity ! We see enough, however, to fill us 



* This, I am afraid, will now he thought to he too 
much of a mere " Song of Triumph ;" or, a? least, 
to he conceived throughout in a far more sanguine 
spirit than is consistent either with a wise observa- 
tion of passing events, or a philosophical estimate 
of the frailties of human nature : And, having cer- 
tainly been written under that prevailing excite- 
ment, of which I chiefly wish to preserve it as a 
memorial, I have no doubt that, to some extent, it 
is so. At the same time it should be recollected, 
that it was written immediately after the first res- 
toration of the Bourbons; and before the startling 
drama of the Hundred Days, and its grand catastro- 
phe at Waterloo, had dispelled the first wholesome 
fears of the Allies, or sown the seeds of more bitter 
ranklingsand resentments in the body of the French 
people: and, ahove all, that it was so written, be- 
fore the many lawless invasions of national inde- 
pendence, and broken promises of Sovereigns to 
their subjects, which have since revived that dis- 
trust, which both nations and philosophers were 
then, perhaps, too ready to renounce. And after 
all, I must say, that an attentive reader may find, 
even in this strain of good auguries, both such traces 
of misgivings, and such iteration of anxious warn- 
ings, as to save me from the imputation of having 
merely predicted a Millennium. 

n 



many high and anxious speculations. The feel- 
ings, we are sure, are in unison with all that 
exists around us ; and we reckon therefore on 
more than usual indulgence for the specula- 
tions into which they may expand. 

The first and predominant feeling which 
rises on contemplating the scenes that have 
just burst on our view, is that of deep-felt 
gratitude and delight, — for the liberation of 
so many oppressed nations, — for the cessation 
of bloodshed and fear and misery over the 
fairest portions of the civilised world, — and 
for the enchanting, though still dim and un- 
certain prospect of long peace and measureless 
improvement, which seems at last to be open- 
ing on the suffering kingdoms of Europe. The 
very novelty of such a state of things, which 
could be known only by description to the 
greater part of the existing generation — the 
suddenness of its arrival, and the contrast 
which it forms with the anxieties and alarms 
to which it has so immediately succeeded, all 
concur most powerfully to enhance its vast 
intrinsic attractions. It has come upon the 
world like the balmy air and flushing verdure 
of a late spring, after the dreary chills of a 
long and interminable winter; and the re- 
freshing sweetness with which it has visited 
the earth, feels like Elysium to those who 
have just escaped from the driving tempests 
it has banished. 

We have reason to hope, too, that the riches 
of the harvest will correspond with the splen- 
dour of this early promise. All the periods 
in which human society and human intellect 
have been known to make great and memor- 
able advances, have followed close upon 
periods of general agitation and disorder. 
Men's minds, it would appear, must be deeply 
and roughly stirred, before they become pro- 
lific of great conceptions, or vigorous resolves; 
and a vast and alarming fermentation must 
pervade and agitate the mass of society, to 
inform it with that kindly warmth, by which 
alone the seeds of genius and improvement 
can be expanded. The fact, at all events, is 
abundantly certain ; and may be accounted 
for, we conceive, without mystery, and with- 
out metaphors. 

A popular revolution in government or re- 
ligion — or any thing else that gives rise to 
general and long-continued contention, natu- 
rally produces a prevailing disdain of author- 
ity, and boldness of thinking in the leaders 
of the fray. — together with a kindling of the 
imagination and development of intellect in a 
great multitude of persons, who, in ordinary 
times, would have vegetated stupidly in the 
place* whore fortune had fixed them. Powct 
?Y 



78 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



and distinction, and all the higher prizes in 
the lottery of life, are then brought within the 
reach of a larger proportion of the community ; 
and that vivifying spirit of ambition, which is 
the true source of all improvement, instead 
of burning at a few detached points on the 
summit of society, now pervades every por- 
tion of its frame. Much extravagance, and, in 
all probability, much guilt and much misery, 
result, in the first instance, from this sudden 
extrication of talent and enterprise, in places 
where they can as yet have no legitimate 
issue, or points of application. But the con- 
tending elements at last find their spheres, 
and their balance. The disorder ceases : but 
the activity remains. The multitudes that 
had been raised into intellectual existence by 
dangerous passions and crazy illusions, do not 
all relapse into their original torpor, when 
their passions are allayed and their illusions 
dispelled. There is a great permanent addi- 
tion to the power and the enterprise of the 
community; and the talent and the activity 
which at first convulsed the state by their 
unmeasured and misdirected exertions, ulti- 
mately bless and adorn it, under a more en- 
lightened and less intemperate guidance. If 
we may estimate the amount of this ultimate 
good by that of the disorder which preceded 
it, we cannot be too sanguine in our calcula- 
tions of the happiness that awaits the rising 
generation. The fermentation, it will readily 
be admitted, has been long and violent enough 
to extract all the virtue of all the ingredients 
that have been submitted to its action ; and 
enough of scum has boiled over, and enough 
of pestilent vapour been exhaled, to afford a 
reasonable assurance that the residuum will 
be both ample and pure. 

If this delight in the spectacle and the 
prospect of boundless good, be the first feeling 
that is excited by the scene before us, the 
second, we do not hesitate to say, is a stern 
and vindictive joy at the do wnfal of the Tyrant 
and the tyranny by whom that good had been 
so long intercepted. We feel no compassion 
for that man's reverses of fortune, whose 
heart,, in the days of his prosperity, was 
steeled against that, or any other humanising 
emotion. He has fallen, substantially, with- 
out the pity, as he rose without the love, of 
any portion of mankind ; and the admiration 
which was excited by his talents and activity 
and success, having no solid- stay in the mag- 
nanimity or generosity of his character, has 
been turned, perhaps rather too eagerly, into 
scorn and derision, now that he is deserted 
by fortune, and appears without extraordinary 
resources in the day of his calamity. — We do 
not think that an ambitious despot and san- 
guinary conqueror can be too much execrated, 
or too little respected by mankind ; but the 
popular- clamour, at this moment, seems to us 
to be carried too far, even against this very 
dangerous individual. It is now discovered, 
it saems, that he has neither genius nor com- 
mon sense; and he is accused of cowardice for 
not killing himself, by the very persons who 
would infallibly have exclaimed against his 
puicide, as a clear proof of weakness and 



folly. History, we think, will not class him 
quite so low as the English newspapers of the 
present day. He is a creature to be dreaded 
and condemned, but not, assuredly, to bo 
despised by men of ordinary dimensions. His 
catastrophe, so far as it is yet visible, seems 
unsuitable indeed, and incongruous with the 
part he has hitherto sustained ; but we have 
perceived nothing in it materially to alter the 
estimate which we formed long ago of his 
character. He still seems to us a man of 
consummate conduct, valour, and decision in 
war, but without -the virtues, or even the 
generous or social vices of a soldier of fortune ; 
— of matchless activity indeed, and boundless 
ambition, but entirely without principle, feel- 
ing, or affection ; — suspicious, vindictive, and 
overbearing; — selfish and solitary in all his 
pursuits and gratifications; — proud and over- 
weening, to the very borders of insanity ; — ■ 
and considering at last the laws of honour and 
the principles of morality, equally beneath his 
notice with the interests and feelings of other 
men. — Despising those who submitted to his 
pretensions, and pursuing, with implacable 
hatred, all who presumed to resist them, he 
seems to have gone on in a growing confi- 
dence in his own fortune, and contempt for 
mankind, — till a serious check from without 
showed him the error of his calculation, and 
betrayed the fatal insecurity of a career w hich 
reckoned only on prosperity. 

Over the downfal of such a man, it is fitting 
that the world should rejoice ; and his dowu- 
fal, and the circumstances with which it has 
been attended, seem to us to hold out three 
several grounds of rejoicing. 

In the first place, we think it has establish- 
ed for ever the impracticability of any scheme 
of universal dominion ; and proved, that Eu- 
rope possesses sufficient means to maintain 
and assert the independence of her several 
states, in despite of any power that can be 
brought against them. It might formerly have 
been doubted, — and many minds of no abject 
cast were depressed with more than doubts 
on the subject, — whether the undivided sway 
which Rome exercised of old, by means of 
superior skill and discipline, might not be re- 
vived in modern times by arrangement, ac- 
tivity, and intimidation, — and whether, in 
spite of the boasted intelligence of Europe at 
the present day, the ready communication 
between all its parts, and the supposed weight 
of its publ c opinion, the sovereign of one or 
two great kingdoms might not subdue all the 
rest, by rapidity of movement and decision 
of conduct, and retain them in subjection by 
a strict system of disarming and espionage — 
by a constant interchange of armies and sta- 
tions — and, in short, by a dexterous and alert 
use of those very means, of extensive intelli- 
gence and communication, which their civil- 
isation seemed at first to hold out as their 
surest protection. The experiment, however, 
has now been tried ; and the result is, that 
the nations of Europe can never be brought 
under the rule of one conquering sovereign. 
No individual, it may be fairly presumed, will 
ever try that fatal experiment again, with so 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



57f» 



many extraordinary advantages, and chances 
at success, as he in whose hands it has now 
finally miscarried. The different states, it is 
to be hoped, will never again be found so 
shamefully unprovided for defence — so long 
insensible to their danger — and, let us not 
scruple at last to speak the truth, so little 
worthy of being saved — as most of them were 
at the beginning of that awful period; while 
there is still less chance of any military sove- 
reign again finding himself invested with the 
absolute disposal of so vast a population, at 
once habituated to war and victory by the 
energies of a popular revolution, and disposed 
to submit to any hardships and privations for 
a ruler who would protect them from a re- 
currence of revolutionary horrors. That ruler, 
however, and that population, reinforced by 
immense drafts from the countries he had 
already overrun, has now been fairly beaten 
down by the other nations of Europe — at 
length cordially united by a sense of their 
common danger. Henceforward, therefore, 
they show their strength, and the means and 
occasions of bringing it into action ; and the 
very notoriety of that strength, and of the 
scenes on which it has been proved, will in 
all probability prevent the recurrence of any 
necessity for proving it again. 

The second ground of rejoicing in the down- 
fa 1 of Bonaparte is on account of the impres- 
sive lesson it has read to Amb tion, and the 
striking illustration it has afforded, of the in- 
evitable tendency of that passion to bring to 
ruin the power and the greatness which it 
seeks so madly to increase. No human being, 
perhaps, ever stood on so proud a pinnacle of 
worldly grandeur, as this insatiable conqueror, 
at th a beginning of his Russian campaign. — 
He had done more — he had acquired more — 
and he possessed more, as to actual power, 
influence, and authority, than any individual 
that ever figured on the scene of European 
story. He had visited, with a victorious army, 
almost every capital of the Continent ; and 
dictated the terms of peace to their astonished 
princes. He had consolidated under his im- 
mediate dominion, a territory and population 
apparently sufficient to meet the combination 
of all that it d:d not include; and interwoven 
himself with the government of almost all 
that was left. He had cast down and erected 
thrones at his pleasure ; and surrounded him- 
self with tributary kings, and principalities, 
of his own creation. He had connected him- 
self by marriage with the proudest of the 
ancient sovereigns ; and was at the head of 
the largest and the finest army that was ever 
assembled to desolate or dispose of the world. 
Had he known where to stop in his aggres- 
sions upon the peace and independence of 
mankind, it seems as if this terrific sove- 
reignty might have been permanently es- 
tablished in his person. But the demon by 
whom he was possessed urged him on to his 
fate. He could not bear that any power should 
exist which did not confess its dependence on 
him. Without a pretext for quarrel, he at- 
tacked Russia — insulted Austria — trod con- 
temptuously on the fallen fortunes of Prussia 



— and by new aggressions, and the menace 
of more intolerable evils, drove them into thai 
league which rolled back the tide of ruin on 
himself, and ultimately hurled him into the 
insignificance from which he originally sprung. 

It is for this reason, chiefly, that we join in 
the feeling, which we think universal in this 
country, of joy and satisfaction at the utter 
destruction of this victim of Ambition, — and 
at the faiiure of those negotiations, which 
would have left him, though humbled, in 
possession of a sovereign state, and of great 
actual power and authority. We say nothing 
at present of the policy or the necessity, that 
may have dictated those propositions; but the 
actual result is far more satisfactory, than any 
condition of their acceptance. Without this, 
the lesson to Ambition would have been im- 
perfect, and the retribution of Eternal Justice 
apparently incomplete. It was fitting, that 
the world should see it again demonstrated, 
by this great example, that the appetite of 
conquest is in its own nature insatiable ; — 
and that a being, once abandoned to that 
bloody career, is fated to pursue it to the end ; 
and must persist in the work of desolation 
and murder, till the accumulated wrongs and 
resentments of the harassed world sweep him 
from its face. The knowledge of this may 
deter some dangerous spirits from entering on 
a course, which will infallibly bear them on 
to destruction ; — and at all events should in- 
duce the sufferers to cut short the measure 
of its errors and miseries, by accomplishing 
their doom at the beginning. Sanguinary 
conquerors, we do not hesitate to say, should 
be devoted by a perpetual proscription, in 
mercy to the rest of the world. 

Our last cause of rejoicing over this grand 
catastrophe, arises from the discredit, and 
even the derision, which it has so opportunely 
thrown upon the character of conquerors in 
general. The thinking part of mankind did 
not perhaps need to be disabused upon this 
subject ; — but no illusion was ever so strong, 
or so pernicious with the multitude, as that 
which invested heroes of this description with 
a sort of supernatural grandeur and dignity, 
and bent the spirits of men before them, as 
beings intrinsically entitled to the homage and 
submission of inferior natures. It is above 
all things fortunate, therefore, when this spell 
can be broken, by merely reversing the opera- 
tion by which it had been imposed ; when the 
idols that success had tricked out in the mock 
attributes of divinity, are stripped of their 
disguise by the rough hand of misfortune, and 
exhibited before the indignant and wondering 
eyes of their admirers, in the naked littleness 
of humbled and helpless men, — depending, 
for life and subsistence, on the pity of their 
human conquerors, — and spared with safety, 
in consequence of their insignificance. — Such 
an exhibition, we would fain hope, will rescue 
men for ever from that most humiliating devo- 
tion, which has hitherto so often tempted the 
ambition, and facilitated the progress of con- 
querors. — It is not in our days, at least, that 
I it will be forgotten, that Bonaparte turned out 
' a mere mortal in the end : — and ne *h.T in our 



580 



gp:neral politics. 



days, nor in those of our children, is it at all 
likely, that any other adventurer will arise to 
efface the impressions connected with that 
recollection, by more splendid achievements, 
than distinguished the greater part of his 
career. Tne kind of shame, too, that is felt 
by those who have been the victims or the 
instruments of a being so weak and fallible, 
"will make it difficult for any successor to his 
ambition, so to overawe the minds of the 
world again ; and will consequently diminish 
the dread, while it exasperates the hatred, 
with which presumptuous oppression ought 
always to be regarded. 

If the downfal of Bonaparte teach this 
lesson, and fix this feeling in the minds of 
men, we should almost be tempted to say that 
the miseries he has inflicted are atoned for ; 
and that his life, on the whore, will have been 
useful to mankind. Undoubtedly there is no 
other single source of wretchedness so prolific 
as that strange fascination by which atrocious 
guilt is converted into an object of admiration, 
and the honours due to the benefactors of the 
human race lavished most profusely on their 
destroyers. A sovereign who pursues schemes 
of conquest for the gratification of his personal 
ambition, is neither more nor less than a being 
who inflicts violent death upon thousands, 
and miseries still more agonising on millions, 
of innocent individuals, to relieve his own 
ennui, and divert the languors of a base and 
worthless existence : — and, if it be true that 
the chief excitement to such exploits is found 
in the false Glory with which the madness 
of mankind has surrounded their successful 
performance, it will not be easy to calculate 
now much we are indebted to him whose his- 
tory has contributed to dispel it. 

Next to our delight at the overthrow of 
Bonaparte, is our exultation at the glory of 
England. — It is a proud and honourable dis- 
tinction to be able to say, in the end of such 
a contest, that we belong to the only nation 
that has never been conquered ; — tathe nation 
that set the first example of successful resist- 
ance to the pow T er that was desolating the 
world. — and who always stood erect, though 
she sometimes stood alone, before it. From 
England alone, that power, to which all the 
rest had successively bowed, has won no tro- 
phies, and extorted no submission; on the 
contrary, she has been constantly baffled and 
disgraced whenever she has grappled directly 
with the might and energy of England. Dur- 
ing the proudest part of her continental career, 
England drove her ships from the ocean, and 
annihilated her colonies and her commerce. 
The first French army that capitulated, capit- 
ulated to the English forces in Egypt; and 
Lord Wellington is the only commander 
against whom six Marshals of France have 
successively tried in vain to procure any ad- 
vantage. 

The efforts of England have not always 
been well directed, — nor her endeavours to 
rouse the other nations of Europe very wisely 
timed : — But she has set a magnificent ex- 
ample of unconquerable fortitude and unalter- 
able constancy ; and she may claim the proud 



distinction of having kept alive the sacrer 
flame of liberty and the spirit of national in 
dependence, when the chill of general appre 
heusion, and the rushing whirlwind of con- 
quest, had apparently extingu : shed them fo* 
ever, in the other nations of the earth. N<« 
course of prosperity, indeed, and no harvesi 
of ultimate success, can ever extinguish the 
regret of all the true friends of our national 
glory and happiness, for the many preposter- 
ous, and the occasionally disreputable expe- 
ditions, in which English blood was more 
than unprofitably wasted, and English char- 
acter more than imprudently involved ; nor 
can the delightful assurance of our actual 
deliverance from danger efface the remem- 
brance of the tremendous hazard to which we 
were so long exposed by the obstinate mis- 
government of Ireland. These, however, were 
the sins of the Government. — and do not at 
all detract from the excellent spirit of the 
People, to which, in its main bearings, it was 
necessary for the government to conform. 
That spirit was always, and we believe uni- 
versally, a spirit of strong attachment to the 
county, and of stern resolution to do all 
things, and to suffer all things in its cause ;— 
mingled with more or less confidence, or more 
or less anxiety, according to the temper or the 
information of individuals, — but sound, steady 
and erect we believe upon the whole, — and 
equally determined to risk all for independ- 
ence, whether it was believed to be in great 
or in little danger. 

Of our own sentiments and professions, and 
of the consistency of our avowed principles, 
from the first to the last of this momentous 
period, it would be impertinent to speak at 
large, in discussing so great a theme as the 
honour of our common country. None of our 
readers, and none of our censors, can be more 
persuaded than we are of the extreme insig- 
nificance of such a discussion — and not many 
of them can feel more completely indifferent 
about the aspersions with when, we have 
been distinguished, or more fully convinced 
of the. ultimate justice of public opinion. We 
shall make no answer therefore to the sneers 
and calumnies of which it has been thought 
worth while to make us the subject, except 
just to say, that if any man can read what we 
have written on public affairs, and entertain 
any serious doubt of our zeal for the safety, 
the honour, and the freedom of England, he 
must attach a different meaning to all these 
phrases from that which we have most sin- 
cerely believed to belong to them ; and that, 
though we do not pretend to have either fore- 
seen or foretold the happy events that have so 
lately astonished the world, we cannot fail to 
see in them the most gratifying confirmation 
of the very doctrines we have been the longest, 
and the most loudly abused for asserting. 

The last sentiment in which we think all 
candid observers of the late great events must 
cordially agree, is that of admiration and pure 
and unmingled approbation of the magnani- 
mity, the prudence, the dignity and forbear- 
ance of the Allies. There has been some- 
thing in the manner of those extraordinary 



RESTORATION OK THE BOURBONS. 



5*1 



transactions as valuable as the substance of 
what has been achieved. — and. if possible, 
still more meritorious. History records no in- 
stance of union so faithful and complete — of 
councils so firm — of gallantry so generous — 
of model ation so dignified and wise. In read- 
ing the addresses of the Allied Sovereigns to 
the people of Europe and of France ; and, 
above all, in tracing every step of their de- 
meanour after they got possession of the me- 
tropolis, we seem to be transported from the 
vulgar and disgusting realities of actual story, 
to the beautiful imaginations and exalted fic- 
tions of poetry and romance. The proclama- 
tion of the Emperor Alexander to the military 
men who might be in Paris on his arrival — his 
address to the Senate — the terms in which he 
has always spoken of his fallen adversary, 
are all conceived in the very highest strain of 
nobleness and wisdom. They have all the 
spirit, the courtesy, the generosity, of the age 
of chivalry; and all the liberality and mild- 
ness of that of philosophy. The disciple of 
Fenelon could not have conducted himself 
with more perfect amiablenessand grandeur; 
and the fabulous hero of the loftiest and most 
philanthropic of moralists, has been equalled, 
if not outdone, by a Russian monarch, in the 
first flush and tumult of victory. The sub- 
limity of the scene indeed, and the merit of 
the actors, will not be fairly appreciated, if 
we do not recollect that they were arbitrary 
sovereigns, who had been trained rather to 
consult their own feelings than the rights of 
mankind — who had been disturbed on their 
hereditary thrones by the wanton aggressions 
of the man who now lay at their mercy — and 
had seen their territories wasted, their people 
butchered, and their capitals pillaged, by him 
they had at last chased to his den, and upon 
whose capital, and whose people, they might 
now repay the insults that had been offered 
to theirs. They judged more magnanimously, 
however; and they judged more wisely — for 
their own glory, for the objects they had in 
view, and for the general interests of humani- 
ty. By their generous forbearance, and sin- 
gular moderation, they not only put their ad- 
versary in the wrong in the eyes of all Europe, 
but they made him appear little and ferocious 
in comparison ; and, while overbearing all 
opposition by superior force, and heroic reso- 
lution, they paid due honour to the valour by 
which they had been resisted, and gave no 
avoidable offence to that national pride which 
might have presented the greatest of all ob- 
stacles to their success. From the beginning 
to the end of their hostile operations, they 
avoided naming the name of the ancient 
family; and not in words merely, but in the 
whole strain and tenor of their conduct, re- 
spected the inherent right of the nation to 
choose its own government, and stipulated for 
nothing but what was indispensable for the 
safety of its neighbours. Born, as they w r ere, 
to unlimited thrones, and accustomed in their 
own persons to the exercise of power that ad- 
mitted but little control, they did not scruple 
to declare publicly, that France, at least, was 
entitled to a larger measure of freedom ; and 



that the intelligence of its population entitled 
it to a share in its ow r n government. They 
exerted themselves sincerely to mediate be- 
tween the different parties that might be sup- 
posed to exist in the state; and treated each 
with a respect that taught its opponents that 
they might coalesce without being dishonour- 
ed. In this way the seeds of civil discord, 
which such a crisis could scarcely have failed 
to quicken, have, we trust, been almost en- 
tirely destroyed ; and if France escapes the 
visitation of internal dissension, it will be 
chiefly owing to the considerate and magnani- 
mous prudence of those very persons to whom 
Europe has been indebted for her deliverance. 
In this high and unqualified praise, it is a 
singular satisfaction to us to be able to say, 
that our own Government seems fully entitled 
to participate. In the whole of those most im- 
portant proceedings, the Ministry of England 
appears to have conducted itself with wisdom, 
moderation, and propriety. In spite of the 
vehement, clamours of many in their own 
party, and the repugnance which was said to 
exist in higher quarters to any negotiation with.' 
Bonaparte, they are understood to have ad- 
hered with laudable firmness to the clear po- 
licy of not disjoining their country from that 
great confederacy, through which alone, either 
peace or victory, was rationally to be expect- 
ed : — and, going heartily along with their 
allies, both in their unrivalled efforts and in 
their heroic forbearance, they too . refrained 
from recognising the ancient family, till they 
were invited to return by the spontaneous 
voice of their own nation ; and thus.gave them 
the glorj of being recalled by the appearance 
at last of affection, instead of being replaced 
by force ; while the nation, which force would 
either have divided, or disgusted entire, did 
all that, was wanted, as the free act of their 
own patriotism and wisdom. Considering the 
temper that had long been fostered, and the 
tone that had been maintained among their 
warmest supporters at home, we think this 
conduct of the ministry entitled to the highest 
credit; and we give it our praise now, with 
the same freedom and sincerity with which 
we pledge ourselves to bestow our censure, 
whenever they do any thing that seems to call 
for that less grateful exercise of our duty. 

Having now indulged ourselves, by express- 
ing a few of the sentiments that are irresistibly 
suggested by the events that lie before us, 
we turn to our more laborious and appropriate 
vocation of speculating on the nature and con- 
sequences of those events. Is the restoration 
of the Bourbons the best possible issue of the 
long struggle that has preceded ? Will it lead 
to the establishment of a free government in 
France 1 Will it be favourable to the general 
interests of liberty in England and the rest of 
the world % These are great and momentous 
questions, — which we are far from presuming 
to think we can answer explicitly, without the 
assistance of that great expositor — time. Yel 
we should think the man unworthy of the 
great felicity of having lived to the present 
day, who could help asking them of himself * 
2t2 



582 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



ana we* seem to stand m the particular pre- 
dicamen* of being obliged to try at least for 
an answer. 

The first, we think, is the easiest ; and we 
scarcely scruple to answer it at once in the 
affirmative. We know, indeed, that there are 
many who think, that a permanent change of 
dynasty might have afforded a better guarantee 
against the return of those ancient abuses 
which first gave rise to the revolution, and may 
again produce all its disasters ; and that France, 
reduced within moderate limits, would, under 
such a dynasty, both have served better as a 
permanent warning to other states of the dan- 
ger of such abuses, and been less likely to 
unite itself with any of the old corrupt govern- 
ments, in schemes against the internal liberty 
or national independence of the great European 
communities. And we are far from under- 
rating the value of these suggestions. But 
there are considerations of more urgent and 
immediate importance, that seem to leave no 
room for hesitation in the present position of 
affairs . 

In the first place, the restoration of the 
Bourbons seems the natural and only certain 
end of that series of revolutionary movements, 
and that long and disastrous experiment which 
has so awfully overshadowed the freedom 
and happiness of the world. It naturally 
figures as the final completion of a cycle of 
convulsions and miseries ; and presents itself 
to the imagination as the point at which the 
tempest-shaken vessel of the state again 
reaches the haven of tranquillity from the 
stormy ocean of revolution. Nor is it merely 
to the imagination, or through the mediation 
of such figures, that this truth presents itself. 
To the coldest reason it is manifest, that by 
the restoration of the old line, the whole tre- 
mendous evils of a disputed title to the crown 
are at once obviated : For when the dynasty 
of Napoleon has once lost possession, it has 
lost all upon which its pretensions could ever 
have been founded, and may fairly be con- 
sidered' as annihilated and extinguished for 
ever. The novelty of a government is in all 
cases a prodigious inconvenience — but if it be 
substantially unpopular, and the remnants of 
an old government at hand, its insecurity be- 
I comes not only obvious but alarming : Since 
nothing but the combination of great severity 
and great success can give it even the appear- 
ance of stability. Now, the government of 
Napoleon was not only new and oppressive, 
and consequently insecure, but it was abso- 
lutely dissolved and at an end, before the pe- 
riod had arrived at which alone the restoration 
of the Bourbons could be made a subject of 
deliberation. 

The chains of the Continent, in fact, were 
broken at Leipsic ; and the Despotic sceptre 
of the great nation cast down to the earth, as 
soon as the allies set foot as conquerors on its 
ancient territory. If the Bourbons were not 
then to be restored, there were only three 
other ways of settling the government. — To 
leave Bonaparte at the head of a limited and 
/educed monarchy — to vest the sovereignty 
'.n bi$ infant son — or to call or permit some 



new adventurer to preside over an entire new 
constitution, republican or monarchical, as 
might be most agreeable to his supporters. 

The first would have been fraught with 
measureless evils to France, and dangers to 
all her neighbours ; — but, fortunately, though 
it was tried, it was in its own nature imprac- 
ticable : and Napoleon knew this well enough, 
when he rejected the propositions made to him 
at Chatillon. He knew well enough what 
stuff his Parisians and his Senators were made 
of; and what were the only terms upon which 
the nation would submit to his dominion. He 
knew that he had no real hold of the Affec- 
tions of the people ; and ruled but in their 
fears and their Vanity — that he held his thi one, 
in short, only because he had identified his 
own greatness with the Glory of France, and 
surrounded himself w T ith a vast army, drawn 
from all the nations of Europe, and so posted 
and divided as to be secured against any 
general ^ spirit of revolt. The moment this 
army was ruined therefore, and he came back 
a beaten and humbled sovereign, he felt that 
his sovereignty was at an end. To rule at 
all, it was necessary that he should rule with 
glory, and with full possession of the means 
of intimidation. As soon as these left him, 
his throne must have tottered to its fall. 
Royalist factions and Republican factions 
would have arisen in every part of the na- 
tion — discontent and insurrection would have 
multiplied in the capital, and in the pro- 
vinces — and if not cut off by the arm of 
some new competitor, he must soon have 
been overwhelmed in the tempest of civil 
commotion. 

The second plan would have been less dan- 
gerous to other states, but still more impracti- 
cable with a view to France itself. The 
nerveless arm of an infant could never have 
wielded the iron sceptre of Napoleon, — and 
his weakness, and the utter want of native 
power or influence in the members of his 
family, would have invited all sorts of preten- 
sions, and called forth to open day all the wild 
and terrific factions which the terror of his 
father's power had chased for a season to their 
dens of darkness. Jealousy of the influence 
of Austria, too, would have facilitated the de- 
position of the baby despot ; — and even if his 
state could have been upheld, it is plain that 
it could have been only by the faithful energy 
of his predecessor's ministers of oppression, — 
and that the dynasty of Napoleon could only 
have maintained itself by the arts and the 
crimes of its founder. 

The third expedient must plainly have been 
the most inexpedient and unmerciful of all; 
since, after the experience of the last twenty 
years, we may venture to say with confidence, 
that it could only have led, through a repeti- 
tion of those monstrous disorders over which 
reason has blushed and humanity sickened so 
long, to the dead repose of another military 
despotism. 

The restoration of the Bourbons, therefore, 
we conceive, was an act, not merely of wis- 
dom, but of necessity, — or of that strong and 
obvious expediency, with a view either tc 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



neace or security, whi< h in politics amounts 
to necessity- It is a separate, however, or at 
least an ulterior question, whether this res- 
toration is likely to give a Free Government 
to France, or to bring it hack to the condition 
of its old arbitrary monarchy ? a question cer- 
tainly of great interest and curiosity, — and 
upon which it does not appear to us that the 
politicians of this country are by any means 
agreed. 

There are many, we think, who cannot be 
brought to understand that the restoration of 
the ancient line can mean any thing else but 
the restoration of the ancient constitution of 
the monarchy, — who take it for granted, that 
they must return to the substantial exercise 
of all their former functions, and conceive, 
that all restraints upon the sovereign authori- 
ty, and all stipulations in favour of public 
liberty, must be looked upon with contempt 
and aversion, and be speedily swept away, as 
vestiges of that tremendous revolution, the 
whole brood and progeny of which must be 
held in abhorrence at the Court of the new 
Monarch: — And truly, when we remember 
what Mr. Fox has said, with so much solem- 
nity, upon this subject, and call to mind the 
occasion, with reference to which he has de- 
clared, that "a Restoration is, for the most part, 
the most pernicious of all Revolutions," — it is 
not easy to divest ourselves of apprehensions, 
that such may in some degree be the conse- 
quence of the events over which w T e are re- 
joicing. Yet the circumstances of the present 
case, we will confess, do not seem to us to 
warrant such apprehensions in their full ex- 
tent ; and our augury, upon the whole, is fa- 
vourable upon this branch of the question also. 

They who think differently, and who hope, 
or fear, that things are to go back exactly to 
the state in which they were in 1788 ; and 
that all the sufferings, and all the sacrifices, 
of the intermediate period, are to be in vain, 
look only, as it appears to us, to the naked 
facr, that the old line of kings is restored, and 
the ancient nobility re-established in their 
honours. They consider the case, as it would 
have been, if this restoration had been effect- 
ed by the triumphant return of the emigrants 
from Coblentz in 1792 — by the success of the 
Royalist arms in La Vendee — or by the gene- 
ral prevalence of a Royalist party, spontane- 
ously regenerated over the kingdom: — For- 
getting that the ancient family has only been 
recalled in a crisis brought on by foreign suc- 
cesses; when the actual government was 
virtually dissolved, and no alternative left to 
the nation, but those which we have just enu- 
merated; — forgetting that it is not restored 
unconditionally, and as a matter of right, but 
rather called anew to the throne, upon terms 
and stipulations, propounded in the name of a 
nation, free to receive or to reject it ; — forget- 
ting that an interval of twenty-five long years 
has separated the subjects from the Sovereign ; 
and broken all those ties of habitual loyalty, 
by wrreh a people is most effectually bound 
to an hereditary monarch ; and that those 
years, filled with ideas of democratic license, 
or despotic oppression, cannot have tended to 



foster associations favourable to royalty, or ta 
propagate kindly conceptions of the connec- 
tion of subject and king; — forgetting, above 
all, that along with her ancient monarchy, a 
new legislative body is associated in the gov- 
ernment of France, — that a constitution has 
been actually adopted, by which the powers 
of those monarchs maybe effectually control- 
led ; and that the illustrious person who has 
ascended the throne, has already bound him- 
self to govern according to that constitution, 
and to assume no power with which it does 
not expressly invest him. 

If Louis XVIII., then, trained in the school 
of misfortune, and seeing and feeling all the 
permanent changes which these twenty-five 
eventful years have wrought in the condition 
of his people ; — if this monarch, mild and un- 
ambitious as he is understood to be in his 
character, is but faithful to his oath, grateful 
to his deliverers, and observant of the coun- 
sels of his most prudent and magnanimous' 
Allies, he will feel, that he is not the lawful 
inheritor of the powers that belonged to his 
predecessor ; that his crown is not the crown 
of Louis XVI. ; and that to assert his privi- 
leges, would be to provoke his fate. By this 
time, he probably knows enough of the nature 
of his countrymen, perhaps w r e should say of 
mankind in general, not to rely too much on 
those warm expressions of love and loyalty, 
with which his accession has been hailed, and 
which would probably have been lavished 
with equal profusion on his antagonist, if vic- 
tory had again attended his arms, in this last 
ancl decisive contest. It is not improbable 
that he^may be more acceptable to the body 
of the nation, than the despot he has supplant- 
ed ; and that some recollections or traditions 
of a more generous loyalty than the sullen 
nature of that ungracious ruler either invited 
or admitted, have mingled themselves with 
the hopes of peace and of liberty, which must 
be the chief solid ingredients in his welcome ; 
and acting upon the constitutional vivacity of 
the people, and the servility of mobs, always 
ready to lackey the heels of the successful, 
have taken the form of ardent affection, and 
the most sincere devotedness and attachment. 
But w<e think it is very apparent, that there is 
no great love or spontaneous zeal for the Bour- 
bons in the body of the French nation ; that 
the joy so tardily manifested for their return, 
is mainly grounded upon the hope of conse- 
quential benefits to themselves; and, at all 
events, that there is no personal attachment, 
which will lead them to submit to any thing 
that may be supposed to be encroaching, or 
felt to be oppressive. It will probably require 
great temper and great management in the 
new sovereigns to exercise, without offence, 
the powers with which they are legitimately 
invested; but their danger will be great in- 
deed, if they suddenly attempt to go beyond 
them. With temper and circumspection, they 
may in time establish the solid foundations ol 
a splendid, though limited, throne ; if they 
aspire again to be absolute, the probability is 
that they will soon cease to reign 

The restoration of the old Nobility seems, 



59ft 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



At first sight, a more hazardous operation than 
than that of the ancient monarchs; — but the 
danger, there also, is more apparent than real. 
The various inclemencies of a twenty-five 
years' exile have sadly thinned the ranks of 
those rash and sanguine spirits who assem- 
bled at Coblentz in 1792, and may be pre- 
sumed to have tamed the pride and lowered 
the pretensions of the few that remain. A 
great multitude of families have become ex- 
tinct, — a still greater number had reconciled 
themselves to the Imperial Government, — and 
the small remnant that have continued faith- 
ful to the fortunes of their Royal Master, will 
probably be satisfied w T ith the conditions of 
his return. Thus dwindled in number, — de- 
cayed in fortune, — and divided by diversities 
of conduct that will not be speedily forgotten, 
we do not think that there is any great hazard 
of their attempting either to assert those priv- 
ileges as a body, or to assume that tone, by 
which they formerly revolted the inferior 
classes of the state, and would now be con- 
sidered as invading the just rights and con- 
stitutional dignity of the other citizens. 

We do not see any thing, therefore, in the 
restoration itself, either of the Prince or of his 
nobles, that seems to us very dangeroas to the 
freedom of the people, or very likely to per- 
vert those constitutional provisions by which 
it is understood that their freedom is to be 
secured. Yet we did not need the example 
that France herself has so often afforded, to 
make us distrustful of constitutions on paper; 
— and are not only far from feeling assured of 
the practical benefits that are to result from 
this new experiment, but are perfectly con- 
vinced that all the benefit that does result, 
must be ascribed, not to the wisdom of the 
actual institutions, but to the continued opera- 
tion of the extraordinary circumstances, by 
which these institutions have been suggested, 
and by the permanent pressure of which alone 
their operation can yet be secured. The bases 
of the new constitution sound well certainly; 
and may be advantageously contrasted with 
the famous declaration of the rights of man, 
which initiated the labours of the Constituent 
Assembly. But the truth is, that the bases 
of most paper constitutions sound well ; and 
that principles not much less wise and liberal 
than those which we now hope to see reduced 
into practice, have been laid down hi most of 
the constitutions which have proved utterly 
ineffectual within the last twenty-five years, 
to repress popular disorder or despotic usur- 
pation in this very country- The constitution 
now adopted by Louis XVIII. is not very un- 
like that which was imposed on his unfortu- 
nate predecessor, in the Champs de Mars in 
1790; and it certainly leaves less power to 
the crown than was conceded by that first ar- 
rangement. Yet the power vested in Louis 
XVI. was found quite inadequate to protect 
the regal office against the encroachments of 
an insane democracy; and the throne was 
overthrown by the sudden irruption of the 
nopolarpaft of the government. On the other 
s and, it is still more remarkable that the con- 
stitution now about to be put ou its trial, is 



yet more like the constitution adopted by 
Bonaparte on his accession to the sovereign 
authority. He too had a Senate and a Legisla- 
tive Body, — and trial by jury, — and universal 
eligibility, — and what was pretended to be 
liberty of printing. The freedom of the peo- 
ple, in short, was as well guarded, in most 
respects, by the words and the forms of that 
constitution, as they are by those of this which 
is now under consideration; and yet those 
words and forms were found to be no obstacle 
at all to the practical exercise and systematic 
establishment of the most efficient despotism 
that Europe has ever witnessed. 

What then shall we say? Since the same 
institutions, and the same sort of balance of 
power, give at one time too much weight to' 
the Crown, and at another too much indul- 
gence to popular feeling, shall we conclude 
that all sorts of institutions and balances are 
indifferent or nugatory ? or only, that their 
efficacy depends greatly on the circumstances 
to which they are applied, and on the actual 
balance and relation in which the different 
orders of the state previously stood to each 
other ? The last, we think, is the only sane 
conclusion ; and it is by attending to the con- 
ditions which it involves, that we shall best 
be enabled to conjecture, whether an experi- 
ment, that has twice failed already in so sig- 
nal a manner, is now likely to be attended 
with success. 

When a limited monarchy was proposed for 
France in 1790, the whole body of the nation 
had just emancipated itself by force from a 
state of political vassalage, and had begun to 
feel the delight and intoxication of that con- 
sciousness of power, which always tempts at 
first to so many experiments on its reality and 
extent. New to the exercise of this power, 
and jealous of its security so long as any of 
those institutions remained which had so long 
repressed or withheld it, they first improvi- 
dently subverted all that was left of their an- 
cient establishments; and then, from the same 
impetuosity of inexperience, they split into 
factions, that began with abuse, and ended in 
bloodshed ; and, setting out with an extreme 
zeal for reason and humanity, plunged them- 
selves very speedily in the very abyss of 
atrocity and folly. In such a violent state of 
the public mind, no institutions had any chance 
of being permanent. The root of the evil was 
in the suddenness of the extrication of such a 
volume of political energy,— or rather, perhaps, 
in the arrangements by which it had been so 
long pent up and compressed. The only true 
policy would have been for those among the 
ancient leaders, whose interest or judgment 
enabled them to see the hazards upon which 
the new-sprung enthusiasts were rushing — to 
have thrown themselves into their ranks; — to 
have united cordially with those who were 
least insane or intemperate : and, by going along 
with them at all hazards, to have retarded the 
impetuosity of their movements, and watched 
the first opportunity to bring them back to so- 
briety and reason. Instead of this, they aban- 
doned them, with demonstrations of contempt 
and hostility, to the career upon which thev 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



A85 



had entered. They emigrated from the ter- 
ritory — and thus threw the mass of the popu- 
lation at once into the hands of the incendia- 
ries of the capital. Twenty-five years have 
nearly elapsed since the period of that terrible 
explosion. A great part of its force has been 
wasted and finally dissipated in that long in- 
terval ; and though its natural flow has been 
again repressed in the latter part of it, there is 
no hazard of such another eruption, now that 
those obstructions are again thrown off. ' That 
was produced by the accumulation of all the 
energy, intelligence, and discontent, that had 
been generated among a people deprived of 
political rights, during a full century of peace- 
ful pursuits and growing intelligence, without 
any experience or warning of the perils of its 
sudden expansion. This can be but the col- 
lection of a few years of a very different de- 
scription, and with all the dreadful conse- 
quences of its untempered and undirected in- 
dulgence still glaring in view. We do not 
think, therefore, that the attempt to establish 
a limited monarchy is now in very great dan- 
ger of miscarrying in the same way as in 1790 ; 
and conceive, that the conduits of an ordinary 
representative assembly, if instantly prepared 
and diligently \vatched, may now be quite 
sufficient to carry off and direct all the popu- 
lar energy that is generated in the nation — 
though the quantity was then so great as to 
tear all the machinery to pieces, and blow the 
ancient monarchy to the clouds, with the frag- 
ments of the new constitution. 

With regard to the late experiment under 
Bonaparte, it is almost enough to observe, that 
it seems to us to have been from the begin- 
ning a mere piece of mockery and delusion. 
The government was substantially despotic 
and military, or, at all events, a government 
of undisguised force, ever since the time of 
the triumvirs, — perhaps we might say, since 
that of Robespierre ; and when Bonaparte as- 
sumed the supreme power, the nation wil- 
lingly gave up its liberty, for the chance of 
tranquillity and protection. Wearied out with 
the perpetual succession of sanguinary fac- 
tions, each establishing itself by bloody pro- 
scriptions, deportations, and confiscations, it 
gladly threw itself into the arms of a ruler 
who seemed sufficiently strong to keep all 
lesser tyrants in subjection ; and, despairing 
of freedom, was thankful for an interval of 
repose. In such a situation, the constitution 
was dictated by the master of the state for 
his own glory and convenience, — not imposed 
upon him by the nation for his direction and 
control : and, with whatever names or pre- 
tences of liberty and popular prerogative the 
members of it might be adorned, it was suffi- 
ciently known to all parties that it was intend- 
ed substantially as an instrument of Command, 
— that the only effective power that was meant 
to be exercised or recognised in the govern- 
ment, was the power of the Emperor, abetted 
by h's Army ; and that all the other function- 
aries were in reality to be dependent upon 
■nim. That the Senate and Legislative Body, 
therefore, did not convert the military despot- 
ism upon wh.ch they were thus engrafted into 
74 



a free government, is no considerable pre- 
sumption against the fitness of such institu- 
tions to maintain the principles of freedom 
under different circumstances: nor can the 
fact be justly regarded as a new example of 
their inefficiency for that purpose. In this 
instance they were never intended to minister 
to the interests of liberty; nor instituted with 
any serious expectation that they would have 
that effect. Here, therefore, there was truly 
no failure, and no disappointment. They ac- 
tually answered all the ends of their establish- 
ment j by facilitating the execution of the Im- 
perial will, and disguising, to those who chose 
to look no farther, the naked oppression of the 
government. It does not seem to us, therefore, 
that this instance more than the other, should 
materially discourage our expectations of now 
seeing something like a system of regulated 
freedom in that country. The people of France 
have lived long enough under the capricious 
atrocities of a crazy democracy, to be aware 
of the dangers of that form of government, — 
to feel the necessity of contriving some retard- 
ing machinery to break the impulse of the 
general will, and providing some apparatus 
for purifying, concentrating, and cooling ihe 
first fiery runnings of popular spirit and enthu- 
siasm ; while they have also felt enough of 
the oppressions and miseries of arbitrary pow- 
er, to instruct them in the value of some regu- 
lar and efficient control. In such a situation, 
therefore, when a scheme of government that 
has been found to answer both these purposes 
in other countries, is offered by the nation as 
the accompaniment and condition of the mon- 
archy, and is freely accepted by the Sovereign 
on his accession, there seems to be a reason- 
able hope that the issue will at length be for- 
tunate ; — and that a free and stable constitu- 
tion may succeed to the calamitous experiments 
which have been suggested by the imperfec- 
tions of that which was originally established. 
All this, however, we readily admit, is but 
problematical ; and affords ground for nothing 
more than expectation and conjecture. There 
are grounds certainly for doubting, who.th.er 
the French are even yet capable of a itgula- 
ted freedom ; — and for believing, at all events, 
that they will for a good while be but awk- 
ward in discharging the ordinary offices of 
citizens of a limited monarchy. They have 
probably learned, by this time, that for a na- 
tion to be free, something more is necessary 
than that it should will it. To be practically 
and tranquilly free, a great deal more is neces- 
sary ; and though we do not ascribe much to 
positive institutions, we ascribe almost every 
thing to temper and habit. — A genuine system 
of national representation, for example, can 
neither be devised, nor carried into operation 
in a day. The practical benefits of such a 
system depend in a great measure upon the 
internal arrangements of the society in which 
it exists, by means of which the sentiments 
and opinions of the people maybe peacefully 
and safely transmitted from their first small 
and elementary gatherngs, to ihe great public 
depositories of national energy and wisdom. 
The structure, which answers those purposes, 



586 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



however, is in ail cases more the work of time 
than of contrivance j and can never be im- 
pressed at once upon a society, which is aim- 
ing for the first time at these objects. — With- 
out some such previous and interna] arrange- 
ment, however — and without the familiar 
existence of a long gradation of virtual. and 
unelected representatives, no pure or fair 
representation can ever be obtained. Instead 
of the cream of the society, we shall have the 
froth only in the legislature — or, it may be, 
the scum, and the fiery spirit, instead of the 
rich extract of all its strength and its virtues. 
But even independent of the common hazards 
and disadvantages of novelty, there are strong- 
grounds of apprehension in the character and 
habits of the French nation. The very vi- 
vacity of that accomplished people, and the 
raised imagination which they are too apt to 
carry with them into projects of every descrip- 
tion", are all against them in those political 
adventures. They are too impatient, we fear 
— too ambitious of perfection — too studious 
of effect, to be satisfied with the attainable 
excellence or vulgar comforts of an English 
constitution. If it captivate them in the 
theory, it will be sure to disappoint them in 
the working: — From endeavouring univer- 
sally, each in his own department, to lop their 
parts, they will be very apt to go beyond 
them ; — and will run the risk, not only of en- 
croaching upon each other, but, generally, of 
missing the substantial advantages of the plan, 
through disdain of that sobriety of effort, and 
calm mediocrity of principle, to which alone 
it is adapted. 

The project of giving them a free constitu- 
tion, therefore, may certainly miscarry, — and 
it may miscarry in two ways. If the Court 
can effectually attach to itself the Marshals 
and Military Senators of Bonaparte, in addi- 
tion to the old Nobility ; — and if, through their 
means, the vanity and ambition of the turbu- 
lent and aspiring spirits of the nation can be 
turned either towards military advancement. 
or to offices and distinction about the Court, 
the legislative bodies may be gradually made 
subservient in most things to the will of the 
Government ; — and by skilful management, 
may be rendered almost as tractable and in- 
significant, as they have actually been in the 
previous stages of their existence. On the 
other hand, if the discordant materials, out 
of wh : ch the higher branch of the legislature 
is to be composed, should ultimately arrange 
it into two hostile parties, — of the old Noblesse 
on the one hand, and the active individuals 
. who have fought their way to distinction 
through scenes of democratic and imperial 
tyranny, on the other, it is greatly to be feared, 
that the body of the nation will soon be divi- 
ded into the same factions; and that while 
the Court throws all its influence into the 
scale of the former, the latter will in time 
unite the far more formidable weight of the 
military body — the old republicans, and all 
who are either discontented at their lot, or 
impatient of peaceful times. By their assist- 
ance, and that of the national vehemence 
and love of change, it will most probably get 



the command of the legislative body and the 
capital j — and then, unless the Prince play his 
part with singular skill, as well as temper, 
there will be imminent hazard of a revolu- 
tion. — not Jess disastrous perhaps than that 
which has just been completed. 

Of these two catastrophes, the first, which 
would be the least lamentable or hopeless, 
seems, in the present temper of the times, to 
be rather the most likely to happen; — and, 
even though it should occur, the government 
would most probably be considerably more 
advanced toward freedom than it has ever yet 
been in that country — and the organisation 
would remain entire, into which the breath 
of liberty might be breathed, as soon as the 
growing spirit of patriotism and intelligence 
had again removed the shackles of authority. 
Against the second and more dreadful catas 
trophe, and in some considerable degree 
against both, there seems to exist a reason- 
able security in the small numbers and general 
M-eakness of that part of the old aristocracy 
which has survived to reclaim its privileges. 
One of the basts of the new constitution, and 
perhaps the most important of them all, is, 
that every subject of the kingdom shall be 
equally capable of all honours or employ- 
ments Mad the Sovereign, however, \a ho is 
the fountain of honour and the giver of em- 
ployment, returned with that great train of 
nobility which waited in the court of his pre- 
decessor, this vital regulation, we fear, miiilit 
have proved a mere dead letter ; aid the 
same unjust monopoly of power and distinc- 
tion that originally overthrew the ti.rone > 
might again have sapped its foundations — 
As things now are, however, there are far loo 
few of that order to sustain such a monopoly ; 
and the prince must of necessity employ sub- 
jects of all ranks and degrees, in situations of 
the greatest dignity and importance. A real 
equality of rights will thus be practically re- 
cognised ; and a fair and intelligent distribu- 
tion of power and consideration will go far to 
satisfy the wishes of every party in the state, 
or at least to disarm those who would foment 
discontents and disaffection, of their most 
plausible topics and pretexts. 

On the whole, then, we think France has 
now a tolerable prospect of obtaining a free 
government — and, without extraordinary mis- 
management, is almost sure of many great 
improvements on her ancient system. Her 
great security and panacea must be a spirit of 
genera] mildness, and mutual indulgence and 
toleration. All parties have something to 
forgive, and something to be forgiven ; and 
there is much in ihe history of the Inst 
twenty-five years, which it would be for the 
general interest, and the general credit of 
the country, to consign to oblivion. The scene 
has opened, we think, under the happiest 
auguries in this respect. The manner of the 
abdication, and the manner of the restoration, 
are ominous, we think, of forbearance and 
conciliation in all the quarters from which 
intractable feelings were most to be appre 
hended ; and the commanding example of the 
Emperor Alexander, will go further to dittusr 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



587 



juid coMum this spirit, than the professions 
or exhortations of any of the parties more 
immediately concerned. The blood of the 
Bourbons too, we believe to be mild and tem- 
perate ; and the adversity by which their 
illustrious Chief has so long been tried, we 
are persuaded, has not altered its sweetness. 
He is more anxious, we make no doubt, to 
relieve the sufferings, than to punish the of- 
fences, of any part of his subjects — and re- 
turns, we trust, to the impoverished cities and 
wasted population of his country, with feel- 
ings, not of vengeance, but of pity. If to the 
philanthropy which belongs to his race, he 
could but join the firmness and activity in 
which they have been supposed to be want- 
ing, he might be the most glorious king of the 
happiest people that ever escaped from ty- 
ranny; and, we fondly hope that fortune and 
prudence will combine to render the era of 
his accession for ever celebrated in the grate- 
ful memory of his people. In the mean time, 
his most dangerous enemies are the Royalists ; 
and the only deadly error he can commit, is to 
rely on his own popularity or personal au- 
thority. 

If we are at all right in this prognostication, 
there should be little doubt on the only re- 
maining subject of discussion. It must be 
favourable to the general interests of free- 
dom, that a free government is established in 
France ; and the principles of liberty, both 
here and elsewhere, must be strengthened by 
this large accession to her domains. There 
are persons among us, however, who think 
otherwise, — or profess at least to see, in the 
great drama which has just been completed, 
no other moral than this — that rebellion 
against a lawful sovereign, is uniformly fol- 
lowed with great disasters, and ends in the 
complete demolition and exposure of the in- 
surgents, and the triumphal restoration of the 
rightful Prince. These reasoners find it con- 
venient to take a very compendious and sum- 
mary view indeed of the great transactions of 
which they thus extract the essence — and 
positively refuse to look at any other points in 
the eventful history before them, but that the 
line of the Bourbons was expelled, and that 
great atrocities and great miseries ensued — 
that the nation then fell under a cruel despo- 
tism, and that all things are set to rights again 
by the restoration of the Bourbons ! The com- 
fortable conclusion which they draw, or wish 
at least to be drawn, from these premises, is, 
that if the lesson have its proper effect, this 
restoration will make every king on the Con- 
tinent more absolute than ever; and confirm 
every old government in an attachment to its 
most inveterate abuses. 

It is not worth while, perhaps, to combat 
these extravagancies by reasoning ; — Yet, in 
their spirit, they come so near certain opinions 
that seem to have obtained currency in this 
country, that it is necessary to say a word or 
two with regard to them. We shall merely 
observe, therefore, that the Bourbons were 
expelled, on account of great faults and abuses 
in the old system of the government; and that 
they have only been restored upon condition 



that these abuses shall be abolished. They 
were expelled, in short, because they were 
Arbitrary monarchs ; and they are only re- 
stored, upon paction and security that they 
shall be arbitrary no longer. This is the true 
summary of the great transaction that has 
just been completed ; and the correct result 
of the principles that regulated its begin- 
ning and its ending. The intermediate pro- 
ceedings, too, bear the very same charac- 
ter. After the abolition of the old royalty, 
the nation fell no doubt into great disorders 
and disasters, — not, however, for want of the 
old abuses, — or even of the old line of sove- 
reigns, — but in consequence of new abuses, 
crimes, and usurpations. These also they 
strove to rectify and repress as they best 
could, by expelling or cutting off the delin- 
quents, and making provision against the re- 
currence of this new form of tyranny ; — at 
last, they fell under the arbitrary rule of a 
great military commander, and for some time 
rejoiced in a subjection which insured their 
tranquillity. By and by, however, the evils 
of this tyranny were found far to outweigh its 
advantages; and when the destruction of his 
military force gave them an opportunity of 
expressing their sentiments, the nation rose 
against him as one man, and expelled him 
also, for his tyranny, from that throne, from 
which, for a much smaller degree of the same 
fault, they had formerly expelled the Bour- 
bons. — Awaking then to the advantages of an 
undisputed title to the crown, and recovered 
from the intoxication of their first burst into 
political independence, they ask- the ancient 
line' of their kings, whether they will renounce 
the arbitrary powers which had been claimed 
by their predecessors, and submit to a con- 
stitutional control from the representatives of 
the people % and upon their solemn consent 
and cordial acquiescence in those conditions, 
they recal them to the throne, and enrol them- 
selves as their free and loyal subjects. 

The lesson, then, which is taught by the 
whole history is, that oppressive governments 
must also be insecure : and that, after nations 
have attained to a certain measure of intel- 
ligence, the liberty of the people is necessary 
to the stability of the throne. We may dis- 
pute for ever about the immediate or acci- 
dental causes of the French revolution ; but 
no man of reflection can now doubt, that its 
true and efficient cause, was the undue limi- 
tation of the rights and privileges of the great 
body of the people, after their wealth and 
intelligence had virtually entitled them to 
greater consequence. Embarrassments in 
finance, or blunders, or ambition in particular 
individuals, may have determined the time 
and the manner of the explosion ; but it was 
the system which withheld all honours and 
distinctions from the mass of the people, after 
nature had made them capable of them, which 
laid the train, and filled the mine that pro- 
duced it. Had the government of France 
been free in 1788, the throne of its monarch 
might have bid a proud defiance to deficits 
in the treasury, or disorderly ambition in a 
thousand Mirabeaus. Had the people en 



688 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



joyed their due weight in the administra- 
tion of the government, and their due share 
in the distribution of its patronage, there 
would have been no democratic insurrection, 
a d no materials indeed for such a catastrophe 
as ensued. That movement, like all great 
nat onal movements, was produced by a sense 
of injustice and oppression; and though its 
immediate consequences were far more dis- 
astrous than the evils by which it had been 
provoked, it should never be forgotten, that 
those evils were the necessary and lamented 
causes of the whole. The same principle, 
indeed, of the necessary connection of oppres- 
sion and insecurity, may be traced through 
all the honors of the revolutionary period. 
What, after all, was it but their tyranny that 
supplanted Marat and Robespierre, and over- 
threw the tremendous power of the wretches 
for whom they made way 1 Or, to come to its 
last and most conspicuous application, does 
any one imagine, that if Bonaparte had been 
a just, mild, and equitable sovereign, under 
whom the people enjoyed equal rights and 
impartial protection, he would ever have been 
hurled from his throne, or the Bourbons in- 
vited to replace him ?• He, too. fell ultimately 
a victim to his tyranny :— and his fall, and 
their restoration on the terms that have been 
stated, concur to show, that there is but one 
condition by which, in an enlightened age, 
the loyalty of nations can be secured — the 
condition of -their being treated with kindness: 
and but one bulwark by which thrones can 
now be protected — the attachment and con- 
scious interest of a free and intelligent people. 
This is the lesson which the French revo- 
lution reads aloud to mankind ] and which, in 
its origin, in its progress, and in its termina- 
tion, it tends equally to impress. It shows 
also, no doubt, the dangers of popular insur- 
rection, and the dreadful excesses into which 
a people will be hurried, who rush at once 
from a condition of servitude to one of un- 
bounded licentiousness. But the state of 
servitude leads necessarily to resistance and 
insurrection, when the measure of wrong and 
of intelligence is full ; and though the history 
before us holds out most awful warnings as 
to the reluctance and the precautions with 
which resistance should be attempted, it is 
so far from showing that it either can or ought 
to be repressed, that it is the very moral of 
the whole tragedy, and of each of its separate 
acts, that resistance is as inevitably the effect, 
as it is immediately the cure and the punish- 
ment of oppression. The crimes and excesses 
with which the revolution may be attended, 
will be more or less violent in proportion to 
the severity of the preceding tyranny, and 
the degree of ignorance and degradation in 
which it has kept the body of the people. 
The rebellion of West India slaves is more 
atrocious than the insurrection of a Parisian 
populace ; — and that again far more fierce 
and sanguinary than the movements of an 
English revolution. But in all cases, the 
radical guilt is in the tyranny which compels 
the resistance; and they who are the authors 
of the misery and the degradation, are also 



responsible for the act.-.; of passion and debar- 
ment to which they naturally lead. If the 
natural course of a stream be obstructed, the 
pent up waters will, to a certainty, sooner or 
later bear down the bulwarks by vhich they 
are confined. The devastation which may 
ensue, however, is not to be ascribed to the 
weakness of those bulwarks, but to the funda- 
mental folly of their erection. The stronger 
they had been made, the more dreadful, and 
not the less. certain, would have been the 
ultimate eruption ; and the only practical les- 
son to be learned from the catastrophe is, that 
the great agents and elementary energies of 
nature are never dangerous but when they 
are repressed ; and that the only way to guide 
and disarm them, is to provide a safe and 
ample channel for their natural operation. 
The laws of the physical world, however, are 
not more absolute than those of the moral; 
nor is the principle of the rebound of elastic 
bodies more strictly demonstrated than the 
reaction of rebellion and tyranny. 

If there ever was a time, however, when it 
might be permitted to doubt of this principle, 
it certainly is not the time when the tyranny 
of Napoleon has just overthrown the mightiest 
empire that pride and ambition ever erected 
on the rains of justice and freedom. Pro- 
tected as he was by the vast military sys- 
tem he had drawn up before him, and still 
more, perhaps, by the dread of that chaotic 
and devouring gulf of Revolution which still 
yawned behind him, and threatened to swal- 
low up all who might drive -him from his 
place, he was yet unable to maintain a do- 
minion which stoQcl openly arrayed against 
the rights and liberties of mankind. But if 
tyranny and oppression, and the abuse of im- 
perial power have cast down the throne of 
Bonaparte, guarded as it was with force and 
terror, and all that art could devise to embar- 
rass, or glory furnish to dazzle and over-awe. 
what tyrannical throne can be expected to 
stand "hereafter? or what contrivances can se- 
cure an oppressive sovereign from the ven- 
geance of an insurgent people 1 Looking only 
to the extent of his resources, and the skill 
and vigour of his arrangements, no sovereign 
on the Continent seemed half so firm in his 
place as Bonaparte did but two years ago. 
There was the canker of tyranny, however, 
in the full-blown flower of his greatness. 
With all the external signs of power and pros- 
perity, he was weak, because he was unjust 
— he was insecure, because he was oppressive 
— and his state was assailed from without, and 
deserted from within, for no other reason than 
that his ambitious and injurious proceedings 
had alienated the affections of his people, and 
alarmed the fears of his neighbours. 

The moral, then, of the grand drama which 
has occupied the scene of civilised Europe for 
upwards of twenty years, is, we think, at last 
sufficiently unfolded ; — and strange indeed 
and deplorable it certainly were, if all that 
labour should have been without fruit, and all 
that suffering in vaim Something, surely, for 
our own guidance, and for that of our posteri- 
ty, we ou$ht at last to learn, from so painful 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



3SS 



and so cosily in experiment. We have lived 
ages in these twenty years J and have seen 
condensed, into the period of one short life, 
the experience of eventful centuries. All the 
moral and all the political elements that en- 
gender or diversify great revolutions, have 
been set in action, and made to produce their 
full effect before us; and all the results of 
misgovernment, in all its forms and in all its 
extremes, have been exhibited, on the grand- 
est scale, in our view. Whatever quiescent 
indolence or empiric rashness, individual am- 
bition or popular fury, unrectified enthusiasm 
or brutal profligacy, could do to disorder the 
counsels and embroil the affairs of a mighty 
nation, has been tried, without fear and with- 
out moderation. We have witnessed the full 
operation of every sort of guilt, and of every 
sort of energy — the errors of strength and the 
errors of weakness — and the mingling or con- 
trasting effects of terror and vanity, and wild 
speculations and antiquated prejudices, on the 
\vhole population of Europe. There has been 
an excitement and a conflict to which there 
is nothing parallel in the history of any past 
generation ; and it may be said, perhcTps with- 
out any great extravagance, that during the 
few years that have elapsed since the break- 
ing out of the French revolution, men have 
thought and acted, and sinned and suffered, 
more than in all the ages that have passed 
since their creation. In that short period, 
every thing has been questioned, every thing 
has been suggested — and every thing has 
been tried. There is scarcely any conceiva- 
ble combination of circumstances under which 
men have not been obliged to act, and to an- 
ticipate and to suffer the consequences of 
their acting. The most insane imaginations 
— the most fantastic theories — the most hor- 
rible abominations, have all been reduced to 
practice, and taken seriously upon trial. Noth- 
ing is now left, it would appear, to be projected 
or attempted in government. We have ascer- 
tained experimentally the consequences of all 
extremes ; and exhausted, in the real history 
of twenty-five years, all the problems that can 
be supplied by the whole science of politics. 
Something must have been learned from 
this great condensation of experience ; — some 
leading propositions, either positive or nega- 
tive, must have been established in the course 
of it : — And although we perhaps are as yet 
too near the tumult and agitation of the catas- 
trophe, to be able to judge with precision of 
their positive value and amount, we can hard- 
ly be mistaken as to their general tendency 
and import. The clearest and most indis- 
putable result is, that the prodigious advan- 
ces made by the body of the people, through- 
out the better parts of Europe, in wealth, 
consideration, and intelligence, had rendered 
the ancient institutions and exclusions of the 
old continental governments altogether un- 
suitable to their actual condition ; that public 
opinion had tacitly acquired a commanding 
and uncontrollable power in every enlight- 
ened community; and that, to render its 
operation in any degree safe, or consistent 
with any regular plan of administration, it 



was absolutely necessary to contrive some 
means for bringing it to act directly on the 
machine of government, and for bringing it 
regularly ami openly to bear on the public 
counsels of the country. This was not ne- 
cessary while the bulk of the people were 
poor, abject, and brutish, — and tue nobles 
alone had either education, property, or ac- 
quaintance with affairs; and it was during 
that period that the institutions were adopted, 
which were maintained too long for the peace 
and credit of the world. Public opinion over- 
threw those in France ; and the shock was 
felt in every feudal monarchy in Europe. 
But this sudden extrication of a noble and 
beneficent principle, produced, at first, far 
greater evils than those which had proceeded 
from its repression. "Th' extravagant and 
erring spirit " was not yet enshrined in any 
fitting organisation ; and, acting without bal- 
ance or control, threw -the whole mass of 
society into wilder and more terrible disorder 
than had ever been experienced before its 
disclosure. It was then tried to compress it 
again into inactivity by violence and intimida- 
tion : But it could not be so over-mastered — 
nor laid to rest, by all the powerful conjura- 
tions of the reign of terror; and, after a long 
and painful struggle under the pressure of a 
military despotism, it has again broken loose, 
and pointed at last to the natural and appro- 
priate remedy, of embodying it in a free Rep- 
resentative Constitution, through, the medita- 
tion of which it may diffuse life and vigour 
through every member of society. 

The true theory of that great revolution 
therefore is, that it was produced by the re- 
pression or practical disregard of public opin- 
ion, and that the evils with which it was 
attended, were occasioned by the want of 
any institution to control and regulate the 
application of that opinion to the actual man- 
agement of affairs : — And the 'grand moral 
that may be gathered from the whole event- 
ful history, seems therefore to be, that in an 
enlightened period of society, no government 
can be either prosperous or secure, which 
does not provide for expressing and giving 
effect to the general sense of the community. 

This, it must be owned, is a lesson worth 
buying at some cost : — and, looking back on 
the enormous price we have paid for it, it is no 
slight gratification to perceive, that it seems 
not only to have been emphatically taught, 
but effectually learned. In every corner of 
Europe, principles of moderation and liber- 
ality are at last not only professed, but, to 
some extent, acted upon ; and doctrines equal- 
ly favourable to the liberty of individuals, 
and the independence of nations, are univer 
sally promulgated, in quarters where some 
little jealousy of their influence might have 
been both expected and excused. If any one 
doubts of the progress which the principles 
of liberty have made since the beginning of 
the French revolution, and of the efficacy of 
that lesson which its events have impressed 
on every court of the Continent, let him com- 
pare the conduct of the Allies at this moment. 
with that which they held in 1790- -let him 
2Z 



590 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



contrast the treaty of Pilnitz with the decla- 
ration of Frankfort — and set on one hand 
the proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick 
upon entering the French territories in 1792, 
and that of the Emperor of Russia on the 
same occasion in 1814; — let him think haw 
La Fayette and Dumourier were treated at 
the former period, and what honours have 
been lavished on Moreau and Bernadotte in 
the latter — or, without dwelling on particu- 
lars, let him ask himself, whether it would 
have been tolerated among the loyal Antigal- 
licans of that day, to have proposed, in a mo- 
ment of victory, that a representative assem- 
bly should share the powers of legislation 
with the restored sovereign — that the noblesse 
should renounce all their privileges, except 
such as were purely honorary — that citizens 
of all ranks should be equally eligible to all 
employments — that all the officers and digni- 
taries of the revolutionary government should 
retain their rank — that the nation should be 
taxed only by its representatives — that all 
sorts of national property should be ratified, 
and that perfect toleration in religion, liberty 
of the press, and trial by jury, should be es- 
tablished. Such, however, are the chief bases 
of that constitution, which was cordially ap- 
proved by the Allied Sovereigns, after they 
were in possession of Paris; and, with refer- 
ence to which, their August Chief made that 
remarkable declaration, in the face of Europe, 
"That France stood in need of strong institu- 
tions, and such as were suited to the intelli- 
gence of the age." 

Such is the improved creed of modern courts, 
as to civil liberty and the rights of individuals. 
With regard to national justice and independ- 
ence again, — is there any one so romantic as 
to believe, that if the Allied Sovereigns had 
dissipated the armies of the republic, and 
entered the metropolis as conquerors in 1792, 
they would have left to France all her ancient 
territories, — or religiously abstained from in- 
terfering in the settlement of her government, 
—or treated her baffled warriors and states- 
men with honourable courtesies, and her 
humbled and guilty Chief with magnanimous 
forbearance and clemency % The conduct we 
have just witnessed, in all these particulars, 
is wise and prudent, no doubt, as well as mag- 
nanimous ; — and the splendid successes which 
have crowned the arms of the present Deliv- 
erers of Europe, may be ascribed even more 
to the temper than to the force with which 
they have been wielded ; — certainly more to 
the plain justice and rational ty of the cause 
in which they were raised, than to either. — 
Yet those very successes exclude all supposi- 
tion of this justice and liberality being assum- 
ed out of fear or necessity ; — and establish the 
sincerity of those professions, which it would 
no doubt have been the best of all policy at 
any rate to have made. It is equally decisive, 
however, of the merit of the agents and of 
the principles, that the most liberal maxims 
were held out by the most decided victors; 
and the greatest honours paid to civil and to 
national freedom, when it was most in their 
power to have crushed the one, and invaded 



the other. Nothing, in short, can account for 
the altered tone and altered policy of the great 
Sovereigns of the Continent, but their growing 
conviction of the necessity of regulated free- 
dom to the peace and prosperity of the world, 
— but their feeling that, in the more enlight- 
ened parts of Europe, men could no longer be 
governed but by their reason, and that justice 
and moderation were the only true safeguards 
of a polished throne. By this high testimony, 
we think, the cause of Liberty is at length set 
up above all hazard of calumny or discounte- 
nance ; — and its interests, we make no doubt, 
will be more substantially advanced, by being 
thus freely and deliberately recognised, in the 
face of Europe, by its mightiest and most 
absolute princes, than they could otherwise 
have been by all the reasonings of philosophy, 
and the toils of patriotism, for many succes- 
sive generations. 

While this is the universal feeling among 
those who have the best opportunity, and the 
strongest interest to form a just opinion on 
the subject, it is not a little strange and mor- 
tifying, that there should still be a party in 
this country, who consider those great trans- 
actions under a different aspect; — who look 
with jealousy and grudging upon all that has 
been done for the advancement of freedom ; 
and think the splendour of the late events 
considerably tarnished by those stipulations 
for national liberty, which form to other eyes 
their most glorious and happy feature. We 
do not say this invidiously, nor out of any 
spirit of faction : But the fact is unquestion- 
able ; — and it is worth while both to record, 
and to try to account for it. An arrangement, 
which satisfies all the arbitrary Sovereigns 
of Europe, and is cordially adopted by the 
Monarch who is immediately affected by it, 
is objected to as too democratical, by a party 
in this free country ! The Autocrator of all 
the Russias — the Imperial Chief of the Ger- 
manic principalities — the Military Sovereign 
of Prussia — are all agreed, that France should 
have a free government : Nay, the King of 
France himself is thoroughly persuaded of 
the same great truth; — and all the world 
rejoices at its ultimate acknowledgment — 
except only the Tories of England ! They 
cannot conceal their mortification at this final 
triumph of the popular cause; and, while 
they rejoice at the restoration of the King to 
the throne of his ancestors, and the recal of 
his loyal nobility to their ancient honours, are 
evidently not a little hurt at the advantages 
which have been, at the same time, secured 
to the People. They are very glad, certainly, 
to see Louis XVIII. on the throne of Napoleon, 
— but they would have liked him better if he 
had not spoken so graciously to the Marshals 
of the revolution, — if he Had not so freely 
accepted the constitution which restrained his 
prerogative, — nor so cordially held out the 
hand of conciliation to all descriptions of his 
subjects : — if he had been less magnanimous 
in short, less prudent, and less amiable. It 
would have answered better to their ideas of 
a glorious restoration, if it could have been 
accomplished without any conditions ; and if 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



591 



the Prince had thrown himself entirely into 
the hands of those bgotted emigrants, who 
affect to be displeased with his acceptance 
of a limited crown. In their eyes, the thing 
would have been more complete, if the no- 
blesse had been restored at once to ail their 
feudal privileges, and the church to its ancient 
endowments. And we cannot help suspect- 
ing, that they think the loss of those vain and 
oppressive trappings, but ill compensated by 
tne increased dignity and worth of the whole 
population, by the equalisation of essential 
rights, and the provision made for the free 
enjoyment of life, property, and conscience, 
by the great body of the people. 

Perhaps we exaggerate a little in our rep- 
resentation of sentiments in which we do not 
at all concur: — But, certainly, in conversa- 
tion and in common newspapers— those light 
straws that best show how the wind sits — 
one hearn and sees, every day, things that 
approach at Wst to the spirit we have at- 
tempted to delmeate, — and afford no slight 
presumption of the prevalence of such opin- 
ions as we lament, li; lamenting them, how- 
ever, we would not indiscriminately blame. 
— They are not all to be ascribed to a spirit 
of servility, or a disregard of the happiness 
of mankind. Here, as in other heresies, there 
is an intermixture of errors that ire to be 
pardoned, and principles that are to be re- 
spected. There are patriotic prejudices, and 
illusions of the imagination, and misconcep- 
tions from ignorance, at the bottom of ihiirf 
unnatural antipathy to freedom in the citizens 
of a free land ; as well as more sordid inter- 
ests, and more wilful perversions. Some 
«turdy Englishmen are staunch for our mo- 
lopoly of liberty ; and feel as if it was an 
.-iisokut invasion of British privileges, for any 
oJier nation to set up a free constitution ! — 
Others \pprchend serious dangers to our great- 
ness, h this mainspring and fountain of our 
prosperity be communicated to other lands. — 
A still greater proportion, we believe, are in- 
fluenced by considerations yet more fantasti- 
cal. — They have been «o ^ngused to consider 
the old government of F'ar.ce as the perfect 
model of a feudal monarchy, softened and 
adorned by the refinements of modern society, 
that they are quite sorry to pait with so fine 
a specimen of chivalrous manners and institu- 
tions; and look upon it, with all its character- 
istic and imposing accompaniments, of a bril- 
liant and warlike nobility, — agallam court, — 
a gorgeous hierarchy. — a gay and familiar 
vassalage, with the same sort of feelings witi) 
which they would be apt to regard the sump- 
tuous pageantry and splendid solemnities of 
the Romish ritual. They are very good Pro- 
testants themselves ; and know too well the 
value of religious truth and liberty, to wish 
for any less simple, or more imposing system 
at home : but they have no objection that it 
should exist among their neighbours, that 
their taste may be gratified by the magnificent 
spectae'es it affords, and their imaginations 
warmed with the ideas of venerable and 
pompous antiquity, which it is so well fitted 
to suggest. The case is nearly the same with 



their ideas of the old French monarchy. They 
have read Burke, till their fancies are some- 
what heated with the picturesque image of 
tempered royalty and polished aristocracy, 
which he has held out in his splendid pictures 
of Fiance as it was before the revolution ', 
and have been so long accustomed to contrast 
those comparatively happy and prosperous 
days, with the horrors and vulgar atrocities 
that ensued, that they forget the many real 
evils and oppressions of which that brilliant 
monarchy was productive, and think that the 
succeeding abominations cannot be complete- 
ly expiated till it be restored as it originally 
existed. 

All these, and we believe many other illu- 
sions of a similar nature, slight and fanciful 
as they may appear, contribute largely, we 
have no doubt, to that pardonable feeling of 
dislike to the limitation of the old monarchy, 
which we conceive to be Very discernible in 
a certain part of our population. The great 
source of that feeling, however, and that 
which gives root and nourishment to all the 
rest, is the Ignorance which prevails in this 
country, both of the evils of arbitrary govern- 
ment, and of the radical change in the feel- 
ings and opinions of the Continent, which has 
rendered it no longer practicable in its more 
enlightened quarters. Our insular situation, 
and the measure of freedom we enjoy, have 
done us this injury ; along with the infinite 
good of which they have been the occasions. 
We do not know either the extent of the misery 
and weakness produced by tyranny, or the 
f orce and prevalence of the conviction which 
h<:s i ->cently arisen, where they are best known, 
that they are no longer to be tolerated. On 
the Continent, experience has at last done 
far more to enlighten public opinion upon 
these subjects, than reflection and reasoning 
in this Island. There, nations have been 
found irresistible, when the popular feeling 
was consulted ; and absolutely impotent and 
indefensible where it had been outraged and 
disregarded : And this necessity of consulting 
the general opinion, has led, on both sides, to 
a great relaxation of many of ihe principles 
on which they originally- went to issue. 

Of this change in the terms of the ques- 
tion — and especially of the great abatement 
which it had been found necessary to make 
in the pretensions of the old governments, we 
were generally but little aware in this country. 
Spectators as we have been of the distant and 
protracted contest between ancient institutions 
[ cud authorities on the one hand, and demo- 
1 cratical innovation on the other, we are apt 
still to look upon the parties to that contest, 
as occupying nearly the same positions, and 
maintaining the same principles, they did at 
the beginning; while those who have been 
nearer to the scene of action, or themselves 
partakers of the fray, are aware that, in the 
course of that long conflict, each party has 
been obliged to recede from some of its pre- 
tensions, and to admit, in some degree, the 
justice of those that are made against it. 
Here, where w r e have been but too apt to con 
sider the mighty game which has been piny- 



592 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



ing in our sight, and partly at our expense, as 
an occasion for exercising our own party ani- 
mosities, or seeking illustrations for our pecu- 
liar theories of government, we are still as 
diametrically opposed, and as keen in our 
hostilities, as ever. The controversy with us 
being m a great measure speculative, would 
lose its interest and attraction, if anything 
like a compromise were admitted ; and we 
choose, therefore, to shut our eyes to the great 
and visible approximation into which time, 
and experience, and necessity have forced the 
actual combatants. We verily believe, that, 
except in the imaginations of English politi- 
cians, there no longer exist in the world any 
such aristocrats and democrats as actually 
divided all Europe in the early days of the 
French revolution. In this country, however, 
we still speak and feel as if they existed ; and 
the champions of aristocracy in particular, con- 
tinue, with very few exceptions, both to main- 
ta n pretensions that their principals have long 
ago abandoned, and to impute to their adver- 
saries, crimes and absurdities with which 
they have long ceased to be chargeable. To 
them, therefore, no other alternative has yet 
presented itself but the absolute triumph of 
one or other of two opposite and irreconcile- 
able extremes. Whatever is taken from the 
sovereign, they consider as being necessarily 
given to crazy republicans ; and very naturally 
dislike all limitations of the royal power, be- 
cause they are unable to distinguish them 
from usurpations by the avowed enemies of all 
subordination. That the real state of things has 
long been extremely different, men of reflec- 
tion might have concluded from the known 
principles of human nature, and men of infor- 
mation must have learned from sources of un- 
doubted authority : But no small proportion of 
our zealous politicians belong to neither of 
those classes ; and we ought not, perhaps, to 
w T onder, if they are slow in admitting truths 
which a predominating party has so long- 
thought it for its interest to misrepresent or 
disguise. The time, however, seems almost 
come, when conviction must be forced even 
upon their reluctant understandings. — and by 
the sort of evidence best suited to their capa- 
city. They would probably be little moved by 
the best arguments that could be addressed to 
them, and might distrust the testimony of or- 
dinary observers; but they cannot well refuse 
to yield to the opinions of the great Sovereigns 
of the Continent, and must even give faith to 
their professions, when they find them con- 
firmed at all points by their actions. If the 
establishment of a limited monarchy in France 
would be dangerous to sovereign authority in 
all the adjoining regions, it is not easy to con- 
ceive that it should have met with the cordial 
approbation of the Emperors of Austria and 
Russia, and the King of Prussia, in the day of 
their most brilliant success; or that that mo- 
ment of triumph on the part of the old princes 
of Europe should have been selected as the 
period when the thrones of France, and Spain, 
and Holland, were to be surrounded with per- 
manent limitations, — imposed with their cor- 
dial assent, and we might almost say, by their 



hands. Compared with acts so unequivocal, 
all declarations may justly be regarded as in- 
significant: but there are declarations also to 
the same purpose; — made freely and deliber- 
ately on occasions of unparalleled importance, 
— and for no other intelligible purpose but 
solemnly to announce to mankind the generous 
principle on which those mighty actions had 
been performed. 

But while these authorities and these con- 
siderations may be expected, in due time, to 
overcome that pardonable dislike to conti- 
nental liberty which arises from ignorance or 
natural prejudices, we will confess that we 
by no means reckon on the total disappear- 
ance of this illiberal jealousy. There is, and 
we fear there will always be, among us, a set 
of persons who conceive it to be for their in- 
terest to decry every thing that is favourable 
to liberty, — and who are guided only by a re- 
gard to their interest. In a government con- 
stituted like ours, the Court must almost 
always be more or less jealous, and peihap/ 
justly, of the encroachment of popular prin- 
ciples, and disposed to show favour to those 
who would diminish the influence and au- 
thority of such principles. Without intending 
or wishing to render the British crown alto- 
gether arbitrary, it still seems to them to be 
in favour of its constitutional privileges, that 
arbitrary monarchies should, to a certain ex- 
tent, be defended; and an artful apology for 
tyranny is gratefully received as an argument 
a fortiori in support of a vigorous preroga- 
tive. The leaders of the party, therefore, lean 
that w T ay ; and their baser followers rush cla- 
morously along it — to the very brink of servile 
sedition, and treason against the constitution. 

Such men no arguments will silence, and 
no authorities convert. It is their profession 
to discredit and oppose all that tends to pro- 
mote the freedom of mankind ; and in that 
vocation they will infallibly labour, so long as 
it yields them a profit. At the present mo- 
ment, too, we have no doubt, that their zeal 
is quickened by their alarm ; since, independ- 
ent of the general damage -which the cause 
of arbitrary government must sustain from the 
events of which we have been speaking, their 
immediate consequences in this country are 
likely to be eminently favourable to the in- 
terests of regulated liberty and temperate re- 
form. Next to the actual cessation of blood- 
shed and suffering, indeed, we consider this 
to be the greatest domestic benefit that we 
are likely to reap from the peace, — and the 
circumstance, in our new situation, which calls 
the loudest for our congratulation. We are 
perfectly aware, that it is a subject of regret 
to many patriotic individuals, that the brilliant 
successes at which w T e all rejoice, should have 
occurred ,i«der an administration which has 
not. rnanife id any extraordinary dislike to 
abuses, nor y very cordial attachment to the 
rights and *berties of the people ; and we 
know, tha. it has been an opinion pretty cur- 
rent, both with them and their antagonists, 
that those successes will fix them so firmly in 
power, that they will be enabled, if they should 
be so inclined, to deal more largely in abuses, 



RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS. 



593 



and to press more closely on our liberties, than 
any of their predecessors. For our own part, 
however, we have never been able to see 
things in this inauspicious light; — and having 
no personal or factious quarrel with our pres- 
ent ministers, are easily comforted for the in- 
creased chance of their continuance in office, 
by a consideration of those circumstances that 
must infallibly, under any ministry, operate 
lo facilitate reform, to diminish the power of 
the Crown, and to consolidate the liberties of 
the nation. If our readers agree with us in 
our estimate of the importance of these cir- 
cumstances, we can scarcely doubt that they 
will concur in our general conclusion. 

In the first place, then, it is obvious, that 
the direct patronage and indirect influence or 
the Crown must be most seriously and effect- 
ually abridged by the reduction of our armb- 
and navy, the diminution of our taxes, and, 
generally speaking, of all our establishments, 
upon the ratification of peace. We have 
thought it a great deal gained for the Consti- 
tution of late years, when we could strike oft 
a few hundred thousand pounds of offices in 
the gift of the Crown, that had become use- 
less, or might be consolidated: — and now the 
peace will, at one blow, strike off probably 
thirty or forty millions of government expendi- 
ture, ordinary or extraordinary. This alone 
might restore the balance of the Constitution. 

In the next place, a continuance of peace 
and prosperity will naturally produce a greater 
diffusion of wealth, and consequently a greater 
spirit of independence in the body of the peo- 
ple; which, co-operating with the diminished 
power of the government to' provide for its 
baser adherents, must speedily thin the ranks 
of its regular supporters, and expose it far 
more effectually to the control of a weightier 
and more impartial public opinion. 

In the third place, the events to which we 
have alluded, and the situation in which they 
will leave us, will take away almost all those 
pretexts for resisting inquiry into abuses, and 
proposals for reform, by the help of which, 
rather than of any serious dispute on the prin- 
ciple, these important discussions have been 
waived for these last tAventy years. We shall 
no longer be stopped with the plea of its being 
no fit time to quarrel about the little faults or 
our Constitution, when we are struggling with 
a ferocious enemy for its very existence. It 
will not now do to tell us, that it is both dan- 
gerous and disgraceful to show ourselves dis- 
united in a season of such imminent peril — or 
that all great and patriotic minds should be 
entirely engrossed with the care of our safety, 
and can have neither leisure nor energy to 
bestow upon concerns less urgent or vital. 
The restoration of peace, on the contrary, will 
soon leave us little else to do; — and when we 
have no invasions nor expeditions — nor coali- 
tions nor campaigns — nor even any loans and 
budgets to fill the minds of our statesmen, and 
the ears of our idle politicians, we think it al- 
most certain that questions of reform will rise 
into paramount importance, and the redress 
of abuses become the most interesting of pub- 
lic pursuits. We shall be once more entitled, 
75 



too, to make a fair and natural appeal to the 
analogous acts or institutions of other nations, 
without being met by the cry of revolution 
and democracy, or the imputation of abetting 
the proceedings of a sanguinary despot. We 
shall again see the abuses of old hereditary 
power, and the evils of maladministration in 
legitimate hands; and be permitted to argue 
from them, without the reproach of disaffec- 
tion to the general cause of mankind. Men 
and things, in short, we trust, will again re- 
ceive their true names, on a fair consideration 
of their merits; and our notions of political 
desert be no longer confounded by indiscrimi- 
nate praise of all who are with us, and in- 
tolerant abuse of all who are against us, in a 
struggle that touches the sources of so many 
passions. When we plead for the emancipa- 
tion of the Catholics of Ireland, we shall no 
longer be told that the Pope is a mere puppet 
in the hands of an inveterate foe, — nor be de- 
terred from protesting against the conflagration 
of a friendly capital, by the suggestion, that 
no other means were left to prevent that same 
foe from possessing himself of its fleet. Ex- 
ceptions and extreme cases, in short, will no 
longer furnish the ordinary rules of our con- 
duct ; and it will be impossible, by extraneous 
arguments, to baffle every attempt at a fair es- 
timate of our public principles and proceedings. 

These, we think, are among the necessary 
consequences of a peace concluded in such 
circumstances as we have now been consider- 
ing; and they are but a specimen of the kin- 
dred consequences to which it must infallibly 
lead. If these ensue, however, and are al- 
lowed to produce their natural effects, it is a 
matter of indifference to us whether Lord 
Castlereagh and L6rd Liverpool, or Lord Grey 
and Lord Grenville are at the head of the 
government. The former, indeed, may prob- 
ably be a little uneasy in so new a posture of 
affairs ; but they will either conform to it, or 
abandon their posts in despair. To control or 
alter it, will assuredly be beyond their power. 

With these pleasing anticipations, we would 
willingly close this long review of the State and 
Prospects of the European Commonwealth, 
in its present great crisis, of restoration, or of 
new revolutions. But, cheering and beautiful 
as it is, and disposed as we think we have 
shown ourselves to look hopefully upon it, it 
is impossible to shut our eyes on two dark 
stains that appear on the bright horizon, and 
seem already to tarnish the glories with which 
they are so sadly contrasted. One is of longer 
standing, and perhaps of deeper dye. — But 
both are most painful deformities on the face 
of so fair a prospect; and may be mentioned 
with less scruple and greater hope, from the 
consideration, that those who have now the 
power of effacing them can scarcely be charged 
with the guilt of their production, and have 
given strong indications of dispositions that 
must lead them to wish for their removal. We 
need scarcely give the key to these observa- 
tions by naming the names of Poland and of 
Nonvay. Nor do we propose, on the present 
occasion, to do much more than to name them 
Of the latter, we shall pi ot ably contrive to 
2z2 



694 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



epeak fully on a future occasion. Of the for- 
mer, many of our readers may think we have, 
on former occasions, said at least enough. 
Our zeal in that cause, we know, has been 
made matter of wonder, and even of derision, 
among certain persons who value themselves 
on the character of practical politicians and 
men of the world ; and we have had the satis- 
faction of listening to various witty sneers on 
the mixed simplicity and extravagance of 
supposing, that the kingdom of the Poles was 
to be re-established by a dissertation in an 
English journal. It would perhaps be enough 
to state, that, independent of any view to an 
immediate or practical result in other regions, 
it is of some consequence to keep the obser- 
vation of England alive, and its feelings awake, 
upon a subject of this importance : But we 
must beg leave to add, that such dissertations 
are humbly conceived to be among the legiti- 
mate means by which the English public both 
instructs and expresses itself; and that the 
opinion of the English public is still allowed 
to have weight with its government ; which 
again cannot well be supposed to be altogether 
without influence in the councils of its allies. 
Whatever becomes of Poland, it is most 
materia], we think, that the people of this 
country should judge soundly, and feel right- 
ly, on a matter that touches on principles of 
such general application. But every thing 
that has passed since the publication of our 
former remarks, combines to justify what w r e 
then stated ; and to encourage us to make 
louder and more energetic appeals to the jus- 
tice and prudence and magnanimity of the 
parties concerned in this transaction. The 
words and the deeds of Alexander that have, 
since that period, passed into the page of 
history — the principles he has solemnly pro- 
fessed, and the acts by which he has sealed 
that profession — entitle us to expect from him 
a strain of justice and generosity, which vul- 
gar politicians may call romantic if they please, 
but which all men of high principles and en- 
larged understandings will feel to be not more 
heroic than judicious. While Poland remains 
oppressed and discontented, the peace of Eu- 
rope will always be at the mercy of any am- 
bitious or intriguing power that may think fit 



| to rouse its vast and warlike population with 
the vain promise of independence; while it is 
perfectly manifest that those, by whom alone 
j that promise could be effectually kept, would 
gain prodigiously, both in security and in sub- 
stantial influence, by its faithful performance. 
It is not, however, for the mere name of 
! independence, nor for the lost glories of an 
ancient and honourable existence, that the 
people of Poland are thus eager to array 
themselves in any desperate strife of which 
this may be proclaimed as the prize. We 
have shown, in cur last number, the substan- 
tial and intolerable evils which this extinction 
of their national dignity — this sore and un- 
; merited wound to their national pride, has 
; necessarily occasioned : And thinking, as we 
do, that a people without the feelings of na- 
; tional pride and public duty must be a people 
| without energy and without enjoyments, we 
apprehend it to be at any rate indisputable, in 
the present instance, that the circumstances 
which have dissolved their political being, 
have struck also at the root of their individual 
happiness and prosperity ; and that it is not 
■ merely the unjust destruction of an ancient 
i kindom that we lament, but the condemnation 
: of fifteen millions of human beings to un- 
l profitable and unparalleled misery. 

But though these are the considerations by 
which the feelings of private individuals are 
most naturally affected, it should never be 
forgotten, that all the principles on which the 
great fabric of national independence con- 
fessedly rests in Europe, are involved in the 
decision of this question; and that no one 
nation can be secure in its separate existence, 
if all the rest do not concur in disavowing 
the maxims which were acted upon in the 
partition of Poland. It is not only mournful 
to see the scattered and bleeding members of 
that unhappy state still palpitating and ago- 
nising on the spot where it lately stood erect 
in youthful vigour and beauty ; but it is unsafe 
to breathe the noxious vapours which this 
melancholy spectacle exhales. The whole- 
some neighbourhood is poisoned by their dif- 
fusion ; and every independence within their 
range, sickens and is endangered by the con- 



(Jebrttarjj, 1811.) 

Speech of the Right Hon. William Windham, in the House of Commons, May 26, 1809, on 
Mr. Curwen's Bill, '-'-for better securing the Independence and Purity of Parliament, by 

£reventing the procuring or obtaining of Seats by corrupt Practices." 8vo. pp. 43, 
ondon: 1810* 



Mr. Windham, the most high-minded and 
incorruptible of living men, can see no harm 

* The passing of the Reform Bill has antiquated 
much of the discussion in this article, as originally 
written ; and a considerable portion of it is now, for 
this reason, omitted. But it also contains answers 
to the systematic apologists of corruption, and op- 



in selling seats in parliament openly to the 
highest bidder, or for excluding public trusts 

ponents of reform principles — which are applicable 
to all times, and all conditions of society ; and of 
which recent everts and discussions seem to show 
that ihe present generation may still need to be re- 
minded. 



WINDHAM'S SPEECH. 



595 



generally from the money market ; and is of 
opinion that political influence arising from 
property should be disposed of like other 
property. It will be readily supposed that 
we do not assent to any part of this doctrine ; 
and indeed we must beg leave to say, that to 
us it is no sort of argument for the sale of 
seats, to contend that such a transference is 
no worse than the possession of the property 
transferred ; and to remind us, that he who 
objects to men selling their influence, must 
be against their having it to sell. We are 
decidedly against their having it — to sell! 
and, as to what is here considered as the 
necessary influence of property over elections, 
we should think there could be no great diffi- 
culty in drawing the line between the legiti- 
mate, harmless, and even beneficial use of 
property, even as connected wilh elections; 
and its direct employment for the purchase 
of parliamentary influence. Almost all men — 
indeed, we think, all men — admit, that some 
line is to be drawn; — that the political influ- 
ence of property should be confined to that 
which is essential to its use and enjoyment ; 
— and that penalties should be inflicted, when 
it is directly applied to the purchase of votes : 
though that is perhaps the only case in which 
the law can interfere vindictively, without in- 
troducing far greater evils than those wdiich 
it seeks to remedy. 

To those who are already familiar with the 
facts and the reasonings that bear upon this 
great question, these brief suggestions will 
probably be sufficient ; but there are many to 
whom the subject will require a little more 
explanation ; and for whose use. at all events, 
the argument must be a little more opened 
up and expanded. 

If men were perfectly wise and virtuous, 
they would stand in no need either of Govern- 
ment or of Representatives; and, therefore, 
if they do need them, it is quite certain that 
their choice will not be influenced by con- 
siderations of duty or wisdom alone. We 
may assume it as an axiom, therefore, how- 
ever the purists may be scandalised, that, 
even in political elections, some other feel- 
ings will necessarily have play ; and that pas- 
sions, and prejudices, and personal interests, 
will always interfere, to a greater or less ex- 
tent, with the higher dictates of patriotism 
and philanthropy. Of these sinister motives, 
individual interest, of course, is the strongest 
and most steady 5 and wealth, being its most 
common and appropriate object, it is natural 
to expect that the possession of property 
should bestow some political influence. The 
question, therefore, is, whether this influence 
can ever be safe or tolerable — or whether it 
be possible to mark the limits at which it be- 
comes so pernicious as to justify legislative 
coercion. Now, we are so far from thinking, 
with Mr. Windham, that there is no room for 
any distinction in this matter, that we are in- 
clined, on the whole, to be of opinion, that 
what we would term the natural and inevita- 
ble influence of property in elections, is not 
only safe, but salutary; while its artificial 
and corrupt influence is among the most 



pernicious and reprehensible cf all political 
abuses. 

The natural influence of property is that 
which results spontaneously from its ordinary 
use and expenditure, and cannot well be mis- 
understood. That a man who spends a large 
income in the place of his residence — who 
subscribes handsomely for building bridges, 
hospitals, and assembly-rooms, and generally 
to all works of public charity or accommoda- 
tion in the neighbourhood — and who, more- 
over, keeps the best table for the gentry, and 
has the largest accounts with the tradesmen 
— will, without thinking or caring about the 
matter, acquire more influence, and find more 
people ready to oblige him, than a poorer man, 
of equal virtue and talents — is a fact, which 
we are as little inclined to deplore, as to call 
in question. Neither does it cost us any pang 
to reflect, that, if such a man was desirous of 
representing the borough in which he resided, 
or of having it represented by his son or his 
brother, or some dear and intimate friend, his 
recommendation would go much farther with 
the electors than a respectable certificate of 
extraordinary worth and abilities in an oppos- 
ing candidate. 

Such an influence as this, it would evidently 
be quite absurd for any legislature to think 
of interdicting, or even for any reformer to at- 
tempt to discredit. In the first place, because 
it is founded in the very nature of men and 
of human affairs, and could not possibly be 
prevented, or considerably weakened, by any 
thing short of an universal regeneiation ; se- 
condly, because, though originating from pro- 
perty, it does by no means impl) 7 , either the 
baseness of venality, or the guilt of corrup- 
tion; but rests infinitely more upon feelings 
of vanity, and social instinctive sympathy, 
than upon any consciousness of dependence, 
or paltry expectation of personal emolument; 
and, thirdly, because, taking men as they ac- 
tually are. this mixed feeling is, upon the 
whole, both a safer and a better feeling than 
the greater part of those, to the influence of 
which they would be abandoned, if this should 
be destroyed. If the question were, always, 
whether a man of wealth and family, or a man 
of sense and virtue, should have the greatest 
influence, it would no doubt be desirable that 
the preponderance should be given to moral 
and intellectual merit. But this is by no 
means the true state of the contest; — and 
when the question is between the influence 
of property and the influence of intriguing am- 
bition and turbulent popularity, we own that 
w T e are glad to find the former most frequently 
prevalent. In ordinary life, and in common 
affairs, this natural and indirect influence of 
property is vast and infallible, even upon the 
best and most enlightened part of the com- 
munity ; and nothing can conduce so surely to 
the stability and excellence of a political con- 
stitution, as to make it rest upon the general 
principles that regulate the conduct of the 
better part of the individuals who live under 
it, and tf attach them to their government by 
the same feelings which insure their affec- 
tion or submission in their private capacity 



596 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



There could be no security, in short, either 
for property, or for any thing else, in a coun- 
try where the possession of property did not 
bestow some political influence. 

This, then, is the natural influence of pro- 
perty ; which we would not only tolerate, but 
encourage. We must now endeavour to ex- 
plain that corrupt or artificial influence, which 
we conceive it to be our duty by all means to 
resist and repress. Under this name, we would 
comprehend all wilful and direct employment 
of property to purchase or obtain political 
power, in whatever form the transaction might 
be embodied : but, with reference to the more 
common cases, we shall exemplify only in the 
instances of purchasing votes by bribery, or 
holding the property of those votes distinct 
from any other property, and selling and trans- 
ferring this for a price, like any other market- 
able commodity. All such practices are stig- 
matized, in common language, and in common 
feelings, as corrupt and discreditable ; and 
the slightest reflection upon their principles 
and their consequences, will show, that while 
they tend to debase the character of all who 
are concerned in them, they lead directly to 
the subversion of all that is valuable in a 
representative system of government. That 
they may, in some cases, be combined with 
that indirect and legitimate influence of pro- 
perty of which we have* just been speaking, 
and, in others, be insidiously engrafted upon 
it, it is impossible to deny ; but that they are 
clearly distinguishable from the genuine fruits 
of that influence, both in their moral character 
and their political effects, w T e conceive to be 
equally indisputable. 

Upon the subject of direct bribery to indi- 
vidual voters, indeed, we do not think it ne- 
cessary to say any thing. The law, and the 
feeling of all mankind have marked that prac- 
tice with reprobation : and even Mr. Wind- 
ham, in the wantonness of his controversial 
scepticism, does not pretend to say, that the 
law or the feeling is erroneous, or that it would 
not be better that both should, if possible, be 
made still stronger than they are. 

Setting this aside, however, the great prac- 
tical evils that are supposed to result from the 
influence of property in the elections of this 
country, are, 1st, that the representation of 
certain boroughs is entirely, necessarily and 
perpetually, at the disposal of certain fami- 
lies, so as to be familiarly considered as a 
part of their rightful property ; and, 2dly, 
that certain other boroughs are held and ma- 
naged by corrupt agents and jobbers, for the 
express purpose of being sold for a price in 
ready money, either through the intervention 
of the Treasury, or directly to the candidate. 
That both these are evils and deformities in 
our system of representation, we readily ad- 
mit ; though by no means to the same extent, 
leading to the same effects, or produced by 
the operation of the same causes. 

With regard to the boroughs that are per- 
manently in possession of certain great pro- 
prietors, these are, for the most part, such 
email or decayed places, as have fallen, al- 
most insensibly, under their control, in con- 



sequence of the extension of their possession^ 
and the decline of the population. Consider- 
ed in this light, it does not appear that they 
can, with any propriety, be regarded either as 
scenes of criminal corruption, or as examples 
of the reprehensible influence of property. If 
a place which still retains (however absurdly) 
the right of sending members to parliament, 
comes to be entirely depopulated, like Old 
Sarum, it is impossible to suppose that the 
nomination of its members should vest in any 
one but the Proprietor of the spot to which 
the right is attached : and, even where the 
decay is less complete than in this instance, 
still, if any great family has gradually acquir- 
ed the greater part of the property from which 
the right of voting is derived, it is equally 
impossible to hold that there is any thing cor- 
rupt or reprehensible in its availing itself of 
this influence. Cases of this sort, therefore, 
we are inclined to consider as cases of the 
fair influence of property; and though we 
admit them to be both contradictory to the 
general scheme of the Constitution, and sub- 
versive of some of its most important princi- 
ples, we think they are to be regarded as fla ws 
and irregularities brought on by time and the 
course of events, rather than as abuses intro- 
duced by the vices and corruptions of men. 
The remedy — and we certainly think a very 
obvious and proper remedy — would be, to 
take the right of election from all places so 
small and insignificant as to have thus be- 
come, in a great measure, the property of an 
individual — not to rail at the individual who 
avails himself of the influence inseparable 
from such property — or to dream of restrain- 
ing him in its exercise, by unjust penalties 
and impossible regulations. 

The great evil, however, is in the other de- 
scription of boroughs — those that are held by 
agents or jobbers, by a very different tenure 
from that of great proprietors and benefactors, 
and are regularly disposed of by them, at 
every election, for a price paid down, either 
through the mediation of the ministry, or 
without any such mediation : a part of this 
price being notoriously applied by such agents 
in direct bribes to individual voters — and the 
remainder taken to themselves as the lawful 
profits of the transaction. Now, without going 
into any sort of detail, we think we might at 
once venture to ask, whether it be possible for 
any man to shut his eyes upon the individual 
infamy and the public hazard that are involv- 
ed in these last-mentioned proceedings, or for 
one moment to confound thein even in his 
imagination, with the innocent a:xl salutary in- 
fluence that is inseparable from the possession 
and expenditure of large property 7 The difler- 
ence between them, is not less than between 
the influence which youth and manly beauty, 
aided by acts of generosity and proofs of ho- 
nourable intentions may attain over an object 
of affection, and the control that may be ac- 
quired by the arts of a hateful procuress, and 
by her transferred to an object of natural dis- 
gust and aversion. The one is founded upon 
principles which, if they are not the most 
lofty or infallible, are still among the most 



WINDHAM'S SPEECH. 



597 



amiable that belong to our imperfect nature, 
and leads to consequences eminently favour- 
able to the harmony and stability of our social 
institutions; while the other can only.be ob- 
tained by working with the basest instruments 
on the basest passions; and tends directly to 
6ap the foundations of private honour and pub- 
lic freedom, and to dissolve the kindly cement 
by which nature herself has knit society to- 
gether, in the bonds of human sympathy, and 
mutual trust and dependence. To say that 
both sorts of influence are derived from pro- 
perty, and are therefore to be considered as 
identical, is a sophism scarcely more ingeni- 
ous, than that which would confound the oc- 
cupations of the highwayman and the honour- 
able merchant, because the object of both was 
gain ; or which should assume the philoso- 
phical principle, that all voluntary actions are 
dictated by a view to ultimate gratification, in 
order to prove that there was no distinction 
between vice and. virtue ; and that the felon, 
who was led to execution amidst the execra- 
tions of an indignant multitude, was truly as 
meritorious as the patriot, to whom his grate- 
ful country decreed unenvied honours for its 
deliverance from tyranny. The truth is, that 
there is nothing more dangerous than those 
metaphysical inquiries into the ultimate con- 
stituents of merit or delinquency; and that, 
in every thing that is connected with practice, 
and especially with public conduct, no wise 
man will ever employ such an analytical pro- 
cess to counteract the plain intimations of 
conscience and common sense, unless for the 
purpose of confounding an antagonist, or per- 
plexing a discussion, to the natural result of 
which he is unfriendly on other principles. 

But if the practices to which we are alluding 
be clearly base and unworthy in the eyes of 
all upright and honourable men, and most 
pregnant with public danger in the eyes of 
all thinking and intelligent men, it must ap- 
pear still more strange to find them defended 
on the score of their Antiquity, than on that 
of their supposed affinity to practices that are 
held to be innocent. Yet the old cry of Inno- 
vation ! has been raised, with more than usual 
vehemence, against those who offer the most 
cautious hints for their correction ; and even 
Mr. Windham has not disdained to seek some 
aid to his argument from a misapplication of 
the sorry commonplaces about the antiquity 
and beauty of our constitution, and the hazard 
of meddling at all with that under which we 
have so long enjoyed so much glory and hap- 
piness. Of the many good answers that may 
be made to all arguments of this character, 
we shall content ourselves with one, which 
seems sufficiently conclusive and simple. 

The abuses, of which we complain, are not 
old. but recent ; and those who seek to correct 
them, are not innovating upon the constitu- 
tion, but seeking to prevent innovation. The 
practice of jobbing in boroughs was scarcely 
known at all in the beginning of the last cen- 
tury ; and was not systematized, nor carried 
to any very formidable extent, till within the 
last forty years. At all events, it most cer- 
taiuly was not in the contemplation of those 



by whom the frame of our constitution was 
laid ; and it is confessedly a perversion and 
abuse of a system, devised and established 
for very opposite purposes. Let any man ask 
himself, whether such a scheme of represen- 
tation, as is now actually in practice in many 
parts of this country, can be supposed to have 
been intended by those who laid the founda- 
tions of our free constitution, or reared upon 
them the proud fabric of our liberties ? Or 
let him ask himself, whether, if we were now 
devising a system of representation for such a 
country as England, there is any human being 
who would recommend the adoption of the 
system that is practically established among 
us at this moment, — a system under which 
fifty or sixty members should be returned by 
twenty or thirty paltry and beggarly hamlets, 
dignified with the name of boroughs; while 
twenty or thirty great and opulent towns had 
no representation ; — and where upwards of a 
hundred more publicly bought their seats, 
partly by a promise of indiscriminate support 
to the minister, and partly by a sum paid 
down to persons who had no natural influence 
over the electors, and controlled them noto- 
riously, either by direct bribery, or as the 
agents of ministerial corruption'? If it be 
clear, however, that such a state of things is 
in itself indefensible, it.is still clearer that it 
is not the state of things which is required by 
the true principles of the constitution ; that, hi 
point of fact, it neither did nor could exist at 
the time when that constitution was estab- 
lished; and that its correction would be no 
innovation on that constitution, but a benefi- 
cial restoration of it, both in principle and in 
practice. 

If some of the main pillars of our mansion 
have been thrown down, is it a dangerous in- 
novation to rear them up again % If the roof 
has grown too heavy for the building, by re- 
cent and injudicious superstructures, is it an 
innovation, if we either take them down, or 
strengthen the supports upon which they de- 
pend 1 If the waste of time, and the ele- 
ments, have crumbled away a part of the 
foundation, does it show a disregard to the 
safety of the whole pile, if we widen the basis 
upon which it rests, and endeavour to place 
it upon deeper and firmer materials? If the 
rats have eaten a way into the stores and the 
cellars; or if knavish servants have opened 
private and unauthorised communications in 
the lower parts of the fabric, does it indeed 
indicate a disposition to impair the comfort 
and security of the abode, that we are anxious 
to stop up those holes, and to build across 
those new and suspicious approaches? — Is it 
not obvious, in short, in all such cases, that 
the only true innovators are Guilt and Time; 
and that they who seek to repair what time 
has wasted ; and to restore what guilt has 
destroyed, are still more unequivocally the 
"enemies of innovation, than of abuse ? Those 
who are most aware of the importance of re 
form, are also most aware of the hazards of 
any theoretical or untried change ; and, while 
they strictly confine their efforts to the rcstilu 
Hon of what all admit to have been in the 



59S 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



original plan of our representation, and to have 
formed a most essential part of that plan, may 
reasonably hope, whatever other charges they 
may encounter, to escape that of a Jove of 
innovation. 

There is another topic, on which Mr. Wind- 
ham has dwelt at very great length, which 
appears to us to bear even less on the merits 
of the question, than this of the antiquity of 
our constitution. The abuses and corrup- 
tions which Mr. Curwen aimed at correcting, 
ought not, he says, to be charged to the ac- 
count of ministers or members of Parliament 
alone. The greater part of them both origi- 
nate and end with the people themselves, — 
are suggested by their baseness and self-inter- 
est, and terminate in their corrupt gain, with 
very little voluntary sin, and frequently with 
very little advantage of any sort to ministers 
or candidates. Now, though it is impossible to 
forget what Mr. Windham has himself said, 
of the disgraceful abuses of patronage com- 
mitted by men in power r for their own indi- 
vidual emolument, * yet we are inclined, upon 
the whole, to admit the truth of this state- 
ment. It is what we have always thought it 
our duty to point out to the notice of those 
who can see no guilt but in the envied pos- 
sessors of dignity and power; and forms, in- 
deed, the very basis of the answer we have 
repeatedly attempted to give to those Utopian 
or factious reformers, whose intemperance has 
done more injury to the cause of reform, than 
all the sophistry and all the corruption of their 
opponents. But, though we admit the premises 
of Mr. Windham's argument, we must utterly 
deny his conclusions. When we admit, that 
a part of the people is venal and corrupt, as 
well as its rulers, we really cannot see that 
we admit any thing in defence, or even in 
palliation, of venality and corruption : — Nor 
can we imagine, how that melancholy and 
most humiliating fact, can help in the least to 
make out, that corruption is not an immoral 
and pernicious practice ; — not a malum in se, 
as Mr. Windham has been pleased to assert, 
nor even a practice which it would be just 
and expedient, if it were practicable, to re- 
press and abolish ! The only just inference 
from the fact is, that ministers and members 
of Parliament are not the only guilty persons 
in the traffic ; — and that all remedies will be 
inefficient, which are not capable of being ap- 
plied through the whole range of the malady. 
It may be a very good retort from the gentle- 



* " Wiih respect to the abuse of patronage, one 
of those by which the interests of countries do, in 
reality, most suffer, I perfectly agree, that it is like- 
wise one, of which the government, properly so 
called, that is to say, persons in the highest offices, 
are as likely to be guilty, and from their opportu- 
nities, more likely to be guilty, than any others, 
And nothing, in point of fact, can exceed the greedi- 
ness, the selfishness, the insatiable voracity, the 
profligate disregard of all claims from merit or ser- 
vices, that we often see in persons in high official 
stations, when providing for themselves, their re- 
lations or dependants. I am as little disposed as any 
one to defend them in this conduct. Let it be repro- 
bfited in terms as harsh as any one pleases, and 
much more so than it commonly is." — Speech, p. 28. 



men within doors to the gentlemen without ; 
and when they are reproached with not having 
clean hands, it may be very natural for them 
to ask a sight of those of their accusers. But 
is this any answer at all, to those who insist 
upon the infamy and the dangers of corrup- 
tion in both quarters'? Or, is the evil really 
supposed to be less formidable, because it ap- 
pears to be very widely extended, and to be 
the fair subject, not jonly of reproach, but of 
recrimination 1 The seat of the malady, and 
its extent, may indeed vary our opinion as to 
the nature of the remedy which ought to be 
administered; but the knowledge that it has 
pervaded more vital parts than one, certainly 
should not lead us to think that no remedy 
whatever is needed, — or to consider the symp- 
toms as too slight to require any particular 
attention. 

But, though we differ thus radically from 
Mr. Windham in our estimate of the nature 
and magnitude of this evil, we have already 
said, that we are disposed to concur with him 
in disapproving of the measures which have 
been lately proposed for their correction. The 
bill of Mr. Curwen, and all bills that aim only 
at repressing the ultimate traffic in seats, by 
pains and penalties to be imposed on those 
immediately concerned in the transaction, ap- 
pears to us to begin at the wrong end, — and 
to aim at repressing a result which may be 
regarded as necessary, so long as the causes 
which led to it are allowed to subsist in un- 
diminished vigour. It is like trying to save a 
valley from being flooded, by building a pal- 
try dam across the gathered torrents that flow 
into it. The only effect is, that they will ul- 
timately make their way, by a more destruc- 
tive channel, to worse devastation. The true 
policy is to drain the feeding rills at their 
fountains, or to provide another vent for the 
stream, before it reaches the declivity by 
which the flat is commanded. While the 
spirit of corruption is unchecked, and even 
fostered in the bosom of the country, the in- 
terdiction of the common market will only 
throw the trade into the hands of the more 
profligate and daring, — or give a monopoly to 
the privileged and protected dealings of Ad- 
ministration ; and the evil will in both ways 
be aggravated, instead of being relieved. 

We cannot now stop to point out the actual 
evils to which this corruption gives rise ; or 
even to dwell on the means by which we 
think it might be made more difficult : though 
among these we conceive the most efficacious 
would obviously be to multiply the numbers, 
and, in some cases, to raise the qualification 
of voters — to take away the right of election 
from decayed, inconsiderable, and rotten bo- 
roughs ; and to bestow it on large towns pos- 
sessing various and divided wealth. But, 
though the increased number of voters will 
make it more difficult to bribe them, and their 
greater opulence render them less liable to be 
bribed ; still, we confess that the chief benefit 
which we expect from any provisions of this 
sort, is the security which we think they will 
afford for the improvement, maintenance, and 
propagation of a Free Spirit among the peopla 



WINDHAM'S SPEECH. 



599 



— a feeling of political right, and of individual 
interest, among so great a number of persons, 
as will make it not only discreditable, but un- 
safe, to invade their liberties, or trespass upon 
their rights. It is never to be forgotten, that 
the great and ultimate barrier against oppres- 
sion, and arbitrary power, must always be 
raised on public opinion — and on opinion, so 
valued and so asserted, as to point resolutely 
to resistance, if it be permanently insulted, or 
openly set at defiance. In order to have this 
public opinion, however, either sufficiently 
strong, or sufficiently enlightened, to afford 
such a security, it is quite necessary that a 
very large body of the people be taught to set 
a value upon the rights which it is qualified to 
protect, — that their reason, their moral prin- 
ciples, their pride, and habitual feelings, 
should all be engaged on the side of their po- 
litical independence, — that their attention 
should be frequent]}' directed to their rights 
and their duties, as citizens of a free state, — 
and their eyes, ears, hearts, and affections fa- 
miliarized with the spectacles, and themes, 
and occasions, that remind them of those 
rights and duties. In a commercial country 
like England, the pursuit of wealth, or of per- 
sonal comfort, is apt to engross the whole care 
of the body of the people ; and, if property be 
tolerably secured by law, and a vigilant police 
repress actual outrage and disorcler, they are 
likely enough to fall into a general forgetf ill- 
ness of their political rights; and even to re- 
gard as burdensome those political functions, 
without the due exercise of which the whole 
frame of our liberties would soon dissolve, and 
fall to pieces. It is of infinite and incalcula- 
ble importance, therefore, to spread, as widely 
as possible, among the people, the feelings 
and the love of their political blessings — to 
exercise them unceasingly in the evolutions 
of a free constitution — and to train them to 
those sentiments of pride, and jealousy, and 
self-esteem, which arise naturally from their 
experience of their own value and importance 
in the great order of society, and upon which 
alone the fabric of a free government can 
ever be safely erected. 

We indicate all these things very briefly ; 
both because we cannot now afford room for 
a more full exposition of them, and because it 
is not our intention to exhaust this great sub- 
ject on the present occasion, but rather to 
place before our readers a few of the leading- 
principles upon which we shall think it our 
duty to expatiate at other opportunities. We 
cannot, however, bring even these preliminary 
and miscellaneous observations to a close, 
without taking some notice of a topic which 
seems, at present, peculiarly in favour with 
the reasoning enemies of reform ; and to which 
we cannot reply, without developing, in a 
more striking manner than we have yet done, 
the nature of our apprehensions from the in- 
fluence of the Crown, and the holders of large 
properties, and of our expectations of good 
from the increased spirit and intelligence of 
the people. 

The argument to which we allude, proceeds 
upon the concession, that the patronage of 



Government, and the wealth employed to ob- 
tain political influence, have increased very 
greatly within the last fifty years; and consists 
almost entirely in the assertion, that this in- 
crease, great as it undoubtedly is, yet has not 
kept pace with the general increase which has 
taken place, in the same period, in the wealth, 
weight, and influence of the people ; so that, 
in point of fact, the power of the Crown and Bo- 
rough proprietors, although absolutely greater, 
is proportionally less than it was at the com- 
mencement of the present reign; and ought 
to be augmented, rather than diminished, if 
our object be to preserve the ancient balance 
of the constitution ! We must do Mr. Wind- 
ham the justice to say, that he does not make 
much use of this argument: but it forms the 
grand reserve of Mr. Rose's battle; and, we 
think, is more frequently and triumphantly 
brought forward than any other, by those who 
now affect to justify abuses by argumentation. 
The first answer we make to it, consists in 
denying the fact upon which it proceeds ; at 
least in the sense in which it must be asserted, 
in order to afford any shadow of colour to the 
conclusion. There is, undoubtedly, far more 
wealth in the country than there was fifty 
years ago ; but there is not more independence. 
There are not more men whose incomes ex- 
ceed what they conceive to be their necessary- 
expenditure; — not nearly so many who con- 
sider themselves as nearly rich enough, and 
who would therefore look on themselves as 
■without apology for doing any thing against 
their duty or their opinions, for the sake of 
profit to themselves : on the contrary, it is no- 
torious, and not to be disputed, that our luxury, 
and habits of expense, have increased con- 
siderably faster than the riches by which they 
should be supported — that men, in general, 
have now far less to spare than they had when 
their incomes were smaller — and that if our 
condition may, in one sense, be said to be a 
condition of opulence, it is, still more indis- 
putably, a condition of needy opulence. It is 
perfectly plain, however, that it is not the ab- 
solute amount of wealth existing in a nation, 
that can ever contribute to render it politically 
independent of patronage, or intractable to the 
persuasive voice of a munificent and discern- 
ing ruler, but the general state of content and 
satisfaction which results from its wealth being 
proportioned to its occasions of expense. It 
neither is, accordingly, nor ever was, among 
the poor, but among the expensive and ex- 
travagant, that corruption looks for her surest 
and most profitable game ; nor can her influ- 
ence ever be anywhere so great, as in a coun- 
try where almost all those to whom she can 
think it important to address herself, are 
straitened for money, and eager for preferment 
— dissatisfied with their condition as to fortune 
— and, whatever may be the amount of their 
possessions, practically needy, and impatient 
of their embarrassments. This is the case 
with the greater part even of those who ac- 
tually possess the riches for which this couu 
try is so distinguished. But the effect of their 
prosperity has been, to draw a far greater pro- 
portion of the people within the sphere oi 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



selfish ambition— to diffuse those habits of 
expense which give corruption her chief hold 
and purchase, among multitudes who are 
spectators only of the splendour in which 
they cannot participate, and are infected with 
the cravings and aspirations of the objects of 
their envy, even before they come to be placed 
in their circumstances. Such needy adven- 
turers are constantly generated by the rapid 
progress of wealth and luxury; and are sure 
to seek and court that corruption which is 
obliged to seek and court, though with too 
great a probability of success, those whose 
condition they miscalculate, and labour to at- 
tain. Such a state of things, therefore, is far 
more favourable to the exercise of the cor- 
rupt influence of government and wealthy 
ambition, than a state of greater poverty and 
moderation ; and the same limited means of 
seduction will go infinitely farther among a 
people in the one situation than in the other. 
The same temptations that were repelled by 
the simple poverty of Fabricius, would, in all 
probability, have bought half the golden sa- 
traps of the Persian monarch, or swayed the 
counsels of wealthy and venal Rome, in the 
splendid days of Catiline and Caesar. 

This, therefore, is our first answer; and it 
is so complete, we think, as not to require any 
other for the mere purpose of confutation. But 
the argument is founded upon so strange and 
so dangerous a misapprehension of the true 
state of the case, that we think it our duty to 
unfold the whole fallacy upon which it pro- 
ceeds; and to show what very opposite con- 
sequences are really to be drawn from the 
circumstances that have been so imperfectly 
conceived, or so perversely viewed, by those 
who contend for increasing the patronage of 
the Government as a balance to the increasing- 
consequence of the People. 

There is a foundation, in fact, for some part 
of this proposition ; but a foundation that has 
been strangely misunderstood by those who 
have sought to build upon it so revolting a 
conclusion. The people has increased in con- 
sequence, in power, and in political impor- 
tance. Over all Europe, we verily believe, 
that they are everywhere growing too strong 
for their governments; and that, if these gov- 
ernments are to be preserved, some measures 
must be taken to accommodate them to this 
great change in the condition and interior 
structure of society. But this increase of 
consequence is not owing to their having 
grown- richer; and still less is it to be provi- 
ded against, by increasing the means of cor- 
ruption in the hands of their rulers. This re- 
quires, and really deserves, a little more expla- 
nation. 

All political societies may be considered as 
divided into three great classes or orders. In 
the first place, the governors, or those who 
are employed, or hope to be employed by the 
governors, — and who therefore either have, or 
expect to have, profit or advantage of some 
sort from the government, or from subordinate 
patrons. In the second place, those who are 
in opposition to the government, who feel the 
burdens and restraints which it imposes, are 



jealous of the honours and emoluments it en- 
joys or distributes, and grudge the expense 
and submission which it requires, under an 
apprehension, that the good it accomplishes 
is not worth so great a sacrifice. And, thirdly 
and finally, those who may be counted for 
nothing in all political arrangements — who 
are ignorant, indifferent, and quiescent — who 
submit to all things without grumbling or 
satisfaction — and are contented to consider all 
existing institutions as a part of the order of 
nature to which it is their duty to accommo- 
date themselves. 

In rude and early ages, this last division 
includes by far the greater part of the people : 
but, as society advances, and intellect begins 
to develope itself, a greater and a greater pro- 
portion is withdrawn from it, and joined to 
the two other divisions. These drafts, how- 
ever, are not made indiscriminately, or in 
equal numbers, to the two remaining orders ; 
but tend to throw a preponderating weight, 
either into the scale of the government, or 
into that of its opponents, according to the 
character of that government, and the nature 
of the circumstances by which they have 
been roused from their neutrality. The dif- 
fusion of knowledge, the improvements of 
education, and the gradual descent and ex- 
pansion of those maxims of individual or po- 
litical' wisdom that are successively estab- 
lished by reflection and experience, necessa- 
rily raise up more and more of the mass of 
the population from that state of brutish ac- 
quiescence and incurious ignorance in which 
they originally slumbered. They begin to 
feel their relation to the government under 
which they live ; and, guided by those feel- 
ings, and the analogies of their private in- 
terests and affections, they begin to form, or 
to borrow, Opinions upon the merit or demerit 
of the institutions and administration, to the 
effects of which they are subjected ; and to 
conceive Sentiments either hostile or friendly 
to such institutions and administration. If 
the government be mild and equitable — if 
its undertakings are prosperous, its imposi- 
tions easy, and its patronage just and impar- 
tial — the greater part of those who are thus 
successively awakened into a state of political 
capacity will be enrolled among its support- 
ers ; and strengthen it against the factious, 
ambitious, and disappointed persons, who 
alone will be found in opposition to it. But 
if, on the other hand, this disclosure of intel- 
lectual and political sensibility occur at a pe- 
riod when the government is capricious or 
oppressive — when its plans are disastrous — 
its exactions burdensome — its tone repulsive 
— and its distribution of favours most corrupt 
and unjust; — it will infallibly happen, that 
the greater part of those who are thus called 
into political existence, will take part against 
it, and be disposed to exert themselves for its 
correction, or utter subversion. 

The last supposition, we think, is that which 
has been realised in the history of Europe for 
the last thirty years : and when we say that 
the people has almost every where grown too 
strong for their rulers, we mean only tc say, 



WINDHAM'S SPEECH. 



601 



that, in that period, there has been a prodi- 
gious development in the understanding and 
intelligence of the great mass of the popula- 
tion • and that this makes them much less 
willing than formerly to submit to the folly 
and corruption of most of their ancient gov- 
ernments. The old instinctive feelings of 
loyalty and implicit obedience, have pretty 
generally given way to shrewd calculations 
as to their own interests, their own powers, 
and the rights which arise out of these powers. 
They see now, pretty quickly, both the weak- 
nesses and the vices of their rulers; and ; 
having learned to refer their own sufferings 
or privations, with considerable sagucity, to 
their blunders and injustice, they begin tacitly 
to inquire, what right they have to a sove- 
reignty, of which they make so bad a use — 
and how they could protect themselves, if all 
who hate and despise them were to unite to 
take it from them. Sentiments of this sort, 
we are well assured, have been prevalent 
over all the enlightened parts of Europe for 
the last thirty years, and are every day gain- 
ing strength and popularity. Kings and nobles, 
and ministers and agents of government, are 
no longer looked upon with veneration and 
awe, — but rather with a mixture of contempt 
and jealousy. Their errors and vices are 
canvassed, among all ranks of persons, with 
extreme freedom and severity. The corrup- 
tions by which they seek to fortify them- 
selves, are regarded with indignation and 
vindictive abhorrence ; and the excuses with 
which they palliate them, with disgust and de- 
rision. Their deceptions are almost universally 
seen through; and their incapacity detected 
and despised, by an unprecedented portion of 
of the whole population which they govern. 

It is in this sense, as we conceive it, that 
the people throughout civilised Europe have 
grown too strong for their rulers ; and that 
some alteration in the balance or administra- 
tion of their governments, has become neces- 
sary for their preservation. They have become 
too strong, — not in wealth — but in intellect. 
activity, and available numbers; and the tran- 
quillity of their governments has been endan- 
gered, not from their want of pecuniary in- 
fluence, but from their want of moral respec- 
tability and intellectual vigour. 

Such is the true state of the evil ; and the 
cure, according to the English opponents of 
reform, is to increase the patronage of the 
Crown ! The remote and original cause of 
the danger, is the improved intelligence «nd 
more perfect intercourse of the people, — a 
cause which it is not lawful to wish removed, 
and which, at any rate, the proposed remedy 
has no tendency to remove. The immediate 
and proximate cause, is the abuse of patron- 
age and the corruptions practised by the gov- 
ernment and their wealthy supporters: — and 
the cure that is seriously recommended, is to 
increase that corruption \ — to add to the weight 
of the burdens under which the people is sink- 
ing, — and to multiply the examples of parti- 
ality, profusion, and profligacy, by which they 
are revolted ! 

An absurdity so extra vagant, however, could 
76 



i not have suggested itself, even to the persons 
by whom it has been so triumphantly recom 
mended, unless it had been palliated by some 
colour of plausibility : And their error (which 
really does not seem very unnatural for men 
of their description) seems to have consisted 
merely in supposing that all those who were 
discontented in the country, were disappointed 
candidates for place and profit ; and that the 
whole clamour which had been raised against 
the misgovernment of the modern world, origi- 
nated in a violent desire to participate in the 
emoluments of that misgovernment. Upon 
this supposition, it must no doubt be admitted 
that their remedy was most judiciously de- 
vised. All the discontent was among those 
who wished to be bribed — all the clamour 
among those who were impatient for prefer- 
ment. Increase the patronage of the Crown 
therefore — make more sinecures, more jobs, 
more nominal and real posts of emolument 
and honour. — and you will allay the discon- 
tent, and still the clamour, which are now 
'•'frighting our isle from her propriety ! :; 

This, to be sure, is very plausible and inge- 
nious — as well as highly creditable to the 
honour of the nation, and the moral experience 
of its contrivers. But the fact, unfortunately, 
is not as it is here assumed. There are two 
sets of persons to be managed and appeased ! 
and the misfortune is, that what might gratify 
the one would only exasperate the discontents 
of the other. The one wants unmerited hon- 
ours, and unearned emoluments — a further 
abuse of patronage — a more shameful misap- 
plication of the means of the nation. The 
other wants a correction of abuses — an abridg- 
ment of patronage — a diminution of the public 
burdens — a more just distribution of its trusts, 
dignities, and rewards. This last party is still, 
we are happy to think, by far the strongest, 
and the most formidable : For it is daily re- 
cruited out of the mass of the population, over 
which reason is daily extending her dominion; 
and depends, for its ultimate success, upon 
nothing less than the irresistible progress of 
intelligence — of a true and enlightened sense 
of interest — and a feeling of inherent right, 
united to undoubted power. It is difficult, 
then, to doubt of its ultimate triumph; and it 
must appear to be infinitely foolish to think 
of opposing its progress, by measures which 
are so obviously calculated to add to its 
strength. By increasing the patronage or in- 
fluence of the Crown, a few more venal 
spirits maybe attracted, by the precarious tie 
of a dishonest interest, to withstand all at- 
tempts at reform, and to clamour in behalf 
of all existing practices and institutions. But, 
for every worthless auxiliary that is thus re- 
cruited for the defence of established abuses* 
is it not evident that there will be a thousand 
new enemies called forth, by the additional 
abuse exemplified in the new patronage that 
is created, and the new scene of corruption that 
is exhibited, in exchanging this patronage for 
this dishonourable support? — For a nation to 
endeavour to strengthen itself against the 
attempts of reformers by a deliberate aug- 
mentation of its corrupt ions, is not more poh\ 
3 A 



602 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



tic, than for a spendthrift to think of relieving 
himself of his debts, by borrowing at usurious 
interest to pay what is demanded, and thus 
increasing the burden which he affects to be 
throwing off. 

The only formidable discontent, in short, 
that now subsists in the country, is that of 
those who are reasonably discontented ; and the 
only part of the people whose growing strength 
really looks menacingly on the government, 
is that which has been alienated by what it 
believes to be its corruptions, and enabled, by 
its own improving intelligence, to unmask its 
deceptions, and to discover the secret of its 
selfishness and incapacity. The great object 
of its jealousy, is the enormous influence of 
the Crown, and the monstrous abuses of pa- 
tronage to which that influence gives occasion. 
It is, therefore, of all infatuations, the wildest 
and most desperate, to hold out that the pro- 
gress of this discontent makes it proper to 
give the Crown more influence, and that it 
can only be effectually conciliated, by putting 
more patronage in the way of abuse ! 

In stating the evils and dangers of corrup- 
tion and profligacy in a government, we must 
always keep it in view, that such a system 
can never be universally palatable, even among 
the basest and most depraved people of which 
history has preserved any memorial. If this 
were otherwise indeed — if a whole nation 
were utterly and entirely venal and corrupt, 
and each willing to wait his time of dishonour- 
able promotion, things might go on with suffi- 
cient smoothness at least ; and as such a na- 
tion would not be worth mending, on the one 
hand, so there would, in fact, be much less 
need, on the other, for that untoward opera- 
tion. The supposition, however, is obviously 
impossible ; and, in such a country at least as 
England, it may perhaps be truly stated, as 
the most alarming consequence of corruption, 
that, if allowed to go on without any effectual 
check, it will infallibly generate such a spirit 
of discontent, as necessarily to bring on some 
dreadful convulsion, and overturn the very 
foundations of the constitution. It is thus 
fraught with a double evil to a country enjoy- 
ing a free government. In the first place, it 
gradually corrodes and destroys much that is 
truly valuable in its constitution ; and, secondly, 
it insures its ultimate subversion by the tre- 
mendous crash of an insurrection or revolution. 
It first makes the government oppressive and 
intolerable ; and then it oversets it altogether 
by a necessarj', but dreadful calamity. 

These two evils may appear to be opposite 
to each other; and it is certain, that, though 
brought on by the same course of conduct, 
they cannot be inflicted by the same set of 
persons. Those who are the slaves and the 
ministers of corruption, assuredly are not those 
who are minded to crush it, with a visiting 
vengeance, under the ruins of the social order ; 
and it is in forgetting that there are two sets 
of persons to be conciliated in all such ques- 
tions, that the portentous fallacy which we 
are considering mainly consists. The govern- 
ment may be very corrupt, and a very con- 
siderable part of the nation may be debased 



and venal, while there is still spirit and vhlne 
enough left, when the measure of provocation 
is full, to inflict a signal and sanguinary ven- 
geance, and utterly to overthrow the fabric 
which has been defiled by this traffic of ini- 
quity. And there may be great spirit, and 
strength, and capacity of heroic resentment in 
a nation, which will yet allow its institutions 
to be, for a long time, perverted, its legisla- 
ture to be polluted, and the baser part of its 
population to be corrupted, before it be roused 
to that desperate effort, in which its peace and 
happiness are sure to suffer along with, the 
guilt which brings down the thunder. In such 
an age of the world as the present, however, 
it may be looked upon as absolutely certain, 
that if the guilt be persisted in, the vengeance 
will follow ; and that all reasonable discontent 
will accumulate and gain strength, as reason 
and experience advance ; till, at the last, it 
works its own reparation, arid sweeps the of- 
fence from the earth, with the force and the 
fury of a whirlwind. 

In such a view of the moral destiny of na- 
tions, there is something elevating as well as 
terrible. Yet, the terror preponderates, for 
those who are to witness the catastrophe : and 
all reason, as well as all humanity, urges ua 
to use every effort to avoid the crisis and the 
shock, by a timely reformation, and an earnesl 
and sincere attempt to conciliate the hostile 
elements of our society, by mutual concession 
and indulgence. — It is for this reason, chiefly, 
that we feel such extreme solicitude for a 
legislative reform of our system of representa- 
tion, — in some degree as a pledge of the wil- 
lingness of the government to admit of reform 
where it is requisite* but chiefly, no doubt, 
as in itself most likely to stay the flood of ve- 
nality and corruption, — to reclaim a part of 
those who had begun to yield to its seduc- 
tions, — and to reconcile those to the govern- 
ment and constitution of their country, who 
had begun to look upon it with a mingled 
feeling of contempt, hostility, and despair. 
That such a reform as we have contemplated 
would go far to produce those happy effects, 
we think must appear evident to all who agree 
with us as to the nature and origin of the evils 
from which we suffer, and the dangers to 
which we are exposed. One of its immediate^ 
and therefore chief advantages, however, will 
consist in its relieving and abating the spirit 
of discontent which is generated by the spec- 
tacle of our present condition ; both by giving 
it scope and vent, and by the vast facilities it 
must afford to future labours of regeneration. 
By the extension of the elective franchise, 
many of those who are most hostile to the ex- 
isting system, because, under it, they are ex- 
cluded from all share of power or politica* 
importance, will have a part assigned them, 
both more safe, more honourable, and more 
active, than merely murmuring, or meditating 
vengeance against such a scheme of exclusion. 
The influence of such men will be usefully 
exerted in exciting a popular spirit, and in 
exposing the base and dishonest practices that 
may still interfere with the freedom of elec- 
tion. By some alteration in the boratgii 



WINDHAM'S SPEECH. 



603 



qualifications, the body of electors in general 
will be invested with a more respectable char- 
acter, and feel a greater jealousy of every 
thing that may tend to degrade or dishonour 
them : but, above all, a rigid system of econo- 
my, and a farther exclusion of placemen from 
the legislature, by cutting off a great part of 
the minister's most profitable harvest of cor- 
ruption, will force his party also to have re- 
course to more honourable means of popu- 
larity, and to appeal to principles that must 
ultimately promote the cause of independ- 
ence. 

By the introduction, in short, of a system 
of reform, even more moderate and cautious 
than that which we have ventured to indicate, 
we think that a wholesome and legitimate play 
will be given to those principles of opposition 
to corruption, monopoly, and abuse, which, by 
the denial of all reform., are in danger of being- 
fomented into a decided spirit of hostility to 
the government and the institutions of the 
country. Instead of brooding, in sullen and 
helpless silence, over the vices and errors 
which are ripening into intolerable evil, and 
seeing, with a stern and vindictive joy, wrong 
accumulated to wrong, and corruption heaped 
up to corruption, the Spirit of reform will be 
continually interfering, with active and suc- 
cessful zeal, to correct, restrain, and deter. 
Instead of being the avenger of our murdered 
liberties, it w T ill be their living protector ; and 
the censor, not the executioner, of the consti- 
tution. It will not descend, only at long in- 
tervals, like the Avatar of the Indian mytho- 
logy, to expiate, with terrible vengeance, a 
series of consummated crimes; but, like the 
Providence of a better faith, will keep watch 
perpetually over the actions of corrigible men, 
and bring them back from their aberrations, 
by merciful chastisement, timely admonition, 
and the blessed experience of purer principles 
of action. 

Such, according to our conviction of the 
fact, is the true state of the case as to the 
increasing weight and consequence of the 
people; and such the nature of the policy 
which we think this change in the structure 
of our society calls upon us to adopt. The 
people are grown strong, in intellect, reso- 
lution, and mutual reliance, — quid? in the 
detection of the abuses by which they are 
wronged, — and confident in the powers by 
which they may be compelled ultimately to 
seek their redress. Against this strength, it 
is something more wild than madness, and 
more contemptible than folly, to think of ar- 
raying an additional phalanx of abuses, and 
drawing out a wider range of corruptions — 
In that contest, the issue cannot be doubtful, 
nor the conflict long; and, deplorable as the 
victory will be, which is gained over order, 
as well as over guilt, the blame will rest hea- 
viest upon those whose offences first provoked, 
what may very probably turn out a sanguinary 
and an unjustifiable vengeance. 

The conclusions, then, which we would 
draw from the facts that have been relied on 
by the enemies of reform, are indeed of a 
very opposite description from theirs : and the 



course which is pointed out by these new cir- 
cumstances in our situation, appears to us no 
Hess obvious, than it is safe and promising. — 
If the people have risen into greater conse- 
quence, let them have greater power. If a 
greater proportion of our population be now 
capable and desirous of exercising the func- 
tions of free citizens, let a greater number 
be admitted to the exercise of these func- 
tions. If the quantity of mind and of will, 
that must now be represented in our legisla- 
ture, be prodigiously increased since the frame 
of that legislature was adjusted, let its basis 
be widened, so as to rest on all that intellect 
and will. If there be a new power and energy 
generated in the nation, for the due applica- 
tion of which, there is no contrivance in the 
original plan of the constitution, let it flow 
into those channels through which all similar 
powers were ordained to act by the principles 
of that plan. The power itself you can nei- 
ther repress nor annihilate ; and, if it be not 
assimilated to the system of the constitution, 
you seem to be aware that it will ultimately 
overwhelm and destroy it. To set up against 
it the power of influence and corruption, is to 
set up that by which its strength is recruited, 
and its safe application rendered infinitely 
more difficult : it is to defend your establish- 
ments, by loading them with a weight which 
of itself makes them totter under under its 
pressure, and, at the same time, affords a safe 
and inviting approach to the assailant. 

In our own case, too. nothing fortunately is 
easier, than to reduce this growing power of 
the people within the legitimate bounds and 
cantonments of the constitution ; and nothing 
more obvious, than that, when so legalised 
and provided for, it can tend only to the exal- 
tation and improvement of our condition, and 
must add strength and stability to the Throne, 
as well as to the other branches of the legis- 
lature. It seems a strange doctrine, to bo 
held by any one in this land, and, above all, 
by the chief votaries and advocates of royal 
power, that its legal security consists in its 
means of corruption, or can be endangered by 
the utmost freedom and intelligence in the 
body of the people, and the utmost purity and 
popularity of our elections. Under an arbi- 
trary government, where the powers of the 
monarch are confessedly unjust and oppres- 
sive, and are claimed, and openly asserted, 
not as the instruments of public benefit, but 
as the means of individual gratification, such 
a jealousy of popular independence is suffi- 
ciently intelligible : but, in a government like 
ours, where all the powers of the Crown are 
universally acknowledged to exist for the good 
of the people, it is evidently quite extravagant 
to fear, that any increase of union and intelli- 
gence — any growing love of freedom and 
justice in the people — should endanger, or 
should fail to confirm, all those powers and 
prerogatives. 

We have not left ourselves room to enter 
more at large into this interesting question;, 
but we feel perfectly assured, and ready to 
maintain, that, as the institution of a limited, 
hereditary monarchy, must always appear the 



604 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



wisest and most reasonable of all human in- 
stitutions, and that to which increasing reflec- 
tion and experience will infallibly attach men' 
more and more as the world advances ; so, the 
prerogatives of such a monarch will always 
be safer and more inviolate, the more the 
sentiment of liberty, and the love of their 
political rights, is diffused and encouraged 
among his people. A legitimate sovereign, 



in short, who reigns by the fair exercise 'oj 
his prerogative, can have no enemies among 
the lovers of regulated freedom j and the hos- 
tility of such men — by far the most terrible 
of all internal hostility — can only be directed 
towards him, when his throue is enveloped, 
by treacherous advisers, with the hosts of 
corruption ; and disguised, for their ends, in 
the borrowed colours of tyranny. 



( lanttarg, 1810.) 

Short Remarks on the State of Parties at the Close of the Year 1809. 8vo. pp. 30. 

London: 1809.* 



The parties of which we now wish to speak, 
are not the parties in the Cabinet, — nor even 
the parties in Parliament, but the Parties in 
the Nation; — that nation, whose opinions and 
whose spirit ought to admonish and control 
both Cabinet and Parliament, but which now 
seems to us to be itself breaking rapidly into 
two furious and irreconcileable parties; by 
whose collision, if it be not prevented, our 
constitution and independence must be ulti- 
mately destroyed. We have said before, that 
the root of all our misfortunes was in the state 
of the People, and not in the constitution of 
the legislature; and the more we see and 
reflect, the more we are satisfied of this truth. 
It is in vain to cleanse the conduits and reser- 
voirs, if the fountain itself be tainted and 
impure. If the body of the people be infatu- 
ated, or corrupt or depraved, it is vain to talk 
of improving their representation. 

The dangers, and the corruptions, and the 
prodigies of the times, have very nearly put 
an end to all neutrality and moderation in 
politics ; and the great body of the nation ap- 
pears to us to be divided into two violent and 
most pernicious factions ; — the courtiers, who 
are almost for arbitrary power, — and the de- 
mocrats, who are almost for revolution and 
republicanism. Between these stand a small, 
but most respectable band — the friends of 
liberty and of order — the Old Constitutional 
Whigs of England — with the best talents and 
the best intentions, but without present power 
or popularity, — calumniated and suspected by 

* This, I fear, is too much in the style of a sage 
and solemn Rebuke to the madness of contending 
factions. Yet it is not all rhetorical or assuming : 
And the observations on the vast importance and 
high and difficult duties of a middle party, in all 
great national contentions, seem to me as univer- 
sally true, and as applicable to the present position 
of our affairs, as most of the other things I have 
ventured, for this reason, now to produce. It may 
be right to mention, that it was written at a time 
when the recent failure of that wretched expedition 
to Walcheren, and certain antipopular declarations 
in Parliament, had excited a deeper feeling of dis- 
eontenMn the country, and a greater apprehension 
for its consequences, than had been witnessed since 
<he first great panic and excitement of the French 
revolution. The spirit of 6uch a time may, per- 
haps, be detected in some of the following pages. 



both parties, and looking on both' with too visi- 
ble a resentment, aversion, and alarm. The 
two great divisions, in the mean time, are 
daily provoking each other to greater excesses, 
and recruiting their hostile ranks, as they ad- 
vance, from the diminishing mass of the calm 
and the neutral. Every hour the rising tides 
are eating away the narrow isthmus upon 
which the adherents of the Constitution now 
appear to be stationed ; and every hour it be- 
comes more necessary for them to oppose 
some barrier to their encroachments. 

If the two extreme parties are once per- 
mitted to shock together in open conflict, there 
is an end to the freedom, and almost to the 
existence of the nation, — whatever be the re- 
sult, — although that is not doubtful : And the 
only human means of preventing a consum- 
mation to which things seem so obviously 
tending, is for the remaining friends of the 
constitution to unbend from their cold and 
repulsive neutrality, and to join themselves to 
the more respectable members of the party 
to which they have the greatest affinity ; and 
thus, by the weight of their character, and 
the force of their talents, to temper its violence 
and moderate its excesses, till it can be guided 
in safety to the defence, and not to the de- 
struction, of our liberties. In the present 
crisis, we have no hesitation in saying, that it 
is to the popular side that the friends of the 
constitution must turn themselves; and that, 
if the Whig leaders do not first conciliate, and 
then restrain the people, — if they do not save 
them from the leaders they are already choos- 
ing in their own body, and become themselves 
their leaders, by becoming their patrons, and 
their cordial, though authoritative, advisers; 
they will in no long time sweep away the 
Constitution itself, the Monarchy of Engiaud. 
and the Whig aristrocracy, by which that 
Monarchy is controlled and confirmed, and 
exalted above all other forms of polity. 

This is the sum of our doctrine ; though we 
are aware that, to most readers, it will re- 
quire more development than we can now 
afford, and be exposed to more objections than 
we have left ourselves room to answer. To 
many, we are sensible, our fears will appear 
altogether chimerical and fantastic. We have 



STATE OF PARTIES, 1809. 



605 



di'cays .lad these two parties, it will be said — 
always some for carrying things with a high 
hand against the people — and some for sub- 
jecting every thing to their nod ; but the con- 
llict has hitherto afforded nothing more than 
a wholesome and invigorating exercise ; and 
the constitution, so far from being endangered 
by it, has hitherto been found to flourish, in 
proportion as it became more animated. Why, 
then, should we anticipate such tragical effects 
from its continuance ? 

Now, to this, and to all such questions, we 
must answer, that we can conceive them to 
proceed only from that fatal ignorance or in- 
attention to the Signs of the Times, which 
has been the cause of so many of our errors 
and misfortunes. It is quite true, that there 
have always been in this country persons who 
leaned towards arbitrary power, and persons 
who leaned towards too popular a government. 
In all mixed governments, there must be such 
men, and such parties : some will admire the 
monarchical, and some the democratical part 
of the constitution; and, speaking very gener- 
ally, the rich, and the timid, and the indolent, 
as well as the base and the servile, will have 
a natural tendency to the one side; and the 
poor, the enthusiastic, and enterprising, as 
well as the envious and the discontented, will 
be inclined to range themselves on the other. 
These things have been always ; and always 
must be. They have been hitherto, too, with- 
out mischief or hazard ; and might be fairly 
considered as symptoms at least, if not as 
causes, of the soundness and vigour of our 
political organisation. But this has been the 
case, only because the bulk of the nation has 
hitherto, or till very lately, belonged to no 
party at all. Factions existed only among a 
small number of irritable and ambitious indi- 
viduals; and, for want of partizans, necessa- 
rily vented themselves in a few speeches and 
pamphlets — in an election riot, or a treasury 
prosecution. The partizans of Mr. Wilkes, 
and the partizans of Lord Bute, formed but a 
very inconsiderable part of the population. If 
they had divided the whole nation among 
them, the little breaches of the peace and of 
the law at Westminster, would have been 
changed into civil war and mutual proscrip- 
tions; and the constitution of the* country 
might have perished in the conflict. In those 
times, therefore, the advocates of arbitrary 
power and of popular licence were restrained, 
not merely by the constitutional principles of 
so many men of weight and authority, but by 
the absolute neutrality and indifference of the 
great body of the people. They fought like 
champions in a ring of impartial spectators; 
and the multitude who looked on, and thought 
it sport, had little other interest than to see 
that each had fair play. 

Now, however, the case is lamentably dif- 
ferent ; and it will not be difficult, we think, 
to point out the causes which have spread 
abroad this spirit of contention, and changed 
so great a proportion of those calm spectators 
into fierce and impetuous combatants. We 
have formerly endeavoured, on more than one 
occasion; to explain the nature of that great 



and gradual change in the condition of Euro- 
pean society, by which the lower and mid- 
dling orders have been insensibly raised into 
greater importance than they enjoyed when 
their place in the political scale was originally 
settled ; and attempted to show in what way 
the revolution in France, and the revolutionary 
movements of other countries, might be re- 
ferred partly to the progress, and partly to the 
neglect of that great movement. We cannot 
stop now to resume any part of that general 
discussion ; but shall merely observe, that the 
events of the last twenty years are of them- 
selves sufficient to account for the state to 
which this country has been reduced, and for 
the increased number and increased acrimony 
of the parties that divide it. 

The success of a plebeian insurrection — the 
splendid situations to which low-bred men 
have been exalted, in consequence of that 
success — the comparative weakness and in- 
efficiency of the sovereigns and nobles who 
opposed it, and the contempt and ridicule 
which has been thrown by the victors upon 
their order, have all tended to excite and ag- 
gravate the bad principles that lead men to 
despise existing authorities, and to give into 
wild and extravagant schemes of innovation. 
On the other hand, the long-continued ill suc- 
cess of our anti-jacobin councils — the sicken- 
ing uniformity of our boastings and failures — 
the gross and palpable mismanagement of our 
government — the growing and intolerable 
burthen of our taxes — and, above all, the im- 
minent and tremendous peril into which the 
whole nation has been brought, have made a 
powerful appeal to the good principles that 
lead men into similar feelings; and roused 
those who were lately unwilling to disturb 
themselves with political considerations, to cry 
out in vast numbers for reformation and re- 
dress. The number of those who have been 
startled out of their neutrality by such feel- 
ings, very greatly exceeds, we believe, that 
of those who have been tempted from it by 
the stirrings of an irregular ambition: But 
both are alike disposed to look with jealousy 
upon the advocates of power and prerogative — 
to suspect falsehood and corruption in every 
thing that is not clearly explained — to resent 
every appearance of haughtiness or reserve- 
to listen with eager credulity to every tale of 
detraction against public characters — and to 
believe with implicit rashness whatever is 
said of the advantages of popular control. 

Such are the natural and original causes of 
the increase of that popular discontent which 
has of late assumed so formidable an aspect, 
and is, in fact, far more widely spread and 
more deeply rooted in the nation, than the 
sanguine and contemptuous will believe. The 
enumeration, however, would be quite in- 
complete, if we were not to add, that it has 
been prodigiously helped by the contempt, 
and aversion, and defiance, which has been 
so loudly and unwisely expressed by the op- 
posite party. Instead of endeavouring to avoid 
the occasions of dissatisfaction, and to soothe 
and conciliate those whom it could never be 
creditable to have for enemies, it has been 
3a2 



606 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



but too often the policy of the advocates for 
strong government to exasperate them by 
menaces and abuse ; — to defend, with inso- 
lence, every thing that was attacked, how- 
ever obviously indefensible; — and to insult 
and defy their opponents by a needless osten- 
tation of their own present power, and their 
resolution to use it in support of their most 
offensive and unjustifiable measures. This 
unfortunate tone, which was first adopted in 
the time of Mr. Pitt, has been pretty well 
maintained by most of his successors; and 
has done more, we are persuaded, to revolt 
and alienate the hearts of independent and 
brave men, than all the errors and incon- 
sistencies of which they have been guilty. 

In running thus rapidly over the causes 
which have raised the pretensions and aggra- 
vated the discontents of the People, we have, 
in fact, stated also, the sources of the increased 
acrimony and pretensions of the advocates for 
power. The same spectacle of popular excess 
and popular triumph which excited the dan- 
gerous passions of the turbulent and daring, 
in the way of Sympathy, struck a correspond- 
ing alarm into the breasts of the timid and 
prosperous, — and excited a furious Antipathy 
in those of the proud and domineering. As 
fear and hatred lead equally to severity, and 
are neither of them very far-sighted in their 
councils, they naturally attempted to bear 
down this rising spirit by menaces and abuse. 
All hot-headed and shallow-headed persons 
of rank, with their parasites and dependants 
— and indeed almost all rich persons, of quiet 
tempers and weak intellects, started up into 
furious anti-jacobins ; and took at once a most 
violent part in those political contentions, as 
to which they had, in former times, been con- 
fessedly ignorant and indifferent. When this 
tone was once given, from passion and mis- 
taken principle among the actual possessors 
of power, it was readily taken up by mere 
servile venality. The vast multiplication of 
offices and occupations in the gift of the gov- 
ernment, and the enormous patronage and 
expectancy, of which it has recently become 
the centre, has drawn a still greater number, 
and of baser natures, out of the political neu- 
trality in which they would otherwise have 
remained, and led them to counterfeit, for 
hire, that unfortunate violence which neces- 
sarily produces a corresponding violence in 
its objects. 

Thus has the nation been set on fire at the 
four corners ! and thus has an incredible and 
most alarming share of its population been 
separated into two hostile and irritated parties, 
neither of which can now subdue the other 
without a civil war ; and the triumph of either 
of which would be equally fatal to the consti- 
tution. 

The force and extent of these parties is but 
imperfectly known, we believe, even to those 
who have been respectively most active in ar- 
raying them ; and the extent of the adverse 
partyis rarely ever suspected by those who 
are zealously opposed to it. There must be 
least error, however, in the estimate of the 
partizans of arbitrary government. They are 



in power, and show themselves; — but for this 
very reason, their real force is probably a great 
deal less than it appears to be. Many wear 
their livery, out of necessity or convenience, 
whose hearts are with their adversaries ; and 
many clamour loudly in their cause, who 
would clamour more loudly against them, the 
moment they thought that cause was going 
back in the world. The democratic party, on 
the other hand, is scattered, and obscurely 
visible. It can hardly be for the immediate 
interest of any one to acknowledge it; and 
scarcely any one is, as yet, proud of its badge 
or denomination. It lurks, however, in pri- 
vate dwellings, — it gathers strength at homely 
firesides, — it is confirmed in conferences of 
friends, — it breaks out in pamphlets and jour- 
nals of every description, — and shows its head 
now and then in the more tumultuous assem- 
blies of populous cities. In the metropolis 
especially, where the concentration of num- 
bers gives them confidence and importance, 
it exhibits itself very nearly, though not alto- 
gether, in its actual force. How that force 
now stands in comparison with what is op- 
posed to it, it would not perhaps be very easy 
to calculate. Taking the whole nation over 
head, we should conjecture, that, as things 
now are, they would be pretty equally bal- 
anced ; but, if any great calamity should give 
a shock to the stability of government, or call 
imperiously for more vigorous councils, we are 
convinced that the partizans of popular gov- 
ernment would be found to outnumber their 
opponents in the proportion of three to two. 
When the one party, indeed, had failed so fa- 
tally, it must seem to be a natural resource to 
make a trial of the other ; and, if civil war or 
foreign conquest should really fall on us, it 
would be a movement almost of instinctive 
wisdom, to displace and to punish those under 
whose direction they had been brought on. 
Upon any such serious alarm, too, all the ve- 
nal and unprincipled adherents of the prerog- 
ative would inevitably desert their colours, 
and go over to the enemy, — while the Throne 
would be left to be defended only by its regular 
forces and its immediate dependants, — rein- 
forced by a few bands of devoted Tories, min- 
gled wil h some generous, but downcast spirits, 
under the banner of the Whig aristocracy. 

But, without pretending to settle the nu- 
merical or relative force of the two opposing 
parties, we wish only to press it upon our 
readers, that they are both so strong and so 
numerous, as to render it quite impossible that 
the one should now crush or overcome the 
other, without a ruinous contention ; and that 
they are so exasperated, and so sanguine and 
presumptuous, that they will push forward to 
such a contention in nolong time, unless they 
be separated or appeased by some powerful 
interference. That the number of the demo- 
crats is vast, and is daily increasing with 
visible and dangerous rapidity, any man ma} 
satisfy himself, by the common and obvious 
means of information. It is a fact which he 
may read legibly in the prodigious sale, and 
still more prodigious circulation, of Cobbett's 
Register, and other weekly papers of the same 



STATE OF PARTIES, 1809. 



607 



genera! description : He may learn it in every 
street of all the manufacturing and populous 
towns in the heart of the country; and may, and 
must hear it most audibly, in the public and 
private talk of the citizens of the metropolis. 
All these afford direct and palpable proofs of 
the actual increase of this formidable party. 
But no man, who understands any thing of 
human nature, or knows any thing of our re- 
cent history, can need direct evidence to con- 
vince him, that it must have experienced a 
prodigious increase. In a country where more 
than a million of men take some interest in 
politics, and are daily accustomed (right or 
wrong) to refer the blessings or the evils of 
their condition to the conduct of their rulers, 
is it possible to conceive, that a third part at 
least of every man's income should be taken 
from him in the shape of taxes, — and that, after 
twenty years of boastful hostility, we should 
be left without a single ally, and in imminent 
hazard of being invaded by a revolutionary 
foe, without producing a very general feeling 
of disaffection and discontent, and spreading 
through the body of the nation, not only a 
great disposition to despise and distrust their 
governors, but to judge unfavourably of the 
form of government itself which could admit 
of such gross ignorance or imposition 1 

The great increase of the opposite party, 
again, is but too visible, we are sorry to say, 
in the votes of Parliament, in the existence of 
the present administration, and in the sale 
and the tenor of the treasury journals. But, 
independent of such proof, this too might have 
been safely inferred from the known circum- 
stances of the times. In a nation abounding 
with wealth and loyalty, enamoured of its old 
institutions, and originally indebted for its 
freedom, in a great degree, to the spirit of its 
landed Aristocracy, it was impossible that the 
excesses of a plebeian insurrection should not 
have excited a great aversion to every thing 
that had a similar tendency : and in any na- 
tion, alas ! that had recently multiplied its 
taxes, and increased the patronage of its gov- 
ernment to three times their original extent, 
it could not but happen, that multitudes would 
be found to barter their independence for their 
interest ; and to exchange the language of 
free men for that which was most agreeable to 
the party upon whose favour they depended. 

If the numbers of the opposed factions, 
however, be formidable to the peace of the 
country, the acrimony of their mutual hostili- 
ty is still more alarming. If the whole na- 
tion were divided into the followers of Mr. 
Cobbett and Sir Francis Burdett, and the fol- 
lowers of Mr. John Gifford and Mr. John 
Bowles, does not every man see that a civil 
war and a revolution would be inevitable? 
Now, we say, that the factions into which the 
country is divided, are not very different from 
the followers of Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Gifford ; 
or. at all events, that if they are allowed to 
defy and provoke each other into new extrava- 
gance and increased hostility, as they have 
been doing lately, we do not see how that 
most tremendous of all calamities is to be 
avoided. If those who have influence with 



the people go on a little longer to excite in 
them a contempt and distrust of all public 
characters, and of all institutions of authority, 
while many among our public men go on to 
justify, by their conduct, that contempt and 
distrust j — if the people are taught by all who 
now take the trouble to win their confidence, 
that Parliament is a mere assemblage of un- 
principled place-hunters, and that ins and outs 
are equally determined to defend corruption 
and peculation ; and if Parliament continues 
to busy itself with personalities, — to decline 
the investigation of corruptions, — and to ap- 
prove, by its votes, what no sane man in the 
kingdom can consider as admitting of apolo- 
gy; — if those to whom their natural leaders 
have given up the guidance of the people, 
shall continue to tell them that they may 
easily be relieved of half their taxes, and 
placed in a situation of triumphant security, 
while the government continues to multiply 
its impositrons, and to waste their blood and 
treasure in expeditions which make us hate- 
ful and ridiculous in the eyes of many of our 
neighbours, while they bring the danger nearer 
to our own door ; — if, finally, the people are a 
little more persuaded that, without a radical 
change in the constitution of the Legislature, 
they must continue in the condition of slaves 
to a junto of boroughmongers, while Parlia- 
ment rejects with disdain every proposal to 
correct the most palpable defects of that con- 
stitution : Then we say that ihe whole- 
some days of England are numbered, — that 
she is gliding to the verge of the most dread- 
ful of all calamities, — and that all the freedom 
and happiness which we undoubtedly still en- 
joy, and all the morality and intelligence, and 
the Jong habits of sober thinking and kindly 
affection which adorn and exalt our people, 
will not long protect us from the horrors of a 
civil war. 

In such an unhallowed conflict it is scarcely 
necessary to say that the triumph of either 
party would be the ruin of English liberty, 
and of her peace, happiness, and prosperity. 
Those who have merely lived in our times, 
must have seen, and they who have read of 
other times, or reflected on what Man is at 
all times, must know, independent of that les- 
son, how much Chance, and how much Time, 
must concur with genius and patriotism, to 
form a good or a stable government. We have 
the frame and the materials of such a govern- 
ment in the constitution of England ; but if we 
rend asunder that frame, and scatter these 
materials — if we "put out the light" of our 
living polity, 

" We know not. where is that Promethean fire, 
That may its flame relumine." 

The stability of the English constitution de- 
pends upon its monarchy and aristocracy; and 
their stability, again, depends very much on 
the circumstance of their having grown natu- 
rally out of the frame and inward structure of 
our society — upon their having struck their 
roots deep through every stratum of the po- 
litical soil, and having been moulded and im- 
pressed, during a long course of ages, by the 



608 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



usages, institutions, habits, and affections of 
the community. A popular revolution would 
overthrow the monarchy and the aristocracy; 
and even if it were not true that revolution 
propagates revolution, as waves gives rise to 
waves, till the agitation is stopped by the iron 
boundary of despotism, it would still require 
ages of anxious discomfort, before we could 
build up again that magnificent fabric, which 
now requires purification rather than repair; 
or secure that permanency to our new estab- 
lishments, without which they could have no 
other good quality. 

Such we humbly conceive to be the course, 
and the causes, of the evils which we believe 
to be impending. ft is time now to inquire 
whether there be no remedy. If the whole 
nation were actually divided into revolution- 
ists and high-monarchy men, we do not see 
how they could be prevented from fighting, 
and giving us the miserable choice of a des- 
potism or a tumultuary democracy. Fortu- 
nately, however, this is not the case. There 
is a third party in the nation — small, indeed, 
in point of numbers, compared with either of 
the others — and, for this very reason, low, we 
fear, in present popularity — but essentially 
powerful from talents.and reputation, and cal- 
culated to become both popular and authori- 
tative, by the fairness and the firmness of its 
principles. This is composed of the Whig- 
Royalists of England. — men who, without for- 
getting that all government is from the peo- 
ple, and for the people, are satisfied that the 
rights and liberties of the people are best 
maintained by a regulated hereditary mon- 
archy, and a large, open aristocracy ; and who 
are as much averse, therefore, from every at- 
tempt to undermine the throne, or to discredit 
the nobles, as they are indignant at every pro- 

i'ect to insult or enslave the people. In the 
>etter days of the constitution, this party 
formed almost the whole ordinary opposition, 
and bore no inconsiderable proportion to that 
of the courtiers. It might be said too, to have 
with it, not only the greater part of those who 
were jealous of the prerogative, but all that 
great mass of the population which was ap- 
parently neutral and indifferent to the issue 
of the contest. The new-sprung factions, 
however, have swallowed up almost all this 
disposable body; and have drawn largely 
from the ranks of the old constitutionalists 
themselves. In consequence of this change 
of circumstances, they can no longer act with 
effect, as a separate party; and are far too 
weak to make head, at the same time, against 
the overbearing influence of the Crown, and 
the rising pretensions of the people. It is nec- 
essary, therefore, that they should now leave 
this attitude of stern and defying mediation ; 
and. if they would escape being crushed 
along with the constitution on the collision 
of the two hostile bodies, they must identify 
themselves cordially with the better part of 
one of them, and thus soothe, ennoble, and 
control it, by the infusion of their own spirit, 
and the authority of their own wisdom and 
experience. Like faithful generals, whose 
troops have mutinied, they must join the 



march, and mix with the ranks of the offend 
ers, that they may be enabled to reclaim and 
repress them, and save both them and them 
selves from a sure and shameful destruction 
They have no longer strength to overawe o, 
repel either party by a direct and forcible at- 
tack ; and must work, therefore, by gentle 
and conciliatory means, upon that which is 
mest dangerous, most flexible, and most capa- 
ble of being guided to noble exertions. Like ihe 
Sabine women of old, they must throw them- 
selves between the kindred combatants; and 
stay the fatal feud, by praises and embraces, 
and dissuasives of kindness and flattery. 

Even those who do not much love or care 
for the people, are now called upon to pacify 
them, by granting, at least, all that can reason- 
ably be granted ; and not only to redress their 
Grievances, but to comply with their Desires, 
in so far as they can be complied with, with 
less hazard than must evidently arise, from 
disregarding them. 

We do not say, therefore, that a thorough 
reconciliation between the Whig royalists 
asd the great body of the people is desirable 
merely — but that it is indispensable: since it 
is a dream — a gross solecism and absurdity, 
to suppose, that such a party should exist, 
unless supported by the affections and appro- 
bation of the people. The advocates of pre- 
rogative have the support of prerogative ; and 
they who rule by corruption and the direct 
agency of wealth, have wealth and the means 
of corruption in their hands: — But the friends 
of national freedom must be recognised by 
the nation. If the Whigs are not supported 
by the people, they can have no support; 
and, therefore, if the people are seduced away 
from them, they must just g'o after them and 
bring them back : And are no more to be ex- 
cused for leaving them to be corrupted by 
Demagogues, than they would be for leaving 
them to be oppressed by tyrants. If a party 
is to exist at all, therefore, friendly at once to 
the liberties of the people and the integrity 
of the monarchy, and holding that liberty is 
best secured by a monarchical establishment, 
it is absolutely necessary that it should pos- 
sess the confidence and attachment of the 
people; and if it appear at any time to have 
lost it, the first of all its duties, and the neces- 
sary prelude to the discharge of all the rest, 
is to regain it, by every effort consistent with 
probity and honour. 

Now, it may be true, that the present alien- 
ation of the body of the people from the old 
constitutional champions of their freedom, 
originated in the excesses and delusion of the 
people themselves ; but it is not less true, that 
the Whig royalists have increased that alien- 
ation by the haughtiness of their deportment 
— by the marked displeasure with which they 
have disavowed most of the popular proceed- 
ings — and the tone of needless and imprudent 
distrust and reprobation with which they have 
treated pretensions that w T ere only partly in- 
admissible. They have given too much way 
to the offence which they naturally received 
from the rudeness and irreverence of the terms 
in which their grievances were frequently 



STATE OF PARTIES, 1809. 



stated ; and have felt too proud an indignation 
when they saw vulgar and turbulent men pre- 
sume to lay their unpurged hands upon the 
sacred ark of the constitution. They have 
disdained too much to be associated with 
coarse coadjutors, even in the good work of 
resistance and reformation; and have hated 
too virulently the demagogues who have in- 
flamed the people, and despised too heartily 
the people who have yielded to so gross a de- 
lusion. All this feeling, however, though it 
may be natural, is undoubtedly both misplaced 
and imprudent. The people are. upon the 
whole, both more moral and more intelligent 
than tney ever were in any former period ; and 
therefore, if they are discontented, we may be 
sure they have cause for discontent : if they 
have been deluded, we may be satisfied that 
there is a mixture of reason in the sophistry 
by which they have been perverted. All 
their demands may not be reasonable ; and 
with many, which may be just in principle, it 
may, as yet, be impracticable to comply. But 
all are not in either of these predicaments; 
though we can only now afford to make par- 
ticular mention of one : and one, we are con- 
cerned to say, on which, though of the great- 
est possible importance, the people have of 
late found but few abettors among the old 
friends of the constitution, we mean that of a 
Reform in the representation. Upon this 
point, we have spoken largely on former oc- 
casions; and have only to add that, though we 
can neither approve of such a reform as some 
very popular persons have suggested, nor 
bring ourselves to believe that any reform 
would accomplish all the objects that have 
been held out by its most zealous advocates, 
we have always been of opinion that a large 
and liberal reform should be granted. The 
reasons of policy which have led us to this 
conviction, we have stated on former occa- 
sions. But the chief and the leading reason 
for supporting the proposal at present is, that 
the people are zealous for its adoption ; and 
are entitled to this gratification at the hands 
of their representatives. We laugh at the 
idea of there being any danger in disfranchis- 
ing the whole mass of rotten and decayed 
boroughs, or communicating the elective fran- 
chise to a great number of respectable citi- 
zens : And as to the supposed danger of the 
mere example of yielding to the desires of 
the people, we can only say, that we are far 
more strongly impressed with the danger of 
thwarting them. The people have far more 
wealth and far more intelligence now, than 
they had in former times ; and therefore they 
ought to have, and they must have, more po- 
litical power. The danger is not in yielding 
to this swell, but in endeavouring to resist it. 
If properly watched and managed, it will only 
bear the vessel of the state more proudly and 
steadily along;— if neglected, or rashly op- 
posed, it will dash her on the rocks and shoals 
of a sanguinary revolution. 
77 



We, in short, are for the monarchy ar.d the 
aristocracy of England, as the only sure sup- 
ports of a permanent and regulated freedom : 
But we do not see how either is now to be 
preserved, except by surrounding them with 
the affection of the people. The admirers of 
arbitrary power, blind to the great lesson 
which all Europe is now holding out to them, 
have attempted to dispense with this protec- 
tion ; and the demagogues have taken advan- 
tage of their folly to excite the people to with- 
draw it altogether. The true friends of the 
constitution must now bring it back ; and must 
reconcile the people to the old monarchy and 
the old Parliament of their land, by restraining 
the prerogative within its legitimate bounds, 
and bringing back Parliament to its natural 
habits of sympathy and concord with its con- 
stituents. The people, therefore, though it 
may be deluded, must be reclaimed by gen- 
tleness, and treated with respect and indul- 
gence. All indications, and all feelings of 
jealousy or contempt, must be abjured. What- 
ever is to be granted, should be granted with 
cordial alacrity; and all denials should be 
softened with words and with acts of kind- 
ness. The wounds that are curable, should 
be cured ; those that have festered more deeply 
should be cleansed and anointed; and, into 
such as it may be impossible to close, the 
patient should be allowed to pour any inno- 
cent balsam, in the virtues of which he be- 
lieves. The irritable state of the body politic 
will admit of no other treatment. — Incisions 
and cauteries would infallibly bring on con- 
vulsions and insanity. 

We had much more to say ; but we must 
close here : Nor indeed could any warning 
avail those who are not aware already. He 
must have gazed with idle eyes on the recent 
course of events, both at home and abroad, 
who does not see that no government can now 
subsist long in England, that is not bottomed 
in the affection of the great body of the peo- 
ple ; and who does not see, still more clearly,, 
that the party of the people is every day gain- 
ing strength, from the want of judgment and 
of feeling in those who have defied and in- 
sulted it, and from the coldness and alienation 
of those who used to be their patrons and de- 
fenders. If something is not done to concili- 
ate, these heartburnings must break out into 
deadly strife; and impartial history will as- 
sign to each of the parties their share of the 
great guilt that will be incurred. The first 
and the greatest outrages will probably pro- 
ceed from the people themselves; but a 
deeper curse will fall on the corrupt and su- 
percilious government that provoked them: 
Nor will they be held blameless, who, when 
they might have repressed or moderated the 
popular impulse, by attempting to direct it. 
chose rather to take counsel of their pride, anq 
to stand by, and see the constitution torn to 
pieces, because they could not approve en- 
tirely of either of the combatants ! 



610 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



(©rtober, 1827.) 

The History of Iceland. By John O'Driscol. In two vols. 8 vo. pp.815. London ; 1827. • 



A good History of Ireland is still a deside- 
ratum in our literature ; — and would not only 
be interesting, we think, but invaluable. 
There are accessible materials in abundance 
for such a history ; and the task of arranging 
them really seems no less inviting than im- 
portant. It abounds with striking events, and 
with strange revolutions and turns of fortune 
— brought on, sometimes by the agency of 
enterprising men, — but more frequently by 
the silent progress of time, unwatched and 
unsuspected, alike by those who were to suf- 
fer, and those who were to gain by the result. 
In this respect, as well as in many others, it is 
as full of instruction as of interest, — and to the 
people of this country especially, and of this 
age, it holds out lessons far more precious, far 
more forcible, and far more immediately ap- 
plicable, than all that is elsewhere recorded 
in the annals of mankind. It is the very great- 
ness of this interest, however, and the dread, 
an \ the encouragement of these applications, 
that have hitherto defaced and even falsified 
the record — that have made impartiality al- 
most hopeless, and led alternately to the sup- 
pression and the exaggeration of sufferings 
and atrocities too monstrous, it might appear, 
in themselves, to be either exaggerated or 
disguised. Party rancour and religious ani- 
mosity have hitherto contrived to convert 
what should have been their antidote into 
their aliment, — and, by the simple expedient 
of giving only one side of the picture, have 
pretty generally succeeded in making the his- 
tory of past enormities not a warning against, 
but an incitement to, their repetition. In tell- 
ing the story of those lamentable dissensions, 
each party has enhanced the guilt of the ad- 
versary, and withheld all notice of their own ; 
— and seems to have had it far more at heart 
to irritate and defy each other, than to leave 



* It may be thought that this should rather have 
been brought in under the title of History : But the 
truth is, that I have now omitted all that is properly 
historical, and retained only what relates to the ne- 
cessity of maintaining the legislative and incorpo- 
rating union of the two countries ; a topic that is 
purely political : and falls, I think, correctly enough 
under the title of General Politics, since it is at this 
day of still more absorbing interest than when these 
observations were first published in 1827. If at that 
time I thought a Separation, or a dissolution of the 
union, (for they are the same thing,) a measure not 
to be contemplated but with horror, it may be sup- 
posed that I should not look more charitably on the 
? reposition, now that Catholic emancipation and 
'arliamentary reform have taken away some, at 
least, of the motives or apologies of those by whom 
it was then maintained. The example of Scotland, 
I still think, is well put for the argument: And 
among the many who must now consider this ques- 
tion, it may be gratifying to some to see upon what 
grounds, and how decidedly, an opinion was then 
formed upon it, by one certainly not too much dis- 
posed to think favourably of the conduct or the pre- 
tensions of England. 



even a partial memorial of the truth. That 
truth is, no doubt, for the most part, at once 
revolting and pitiable; — not easily at first to 
be credited, and to the last difiicult to be 
tol^ with calmness. Yet it is thus only that 
it can be told with advantage — and so told, 
it is pregnant with admonitions and sugges- 
tions, as precious in their tenor, as irresisti- 
ble in their evidence, when once fairly re- 
ceived. 

Unquestionably, in the main, England has 
been the oppressor, and Ireland the victim; 
— not always a guiltless victim. — and it may 
be, often an offender: But even when the 
guilt may have been nearly balanced, the 
weight of suffering has always fcMen on the 
weakest. This comparative weakness, in- 
deed, was the first cause of Ireland's misery 
— the second, her long separation. She had 
been too long a weak neighbour, to be easily 
admitted to the rights of an equal ally. Pre- 
tensions which the growing strength and in- 
telligence of the one country began to feel 
intolerable, were sanctioned in the eyes of the 
other by long usage and prescription; — and 
injustice, which never could have been first 
inflicted when it was first complained of, was 
yet long persisted in, because it had been long 
submitted to with but little complaint. No 
misgovernment is ever so bad as provincial 
misgovernment — and no provincial misgov- 
ernment, it would seem, as that which is ex- 
ercised by a free people, — whether arising 
from a jealous reluctance to extend that proud 
distinction to a race of inferiors, or from that 
inherent love of absolute power, which gives 
all rulers a tendency to be despotic, and seeks, 
when restrained at home, for vent and indem- 
nification abroad. 

The actual outline of the story is as clear 
as it is painful. Its most remarkable and 
most disgusting feature is, that while Religion 
has been made the pretext of its most sangui- 
nary and atrocious contentions, it has been, 
from first to last, little else than a cover for 
the basest cupidity, and the meanest and most 
unprincipled ambition. The history which 
concerns the present times, need not be traced 
farther back than to the days of Henry VIII. 
and Queen Mary. Up to that period, the petty 
and tyrannical Parliaments of the Pale had, 
indeed, pretty uniformly insulted and des- 
pised the great native chiefs among whom the 
bulk of the island was divided — but they had 
also feared them, and mostly let them alone. 
At that era, however, the growing strength 
and population of England inspired it with a 
bolder ambition ; and the rage of proselytism 
which followed the Reformation, gave it both 
occasion and excuse. The passions, which 
led naturally enough to hostilities in such cir- 
cumstances, were industriously fostered by 
the cold-blooded selfishness of those who 



O'DRISCOL'S IRELAND. 



611 



were to profit by the result. Insurrections 
were now regularly followed by Forfeitures; 
Rnd there were by this time men and enter- 
prise enough in England to meditate the oc- 
cupancy of the vast domains from which the 
rebel chieftains were thus first to be driven. 
From this period, accordingly, to that of the 
Restoration, the bloodiest and mosr atrocious 
in her unhappy annals, the history of Ireland 
may be summarily described as that of a se- 
ries of sanguinary wars, fomented for purpo- 
ses of Confiscation. After the Restoration, 
and down till the Revolution, this was suc- 
ceeded by a contest equally unprincipled and 
mercenary, between the settlers under Crom- 
well and the old or middle occupants whom 
they had displaced. By the final success of 
King William, a strong military government 
was once more imposed on this unhappy land ; 
under which its spirit seemed at last to be 
broken, and even its turbulent activity re- 
pressed. As it slowly revived, the Protestant 
antipathies of the English government seem 
to have been reinforced, or replaced, by a 
more extended and still more unworthy Na- 
tional Jealousy — first on the subject of trade, 
and then on that of political rights : — and 
since a more enlightened view of her own 
interests, aided by the arms of the volunteers 
of 1780, have put down those causes of op- 

Eression, — the system of misgovernment has 
een maintained, for little other end, that we 
can discern, but to keep a small junto of arro- 
gant individuals in power, and to preserve the 
supremacy of a faction, long" after the actual 
cessation of the causes that lifted them into 
authority. 

This is '-'the abstract and brief chronicle " 
of the political or external history of the sister 
island. But it has been complicated of late, 
and all its symptoms aggravated by the sin- 
gularity of its economical relations. The mar- 
vellous multiplication of its people, and the 
growing difficulty of supplying them with 
food or employment, presenting, at the pre- 
sent moment, a new and most urgent cause 
of dissatisfaction and alarm. For this last 
class of evils, a mere change in the policy of 
the Government would indeed furnish no ef- 
fectual remedy: and to find one in any degree 
available, might well task the ingenuity of the 
most enlightened and beneficent. But for the 
greater part of her past sufferings, as well as 
her actual degradation, disunion, and most 
dangerous discontent, it is impossible to deny 
that the successive Governments of England 
have been chiefly responsible. Without pre- 
tending to enumerate, or even to class, the 
several charges which might be brought 
against them, or to determine what weight 
should be allowed to the temptations or pro- 
vocations by which they might be palliated, 
we think it easier and far more important 
to remark, that the only secure preventive 
would have been an early, an equal, and com- 
plete incorporating Union of the two coun- 
tries : — and that the only effective cure for 
the misery occasioned by its having been so 
long delayed, is to labour, heartily and in ear- 
nest, still to render it equal and complete. It 



is in vain to hope that a provincial govern- 
ment should not be oppressive — that a dele- 
gated power should not be abused — that of 
two separate countries, allied >nly, but not in- 
corporated, the weaker sho lid not be de- 
graded, and the stronger unjust. The only 
remedy is to identify and amalgamate them 
throughout — to mix up the oppressors and the 
oppressed — to take away all privileges and 
distinctions, by fully communicating them, — 
and to render abuses impossible, by confound- 
ing their victims with their authors. 

If any one doubts of the wretchedness of 
an unequal and unincorporating alliance, of 
the degradation of being subject to a provin- 
cial parliament and a distant king, and of the 
efficacy of a substantial union in curing all 
these evils, he is invited to look to the obvious 
example of Scotland. While the crowns only 
were united, and the governments continued 
separate, the weaker country was the scene 
of the mast atrocious cruelties, the most vio- 
lent injustice, the most degrading oppressions. 
The prevailing religion of the people was pro- 
scribed and persecuted with a ferocity greater 
than has ever been systematically exercised, 
even in Ireland; her industry was crippled 
and depressed by unjust and intolerable re- 
strictions; her parliaments corrupted and over- 
awed into the degraded instruments of a dis- 
tant court, and her nobility and gentry, cut off 
from all hope of distinction by vindicating 
the rights or promoting the interests of their 
country at home, were led to look up to the 
favour of her oppressors as the only remain- 
ing avenue to power, and degenerated, for the 
most part, into a band of mercenary adven- 
turers ; — the more considerable aspiring to the 
wretched honour of executing the tyrannical 
orders which were dictated from the South, 
and the rest acquiring gradually those habits 
of subserviency and selfish submission, the 
traces of which are by some supposed to be 
yet discernible in their descendants. The 
Revolution, which rested almost entirely on 
the prevailing antipathy to Popery, required, 
of course, the co-operation of all classes of 
Protestants; and, by its success, the Scottish 
Presbyterians were relieved, for a time, from 
their Episcopalian persecutions. But it was 
not till after the Union that the nation was 
truly emancipated ; or lifted up from the ab- 
ject condition of a dependant, at once sus- 
pected and despised. The effects of that 
happy consolidation were not indeed immedi- 
ately apparent ; For the vices which had been 
generated by a century of provincial mis- 
government, the meannesses that had become 
habitual, the animosities that had so long been 
fostered, could not be cured at once, by the 
mere removal of their cause. The generation 
they had degraded, must first be allowed to 
die out — and more, perhaps, than one genera- 
tion: But the poison tree was cut down — the 
fountain of bitter waters was sealed up, and 
symptoms of returning vigour and happiness 
were perceived. Vestiges may still be traced, 
perhaps, of our long degradation ; but for, at 
least, forty years back, the provinces of Scot- 
land have been, on the whole, but the North 



12 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



em provinces of Great Britain. There are 
no local oppressions, no national animosities. 
Life, and liberty, and property, are as secure in 
Caithness as they are in Middlesex — industry 
as much encouraged, and wealth still more 
rapidly progressive ; while not only different 
religious opinions, but different religious estab- 
lishments subsist in the two ends of the same 
island in unbroken harmony, and only excite 
each other, by a friendly emulation, to greater 
purity of life and greater zeal for Christianity. 

If this happy Union, however, had been 
delayed for another century — if Scotland had 
been doomed to submit for a hundred years 
more to the provincial tyranny of the Lauder- 
dales, Rotheses, and Middletons, and to meet 
the cruel persecutions which gratified the fe- 
rocity of her Dalzells and Drummonds, and 
tarnished the glories of such men as Mon- 
trose and Dundee, with her armed conventi- 
cles and covenanted saints militant — to see 
her patriots exiled, or bleeding on the scaffold 
— her only trusted teachers silenced in her 
churches and schools, and her Courts of Jus- 
tice degraded or overawed into the instru- 
ments of a cowardly oppression, can any man 
doubt, not only that she would have presented, 
at this day, a scene of even greater misery 
and discord than Ireland did in 1800; but 
that the corruptions and animosities by which 
she had been desolated would have been 
found to have struck so deep root as still to 
encumber the land, long after their seed had 
ceased to be scattered abroad on its surface, 
and only to hold out the hope of their eradi- 
cation, after many years of patient and painful 
exertion ? 

Such, however, is truly the condition of Ire- 
land ; and such are the grounds, and such the 
aspect of our hopes for her regeneration. So 
far from tracing any substantive part of her 
miseries to the Union of 1800, we think they 
are to be ascribed mainly to its long delay, 
and its ultimate incompleteness. It is not by 
a dissolution of the Union with England then, 
that any good can be done, but by its im- 
provement and consolidation. Some injury 
it may have produced to the shopkeepers of 
Dublin, and some inconsiderable increase in 
the number of the absentees. But it has shut 
up the main fountain of corruption and dis- 
honour ; and palsied the arm and broken the 
heart of local insolence and oppression. It 
has substituted, at least potentially and in 
prospect, the wisdom and honour of the British 
Government and the British people, to the 
passions and sordid interests of a junto of 
Irish boroughmongers, — and not only enabled, 
but compelled, all parties to appeal directly 
to the great tribunal of the British public. 
While the countries remained apart, the actual 
depositaries of power were almost unavoida- 
bly relied on by the general government for 
information, and employed as the delegates 
of its authority — and, as unavoidably, abused 
the trust, and misled and imposed on their 
employers. Having come into power at the 
time when the Catholic party, by its support 
of the House of Stuart, had excited against it 
all the fears and antipathies of the friends of 



liberty, they felt that they coald only main* 
tain themselves in possession of it, by keep- 
ing up that distrust and animosity, after its 
causes had expired. They contrived, there- 
fore, by false representations and unjust laws, 
to foster those prejudices, which would other- 
wise have gradually disappeared — and, un- 
luckily, succeeded but too well. As their 
own comparative numbers and natural con- 
sequence diminished, they clung still closer 
to their artificial holds on authority; and, ex- 
asperated by feeling their dignity menaced, 
and their monopolies endangered by the grow- 
ing wealth, population, and intelligence of the 
country at large, they redoubled their efforts, 
by clamour and activity, intimidation and de- 
ceit, to preserve the unnatural advantages 
they had accidentally gained, and to keep 
down that springtide of general reason and 
substantial power which they felt rising and 
swelling all around them. 

Their pretence was, that they were the 
champions of the Protestant Ascendancy — and 
that whenever that was endangered, rhere 
was an end of the English connection. While 
the alliance of the two countries was indeed 
no more than a connection, there might be 
some truth in the assertion — or at least it was 
easy for an Irish Parliament to make it appear 
to be true. But the moment they came to 
be incorporated, its falsehood and absurdity- 
should at once have become apparent. Un- 
luckily, however, the incorporation was not so 
complete, or the union so entire, as it should 
have been. There still was need, or was 
thought to be need, of a provincial manage- 
ment, a domestic government of Ireland ; — 
and the old wretched parliamentary machi- 
nery, though broken up and disabled for its 
original work, naturally supplied the materials 
for its construction. The men still survived 
who had long been the exclusive channels of 
communication with the supreme authority; 
and though other and wider channels were 
now opened, the habit of employing the for- 
mer, aided by the eagerness with which they 
sought for continued employment, left with 
them an undue share of its support. Still more 
unluckily, the ancient practice of misgovern- 
ment had left its usual traces on the character, 
not only of its authors, but its victims. Habit- 
ual oppression had produced habitual disaffec- 
tion ; and a long course of wrong and con- 
tumely, had ended in a desperate indignation, 
and an eager thirst for revenge. 

The natural and necessary consequences 
of the Union did not, therefore, immediately 
follow its enactment — and are likely indeed 
to be longer obstructed, and run greater haz- 
ard of being fatally intercepted, than in the 
case of Scotland. Not only is the mutual 
exasperation greater, and the wounds more 
deeply rankled, but the Union itself is more 
incomplete, and leaves greater room for com- 
plaints of inequality and unfairness. The 
numerical strength, too, of the Irish people is 
far greater, and their causes of discontent 
more uniform, than they ever were in Scot- 
land ; and, above all, the temper of the race 
is infinitely more eager, sanguine, and reck- 



O'DRISCOL'S IRELAND. 



<513 



.ess of consequences, than that of the sober 
and calculating tribes of the north. The 
greatest and most urgent hazard, therefore, is 
that which arises from their impatience; — and 
this unhappily is such, that unless some early 
measure of conciliation is adopted, it would 
no longer be matter of surprise to anyone, if, 
upon the first occasion of a war with any of 
the great powers of Europe, or America, the 
great body of the nation should rise in final 
and implacable hostility, and endeavour to 
throw off all connection with, or dependence 
on Great Britain, and to erect itself into an 
independent state ! 

To us it certainly appears that this would 
be a mosjt desperate, wild, and impracticable 
enterprise. But it is not upon this account 
the less likely to be attempted by such a 
nation as the Irish"; — and it cannot be dis- 
sembled that the mere attempt would almost 
unavoidably plunge both countries in the most 
frightful and interminable ruin. Though the 
separation even of distant and mature de- 
pendencies is almost always attended with 
terrible convulsions, separation, in such cir- 
cumstances, is unquestionably an ultimate 
good ; — and if Ireland were a mere depend- 
ency, and were distant enough and strong 
enough to subsist and flourish as an independ- 
ent community, we might console ourselves, 
even for the infinite misery of the struggle 
attending on the separation, by the prospect 
of the great increase of happiness that might 
be the final result. But it is impossible, we 
think, for any one but an exasperated and 
unthinking Irishman, not to see and feel that 
this neither is, nor ever can be, the condition 
of Ireland. Peopled by the same race, speak- 
ing the same language, associated in the same 
pursuits, bound together and amalgamated by 
continual intermarriages, joint adventures in 
trade, and every sort of social relation, and, 
above all. lying within sight and reach of 
each other's shores, they are in truth as inti- 
mately and inseparably connected as most 
of the internal provinces of each are with one 
another; and we might as well expect to 
see two independent kingdoms established in 
friendly neighbourhood, in Yorkshire and Lan- 
cashire, as to witness a similar spectacle on 
the two sides of the Irish Channel. Two such 
countries, if of equal strength, and exasperated 
by previous contentions, never could maintain 
the relations of peace and amity with each 
other, as separate and independent states;— 
but must either mingle into one — or desolate 
each other in fierce and exterminating hos- 
tility, till one sinks in total exhaustion at the 
feet of the bleeding and exhausted victor. In 
the actual circumstances of the two countries, 
however, the attempt would be attended with 
still more deplorable consequences. Ireland, 
with whom alone it can originate, is decidedly 
the weakest, in wealth, population, and all 
effective resources — and probably never will 
venture on the experiment without foreign as- 
sistance. But it must be at once apparent how 
the introduction of this unhallowed element 
darkens all the horrors of the prospect. We 
are far from making light of the advantages 



it might give in the outset. By the help of a 
French army and an American fleet, we think 
it by no means improbable that the separa- 
tion might be accomplished. The English 
armies might be defeated or driven from its 
shores — English capitalists might be butcher- 
ed — the English religion extirpated — and an 
Irish Catholic republic installed with due cere- 
mony in Dublin, and adopted with acclama- 
tion in most of the provinces of the land. 
Under the protection of their foreign deliver- 
ers this state of triumph might even be for 
some time maintained. But how long would 
this last 1 or how can it be imagined that it 
would end ? Would the foreign allies remain 
for ever, on their own charges, and without in- 
terfering with the independence or the policy 
of the new state which they had thus been 
the means of creating ? If they did, it would, 
after all, be but a vassal republic — a depend- 
ency on a more distant and still more impe- 
rious master — an outlying province of France 
— a military station from which to watch and 
to harass England, and on which the first 
burst of her hostilities must always be broken 
— and exposed, of course, in the mean time, 
to all the license, the insolence, the rigour, 
of a military occupancy by a foreign ana 
alien soldiery. 

But this, it is plain, could never be more 
than a temporary measure. The defende e 
and keepers of the Hibernian republic w r ould, 
in no long time, make peace with England, 
and quarrel, both with their new subjects, and 
with each other — and then would come the 
renovated, the embittered, the unequal strug- 
gle with that exasperated power. Weakened 
as England might be by the separation, it 
would be absurd to suppose that she would 
not still be a tremendous overmatch for Ire- 
land, single-handed ; — or that this new state, 
wasted and exhausted by the war of her inde- 
pendence, could supply the means of making 
and equipping a fleet, or appointing an army, 
such as would be required to make head 
against this formidable antagonist. Though 
the numerical majority of her people, too, 
might be zealous for maintaining her inde- 
pendence, it is obvious that England would 
still have in her bosom a body of most for- 
midable allies. The most intelligent, the most 
wealthy, the most politic and sagacious of her 
inhabitants, are at this moment in the English 
interest; — and, however sweeping and bloody 
the proscription by which they might have 
been overthrown, multitudes would still re- 
main, with means and influence sufficient to 
render their co-operatian most perilous, in a 
contest for its restoration. Even if left to her 
own resources, we have little doubt that the 
country would soon be a prey to civil wars, 
plots, and insurrections, which the want of 
skill and experience in the new rulers, as well 
as the state of their finances, would aggravate 
into universal disorder. It is no easy thing 
to settle a new government amicably, even 
where there is no foreign interference : — and, 
in Ireland, from the temper of the peopte, 
and the circumstances which would leave less 
than an ordinary proportion of men of rank. 
3B 



614 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



education, and personal authority in the bands 
of the successful party, the difficulty would 
probably be insurmountable. It is impossible, 
however, not to suppose that England would 
eagerly avail herself of those dissensions, both 
by intrigue, corruption, and force ; and equally 
impossible to doubt that she would succeed, 
if not in regaining her supremacy, at least in 
embroiling the unhappy country which was 
the subject of it, in the most miserable and 
interminable disorders. 

The sum of the matter then is, that there 
could be no peace, and, consequently, no pros- 
perity or happiness for Ireland, as a separate 
and independent neighbour to England. Two 
such countries, after all that has passed be- 
tween them, could no more live in quiet and 
comfort beside each other, than a wife who 
had deserted her husband's house could live 
again in his society and that of his family, as 
a friend or visitor — having her expenses sup- 
plied, and her solitude enlivened, by the fre- 
quent visits of professing admirers : Nor can 
any lesson of prudence be addressed to the 
fiery and impatient spirits who may now 
meditate in Ireland the casting off of their 
ties with the sister island, more precisely ap- 
plicable to their prospects and condition, than 
the warnings which a friendly adviser would 
address to an exasperated matron, whose do- 
mestic grievances had led her to contemplate 
such a fatal step. And can any one doubt 
that the counsel which any faithful and even 
partial friend would give her, must be, to bear 
much from her husband, rather than ventftre 
on so desperate a remedy ; to turn her thoughts 
rather to conciliation than recrimination or re- 
venge j to avoid as much as possible all causes 
of reasonable or unreasonable offence — and, 
above all, firmly and temperately to assert 
the interests secured by the provisions of her 
marriage articles, and to stimulate and insist 
on the resolute interference of the trustees 
appointed to enforce them. 

Such are the warnings which we would ad- 
dress to the offended and exasperated party, 
in whose vindictive and rash proceedings the 
catastrophe we have been contemplating must 
originate. But though we certainly think they 
must appear convincing to any calm specta- 
tor, it is not the less probable that they would 
be of little avail with the inflamed and ex- 
cited party, unless they were seconded by 
conciliatory and gentle measures on the part 
of the supposed offender. Nor are there 
wanting motives sufficiently urgent and im- 
perious to make such measures, in all sound 
reason, indispensable. In the event of a war 
for independence, Ireland would probably be 
the scene of the greatest carnage, havoc, and 
devastation — and, in the end, we think her 
lot would be by far the most deplorable. But 
to England also, it is obvious that such a con- 
test would be the source of unspeakable ca- 
lamity ; and the signal, indeed, of her perma- 
nent weakness, insecurity, and degradation. 
That she is bound, therefore, for her own sake 
to avert it, by every possible precaution and 
every possible sacrifice, no one will be hardy 
enough, to deny — far less that she is bound, 



in the first instance, to diminish t'.ie tremei:* 
dous hazard, by simply " doing Justice ana 
showing Mercy " to those whom it is, in all 
other respects, her interest, as well as hei 
duty, to cherish and protect. 

One thing we take to be evident, and it is 
the substance of all that can be said on the 
subject, that things are fast verging to a crisis, 
and cannot, in all probability, remain long as 
they are. The Union, in short, must either 
be made equal and complete on the part of 
England — or it will be broken in pieces and 
thrown in her face by Ireland. That country 
must either be delivered from the domination 
of an Orange faction, or we must expect, in 
spite of all our warnings and remonstrances, 
to see her seek her own deliverance by the 
fatal and bloody career to which we have 
already alluded — and from which we hold it 
to be the height of guilt and of folly to hesi- 
tate about withholding her, by the sacrifice 
of that miserable faction. 

Little, however, as we rely, without such 
co-operation, on the effect of our warnings, 
we cannot end without again lifting our feeble 
voice to repeat them— without conjuring the 
lovers of Ireland to consider how hopeless 
and how wretched any scheme of a perma- 
nent separation from England must necessa- 
rily be. and how certainly their condition must 
be ameliorated by the course of events, the 
gradual extinction of the generation in whom 
the last life-use of antiquated oppressions is 
now centered, and the spread of those mild 
and liberal sentiments, to which nothing can 
so much contribute as a spirit of moderation 
and patience in those who have so Jong suf- 
fered from the want of them. By the Union, 
such as it is, we think the axe has been laid 
to the root of the old system of oppression 
and misgovernment in Ireland — and though 
its branches may still look green, and still 
afford shelter to the unclean birds who were 
bred and have so long nestled in their covert, 
the sap ascends in them no longer, and the 
whole will soon cease to cumber the ground, 
or obstruct the sight of the sky. In these 
circumstances, the only wise and safe course 
is to watch, and gently to assist the progress 
of their natural decay. If, in some fit of im- 
patience, the brands are thrown into the moul- 
dering mass, and an attempt made to subject 
the land at once to the fatal Purgation of Fire, 
the risk is, not only that the authors will per- 
ish in the conflagration, but that another and 
a ranker crop of abominations will spring from 
its ashes, to poison the dwellings of many fu 
ture generations. 

We may seem to have forgotten Mr. O'Dris- 
col in these general observations: and yet 
they are not so foreign to his merits, as they 
may at first sight appear. His book certainly 
does not supply the desideratum of which we 
spoke at the outset, and will not pass to pos- 
terity as a complete or satisfactory History of 
Ireland. But it is written at least in a good 
spirit ; and we do not know that we could 
better describe its general scope and tendency, 
than by saying, that they coincide almost en- 
tirely with the sentiments we have just been. 



O'DRISCOL'S IRELAND. 



615 



expressing. The author, we have recently 
understood, is a Catholic : But we had really 
read through his work without discovering it, 
— and can testify that he not only gives that 
party their full share of blame in all the trans- 
actions which deserve it, but speaks of the 
besetting sins of their system, with a freedom 
and severity which no Protestant, not abso- 
lutely Orange, could easily improve on. We 
needed no extrinsical lights, indeed, to discover 
that he was an Irishman, — for, independent 
of the pretty distinct intimation conveyed in 
his name, we speedily discovered a spirit of 
nationality about him, that could leave no 
doubt on the subject. It is the only kind of 

Eartiality, however, which we can detect in 
is performance ; and it really detracts less 
from his credit than might be imagined, — 
partly because it is so little disguised as to 
lead to no misconceptions, and chiefly because 
it is mostly confined to those parts of the story 
in which it can do little harm. It breaks out 
most conspicuously in the earlier and most 
problematical portion cf the narrative; as to 
which truth is now most difficult to be come 
at, and of least value when ascertained. He 
is clear, for example, that the Irish were, for 
many centuries before the conquest of Henry 
II., a very polished, learned, and magnificent 
people — that they had colleges at Lismore 
and Armagh, where thousands upon thousands 
of studious youth imbibed all the learning of 
the times — that they worked beautifully in 
gold and silver, and manufactured exquisite 
fabrics both in flax and wool — and, finally, 
that the country was not only more prosperous 
and civilised, burt greatly more populous, in 
those early ages, than in any succeeding time. 
We have no wish to enter into an idle anti- 
quarian controversy — but we must say that no 
sober Saxon can adopt these legends without 
very large allowances. It is indubitable that 
the Irish, or some of them, did very anciently 
fabricate linen, and probably also some orna- 
ments of gold ; and it would appear, from cer- 
tain ecclesiactical writers of no great credit, 
that they had among them large seminaries 
for priests, — a body possessing, in those ages, 
no very extraordinary learning, even in more 
favoured localities. But it is at least equally 
certain, that they were entirely a Pastoral 
people, unacquainted with agriculture, hold- 
ing their herds as the common property of the 
clan, dwelling in rude huts or wigwams, for 
the most part deplorably ignorant, and. in spite 
of their priests, generally practising polygamy 
and other savage vices. But what chiefly 
demonstrates the bias under which our author 
considers those early times, is his firm belief 
in the great populousness of ancient Ireland, 
and the undoubting confidence with which he 
rejects all the English accounts of their bar- 
barism, even in the times of Henry VIII. and 
Elizabeth. But a pastoral country never can be 
populous — and one overrun with unreclaim- 
ed bogs and unbroken forests, still less than 
any other. More than two thirds of the present 
population of Ireland undoubtedly owe their 
existence to the potato ; and men alive can 
Btill point out large districts, now producing 



the food of more than a million of new inhab- 
itants, which they remember in their primitive 
state of sterile and lonely morasses. Without 
potatoes, without corn, turnips, or cultivated 
grasses — with few sheep, and with nothing, 
in short, but roving herds of black cattle, if 
Ireland nad a full million of inhabitants in the 
tenth or twelfth century, she had a great deal ; 
and in spite of her theological colleges, and 
her traditionary churches, we doubt whether 
she had as many.* But whatever may have 
been the number or condition of her people in 
those remote ages, of which we have no sta- 
tistical memorial and no authentic account, it 
is a little bold in Mr. O'Driscol to persuade 
us, that in the time of Elizabeth they were 
by no means an uncultivated or barbarous 
people. To the testimony afforded by all the 
official documents, and the full and graphic 
accounts of Spenser, Davis, and the writers 
referred to by Camden, long resident in the 
country, and eye-witnesses of all they de- 
scribe, we really do not know what Mr. 
O'Driscol has to oppose, but his own patriotic 
prejudices, and his deep-rooted conviction, 
that no English testimony is to be trusted on 
such a subject. We must be forgiven for not 
sharing in his generous incredulity. 

As to the more modern parts of the history, 
though he never fails to manifest an amiable 
anxiety to apologise for Irish excesses, and to 
do justice to Irish bravery and kindness, we 
really are not aware that this propensity has 
led- him into any misrepresentation of facts j 
and are happy to find that it never points, in 
the remotest degree, to any thing so absurd 
as either a separation from England, or a vin- 
dictive wish for her distress or humiliation. 
He is too wise, indeed, not to be aware of that 
important truth, which so few of his zealous 
countrymen seem, however, able to compre- 
hend — that there are no longer any of those 
injured Irish in existence, upon whom the 
English executed such flagrant oppressions 
two hundred years ago ! and that nine tenths 
of the intelligent Irish, who now burn with 
desire to avenge the wrongs of their prede- 
cessors, are truly as much akin to those who 
did, as to those who suffered, the injury. We 
doubt whether even the O'Driscols have not, 
by this time, nearly as much English as Irish 
blood in their veins ; and are quite sure, that 
if the lands pillaged from their original Celtic 
owners, in the days of Elizabeth and Crom- 
well, were to be given back to the true heirs, 
scarcely one of those who now reprobate the 
spoliation in good English, would profit by the 
restitution. The living Irishmen of the pres- 
ent day may have wrongs to complain of, and 
injuries to redress, on the part of the English 
Government : But it is absurd to imagine that 
they are entitled to resent the wrongs and in- 



* If we remember rightly, the forces actually en- 
gaged in the conquest or defence of Ireland in the 
time of Henry the Second were most insignificant 
in point of numbers. Less than a hundred men-at- 
arms easily took possession of a whole district ; and 
even after the invaded had time to prepare for re- 
sistance, an army of three or four hundred waji 
found quite sufficient to bear down all opposition. 



616 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



juries of those who suffered in the same place 
centuries ago. They are rmst of them half 
English, by blood and lineage — and much 
more than half English, in speech, training, 
character, and habits. If they are to punish 
the descendants of the individual English who 
usurped Irish possessions, and displaced true 
Irish possessors, in former days, they must 
punish themselves; — for undoubtedly they 
are far more nearly connected with those 



spoilers than any of the hated English, whose 
ancestors never adventured to the neighbour- 
ing island. Mr. O'Driscol's partiality for the 
ancient Irish, therefore, is truly a mere pecu- 
liarity of taste or feeling — or at best but an 
historical predilection ; and in reality has no 
influence, as it ought to have none, on his 
views as to what constitutes the actual griev- 
ances, or is likely to work the deliverance, of 
the existing generation. 



(December, 1826.) 



Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By Thomas Moore. 
Fourth Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. London : Longman and Co. 1826.* 



We have frequently had occasion to speak 
of the dangers to which the conflict of two 
extreme parties must always expose the peace 
and the liberties of such a country as England, 
and of the hostility with which both are apt 
to regard those who still continue to stand 
neutral between them. The charges against 
this middle party — which we take to be now 
represented by the old constitutional Whigs 
of 1688 — used formerly to be much the same, 
though somewhat mitigated in tone, with 
those which each was in the habit of address- 
ing to their adversaries in the opposite ex- 
treme. When the high Tories wanted to 
abuse the Whigs, they said they were neatly 
as bad as the Radicals ; and when these wished 
in their turn to lessen the credit of the same 
unfortunate party, the established form of re- 
proach was, that they were little better than 
the Tories ! Of late years, however, a change 
seems to have come over the spirit, or the 
practical tactics at least, of these gallant bel- 
ligerents. They have now discovered that 
there are vices and incapacities peculiar to 
the Whigs, and inseparable indeed from their 
middle position : and that before settling their 
fundamental differences with each other, it is 
most wise and fitting that they should unite 
to bear down this common enemy, by making 
good against them these heavy imputations. 
It has now become necessary, therefore, for 
those against whom they are directed, to in- 
quire a little into the nature and proofs of 
these alleged enormities ; the horror of which 
has thus suspended the conflict of old heredi- 
tary enemies, and led them to proclaim a 
truce, till the field, by their joint efforts, can 
be cleared for fair hostilities, by the destruc- 
tion of these hated intruders. 

Now, the topics of reproach which these 
two opposite parties have recently joined in 
directing against those who would mediate 



* What is here given forms but a small part of 
the article originally published under this title, in 
1826. But it exhibits nearly the whole of the Gen- 
eral Politics contained in that article ; and having 
been, as I believe, among the last political discus- 
sions, I contributed to the Review, I have been 
tempted to close, with it, this most anxious and 
perilous division of the present publication. 



between them, seem to be chiefly two: — 
First, that their doctrines are timid, vacillat- 
ing, compromising, and inconsistent; and, 
secondly, that the party which holds them is 
small, weak, despised, and unpopular. These 
are the favourite texts, we think, of those 
whose vocation it has lately become to preach 
against us, from the pulpits at once of servility 
and of democratical reform. But it is neces- 
sary to open them up a little farther, before 
we enter on our defence. 

The first charge then is, That the Whigs 
are essentially an inefficient, trimming, half- 
way sort of party — too captious, penurious, 
and disrespectful to authority, to be useful 
servants in a Monarchy, and too aristoeratical, 
cautious, and tenacious of olfl institutions, to 
deserve the confidence, or excite the sympa- 
thies, of a generous and enlightened People. 
Their advocates, accordingly — and we our- 
selves in an an especial manner — are accused 
of dealing in contradictory and equivocating 
doctrines; of practising a continual see-saw 
of admissions and retractations ; of saying now 
a word for the people — now one for the aris- 
tocracy — now one for the Crown ; of paralysing 
all our liberal propositions by some timid and 
paltry reservation, and never being betrayed 
into a truly popular sentiment without in- 
stantly chilling and neutralising it by some 
cold warning against excess, some cautious 
saving of the privileges of rank and establish- 
ment. And so far has this system of inculpa- 
tion been lately carried, that a liberal Journal, 
of great and increasing celebrity, has actually 
done us the honour, quarter after quarter, of 
quoting long passages from our humble pages, 
in evidence of this sad infirmity in our party 
and principles. 

Now. while we reject of course the epithets 
which are here applied to us, we admit, at 
once, the facts on which our adversaries pro- 
fess to justify them. We acknowledge that 
we are fairly chargeable with a fear of oppo- 
site excesses — a desire to compromise and 
reconcile the claims of all the great parties in 
the State — an anxiety to temper and qualify 
whatever may be said in favour of one, with 
a steady reservation of whatever may be justly 
due to the rest. To this sort of trimming, to 



MOORE'S LIFE OF SHERIDAN. 



617 



this inconsistency, to this timidity, we dis- 
tinctly plead guilty. We plead guilty to a 
love "to the British Constitution — and to all 
and every one of its branches. We are for 
King, Lords, and Commons; and though not 
perhaps exactly in that order, we are proud 
to have it said that we have a word for each 
in its turn ; and that, in asserting the rights 
of one, we would not willingly forget those 
of the others. Our jealousy, we confess, is 
greatest of those who have the. readiest means 
of persuasion ; and therefore, we are generally 
far more afraid of the encroachments of 
arbitrary power, under cover of its patron- 
age, and the general love of peace, security, 
and distinction, which attract so strongly to 
the region of the Court, than of the usurpa- 
tions of popular violence. But we are for au- 
thority, as well as for freedom. We are for 
the natural and wholesome influence of wealth 
and rank, and the veneration which belongs 
to old institutions, without which no govern- 
ment has ever had either stability or respect ; 
as well as for that vigilance of popular control, 
and that supremacy of public opinion, without 
which none could be long protected from 
abuse. We know that, when pushed, to their 
ultimate extremes, those principles may be 
said to be in contradiction. But the escape 
from inconsistency is secured by the very ob- 
vious precaution of stopping short of such ex- 
tremes. It was to prevent this, in fact, that 
the English constitution, and indeed all good 
government everywhere, was established. 
Every thing that we know that is valuable in 
the ordinances of men, or admirable in the 
arrangements of Providence, seems to depend 
on a compromise, a balance ; or, if the expres- 
sion is thought better, on a conflict and strug- 
gle, of opposite and irreconcileable principles. 
Virtue — society — life itself, and, in so far as 
we can see, the grand movements and *whole 
order of the universe, are maintained only by 
such a balance or contention. 

These, we are afraid, will appear but idle 
truisms, and shallow pretexts for foolish self- 
commendation. No one, it will be said, is 
for any thing but the British constitution ; and 
nobody denies that it depends on a balance 
of opposite principles. The only question is, 
whether that balance is now rightly adjusted ; 
and whether the Whigs are in the proper 
central position for correcting its obliquities. 
Now, if the attacks to which we are alluding 
had been reducible to such a principle as this, 
— if we had been merely accused, by our 
brethren of the Westminster, for not going far 
enough on the popular side, and by our breth- 
ren of the Quarterly, for going too far, — we 
should have had nothing to complain of, be- 
yond what is inseparable from all party con- 
tentions ; and must have done our best to an- 
swer those opposite charges, on their separate 
and specific merits, — taking advantage, of 
course, as against each, of the authority of the 
other, as a proof, a fortiori, of the safety of 
our own intermediate position. But the pe- 
culiarity of our present case, and the hardship 
which alone induces us to complain of it is, 
that this is not the course that has been lately 
78 



followed with regard to us, — that our adver- 
saries have effected, or ratner pretended, an 
unnatural union against us, — and, deserting 
not only the old rules of political hostility, 
but, as it humbly appears to us, their own 
fundamental principles, have combined to at- 
tack us, on the new and distinct ground of 
our moderation, — not because we are opposed 
to their extreme doctrines respectively, but 
because we are not extremely opposed to them ! 
— and, affecting a generous indulgence and 
respect for those who are diametrically against 
them, seem actually to have agreed to join 
forces with them, to run down those who stand 
peacefully between, and would gladly effect 
their reconcilement. We understand very 
well the feelings which lead to such a course 
of proceeding; but we are not the less con- 
vinced of their injustice, — and, in spite of all 
that may be said of neutrals in civil war, or 
interlopers in matrimonial quarrels, we still 
believe that the Peacemakers are Blessed, — 
and that they who seek conscientiously to 
moderate the pretensions of contending fac- 
tions, are more likely to be right than either 
of their opponents. 

The natural, and, in our humble judgment, 
the very important function of a middle party 
is, not only to be a check, but a bulwark to 
both those that are more decidedly opposed ; 
and though liable not to be very well looked 
on by either, it should only be very obnoxious, 
we should think, to the stronger, or those who 
are disposed to act on the offensive. To them 
it naturally enough presents the appearance 
of an advanced post, that must be carried be- 
fore the main battle can be joined, — and for 
the assault of which they have neither the 
same weapons, the same advantages of posi- 
tion, nor the same motives of action. To the 
weaker party, however, or those who stand 
on their defence, it must, or at least should, 
always be felt to be a protection, — though re- 
ceived probably with grudging and ill grace, 
as a sort of half-faced fellowship, yielded 
with no cordiality, and ready enough to be 
withdrawn if separate terms can be made 
with the adversary. With this scheme of 
tactics we have long been familiar; and for 
those feelings we were prepared. But it is 
rather too much, we think, when those who 
are irreconcileably hostile, and whose only 
quarrel with us is, that we go half the length 
of their hated opponents, — have the face to 
pretend that we are more justly hateful to 
them, than those who go the whole length, — 
that they have really no particular quarrel 
with those who are beyond us, and that we, 
in fact, and our unhappy mid-way position, 
are the only obstacles to a cordial union of 
those whom it is, in truth, our main object to 
reconcile and unite ! 

Nothing, we take it, can be so plain as that 
this is a hollow, and, in truth, very flimsy- 
pretext : and that the real reason of the ani- 
mosity with which we are honoured by the 
more eager individuals in both the extreme 
parties is, that we afford a covering and a 
shelter to each — impede the assault thev are 
impatient mutually to make on each other, 
3b2 



613 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



and take away from them the means of that 
direct onset, by which the sanguine in both 
hosts imagine they might at once achieve a 
decisive victory. If there were indeed no 
belligerents, it is plain enough that there could 
be no neutrals and no mediators. If there 
was no natural war between Democracy and 
Monarchy, no true ground of discord between 
Tories and Radical Reformers — we admit 
there would be no vocation for Whigs : for the 
true definition of that party, as matters now 
stand in England, is, that it is a middle party, 
between the two extremes of high monarchical 
principles on the one hand, and extremely 
popular principles on the other. It holds no 
peculiar opinions, that we are aware of, on any 
other points of policy, — and no man of com- 
mon sense can doubt, and no man of common 
candour deny, that it differs from each of the 
other parties on the very grounds on which 
they differ from each other, — the only distinc- 
tion being that it does not differ so widely. 

Can any thing be so preposterous as a pre- 
tended truce between two belligerents, in 
order that they may fall jointly upon those 
who are substantially neutral ] — a dallying 
and coquetting with mortal enemies, for the 
purpose of gaining a supposed advantage over 
those who are to a great extent friends 1 Yet 
this is the course that has recently been fol- 
lowed, and seems still to be pursued. It is 
now some time since the thorough Reformers 
began to make awkward love to the Royalists, 
by pretending to bewail the obscuration which 
the Throne had suffered from the usurpations 
of Parliamentary influence, — the curtailment 
of the Prerogative by a junto of ignoble bo- 
roughmongers, — and the thraldom in which 
the Sovereign was held by those who were 
truly his creatures. Since that time, the more 
prevailing tone has been, to sneer at the Whig- 
aristocracy, and to declaim, with all the bit- 
terness of real fear and affected contempt, on 
the practical insignificance of men of fortune 
and talents, who are neither Loyal nor Popu- 
lar — and, at the same time, to lose no oppor- 
tunity of complimenting the Tory possessors 
of power, for every act of liberality, which 
had been really forced upon them by those 
very Whigs whom they refuse to acknowledge 
as even co-operating in the cause ! The high 
Tory or Court party have, in substance, played 
the same game. They have not indeed af- 
fected, so barefacedly, an entire sympathy, or 
very tender regard for their radical allies : but 
they have acted on the same principle. They 
have echoed and adopted the absurd fiction 
of the unpopularity of the Whigs, — and, speak- 
ing with affected indulgence of the excesses 
into which a generous love of liberty may oc- 
casionally hurry the ignorant and unthinking, 
have reserved all their severity, unfairness, 
and intolerance, for the more moderate oppo- 
nents with whose reasonings they find it more 
difficult to cope, and whose motives and true 
position in the country, they are therefore so 
eager to misrepresent. 

Now, though all this may be natural enough 
in exasperated disputants, who are apt to 
wreak their vengeance on whatever is most 



within their reach, it is not the less ur fair airl 
unworthy in itself, nor the less shoitsighted 
and ungrateful in the parties who are guilty 
of it. For we do not hesitate to say, That it 
is substantially to this calumniated and mu- 
tually reviled Whig party, or to those who act 
on its principles, that the country is truly in- 
debted for its peace and its constitution, — and 
one at least, if not both of the extreme par- 
ties, for their very existence ! If there were 
no such middle body, who saw faults and 
merits in both, and could not consent to the 
unqualified triumph or unqualified extirpation 
of either — if the whole population of the 
country was composed of intolerant Tories 
and fiery reformers, — of such spirits, in short, 
to bring the matter to a plain practical bear- 
ing, as the two hostile parties have actually 
chosen, and now support as their leaders and 
spokesmen, does any man imagine that its 
peace or its constitution could be maintained 
for a single year 1 On such a supposition, it 
is plain that they must enter immediately on 
an active, uncompromising, relentless con- 
tention; and, after a short defying parley, 
must, by force or fear, effect the entire sub- 
version of one or the other ; and in either case, 
a complete revolution and dissolution of the 
present constitution and principle of govern- 
ment. Compromise, upon that supposition, 
we conceive, must be utterly out of the ques- 
tion; as well as the limitation of the contest 
to words, either of reasoning or of abuse. 
They would be at each other's Throats, before 
the end of the year ! or, if there was any com- 
promise, what could it. be, but a compromise 
on the middle ground of Whiggism 1 — a vir- 
tual conversion of a majority of those very 
combatants, who are now supposed so to hate 
and disdain them, to the creed of that mod- 
erate and liberal party 1 

Wkftt is it, then, that prevents such a mor- 
tal conflict from taking place at the present 
moment between those who represent them- 
sent themselves respectively, as engrossing 
all the principle and all the force of the 
country 1 what, but the fact, that a very large 
portion of the population do not in reality be- 
long to either; but adhere, and are known to 
adhere, to those moderate opinions, for the 
profession of which the Whigs and their ad- 
vocates are not only covered with the obloquy 
of those whom they save from the perils of 
such frightful extremities, but are preposter- 
ously supposed to have incurred the dislike 
of those with whom in fact they are identified, 
and to whom they belong ? 

And this leads us to say a few words on the 
second grand position of the Holy Allies, 
against whom we are now called to defend 
ourselves, that the Whigs are not only incon- 
sistent and vacillating in their doctrines, but, 
in consequence of that vice or error, are, in 
fact, weak, unpopular, and despised in the 
country. The very circumstance of their being 
felt to be so formidable as to require this 
strange alliance to make head against them, 
and to force their opponents to intermit all 
other contests, and expend on them exclu 
sively the whole treasures of their sophistry 



MOORE'S LIFE OF SHERIDAN. 



619 



and abuse, might go far, we think, to refute 
this desperate allegation. But a very short 
resumption of the principles we. have just 
been unfolding will show that it cannot pos- 
sibly be true. 

We reckon as Whigs, in this question, all 
those who are not disposed to go the length 
of either of the extreme parties who would 
now divide the country between them, — all, 
in other words, who wish the Government to 
be substantially more popular than it is, or is 
tending to be — but, at the same time, to re- 
tain more aristocratical influence, and more 
deference to authority, than the Radical Re- 
formers will tolerate : — and, we do not hesi- 
tate to say. that so far from being weak or 
inconsiderable in the country, we are perfectly 
convinced that, among the educated classes, 
which now embrace a very large proportion 
of the whole, it greatly outnumbers both the 
others put together. It should always be 
recollected, that a middle party like this is 
invariably much stronger, as well as more 
determined and formidable, than it appears. 
Extreme doctrines always make the most 
noise. They lead most to vehemence, pas- 
sion, and display, — they are inculcated with 
most clamour and exaggeration, and excite 
the greatest alarm. In this way we hear of 
them most frequently and loudly. But they 
are not, upon that account, the most widely 
spread or generally adopted ; — and, in an en- 
lightened country, where there are two oppo- 
site kinds of extravagance thus trumpeted 
abroad together, they serve in a good degree 
as correctives to each other; and the great 
body of the people will almost inevitably set- 
tle into a middle or moderate opinion. The 
champions, to be sure, and ambitious leaders 
on each side, will probably only be exasperat- 
ed into greater bitterness and greater confi- 
dence, by the excitement of their contention. 
— But the greater part of the lookers-on can 
scarcely fail to perceive that mutual wounds 
have been inflicted, and mutual infirmities 
revealed, — and the continuance and very 
fierceness of the combat is apt to breed a 
general opinion, that neither party is right, to 
the height of their respective pretensions; 
and that truth and justice can only be satis- 
fied by large and mutual concessions. 

Of the two parties — the Thorough Reformers 
are most indebted for an appearance of greater 
strength than they actually possess, to their 
own boldness and activity, and the mere curi- 
osity it excites among the idle, co-operating 
with the sounding alarms of their opponents, 
— while the high Tories owe the same advan- 
tage in a greater degree to the quiet effect of 
their influence and wealth, and to that pru- 
dence which leads so many, who in their 
hearts are against them, to keep their opinions 
to themselves, till some opportunity can be 
found of declaring them with effect. Both, 
however, are conscious that they owe much 
to such an illusion, — and neither, accordingly, 
has courage to venture on those measures to 
which they would infallibly , resort, if they 
trusted to their apparent, as an actual or avail- 
able strength. The Tories, who have the ad- 



ministration in some measure in their hands, 
would be glad enough to put down all popu- 
lar interference, whether by assemblies, by 
speech, or by writing; and, in fact, only allow 
the law to be as indulgent as it is, and its ad- 
ministration to be so much more indulgent, 
from a conviction that they would not be sup- 
ported in more severe measures, either by 
public opinion without, or even by their own 
majorities within the walls of the Legislature. 
They know very well that a great part of their 
adherents are attached to them by no other 
tie than that of their own immediate interest, 
— and that, even among them as they now 
stand, they could command at least as large 
a following for Whig measures as for Tory 
measures, if only proposed by an administra- 
tion of as much apparent stability. It is not 
necessary, indeed, to go farther than to the 
common conversation of the more open or 
careless of those who vote and act among the 
Tories, to be satisfied, that a very large pro- 
portion, indeed, of those who pass under that 
title, are what we should call really Whigs in 
heart and conviction, and are ready to declare 
themselves such, on the first convenient op- 
portunity. With regard to the Radical Re- 
formers, again, very little more, we think, can 
be necessary to show their real weakness in 
the country, than to observe how very few 
votes they ever obtain at an election, even in 
the most open boroughs, and the most popu- 
lous and independent counties. We count for 
nothing in this question the mere physical 
force which may seem to be arrayed on their 
side in the manufacturing districts, on occa- 
sions of distress and suffering ; though, if they 
felt that they had even this permanently at 
their command, it is impossible that they 
should not have more nominations of parlia- 
mentary attorneys, and more steady and im- 
posing exhibitions of their strength and union. 
At the present moment, then, we are per- 
suaded that the proper Whig party is in reality 
by much the largest and the steadiest in the 
country ; and we are also convinced, that it is 
in a course of rapid increase. The effect of 
all long-continued discussion is to disclose 
flaws in all sweeping arguments, and to mul- 
tiply exceptions to all general propositions — 
to discountenance extravagance, in short, to 
abate confidence and intolerance, and thus to 
lay the foundations for liberal compromise and 
mutual concession. Even those who continue 
to think that all the reason is exclusively on 
their side, can scarcely hope to convert their 
opponents, except by degrees. Some few rash 
and fiery spirits may contrive to pass from one 
extreme to the other, without going through 
the middle. But the common course undoubt- 
edly is different ; and therefore we are entitled 
to reckon, that every one who is detached from 
the Tory or the Radical faction, will make a 
stage at least, or .half-way house, of Whiggism ; 
and may probably be inauced, by the comfort 
and respectability of the establishment, to re- 
main : As the temperate regions of the earth 
are found to detain the greater part of those 
who have been induced to fly from the heats 
of the Equator, or the rigours of the Pole. 



20 



GENERAL POLITICS. 



Though it is natural enough, therefore, for 
those who hold extreme opinions, to depreciate 
the weight and power of those who take their 
station between them, it seems sufficiently 
certain, not only that their position must at all 
times be the safest and best, but that it is des- 
tined ultimately to draw to itself all that is 
truly of any considerable weight upon either 
hand; and that it is the feeling of the con- 
stant and growing force of this central attrac- 
tion, that inflames the animosity of those 
whose importance would be lost by the con- 
vergence. For our own part, at least, we are 
satisfied, and we believe the party to which 
we belong is satisfied, both with the degree 
of influence and respect which we possess in 
the country, and with the prospects which, 
we think, upon reasonable grounds, we may 
entertain of its increase. In assuming to our- 
selves the character of a middle party, we 
conceive that we are merely stating a fact, 
which cannot well be disputed on the present 
occasion, as it is assumed by both those who 
are now opposed to us, as the main ground of 
their common attack ; and almost all that we 
have said follows as a necessary consequence 
of this assumption. From the very nature of 
the thing, we cannot go to either of the ex- 
treme parties; and neither of them can make 
any movement to increase their popularity and 
substantial power, without coming nearer to 
us. It is but fair, however, before concluding, 
to state, that though we do occupy a position 
between the intolerant Tories and the thorough 
Reformers, w r e conceive that we are consider- 
ably nearer to the latter than to the former. In 
our principles, indeed, and the ends at which 
we aim, we do not materially differ from what 
is professed by the more sober among them ; 
though we require more caution, more securi- 
ties, more exceptions, more temper, and more 
time. 

That is the difference of our theories. In 
practice, we have no doubt, we shall all have 
time enough : — For it is the lot of England, 
we have little doubt, to be ruled in the main 
by what will be called a Tory party, for as 
long a period as we can now look forward to 
with any great distinctness — by a Tory party, 
however, restrained more and more in its pro- 
pensities, by the growing influence of Whig 
principles, and the enlightened vigilance of 
that party, both in Parliament and out of it; 
and now and then admonished, by a temporary 
expulsion, of the necessity of a still greater 
conformity with the progress of liberal opin- 
ions, than could be spontaneously obtained. 
The inherent spirit, however, of monarchy, 
and the natural effect of long possession of 
power, will secure, we apprehend, for a con- 



siderable time, the general sway of men pro- 
fessing Tory principles ; and their speedy res 
toration, when driven for a. season from their 
places by disaster or general discontent : and 
the Whigs, during the same period, must con- 
tent themselves with preventing a great deal 
of evil, and seeing the good which they had 
suggested tardily and imperfectly effected, by 
those w T ho will take the credit of originating 
what they had long opposed, and only at last 
adopted with reluctance and on compulsion. 
It is not a very brilliant prospect, perhaps, nor 
a very enviable lot. But we believe it to be 
what awaits us ; and Ave embrace it, not only 
cheerfully, but with thankfulness and pride — 
thankfulness, that we are enabled to do even 
so much for the good and the liberties of our 
country — and pride, that in thus seeking her 
service, we cannot well be suspected of selfish 
or mercenary views. 

The thorough Reformers never can be in 
power in this country, but by means of an ac- 
tual revolution. The Whigs may, and occa- 
sionally will, without any disturbance to its 
peace. But these occasions might be multi- 
plied, and the good that must attend them 
accelerated and increased, if the Reformers, 
aware of the hopelessness of their separate 
cause, would throw their weight into the scale 
of the Whigs, and so far modify their preten- 
sions as to make it safe or practicable to sup- 
port them. The Whigs, we have already 
said, cannot come to them; both because 
they hold some of their principles, and thei. 
modes of asserting them, to be not merely un- 
reasonable, but actually dangerous; and be- 
cause, by their adoption, they would at once 
hazard much mischief, and unfit themselves 
for the good service they now perform. But 
the Reformers may very well come to the 
Whigs; both because they can practically do 
nothing (peaceably) for themselves, and. be- 
cause the measures which they might occa- 
sionally enable the Whigs to carry, though 
not in their eyes unexceptionable or sufficient, 
must yet appear to them better than those of 
the Tories — which is the only attainable al- 
ternative. This accordingly, we are persuad- 
ed, will ultimately be the result ; and is al- 
ready, we have no doubt, in a course of 
accomplishment; — and, taken along with 
the gradual abandonment of all that is offen- 
sive in Tory pretensions, and the silent adop- 
tion of most of the Whig principles, even 
by those who continue to disclaim the name, 
will effect almost all that sober lovers of their 
country can expect, for the security of her 
liberties, and the final extinction of all ex- 
treme parties, in the liberal moderation of 
Whiggism. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



(JHoa, 1820 



An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. Pari 
First. Containing an Historical Outline of their Merits and Wrongs as Colonies, and Stric- 
tures on the Calumnies of British Writers. By Robert Walsh, Esq. 8vo. pp. 505. Phila- 
delphia and London: 1819.* 



One great staple of this book is a vehe- 
ment, and, we really think, a singularly un- 
,ust attack, on the principles of this Journal. 
Vet we take part, on the whole, with the au- 
thor : — and heartily wish him success in the 
great object of vindicating his country from 
unmerited aspersions, and trying to make us, 
in England, ashamed of the vices and defects 
which he has taken the trouble to point out in 
our national character and institutions. In this 
part of the design we cordially concur — and 
shall at all times be glad to co-operate. But 
there is another part of it, and we are sorry to 
say a principal and avowed part, of which we 
cannot speak in terms of too strong regret and 
reprobation — and that is, a design to excite 
and propagate among his countrymen, a gene- 
ral animosity to the British name, by way of 
counteracting, or rather revenging, the ani- 
mosity which he very erroneously supposes 
to be generally entertained by the English 
against them. 

That this is, in itself, and under any circum- 
stances, an unworthy, an unwise, and even a 
criminal object, we think we could demon- 
strate to the satisfaction of Mr. Walsh him- 
self, and all his reasonable adherents ;± but it 
is better, perhaps, to endeavour, in the first 
place, to correct the misapprehensions, and 
dispel the delusions in which this disposition 
has its foundation, and, at all events, to set 
them the example of perfect good humour and 
fairness, in a discussion where the parties 
perhaps will never be entirely agreed; and 
where those who are now to be heard have the 
strongest conviction of having been injuriously 
misrepresented. If we felt any soreness, in- 



* There is no one feeling — having public con- 
cerns for its object — with which I have been so 
long and so deeply impressed, as that of the vast 
importance of our maintaining friendly, and even 
cordial relations, with the free, powerful, moral, and 
industrious States of America: — a condition upon 
which I cannot help thinking that not only our own 
freedom and prosperity, but that of the better part 
of the world, will ultimately be found to be more 
and more dependent. I give the first place, there- 
fore, in this concluding division of the work, to an 
earnest and somewhat importunate exhortation to 
(his effect — which I believe produced some impres- 
»ion at the time, and I trust may still help forward 
the good end to which it was directed. 



deed, on the score of this author's imputa- 
tions, or had any desire to lessen the just effect 
of his representations, it would have been 
enough for us, we believe, to have let them 
alone. For, without some such help as ours, 
the work really does not seem calculated to 
make any great impression in this quarter of 
the world. It is not only, as the author has 
himself ingenuously observed of it, a very 
"clumsy book," heavily written and abomina- 
bly printed, — but the only material part of it 
— the only part about which anybody can now 
be supposed to care much, either here or in 
America — is overlaid and buried under a 
huge mass of historical compilation, which 
would have little chance of attracting readers 
at the present moment, even if much better 
digested than it is in the volume before us. 

The substantial question is, what has been 
the true character and condition of the United 
States since they became an independent na- 
tion, — and what is likely to be their condition 
in future 1 And to elucidate this question, 
the learned author has thought fit to premise 
about two hundred very close-printed pages, 
upon their merits as colonies, and the harsh 
treatment they then received from the mother 
country ! Of this large historical sketch, we 
cannot say, either that it is very correctly 
drawn, or very faithfully coloured. It pre- 
sents us with no connected narrative, or inter- 
esting deduction of events — but is, in truth, a 
mere heap of indigested quotations from com- 
mon books, of good and bad authority — inar- 
tificially cemented together by a loose and 
angry commentary. We are not aware, in- 
deed, that there are in this part of the work 
either any new statements, or any new views 
or opinions; the facts being mostly taken 
from Chalmers' Annals, and Burke's European 
Settlements ; and the authorities for the good 
oonduot and ill treatment of the colonies, 
being chiefly the Parliamentary Debates and 
Brougham's Colonial Policy. 

But, m good truth, these histonca. recollec- 
tions will go but a little way in determining 
that great practical and most important ques- 
tion, which it is Mr. W.'s intention, as well 
as ours, to discuss — What are, and what ought 
to be, the dispositions of England and Ameri- 
ca towards each other 1 And the general facts 

621 



22 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



as to the first settlements and colonial history 
of the latter, in so far as they bear upon this 
question, really do not admit of much dispute. 
The most important of those settlements were 
unquestionably founded by the friends of civil 
and religious liberty — who, though somewhat 
precise and puritanical, and we must add, not 
a little intolerant, were, in the main, a sturdy 
and sagacious race of people, not readily to 
be cajoled oat of the blessings they had sought 
through sO many sacrifices; and ready at all 
times manfully and resolutely to assert them 
against all invaders. As to the mother coun- 
try, again, without claiming for her any ro- 
mantic tenderness or generosity towards those 
hardy offsets, we think we may say, that she 
oppressed and domineered over them much 
less than any other modern nation has done 
over any such settlements — that she allowed 
them, for the most part, liberal charters and 
constitutions, and was kind enough to leave 
them very much to themselves ; — and although 
she did manifest, now and then, a disposition 
to encroach on their privileges, their rights 
were, on the whole, very tolerably respected 
— so that they grew up undoubtedly to a state 
of much prosperity and a familiarity with 
freedom in all its divisions, which was not 
only without parallel in any similar establish- 
ment, but probably would not have been at- 
tained had they been earlier left to their own 
guidance and protection. This is all that we 
ask for England,, on a review of her colonial 
policy, and her conduct before the war ; and 
this, we think, no candid and well-informed 
person can reasonably refuse her. 

As to the War itself, the motives in which 
it originated, and the spirit in which it was 
carried on, it cannot now be necessary to say 
any thing — or, at least, when we say that hav- 
ing once been begun, we think that it termi- 
nated as the friends of Justice and* Liberty 
must have wished it to terminate, we con- 
ceive that Mr. Walsh can require no other 
explanation. That this result, however, should 
have left a soreness upon both sides, and 
especially on that which had not been soothed 
by success, is what all men must have ex- 
pected. But, upon the whole, we firmly be- 
live that this was far slighter and less durable 
than has generally been imagined ; and was 
likely very speedily to have been entirely ef- 
faced, by those ancient recollections of kind- 
ness and kindred which could not fail to recur, 
and by that still more powerful feeling, to 
which every day was likely to add strength, 
of their common interests, as free and as com- 
mercial countries, and of the substantial con- 
formity of their national character, and of 
their sentiments upon most topics of public 
and of private right. The healing operation, 
however, of these causes was unfortunately 
thwarted and retarded by the heats that rose 
out of the French revolution, and the new in- 
terests and new relations which it appeared 
for a time to create : — And the hostilities in 
which we were at last involved with America 
herself — though the opinions of her people, as 
well as our own, were deeply divided upon 
both questions — served still further to embit- 



ter the general feeling, and to keep alive the 
memory of animosities that ought not to have 
been so long remembered . At last came peace, 
— and the spirit, we verily believe, but unfor- 
tunately not the prosperity of peace ; and the 
distresses and commercial embarrassments of 
both countries threw both into bad humour; 
and unfortunately hurried both into a system 
of jealous and illiberal policy, by which that 
bad humour was aggravated, and received an 
unfortunate direction. 

In this exasperated state of the national 
temper, and we do think, too much under its 
influence, Mr. Walsh has now thought him- 
self called upon to vindicate his country from 
the aspersions of English writers; and after 
arraigning them, generally, of the most in- 
credible ignorance, and atrocious malignity, 
he proceeds to state, that the Edinburgh and 
Quarterly Reviews, in particular, have been 
incessantly labouring to traduce the character 
of America, and have lately broken out into 
such "excesses of obloquy," as can no longer 
be endured ; and, in particular, that the pros- 
pect of a large emigration to the United States 
has thrown us all into such "paroxysms of 
spite and jealousy," that we have engaged in 
a scheme of systematic defamation that sets 
truth and consistency alike at defiance. To 
counteract this nefarious scheme, Mr. W. has 
taken the field — not so much to refute as to 
retort — not for the purpose of pointing out our 
errors, or exposing our unfairness, but, rather, 
if we understand him aright, of retaliating on 
us the unjust abuse we have been so long pour- 
ing on others. In his preface, accordingly, he 
fairly avows it to be his intention to act on the 
offensive — to carry the war into the enemy's 
quarters, and to make reprisals upon the hon- 
our and character of England, in revenge for 
the insults which, he will have it, her writers 
have heaped on his country. He therefore 
proposes, to point out, — not the natural com- 
plexion, or genuine features, but " the sores 
and blotches of the British nation," to the 
scorn and detestation of his countrymen; and 
having assumed, that it is the " intention of 
Great Britain to educate her youth in senti- 
ments of the most rancorous hostility to Amer- 
ica," he assures us, that this design will, and 
must be met with corresponding sentiments, on 
his side of the water! 

Now. though we cannot applaud the gen- 
erosity, or even the common humanity of 
these sentiments — though we think that the 
American government and people, if at all 
deserving of the eulogy which Mr. W. has 
here bestowed upon them, might, like Crom- 
well, have felt themselves too strong to care 
about paper shot — and though we cannot but 
feel that a more temperate and candid tone 
would have carried more weight, a? *vell as 
more magnanimity with it, we must yet begin 
by admitting, that America has cause of com- 
plaint ; — and that nothing can be more despi- 
cable and disgusting, than the scurrility with 
which she has been assailed by a portion of 
the press of this country — and that, disgrace- 
ful as these publications are, they speak the 
sense, if not of a considerable, at least of a 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



623 



conspicuous and active party in the nation.* 
All this, and more than this, we have no wish, 
and no intention to deny. But we do wish 
most anxiously to impress upon Mr. W. and 
his adherents, to beware how they believe 
that this party speaks the sense of the British 
Nation — or that their sentiments on this, or on 
many other occasions, are in any degree in 
accordance with those of the great body of 
our people. On the contrary, we are firmly 
persuaded that a very large majority of the 
nation, numerically considered, and a still 
larger majority of the intelligent and enlight- 
ened persons whose influence and authority 
cannot fail in the long run to govern her coun- 
cils, would disclaim all sympathy with any 
part of these opinions ; and actually look on 
the miserable libels in question, not only with 
the scorn and disgust to which Mr. W. would 
consign them, but with a sense of shame from 
which his situation fortunately exempts him, 
and a sorrow and regret, of which unfortu- 
nately he seems too little susceptible. 

It is a. fact which can require no proof, even 
in America, that there is a party in this coun- 
try not friendly to political liberty, and deci- 
dedly hostile to all extension of popular rights, 
— which, if it does not grudge to its own peo- 
ple the powers and privileges which are be- 
stowed on them by the Constitution, is at least 
for confining their exercise within the narrow- 
est limits — which never thinks the peace and 
well-being of society in danger from any thing 
but popular encroachments, and holds the 
only safe or desirable government to be that 
of a pretty pure and unincumbered Monarchy, 
supported by a vast revenue and a powerful 
army, and obeyed by a people just enlightened 
enough to be orderly and industrious, but no 
way curious as to questions of right — and 
never presuming to judge of the conduct of 
their superiors. 

Now, it is quite true that this Party dislikes 
America, and is apt enough to decry and in- 
sult her. Its adherents never have forgiven 
the success of her war of independence — the 
loss of a nominal sovereignty, or perhaps of a 
real power of vexing and oppressing — her 
supposed rivalry in trade — and, above all, the 
happiness and tranquillity -which she now 
enjoys under a republican form of govern- 
ment. Such a spectacle of democratical pros- 
perity is unspeakably mortifying to their high 
monarchical principles, and is easily imagined 
to be dangerous to their security. Their first 
wish, and, for a time, their darling hope, was, 
that the infant States would quarrel among 
themselves, and be thankful to be again re- 



* Things are much mended in this respect since 
1820 ; persons of rank and influence in this country 
now speaking of America, in private as well as in 
public, with infinitely greater respect and friendli- 
ness than was then common ; and evincing, I think, 
a more general desire to be courteous to individuals 
of that nation, than to foreigners of any other de- 
scription. There are still, however, publications 
among us, and some proceeding from quarters 
where I should not have looked for them, that con- 
tinue to keep up the tone alluded to in the text, and 
consequenily to do mischief, which it is still a duty 
therefore to endeavour to counteract. 



ceived under our protection, as a refuge from 
military despotism. Since that hope was lost, 
it would have satisfied them to find that their 
republican institutions had made them poor, 
and turbulent, and depraved — incapable of 
civil wisdom, regardless of national honour, 
and as intractable to their own elected rulers 
as they had been to their hereditary sove- 
reign. To those who were capable of such 
wishes and such expectations, it is easy to 
conceive, that the happiness and good order 
of the United States — the wisdom and au- 
thority of their government — and the un- 
paralleled rapidity of their progress in wealth, 
population, and refinement, must have been 
but an ungrateful spectacle ) and most especi- 
ally, that the splendid and steady success of 
by far the most truly democratical govern- 
ment that ever was established in the world, 
must have struck the most lively alarm into 
the hearts of all those who were anxious to 
have it believed that the People could never 
interfere in politics but to their ruin, and that 
the smallest addition to the democratical in- 
fluence, recognised in the theory at least of 
the British Constitution, must lead to the im- 
mediate destruction of peace and property, 
morality and religion. 

That there are journals in this country, and 
journals too of great and deserved reputation 
in other respects, who have spoken the Ian 
guage of the party we have now described, 
and that in a tone of singular intemperance 
and offence, we most readily admit. But need 
we tell Mr. W., or any ordinarily well-in- 
formed individual of his countrymen, that 
neither this party nor their journalists can be 
allowed to stand for the People of England ? 
— that it is notorious that there is among that 
people another and a far more numerous 
party, whose sentiments are at all points op- 
posed to those of the former, and who are, 
by necessary consequence, friends to America, 
and to all that Americans most value in their 
character and institutions — who, as English- 
men, are more' proud to have great and glo- 
rious nations descended from them, than to 
have discontented colonies uselessly subjected 
to their caprice — who, as Freemen rejoice to 
see freedom advancing, with giant footstep^ 
over the fairest regions of the earth, and na- 
tions flourishing exactly in proportion as they 
are free — and to know that when the drivel- 
ling advocates of hierarchy and legitimacy 
vent their paltry sophistries with some shadow 
of plausibility on the history of the Old Woi Id, 
they can now turn with decisive triumph to 
the unequivocal example of the New — and 
demonstrate the unspeakable advantage's of 
free government, by the unprecedented pros- 
perity of America? Such persons, too, can 
be as little suspected of entertaining any 
jealousy of the commercial prosperity of the 
Americans as of their political freedom ; since 
it requires but a very moderate share of un« 
derstanding to see, that the advantages of 
trade must always be mutual and reciprocal 
— that one great trading country is of necessity 
the best customer to another — and that the 
trade of America, consisting chiefly m the ex- 



€24 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



porlation of raw produce and the importation 
of manufactured commodities, is, of ail others, 
the most beneficial to a country like England. 

That such sentiments were naturally to be 
expected in a country circumstanced like 
England, no thinking man will deny. But 
Mr. Walsh has been himself among us; and 
was, we have reason to believe, no idle or in- 
curious observer of our men and cities ; and 
we appeal with confidence to him, whether 
these were not the prevailing sentiments 
among the intelligent and well educated of 
every degree 1 If he thinks as we do, as to 
their soundness and importance, he cannot 
well doubt that they must sooner or later in- 
fluence the conduct even of our Court and 
Cabinet. But, in the mean time, the fact is 
certain, that the opposite sentiments are con- 
fined to a very small portion of the people of 
Great Britain — and that the course of events, 
as well as the force of reason, is every day 
bringing them more and more into discredit. 
Where then, we would ask, is the justice or 
the policy of seeking to render a quarrel Na- 
tional, when the cause of quarrel is only 
with an inconsiderable and declining party of 
the nation 1 — and why labour to excite ani- 
mosity against a whole people, the majority of 
whom are, and must be, your sincere friends, 
merely because some prejudiced or inter- 
ested persons among them have disgusted the 
great body of their own countrymen, by the 
senselessness and scurrility of their attacks 
upon yours? 

The Americans are extremely mistaken, 
too, if they suppose that they are the only 
persons who are abused by the only party that 
does abuse them. They have merely their 
share of that abuse along with all the friends 
and the advocates of Liberty in every part of 
the world. The Constitutionalists of France, 
including the King and many of his ministers, 
meet with no better treatment; — and those 
who hold liberal opinions in this country, are 
assailed with still greater acrimony and fierce- 
ness. Let Mr. Walsh only look to the lan- 
guage held by our ministerial journals for the 
last twelvemonth, on the subjects of Reform 
and Alarm — and observe in what way not 
only the whole class of our own reformers 
and conciliators, but the names and persons 
of such men as Lords Lansdowne, Grey, Fitz- 
william, and Erskine, Sir James Mackintosh, 
and Messrs. Brougham, Lambton, Tierney, 
and others, are dealt with by these national 
oracles, — and he will be satisfied that his 
countrymen neither stand alone in the mis- 
fortune of which he complains so bitterly, 
nor are subjected to it in very bad company. 
We, too, he may probably be aware, have had 
our portion of the abuse which he seems to 
think reserved for America — and, what is a 
little remarkable, for being too much her 
advocate. For what we have said of her pre- 
sent power and future greatness — her wisdom 
in peace and her valour in war — and of all the 
invaluable advantages of her representative 
system — her freedom from taxes, sinecures, 
and standing armies — we have been subjected 
to far more virulent attacks than any of which 



he now complains for his country — and that 
from the same party scribblers, with whom 
we are here, somewhat absurdly, confounded 
and supposed to be leagued. It is really, we 
think, some little presumption of our fairness, 
that tne accusations against us should be thus 
contradictory — and that for one and the same 
set of writings, we should be denounced by 
the ultra-royalists of England as little better 
than American republicans, and by the ultra- 
patriots of America as the jealous defamers 
of her Freedom. 

This, however, is of very little consequence. 
What we wish to impress on Mr. W. is, that 
they who daily traduce the largest and ablest 
part of the English nation, cannot possibly be 
supposed to speak the sense of that nation— 
and that their offences ought not, in reason, to 
be imputed to her. If there be any reliance 
on the principles of human nature, the friends 
of liberty in England must rejoice in the pros- 
perity of America. Every selfish, concurs 
with every generous motive, to add strength 
to this sympathy ; and if any thing is certain 
in our late internal history, it is that the 
friends of liberty are rapidly increasing among 
us; — partly from increased intelligence — 
partly from increased suffering and impa- 
tience — partly from mature conviction, and 
instinctive prudence and fear. 

There is another consideration, also arising 
from the aspect of the times before us, which 
should go far, we think, at the present mo- 
ment, to strengthen those bonds of affinity. 
It is impossible to look to the state of the Old 
World without seeing, or rather feeling, that 
there is a greater and more momentous con- 
test impending, than ever before agitated 
human society. In Germany — in Spain — in 
France — in Italy, the principles of Reform 
and Liberty are visibly arraying themselves 
for a final struggle with the principles of Es- 
tablished Abuse, — Legitimacy, or Tyranny — 
or whatever else it is called, by its friends or 
enemies. Even in England, the more modi- 
fied elements of the same principles are stir- 
ring and heaving, around, above and beneath 
us, with unprecedented force, activity, and 
terror; and every thing betokens an approach- 
ing crisis in the great European common- 
wealth, by the result of which the future 
character of its governments, and the struc- 
ture and condition of its society, will in all 
probability be determined. The ultimate re- 
sult, or the course of events that are to lead 
to it. we have not the presumption to predict. 
The struggle may be long or transitory — san- 
guinary or bloodless; and it may end in a 
great and signal amelioration of all existing 
institutions, or in the establishment of one vast 
federation of military despots, domineering as 
usual in the midst of sensuality, barbarism, 
and gloom. The issues of all these things 
are in the hand of Providence and the womb 
of time ! and no human eye can yet foresee 
the fashion of their accomplishment. But 
great changes are evidently preparing; and 
in fifty years — most probably in a far shorter 
time — some material alterations must have 
taken place in most of the established govern- 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



625 



merits of Europe, and the rights of the Euro- 
pean nations been established on a surer and 
more durable basis. Half a century cannot 
pass away in growing discontents on the part 
of the people, and growing fears and precau- 
tions on that of their rulers. Their preten- 
sions must at last be put clearly in issue j and 
ab.de the settlement of force, or fear, or reason. 

Looking back to what has already happened 
in the world, both recently and in ancient 
times, we can scarcely doubt that the cause of 
Liberty will be ultimately triumphant. But 
through what trials and sufferings — what mar- 
tyrdoms and persecutions it is doomed to 
work out its triumph — we profess ourselves 
unable to conjecture. The disunion of the 
lower and the higher classes, which was 
gradually disappearing with the increasing 
intelligence of the former, but has lately been 
renewed by circumstances which we cannot 
now stop to examine, leads, we must confess, 
to gloomy auguries as to the character of this 
contest; and fills us with apprehensions, that 
it may neither be peaceful nor brief. But in 
this, as in every other respect, we conceive 
that much will depend on the part that is 
•taken by America; and on the dispositions 
which she may have cultivated towards the 
different parties concerned. Her great and 
growing wealth and population — her univer- 
sal commercial relations — her own impregna- 
ble security — and her remoteness from the 
scene of dissension — must give her prodigious 
power and influence in such a crisis, either as 
a mediator or umpire, or, if she take a part, as 
an auxiliary and ally. That she must wish 
well to the cause of Freedom, it would be in- 
decent, and indeed impious, to doubt — and 
that she should take an active part against it, 
is a thing not even to be imagined : — But she 
may stand aloof, a cold and disdainful spec- 
tator ; and. counterfeiting a prudent indiffer- 
ence to scenes that neither can nor ought to 
be indifferent to her, may see, unmoved, the 
prolongation of a lamentable contest, which 
her interference might either have prevented, 
or brought to a speedy and happy termination. 
And this course she will most probably follow, 
if she allows herself to conceive antipathies to 
nations for the faults of a few calumnious in- 
dividuals : And especially if. upon grounds so 
trivial, she should nourish such an animosity 
towards England, as to feel a repugnance to 
make common cause with her, even in behalf 
of th,eir common inheritance of freedom. 

Assuredly, there is yet no other country in 
Europe where the principles of liberty, and 
the rights and duties of nations, are so well 
understood as with us — or in which so great a 
number of men, qualified to write, speak, and 
act with authority, are at all times ready to 
take a reasonable, liberal, and practical view 
of those principles and duties. The Govern- 
ment, indeed, has not always been either wise 
or generous, to its own or to other countries; — 
but it has partaken, or at least has been con- 
trolled by the general spirit of freedom : and 
we have no hesitation in saying, that the Free 
Constitution of England has been a blessing 
and protection to the remotest nations of Eu- 
79 



rope for the last two hundred years. Had 
England not been free, the worst despotism 
in Europe would have been far worse than it 
is. at this moment. If our world had been 
parcelled out among arbitrary monarchs, they 
would have run a race of oppression, and en- 
couraged each other in all sorts of abuses. 
But the existence #f one powerful and flour- 
ishing State, where juster maxims were ad- 
mitted, has shamed them out of their worst 
enormities, given countenance and encourage- 
ment to the claims of their oppressed subjects. 
and gradually taught their rulers to under- 
stand, that a certain measure of liberty was 
not only compatible with national greatness 
and splendour, but essential to its support. 
In the days of Queen Elizabeth. England was 
the champion and asylum of Religious Free- 
dom — in those of King William, of P\ T ational 
Independence. If a less generous spirit has 
prevailed in her Cabinet since the settled pre- 
dominance of Tory principles in her councils, 
still, the effects of her Parliamentary Oppo- 
sition — the artillery of her Free Press — the 
voice, in short, of her People, which Mr. W. 
has so strangely mistaken, have not been 
without their effects ; — and, though some fla- 
grant acts of injustice have stained her recent 
annals, we still venture to hope that the dread 
of the British Public is felt as far as Peters- 
burgh and Vienna; and would fain indulge 
ourselves with the belief, that it may yet scare 
some Imperial spoiler from a part of his prey, 
and lighten, if not break, the chains of many 
distant captives. 

It is in aid of this generous, though perhaps 
decaying influence — it is as an associate or 
successor in the noble office of patronising and 
protecting General Liberty, that we now call 
upon America to throw from her the memory 
of all petty differences and nice offences, and 
to unite herself cordially with the liberal and 
enlightened part of the English nation, at a 
season when their joint efforts may be all little 
enough to crown the good cause with success, 
and when their disunion will give dreadful 
advantages to the enemies of improvement 
and reform. The example of America has 
already done much for that cause ; and the 
very existence of such a country, under such 
a government, is a tower of strength, and a 
standard of encouragement, for all who may 
hereafter have to struggle for the restoration 
or the extension of their rights. It shows 
within what wide limits popular institutions 
are safe and practicable ; and what a large 
infusion of democracy is consistent with the 
authority of government, and the good order 
of society. But her influence, as well as her 
example, will be wanted in the crisis which 
seems to be approaching : — and that influence 
must be paralysed and inoperative, if she 
shall think it a duty to divide herself from 
England ; to look with jealousy upon her pro- 
ceedings, and to judge unfavourably of all the 
parties she contains. We do not ask her to 
think well of that party, whether in power or 
out of it, which has always insulted and re- 
viled her, because she is free and in depend 
ent, and democratic and prosperous :— But wo 
3C 



626 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



do confidently lay claim to her favourable 
opinion for that great majority of the nation 
which has always been opposed to this party 
--which has partaken with her in the honour 
of its reproaches, and is bound, by every con- 
sideration Of interest and duty, consistency 
and common sense, to maintain her rights and 
her reputation, and to promote and proclaim 
her prosperity. 

To which of these parties ive belong, and to 
which our pen has been devoted, we suppose 
it is unnecessary for us to announce, even in 
America ; and therefore, without recapitulat- 
ing any part of what has just been said, we 
think we may assume, in the outset, that the 
charge exhibited against us by Mr. W. is, at 
least, and on its face, a very unlucky and im- 
probable one — that we are actuated by jeal- 
ousy and spite towards America, and have 
joined in a scheme of systematic defamation, 
in order to diffuse among our countrymen a 
general sentiment of hostility and dislike to 
her ! Grievous as this charge is, w r e should 
scarcely have thought it necessary to reply to 
it, had not the question appeared to us to re- 
late to something of far higher importance 
than the character of our Journal, or the jus- 
tice or injustice of an imputation on the prin- 
ciples of a few anonymous writers. In that 
case, we should have left the matter, as all 
the world knows we have uniformly left it in 
other cases, to be determined by our readers 
upon the evidence before them. But Mr. W. 
has been pleased to do us the honour of identify- 
ing us with the great Whig party of this coun- 
try, or, rather, of considering us as the expo- 
nents of those who support the principles of 
liberty, as it is understood in England: — and 
to think his' case sufficiently made out against 
the Nation at large, if he can prove that both 
the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Review 
had given proof of deliberate malice and 
shameful unfairness on the subject of Ameri- 
ca. Now this, it must be admitted, gives the 
question a magnitude that would not other- 
wise belong to it; and makes what might in 
itself be a mere personal or literary alterca- 
tion, a matter of national moment and con- 
cernment. If a sweeping conviction of mean 
jealousy and rancorous hostility is to be en- 
tered up against the whole British nation, and 
a corresponding spirit to be conjured up in the 
breast of America, because it is alleged that 
the Edinburgh Review, as well as the Quar- 
terly, has given proof of such dispositions, — 
then it becomes a question of no mean or or- 
dinary importance, to determine whether this 
charge has been justly brought against that 
unfortunate journal, and whether its accuser 
has made out enough to entitle him to a ver- 
dict leading to such consequences. 

It will be understood, that we deny alto- 
gether the justice of the charge : — But we 
wish distinctly to say in the beginning, that if 
it should appear to any one that, in the course 
of a great deal of hasty writing, by a variety 
of hands, m the course of twenty long years, 
some rash or petulant expressions had been 
admitted, at which the national pride of our 
Transatlantic brethren might be justly offend- 



ed, we shall most certainly feel no an* \t ty to 
justify these expressions, — nor any fefh* that, 
with the liberal and reasonable part of the 
nation to which they relate, our avowal of re- 
gret for having employed them will not be 
received as a sufficient atonement. Even in 
private life, and without the provocation of 
public controversy, there are not many men 
who, in half the time we have mentioned, do 
not say some things to the slight or disparage- 
ment of their best friends ; which, if all " set 
in a note-book, conned and got by rote," it 
might be hard to answer: — and yet, among 
people of ordinary sense or temper, such thing3 
never break any squares — and the dispositions 
are judged of by the general tenor of one's 
life and conduct, and not by a set of peevish 
phrases, curiously culled and selected out of 
his whole conversation. But we really do not 
think that we shall very much need the bene- 
fit of this plain consideration, and shall pro- 
ceed straightway to our answer. 

The sum of it is this — That, in point of fact, 
we have spoken far more good of America 
than ill — that in nine instances out of ten, 
where we have mentioned her, it has been 
for praise — and that in almost all that is essen 
tial or of serious importance, we have spoken 
nothing but good; — while our censures have 
been wholly confined to matters of inferior 
note, and generally accompanied^ with an 
apology for their existence, and a prediction 
of their speedy disappearance. 

Whatever we have written seriously and 
with earnestness of America, has been with 
a view to conciliate towards her the respect 
and esteem of our own country ; and we have 
scarcely named her, in any deliberate man- 
ner, except for the purpose of impressing upon 
our readers the signal prosperity she has en- 
joyed — the magical rapidity of her advances 
in wealth and population — and the extraordi- 
nary power and greatness to which she is evi- 
dently destined. On these subjects we have 
held but one language, and one tenor of sen- 
timent; and have never missed an opportu- 
nity of enforcing our views on our readers — 
and that not feebly, coldly, or reluctantly, but 
with all the earnestness and energy of which 
we were capable ; and we do accordingly take 
upon us to say, that in no European publica- 
tion have those views been urged with the 
same force or frequency, or resumed at every 
season, and under every change of circum- 
stances, with such steadiness and uniformity. 
We have been equally consistent and equally 
explicit, in pointing out the advantages which 
that country has derived from the extent of 
her elective system — the lightness of her pub- 
lic burdens — the freedom of her press — and 
the independent spirit of her people. The 
praise of the Government is implied in the 
praise of these institutions ; but we have not 
omitted upon every occasion to testify, in ex- 
press terms, to its general wisdom, equity, and 
prudence. Of the character of the people, 
too, in all its more serious aspects, we have 
spoken with the same undeviating favour; 
and have always represented them as brave, 
enterprising, acute, industrious, and patriotic. 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



627 



We need not load our pages with quotations 
Jo prove the accuracy of this representation 
— our whole work is full of them; and Mr. 
W. himself has quoted enough, both in the 
outset of his book and in the body of it, to 
satisfy even such as may take their informa- 
tion from him, that such have always been 
our opinions. Mr. W. indeed seems to ima- 
gine, that other passages, which he has cited, 
import a contradiction or retractation of these ; 
and that we are thus involved, not only in the 
guilt of malice, but the awkwardness of in- 
consistency. Now this, as we take it, is one 
of the radical and almost unaccountable errors 
with which the work before us is chargeable. 
There is no such retractation, and no contradic- 
tion. We can of course do no more, on a point 
like this,thanmakeadistinct asseveration; but, 
after having perused Mr. W.'s book, and with 
a pretty correct knowledge of the Review, we 
do say distinctly, that there is not to be found 
in either a single passage inconsistent, or at 
all at variance with the sentiments to which 
we have just alluded. We have never spoken 
but in one way of the prosperity and future 
greatness of America, and of the importance 
of cultivating amicable relations with her — 
never but in one way of the freedom, cheap- 
ness, and general wisdom of her government 
— never but in one way of the bravery, intelli- 
gence, activity, and patriotism of her people. 
The points on which Mr. W. accuses us of 
malice and unfairness, all relate, as we shall 
see immediately, to other and far less con- 
siderable matters. 

Assuming, then, as we must now do, that 
upon the subjects that have been specified, 
our testimony has been eminently and exclu- 
sively favourable to America, and that we have 
never ceased earnestly to recommend the most 
cordial and friendly relations with her, how, 
it may be asked, is it possible that we should 
have deserved to be classed among the chief 
and most malignant of her calumniators, or 
accused of a design to excite hostility to her 
in the body of our nation "? and even repre- 
sented as making reciprocal hostility a point 
of duty in her, by the excesses of our oblo- 
quy? For ourselves, we profess to be as little 
able to answer this question, as the most ig- 
norant of our readers; — but we shall lay be- 
fore them some account of the proofs on which 
Mr. W. relies for our condemnation; and 
cheerfully submit to any sentence which these 
may seem to justify. There are a variety of 
counts in our indictment; but, in so far as we 
have been able to collect, the heads of our 
offending are as follows. 1st, That we have 
noticed, with uncharitable and undue severity, 
the admitted want of indigenous literature in 
America, and the scarcity of men of genius; 
2d, as an illustration of that charge, That we 
have laughed too ill-naturedly at the affecta- 
tions of Joel Barlow's Columbiad, made an un- 
fair estimate of the merits of Marshall's His- 
tory, and Adams' Letters, and spoken illiber- 
ally of the insignificance of certain American 
Philosophical Transactions; 3dly, That we 
have represented the manners of the fashion- 
able society of America as less polished and 



agreeable than those of Europe — the lower 
orders as impertinently inquisitive, and the 
whole as too vain of their country; 4th, and 
finally, That we have reproached them too 
bitterly with their negro slavery. 

These, we think, are the whole, and certainly 
they are the chief, of the charges against us ; 
and, before saying any thing as to {he particu- 
lars, we should just like to ask, whether, if 
the}- were all admitted to be true, they would 
afford any sufficient grounds, especially when 
set by the side of the favourable representa- 
tions we have made with so much more earn- 
estness on points of much more importance, 
for imputing to their authors, and to the whole 
body of their countrymen, a systematic de- 
sign to make America odious and despicable 
in the eyes of the world 1 This charge, we 
will confess, appears to us most extravagant 
— and, when the facts already stated are taken 
into view, altogether ridiculous. Though we 
are the friends and well-wishers of the Ameri- 
cans — though we think favourably, and even 
highly, of many things in their institutions, 
government, and character, — we are not their 
stipendiary Laureates or blind adulators ; and 
must insist on our right to take notice of what 
we conceive to be their errors and defects, 
with the same freedom which we use to our 
own and to all other nations. It has already 
been shown, that we have by no means con- 
fined ourselves to this privilege of censure ; 
and the complaint seems to be, that we should 
ever have presumed to use it at all. We really 
do not understand this. We have spoken much 
more favourably of their government and in- 
stitutions than we have done of our own. We 
have criticised their authors with at least as 
much indulgence, and spoken of their national 
character in terms of equal respect : But be- 
cause we have pointed out certain undeniable 
defects, and laughed at some indefensible ab- 
surdities, we are accused of the most partial 
and unfair nationality, and represented as en- 
gaged in a conspiracy to bring the whole nation 
into disrepute ! Even if we had the misfor- 
tune to differ in opinion with Mr. W., or the 
majority of his countrymen, on most of the 
points to which our censure has been directed, 
instead of having his substantial admission of 
their justice in most instances, this, it humbly 
appears to us, would neither be a good ground 
for questioning our good faith, nor a reason- 
able occasion for denouncing a general hos- 
tility against the country to which we belong. 
Men may differ conscientiously in their taste 
in literature and manners, and in their opinions 
as to the injustice or sinfulness of domestic 
slavery ; and may express their opinions in 
public — or so at least we have fancied — with- 
out being actuated by spite or malignity. But 
a very slight examination of each of the arti- 
cles of charge will show still more clearly 
upon what slight grounds they have been 
hazarded, and how much more of spleen than 
of reason there is in the accusation. 

1 . Upon the first head, Mr. W. neither does, 
nor can deny, that our statements are perfectly 
correct. The Americans have scarcely any 
literature of their own growth— and scarcely 



628 



MISCELLANEOUS 



any authors of celebrity.* The fact is too 
remarkable not to have been noticed by all 
who have occasion to speak of them; — and 
we have only to-add. that, so far from bringing 
it forward in an insulting or invidious manner. 
we have never, we believe, alluded to it with- 
out adding such explanations as in candour 
we thought due, and as were calculated to 
take from it all shadow of offence. So early 
as in our third Number (printed in 1802), we 
observed that "Literature was one of those 
finer Manufactures which a new country will 
always find it better to import than to raise j" 
— and, after showing that the want of leisure 
and hereditary wealth naturally lead to this 
arrangement, we added, that " the Americans 
had shown abundance of talent, wherever in- 
ducements had been held out for its exertion; 
that their party-pamphlets were written with 
great keenness and spirit ; and that their ora- 
tors frequently displayed a vehemence, cor- 
rectness, and animation, that would command 
the admiration of any European audience." 
Mr. W. has himself quoted the warm testi- 
mony we bore, in our twelfth Volume, to the 
merits of the papers published under the title 
of The Federalist : — And in our sixteenth, we 
observe, that when America once turned her 
attention to letters, "we had no doubt that 
her authors would improve and multiply, to a 
degree that would make all our exertions 
necessary to keep the start we have of them.' 5 
In a subsequent Number, we add the import- 
ant remark, that "among them, the men who 
write bear no proportion to those who read;" 
and that, though they have as yet but few 
native authors, "the individuals are innumer- 
able who make use of literature to improve 
their understandings, and add to their happi- 
ness." The very same ideas are expressed 
in a late article, which seems to have given 
Mr. W. very great offence — though we can 
discover nothing in the passage in question, 
except the liveliness of the style, that can 
afford room for misconstruction. " Native lite- 
rature," says the Reviewer, "the Americans 
have none : It is all imported. And why 
should they write books, when a six weeks' 
passage brings them, in their own tongue, our 
sense, science, and genius, in bales and hogs- 
heads V — Now, what is the true meaning of 
this, but the following — " The Americans do 
not write books ; but it must not be inferred, 
from this, that they are ignorant or indifferent 
about literature. — The true reason is, that they 
get books enough from us in their own lan- 
guage ; and are, in this respect, just in the 
condition of any of our great trading or manu- 
facturing districts at home, within the locality 
of which there is no encouragement for authors 
to settle, though there is at least as much 
reading and thinking as in other places." 
This has all along been our meaning — and 
we think it has been clearly enough express- 
ed. The Americans, in fact, are at least as 

* This might require more qualification now, 
th*n in 1820, when it was written — or rather, than 
in !810, befoie which almost all the reviews con- 
taining the assertion had appeared. 



great readers as the English, and take off nn 
mense editions of aii our popular works; — 
and while we hive repeatedly stated thb 
causes that have probably withheld them 
from becoming authors in great numbers 
themselves, we confidently deny that we have 
ever represented them as illiterate, or neg- 
ligent of learning. 

2. As to our particular criticismson Ameri- 
can w r orks, we cannot help feeling that our 
justification will be altogether as easy as in 
the case of our general remarks on their rarity. 
Nothing, indeed, can more strikingly illustrate 
the unfortunate prejudice or irritation under 
which Mr. W. has composed this part of his 
work, than the morose and angry remarks he 
has made on our very innocent and good- 
natured critique of Barlow's Columbiad. It is 
very true that we have laughed at its strange 
neologisms, and pointed out some of its other 
manifold faults. But is it possible for any one 
seriously to believe, that this gentle castigation 
was dictated by national animosity 1 — or does 
Mr. W. really believe that, if the same work 
had been published in England, it would have 
met with a milder treatment 1 If the book was 
so bad. however, he insinuates, why take any 
notice of it, if not to indulge your malignity'? 
To this we answer, first. That a handsome 
quarto of verse, from a country which pro- 
duces so few, necessarily attracted our atten- 
tion more strongly than if it had appeared 
among ourselves; secondly, That its faults 
were of so peculiar and amusing a kind, as to 
call for animadversion rather than neglect ; 
and, thirdly, what no reader of Mr. W.'s 
remarks would indeed anticipate, That, in 
spite of these faults, the book actually had 
merits that entitled it to notice ; and that a 
very considerable part of our article is ac- 
cordingly employed in bringing those merits 
into view. In common candour, we must say, 
Mr. W. should have acknowledged this, when 
complaining of the illiberal severity with 
which Mr. Barlow's work had been treated., 
For, the truth is, that we have given it fully 
as much praise as he, or any other intelligent 
American, can say it deserves ; and have been 
at some pains in vindicating the author's sen- 
timents from misconstruction, as well as res 
cuing his beauties from neglect. Yet Mr. W 
is pleased to inform his reader, that the work 
"seems to have been committed to the Mo 
mus of the fraternity for especial diversion ;" 
and is very surly and austere at "'the exquisite 
jokes" of whicn he says it consists. We cer- 
tainly do not mean to dispute with him about 
the quality of our jokes: — though we lake 
leave to appeal to a gayer critic — or to him- 
self in better humour — from his present sen- 
tence of reprobation. But he should have re- 
collected, that, besides stating, in distinct 
terms, that "'his versification was generally 
both soft and sonorous, and that there were 
many passages of rich and vigorous descrip- 
tion, and some that might lay claim even to 
the praise of magnificence," the critics had 
summed up their observations by saying, 
" that the author's talents were evidently re- 
spectable; and that, severely as they had 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



629 



been oLnged to speak of his taste and his dic- 
tion, in a great part of the volume, they con- 
6 dered him as a giant in comparison -with 
many of the paltry ami puling rhymsters who 
disgraced our English literature by their oc- 
casional success ; and that, if he would pay 
some attention to purity of style and simpli- 
city of composition, they had no doubt that he 
might produce something which English poets 
would envy, and English critics applaud." 

Are there any traces here, we would ask, 
of national spite and hostility? — or is it not 
true, that our account of the poem is, on the 
whole, not only fair but favourable, and the 
tone of our remarks as good-humoured and 
friendly as if the author had been a whiggish 
Scotchman 1 As to " Marshall's Life of Wash- 
ington," we do not think that Mr. W. differs 
very much from the Reviewers. He says, 
"he does not mean to affirm that the story of 
their Revolution has been told absolutely ivell 
by this author-" and we, after complaining of 
its being cold, heavy, and tedious, have dis- 
tinctly testified, that "it displayed industry, 
good sense, and, in so far as we could judge, 
laudable impartiality; and that the style, 
though neither elegant nor impressive, was 
yet, upon the whole, clear and manly." Mr. 
W., however, thinks that nothing but national 
spite and illiberality can account for our say- 
ing, M that Mr. M. must not promise himself 
a reputation commensurate with the dimen- 
sions of his work ;" and w that what passes 
with him for dignity, will, by his readers, be 

Eronounced dulness and frigidity:" And then 
e endeavours to show, that a passage in 
which we say that " Mr. Marshall's narrative 
is deficient in almost every thing that con- 
stitutes historical excellence," is glaringly in- 
consistent with the favourable sentence we 
have transcribed in the beginning; not see- 
ing, or not choosing to see. that in the one 
place we are speaking of the literary merits 
of the work as an historical composition, and 
in the other of its value in respect of the 
views and information it supplies. But the 
question is not, whether our criticism is just 
and able, or otherwise ; but whether it indi- 
cates any little spirit of detraction and national 
rancour — and this it would seem not very dif- 
ficult to answer. If we had taken the occasion 
of this publication to gather together all the 
foolish, and awkward, and disreputable things 
that occurred in the conduct of the revolu- 
tionary councils and campaigns, and to make 
the history of this memorable struggle, a 
vehicle for insinuations against the courage 
or integrity of many who took part in it, we 
might, with reason, have been subjected to 
the censure we now confidently repel. But 
there is not a word in the article that looks 
that way; and the only ground for the impu- 
tation is, that we have called Mr. Marshall's 
book dull and honest, accurate and heavy, 
valuable and tedious, while neither Mr. Walsh, 
nor any body else, ever thought or said any 
thing else of it. It is his style only that we 
object to. Of his general sentiments — of the 
conduct and character of his hero — and of 
the prospects of his country, we speak as the 



warmest friends of America, and the warmest 
admirers of American virtue, would wish us 
to speak. We shall add but one short passage 
as a specimen of the real tone of this insolent 
and illiberal production. 

" History has no other example of so happy an 
i>sue to a revolution, consummated by a long civil 
war. Inch -ed it seems to be very near a maxim in 
political philosophy, that a £ree government cannot 
be obtained where a long employment of military 
force has been necessary to establish it. In the 
case of America, however, the military power was, 
by a rare felicity, disarmed by that very influence 
which makes a revolutionary army so formidable 
to liberty: For the images of Grandeur and Power 
— those meteor lights that are exhaled in the stormy 
atmosphere of a revolution, to allure the ambi- 
tious and dazzle the weak — made no impression 
on the firm and virtuous soul of the American 
commander." 

As to Adams' Letters on Silesia, the case is 
nearly the same. We certainly do not run 
into extravagant compliments to the author, 
because he happens to be the son of the 
American President : But he is treated with 
sufficient courtesy and respect : and Mr. W. 
cannot well deny that the book is very fairly 
rated, according to its intrinsic merits. There 
is no ridicule, nor any attempt at sneering, 
throughout the article. The work is described 
as " easy and pleasant, and entertaining," — as 
containing some excellent remarks on Educa- 
tion, — and indicating, throughout, " that set- 
tled attachment to freedom which is worked 
into the constitution of every man of virtue 
who has the fortune to belong to a free and 
prosperous community." As to the style, we 
remark, certainly in a very good-natured and 
inoffensive manner, that " though it is re- 
markably free from those affectations and 
corruptions of phrase that overrun the com- 
positions of his country, a few national, per- 
haps we might still venture to call them pro- 
vincial, peculiarities, might be detected;" 
and then we add, in a style which we do not 
think can appear impolite, even to a minister 
plenipotentiary. " that if men of birth and 
education in that other England which they 
are building up in the West, will not dili- 
gently study the great authors who fixed and 
purified the language of our common fore- 
fathers, we must soon lose the only badge 
that is still worn of our consanguinity." Un- 
less the Americans are really to set up a 
new standard of speech, we conceive that 
these remarks are perfectly just and unan- 
swerable; and we are sure, at all events, tnat 
nothing can be farther from a spirit of insult 
or malevolence. 

Our critique on the volume of American 
Transactions is perhaps more liable to objec- 
tion ; and, on looking back to it, we at once 
admit that it contains some petulant and rash 
expressions which had better have been omit- 
ted — and that its general tone is less liberal 
and courteous than might have been desire*!. 
It is remarkable, however, that this, which .s 
by far the most offensive of our discussions 
on American literature, is one of the earliest, 
and that the sarcasms with which it is sea« 
soned have never been repeated — a f act 
3c 2 



630 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



which, with many others, may serve to ex- 
pose the singular inaccuracy with which Mr. 
W. has been led, throughout his work, to as- 
sert that we began our labours with civility 
and kindness towards his country, and have 
only lately changed our tone, and joined its 
inveterate enemies in all the extravagance of 
abuse. The substance of our criticism, it does 
not seem to be disputed, was just — the volume 
containing very little that was at all interest- 
ing, and a good part of it being composed in 
a style very ill suited for such a publication. 

Such are the perversions of our critical 
office, which Mr. W. can only explain on the 
supposition of national jealousy and malice. 
As proofs of an opposite disposition, we beg 
leave just to refer to our lavish and reiterated 
praise of the writings of Franklin — to our 
high and distinguished testimony to the merits 
of The Federalist — to the terms of commend- 
ation in which we have spoken of the Journal 
of Messrs. Lewis and Clarke ; and in an espe- 
cial manner, to the great kindness with which 
we have treated a certain American pamphlet 
published at Philadelphia and London in 1810, 
and of which we shall have a word to say 
hereafter, — though each and all of those per- 
formances touched much more nearly on sub- 
jects of national contention, and were far 
more apt to provoke feelings of rivalry, than 
any thing in the Philosophical Transactions, 
or the tuneful pages of the Columbiad. 

3. We come now to the ticklish Chapter of 
Manners ; on which, though we have said less 
than on any other, we suspect we have given 
more offence — and, if possible, with less rea- 
son. We may despatch the lower orders first, 
before we come to the people of fashion. The 
charge here is, that we have unjustly libelled 
those persons, by saying, in one place, that 
they were too much addicted to spirituous li- 
quors ; in another, that they were rudely in- 
quisitive ; and in a third, that they were 
absurdly vain of their free constitution, and 
offensive in boasting of it. Now, we may have 
been mistaken in making these imputations;, 
but we find them stated in the narrative of 
every traveller who has visited their country ; 
and most of them noticed by the better wri- 
ters among themselves, from Franklin to 
Cooper inclusive. We have noticed them, 
too, without bitterness or insult, and generally 
in the words of the authors upon whose au- 
thority they are stated. Neither are the im- 
putations themselves very grievous, or such 
as can be thought to bespeak any great ma- 
lignity in their authors. Their inquisitiveness, 
and the boast of their freedom, are but ex- 
cesses of laudable qualities; and intemper- 
ance, though it is apt to lead further, is, in 
itself, a sin rather against prudence than mo- 
rality. Mr. W. is infinitely offended, too, be- 
cause we have said that u the people of the 
Western States are very hospitable to strangers 
— because they are seldom troubled with them. 
3.nd because they have always plenty of maize 
and hams ;" as if this were not the rationale 
of all hospitality among the lower orders, 
jhroughout the world. — and familiarly applied, 
among ourselves, to the case of our Highland- 



ers and remote Irish. But slight as these 
charges are, we may admit, that Mr. W. would 
have had some reason to complain if they had 
included all that we had ever said of the great 
bulk of his nation. But the truth is, that we 
have all along been much more careful to no- 
tice their virtues than their faults, and have lost 
no fair opportunity of speaking well of them. 
In our twenty-third Number, we have said 
" The great body of the American people is 
better educated, and more comfortably situated, 
than the bulk of any European community ; 
and possesses all the accomplishments that 
are anywhere to be found in persons of the 
same occupation and condition." And more 
recently, " The Americans are about as pol- 
ished as ninety-nine out of one hundred of our 
own countrymen, in the upper ranks; and 
quite as moral, and well educated, in the lower. 
Their virtues too are such as we ought to ad- 
mire; for they are those on which we value 
ourselves most highly." We have never said 
any thing inconsistent with this : — -and if this 
be to libel a whole nation, and to villify and 
degrade them in comparison of ourselves, we 
have certainly been guilty of that enormity. 

As for the manners of the upper classes, we 
have really said very little about them, and 
can scarcely recollect having given any posi- 
tive opinion on the subject. We have lately 
quoted, with warm approbation, Captain HalFs 
strong and very respectable testimony to their 
agreeableness — and certainly have never con- 
tradicted it on our own authority. We have 
made however certain hypothetical and con- 
jectural observations, which, we gather from 
Mr. W., have given some offence — we must 
say, we think, very unreasonably. We have 
said, for example, as already quoted, that " the 
Americans are- about as polished as ninety- 
nine in one hundred of our own countrymen 
in the upper ranks." Is it the reservation of 
this inconsiderable fraction in our own favour 
that is resented 1 Why, our very seniority, we 
think 7 might have entitled us to this prece- 
dence : and we must say that our monarchy 
— our nobility — our greater proportion of he- 
reditary wealth, and our closer connection with 
the old civilised world, might have justified a 
higher percentage. But we will not dispute 
with Mr. W. even upon this point. Let him 
set down the fraction, if he pleases, to the 
score merely of our national partiality ; — and 
he must estimate that element very far indeed 
below its ordinary standard, if he does not find 
it sufficient for it, without the supposition of 
intended insult Or malignity. Was there ever 
any great nation that did not prefer its own 
manners to those of any of its neighbours ? — 
or can Mr. W. produce another instance in 
which it was ever before allowed, that a rival 
came so near as to be within one hundreth 
of its own excellence ? 

But there is still something worse than this. 
Understanding that the most considerable per- 
sons in the chief cities of America, were their 
opulent merchants, we conjectured that their 
society was probably much of the same des- 
cription with that of Liverpool, Manchester,, 
and Glasgow : — And does Mr. W. really think 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



631 



there is any disparagement in this? — Does he 
not know that these places have been graced; 
for generations, by some of the most deserving 
and enlightened citizens, and some of the most 
learned and accomplished men that have ever 
adorned our nation'? Does he not know that 
Adam Smith, and Reid, and Miller, spent their 
happiest days in Glasgow; that Roscoe and 
Carrie illustrated the society of Liverpool — 
and Priestley and Ferriar and Darwin that of 
Manchester'? The wealth and skill and enter- 
prise of all the places is equally indisputable 
— and we confess we are yet to learn in which 
of the elements of respectability they can be 
imagined to be inferior to Ne.w York, or Bal- 
timore, or Philadelphia. 

But there is yet another passage in the Re- 
view which Mr. W. has quoted as insulting 
and vituperative — for such a construction of 
which we confess ourselves still less able to 
divine a reason. It is part of an honest and 
very earnest attempt to overcome the high 
monarchical prejudices of a part of our own 
country against the Americans, and notices 
this objection to their manners only collaterally 
and hypothetically. Mr. W. needs not be told 
that all courtiers and zealots of monarchy im- 
pute rudeness and vulgarity to republicans. 
The French used to describe an inelegant 
person as having " Les manieres (Pun Suisse, 
En Hollande civilise j" — and the Court faction 
among ourselves did not omit this reproach 
when we went to war with the Americans. 
To expose the absurdity of such an attack, 
we expressed ourselves in 1814 as follows. 

" The complaint respecting America is, that there 
are no people of fashion, — that their column still 
wants its Corinthian capital, or, in other words, that 
those who are rich and idle, have not yet existed so 
long, or in such numbers, as to have brought to full 
perfection that system of ingenious trifling and ele- 
gant dissipation, by means of which it has been dis- 
covered that wealth and leisure may be most agree- 
ably disposed of. Admitting the fact to be so, and 
in a country where there is no court, no nobility, 
and no monument or tradition of chivalrous usages, 
— and where, moreover, the greatest number of 
those who are rich and powerful have raised them- 
selves to that eminence by mercantile industry, we 
really do not see how it could well be otherwise ; 
we would still submit, that this is no lawful cause 
either for national contempt, or for national hostility. 
It is a peculiarity in the structure of society among 
that people, which, we take it, can only give offence 
to their visiting acquaintance ; and, while it does us 
no sort of harm while it subsists, promises, we think, 
very soon to disappear altogether, and no longer to 
afflict even our imagination. The number of indi- 
viduals born to the enjoyment of hereditary wealth 
is, or at least was. daily increasing in that country ; 
and it is impossible that their multiplication (with 
all the models of European refinement before them, 
and all the advantages resulting from a free govern- 
ment and a general system of good education) should 
fail, within a very short period, to give birth \o abetter 
tone of conversation and society, and to manners 
mu>re dignified and refined. Unless we are very 
much misinformed, indeed, the symptoms of such a 
change may already be traced in their cities. Their 
youths of fortune already travel over all the coun- 
tries of Europe for their improvement ; and speci- 
mens are occasionally met with, even in these 
islands, which, with all our prejudices, we must ad- 
mit, would do no discredit to the best blood of the 
land from which they originally sprung." 



Now, is there really any matter of offence 
in this? — In the first place, is it not substan- 
tially true ? — in the next place, is it not mildly 
and respectfully stated 1 Is it not true, that 
the greater part of those who compose the 
higher society of the American cities, have 
raised themselves to opulence by commercial 
pursuits? — and is it to be imagined that, in 
America alone, this is not to produce its usual 
effects upon the style and tone of society ? 
As families become old, and hereditary wealth 
comes to be the portion of many, it cannot but 
happen that a change of manners will take 
place j — and is it an insult to suppose that this 
change will be an improvement ? Surely they 
cannot be perfect, both as they are, arid as 
they are to be ; and, while it seems impossi- 
ble to doubt that a considerable change is in- 
evitable, the offence seems to be, that it is 
expected to be for the better ! It is impossible, 
we think, that Mr. W. can seriously imagine 
that the manners of any country upon earth 
can be so dignified and refined — or their tone 
of conversation and society so good, when the 
most figuring persons come into company from 
the desk and the counting-house, as when 
they pass only from one assembly to another, 
and have had no other study or employment 
from their youth up, than to render society 
agreeable, and to cultivate those talents and 
manners which give its charm to polite con- 
versation. If there are any persons in America 
who seriously dispute the accuracy of these 
opinions, we are pretty confident that they 
will turn out to be those whom the rest of the 
country would refer to in illustration of their 
truth. The truly polite, we are persuaded, 
will admit the case to be pretty much as we 
have stated it. The upstarts alone will con- 
tend for their present perfection. If we have 
really been so unfortunate as to give any of- 
fence by our observations, we suspect that 
offence will be greater at Cincinnati than at 
New York, — and not quite so slight at New 
York as at Philadelphia or Boston. 

But we have no desire to pursue this topic 
any further — nor any interest indeed to con- 
vince those who may not be already satisfied. 
If Mr. W. really thinks us wrong in the opin- 
ions we have now expressed, we are willing 
for the present to be thought so: But surely 
we have said enough to show that we had 
plausible grounds for those opinions; and 
surely, if we did entertain them, it was im- 
possible to express them in a manner less of- 
fensive. We did not even recur to the topic 
spontaneously — but occasionally took it up in 
a controversy on behalf of America, with a 
party of our own countrymen. What we said 
was not addressed to America — but said of 
her; and, most indisputably, with friendly 
intentions to the people of both countries. 

But we have dwelt too long on this subject. 
The manners of fashionable life, and the ri 
valry of bon ton between one country and 
another, is, after all, but a poor affair to oc- 
cupy the attention of philosophers, or affect 
the peace of nations. — Of what real conse- 
quence is it to the happiness or glory of a 
country, how a few thousand idle people— 



€32 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



probably neither the most virtuous nor the 
most useful of their fellow-citizens — pass 
their time, or divert the ennui of their inac- 
tivity ? — And men must really have a great 
propensity to hate each other, when it is 
thought a reasonable ground of quarrel, that 
the rich desmivres of one country are accused 
of not knowing how to get through their day 
80 cleverly as those of another. Manners 
alter from age to age. and from country to 
country ; and much is at all times arbitrary 
and conventional in that which is esteemed 
the be'st. What pleases and amuses each 
people the most, is the best for that people : 
And, \^here states are tolerably equal in power 
and wealth, a great and irreconcileable diver- 
sity is often maintained with suitable arro- 
gance and inflexibility, and no common stan- 
dard recognised or dreamed of. The bon ton 
of Pekin has no sort of affinity, we suppose, 
with the bon ton of Paris — and that of Con- 
stantinople but little resemblance to either. 
The difference, to be sure, is not so complete 
within the limits of Europe ; but it is suffi- 
ciently great, to show the folly of being dog- 
matical or intolerant upon a subject so inca- 
pable of being reduced to principle. The 
Fiench accuse us of coldness and formality, 
and we accuse them of monkey tricks and 
impertinence. The good company of Rome 
would be much at a loss for amusement at 
Amsterdam ; and that of Brussels at Madrid. 
The manners of America, then, are probably 
the best for America : But, for that very rea- 
son, they are not the best for us : And when 
we hinted that they probably might be im- 
proved, we spoke with reference to the Euro- 
pean standard, and to the feelings and judg- 
ment of strangers, to whom that standard 
alone was familiar. When their circum- 
stances, and the structure of their society, 
come to be more like those of Europe, their 
manners will be more like — and they will 
suit better with those altered circumstances. 
When the fabric has reached "its utmost ele- 
vation, the Corinthian capital may be added: 
For the present, 'the Doric is perhaps more 
suitable ; and, if the style be kept pure, w r e 
are certain it will be equally graceful. 

4. It only remains to notice what is said 
with regard to Negro Slavery: — and on this 
we shall be very short. We have no doubt 
spoken very warmly on the subject in one of 
our late Numbers: — but Mr. W. must have 
read what we there said, with a jaundiced 
eye indeed, if he did not see that our warmth 
proceeded, not from any animosity against the 
people among whom this miserable institution 
existed, but against the institution itself — and 
was mainly excited by the contrast that it 
presented to the freedom and prosperity upon 
which it was so strangely engrafted ; — thus 
appearing 

" Like a stain upon a Vestal's robe, 

The worse for what it soils." 

Accordingly, we do not call upon other 
nations to hate and despise America for this 
practice; but upon the Americans themselves 
to wipe away this foul blot from their charac- 



ter. We have a hundred times used the same 
language to our own countrymen — and re- 
peatedly on the subject of the Slave Trade y— 
and Mr. W. cannot be ignorant, that many 
pious and excellent citizens of his own coun- 
try have expressed themselves in similar 
terms w T ith regard to this very institution. 
As to his recriminations on England, we shall 
explain to Mr. W. immediately, that they 
have no bearing whatever on the question 
now at issue between us* and, though nobody 
can regret more than we do the domestic 
slavery of our West Indian islands, it is quite 
absurd to represent the difficulties of the abo- 
lition as at all parallel in the case of America. 
It is still confidently asserted that, without 
slaves, those islands could not be maintained ; 
and, independent of private interests, the 
trade of England cannot afford to part with 
them. But will any body pretend to say, 
that the great and comparative temperate re- 
gions over which the American Slavery ex- 
tends, would be deserted, if all their inhabit- 
ants were free — or even that they would be 
permanently less populous or less productive! 
We are perfectly aware, that a sudden or im- 
mediate emancipation of all those who are 
now in slavery, might be attended with fright- 
ful disorders, as well as intolerable losses; 
and, accordingly, we have nowhere recom- 
mended any such measure: But we must re- 
peat, that it is a crime and a shame, that the 
freest nation on the earth should keep a mil- 
lion and a half of fellow-creatures in actual 
chains, within the very territory and sanc- 
tuary of their freedom; and should see them 
multiplying, from day to day, without think- 
ing of any provision for their ultimate libera- 
tion. When we say this, we are far from 
doubting that there are many amiable and 
excellent individuals among the slave propri- 
etors. There were many such among the 
importers of slaves in our West Indies : Yet, 
it is not the less true, that that accursed traffic 
was a crime — and it was so called, in the 
most emphatic language and with general 
assent, year after year, in Parliament, without 
any one ever imagining that this imported a 
personal attack on those individuals, far less 
a malignant calumny upon the nation which 
tolerated and legalized their proceedings. 

Before leaving this topic, we have to thank 
Mr. W. for a great deal of curious, and, to us, 
original information, as to the history of the 
American Slave trade, and the measures pur- 
sued by the different States with regard to the 
institution of slavery: From which we learn, 
among other things, that, so early as 1767, the 
legislature of Massachussets brought in a bill 
for prohibiting the importation of negroes into 
that province, which was rejected by the 
British governor, in consequence of express 
instructions; — and another in 1774 shared the 
same fate. We learn also, that, in 1770, two 
years before the decision of Somerset's case in 
England, the courts of the same distinguished 
province decided, upon solemn argument, that 
no person could be held in slavery within their 
jurisdiction ; and awarded not only their free- 
dom, but wages for their past services, to a 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



633 



variety of negro suitors. These, indeed, are 
fair subjects of pride and exultation ; and we 
nail them, without grudging, as bright trophies 
in the annals of the States to which they re- 
late. But do not their glories cast a deeper 
shade on those who have refused to follow the 
example — and may ive not now be allowed to 
speak of the guilt and unlawfulness of slavery, 
as their own countrymen are praised and 
boasted of for having spoken, so many years 
ago? 

We learn also from Mr. W., that Virginia 
abolished the foreign slave trade so early as 
1778 — Pennsylvania in 1780 — Massachusetts 
in 1787 — and' Connecticut and Rhode Island 
in 1788. It was finally interdicted by the 
General Congress in 1794 ; and made punish- 
able as a crime, seven years before that 
measure was adopted in England. We have 
great pleasure in stating these facts." But 
they all appear to us not only incongruous 
with the permanent existence of slavery, but 
as indicating those very feelings with regard 
to it which we have been so severly blamed 
for expressing. 

We here close our answer to Mr. W.'s 
charges. Our readers, we fear, have been for 
some time tired of it: And, indeed, we have 
felt all along, that there was something ab- 
surd in answering gravely to such an accusa- 
tion. If any regular reader of our Review- 
could be of opinion that we were hostile to 
America, and desirous of fomenting hostility 
between her and this country, we could 
scarcely hope that he would change that opin- 
ion for any thing we have now been saying. 
But Mr. W.'s book may fall into the hands of 
many, in his own country at least, to whom 
our writings are but little known ; and the 
imputations it contains may become known to 
many who never inquire into their grounds: 
On such persons, the statements we have now 
made may produce some impression — and the 
spirit in which they are made perhaps still 
more. Our labour will not have been in vain, 
if there are any that rise up from the perusal 
of these pages with a better opinion of their 
Transatlantic brethren, and an increased de- 
sire to live with them in friendship and peace. 
There still remains behind, a fair moiety 
of Mr. W.'s book ; containing his recrimina- 
tions on England — his expositions of "her 
sores and blotches" — and his retort courteous 
for all the abuse which her writers have been 
pouring on this country for the last hundred 
years. The task, we should think, must have 
been rather an afflicting one to a man of much 
moral sensibility: — But it is gone through very 
resolutely, and with a marvellous industry. 
The learned author has not only ransacked 
forgotten histories and files of old newspapers 
in search of disreputable transactions and de- 
grading crimes — but has groped for the mate- 
rials of our dishonour, among the filth of Dr. 
Colquhoun's Collections, and the Reports of 
our Prison and Police Committees — culled vi- 
tuperative exaggerations from the records of 
angry debates — and produced, as incontro- 
vertible evidence of the excess of our guilt 
and misery, the feivid declamations of moral- 
80 



ists exhorting to amendment, or of sat :, -ists 
endeavouring to deter from vice. Provincial 
misgovernment from Ireland to Hindostan — 
cruel amusements — increasing pauperism — 
disgusting brutality — shameful ignorance — 
perversion of law — grinding taxation — brutal 
debauchery, and many other traits equally 
attractive, are all heaped together, as the char- 
acteristics of English society ; and unsparingly 
illustrated by "loose extracts from English 
Journals," — quotations from Espriella's Let- 
ters — and selections from the Parliamentary 
Debates. Accustomed, as we have long been, 
to mark the vices and miseries of our country- 
men, we really cannot say that we recognise 
any likeness in this distorted representation; 
which exhibits our fair England as one great 
Lazar-house of moral and intellectual disease 
— one hideous and bloated mass of sin and 
suffering — one festering heap of corruption, 
infecting the wholesome air which breathes 
upon it, and diffusing all around the contagion 
and the terror of its example. 

We have no desire whatever to argue 
against the truth or the justice of this picture 
of our country ; which we can assure Mr. W. 
we contemplate with perfect calmness and 
equanimity: but we are tempted to set against 
it the judgment of another foreigner, with 
whom he cannot complain of being confront- 
ed, and whose authority at this moment stands 
higher, perhaps with the whole civilised 
world, than that of any other individual. We 
allude to Madame de Stael — and to the splen- 
did testimony she has borne to the character 
and happiness of the English nation, in her 
last admirable book on the Revolution of her 
own country. But we have spoken of this 
work so lately, that we shall not now recal 
the attention of our readers to it, further than 
by this general reference. We rather wish, 
at present, to lay before them an American 
authority. 

In a work of great merit, entitled " A Letter 
on the Genius and Dispositions of the French 
Government," published at Philadelphia in 
1810, and which attracted much notice, both 
there and in this country, the author, in a 
strain of great eloquence and powerful rea- 
soning, exhorts his country to make common 
cause with England in the great struggle in 
which she was then engaged with the giant 
power of Bonaparte, and points out the many 
circumstances in the character and condition 
of the two countries that invited them to a 
cordial alliance. He was well aware, too, of 
the distinction w r e have endeavoured to point 
out between the Court, or the Tory rulers of 
the State, and the body of our People : and, 
after observing that the American Govern- 
ment, by following his councils, might retrieve 
the character of their country, he adds, "They 
will, I am quite sure, be seconded by an en- 
tire correspondence of feeling, not only on 
our part, but on that of the People of Eng- 
land — whatever may be the narrow policy, or 
illiberal prejudices of the British Ministry ;" 
and, in the body of his work, he gives an 
ample and glowing description of the char- 
acter and condition of that England of which 



634 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



we have just seen so lamentable a representa- 
tion. The whole passage is too long for in- 
sertion ; but the following extracts will afford 
a sufficient specimen of its tone and tenor. 

11 A peculiar masculine character, and the utmost 
energy of feeling are communicated to all orders of 
men, — by the abundance which prevails so univer- 
sally, — the consciousness of equal rights, — the ful- 
ness of power and frame to which the nation has 
attained, — and the beauty and robustness of the 
species under a climate highly favourable to the 
animal economy. The dignity of the rich is with- 
out insolence, — the subordination of the poor with- 
out servility. Their freedom is well guarded both 
from the dangers of popular licentiousness, and 
from the encroachments of authority. — Their na- 
tional pride leads to national sympathy, and is built 
upon the most legitimate of all foundations — a sense 
of pre-eminent merit and a body of illustrious an- 
nals. 

" Whatever may be the representations of those 
who, with little knowledge of facts, and still less 
soundness or impartiality of judgment, affect to de- 
plore the condition of England, — it is nevertheless 
true, that there does not exist, and never has ex- 
isted elsewhere, — so beautiful and perfect a model 
of public and private prosperity, — so magnificent, 
and at the same time, so solid a fabric of social hap- 
piness and national grandeur. 1 pay this just tri- 
bute of admiratio?i with the more pleasure, as it is 
to me in the light of an Atonement for the errors 
and prejudices, under which I laboured, on this sub- 
ject, before I enjoyed the advantage of a personal 
experience. A residence of nearly two years in 
that country, — during which period, I visited and 
studied almost every part of it, — with no other view 
or pursuit than that of obtaining correct informa- 
tion, and, T may add, with previous studies well 
fitted to promote my object, — convinced me that I 
had been egregiously deceived. I saw no instances 
of individual oppression, and scarcely any individual 
misery but that which belongs, under any circum- 
stances of our being, to the infirmity of all human 
institutions."—- 

" The agriculture of England is confessedly su- 
perior to that of any other part of the world, and 
the condition of those who are engaged" in the cul- 
tivation of the soil, incontestibly preferable to that 
of the same class in any other section of Europe. 
An inexhaustible source of admiration and delight 
is found in the unrivalled beauty, as well as rich- 
ness and fruitfulness of their husbandry ; the effects 
of which are heightened by the magnificent parks 
and noble mansions of the opulent proprietors : by 
picturesque gardens upon the largest scale, and 
disposed with the most exquisite taste: and by 
Gothic remains no less admirable in their structure 
than venerable for their antiquity. The neat cot- 
tage, the substantial farm-house, the splendid villa, 
are constantly rising to the sight, surrounded by the 
most choice and poetical attributes of the landscape. 
The vision is not more delightfully recreated by 
the rural scenery, than the moral sense is gratified, 
and the understanding elevated by the instituiions 
of this great country. The first and continued ex- 
clamation of an American who contemplates them 
with unbiassed judgment, is — 

Salve ! magna Parens frugum, Saturnia tellus ! 
Magna virurn. 

"It appears something not less than Impious to 
desire the ruin of this people, when you view the 
height to which they have carried the comforts, the 
knowledge, and the virtue of our species : the ex- 
tent and number of their foundations of charity ; 
their skill in the mechanic arts, by the improvement 
of which alone they have conferred inestimable 
benefits on mankind; the masculine morality, the 
lofty sense of independence, the sober and rational 
piety which are found in all classes ; their impar- 
tial, decorous, and able administration of a code of 



laws, than which none more just and perfect haa 
ever been in operation ; their seminaries of educa- 
tion yielding more solid and profitable instruction 
than any other whatever ; their eminence in litera- 
ture and science — the urbanity and learning of their 
privileged orders — their deliberative assemblies, 
illustrated by so many profound statesmen, and 
brilliant orators. It is worse than Ingratitude in 
us not to sympathise with them in their present 
struggle, when we recollect that it is from them we 
derive the principal merit of our own character — 
the best of our own institutions — the sources of our 
highest enjoyments — and the light of Freedom itself, 
which, if they should be destroyed, will not long 
shed its radiance over this country.'''' 

What will Mr. Walsh say to this picture of 
the country he has so laboured to degrade'? — 
and what will our readers say, when they are 
told that Mr. Walsh himself is the author of 
this picture ! 

So, however, the fact unquestionably stands. 
— The book from which we have made the 
preceding extracts, was written and published, 
in 1810, by the very same individual who has 
now recriminated upon England in the vol- 
ume which lies before us, — and in which he 
is pleased to speak with extreme severity of 
the inconsistencies he has detected in our Re- 
view ! — That some discordant or irreconcile- 
able opinions should be found in the miscel- 
laneous writing of twenty years, and thirty or 
forty individuals under no effective control, 
may easily be imagined, and pardoned, we 
should think, without any great strelch of 
liberality. But such a transmutation of senti- 
ments on the same identical subject — such a 
reversal of the poles of the same identical 
head, we confess has never before come under 
our observation ; and is parallel to nothing that 
we can recollect, but the memorable trans- 
formation of Bottom, in the Midsummer Night's 
Dream. Nine years, to be sure, had intervened 
between the first and the second publication. 
But all the guilt and all the misery which is 
so diligently developed in the last, had been 
contracted before the first was thought of; and 
all the injuries, and provocations too, by which 
the exposition of them has lately become a 
duty. Mr. W. knew perfectly, in 1810, how 
England had behaved to her American colonies 
before the war of independence, and in what 
spirit she had begun and carried on that war: 
— our Poor-rates and taxes, our bull-baitings 
and swindlings. were then nearly as visible as 
now. Mr. Colquhoun, had, before that time, put 
forth his Political Estimate of our prostitutes 
and pickpockets ; and the worthy Laureate his 
authentic Letters on the bad state of our par- 
liaments and manufactures. Nay, the Edin- 
burgh Review had committed the worst of 
those offences which now make hatred to 
England the duty of all true Americans, and 
had expressed little of that zeal for her friend- 
ship which appears in its subsequent Numbers. 
The Reviews of the American Transactions, 
and Mr. Barlow's Epic, of Adams' Letters, and 
Marshall's History, had all appeared before 
this time — and but very few of the articles in 
which the future greatness of that country is 
predicted, and her singular prosperity extolled. 

How then is it to be accounted for, that Mr. 
W. should have taken such a favourable view 



WALSH'S APPEAL. 



635 



of our state and merits in 1810, and so very 
different a one in 1819"? There is but one 
explanation that occurs to us. — Mr. W., as 
appears from the passages just quoted; had 
been originally very much of the opinion to 
which he has now returned — For he tells us, 
that he considers the tribute of admiration 
which he there offers to our excellence, as an 
Atonement for the errors and prejudices under 
which he laboured till he came among us, — 
and hints pretty plainly, that he had formerly 
oeen ungrateful enough to disown all obliga- 
tion to our race, and impious enough even to 
wish for our ruin. Now, from the tenor of the 
work before us, compared with these passages, 
it is pretty plain, we think, that Mr. W. has 
just relapsed into those damnable heresies, 
which we fear are epidemic in his part of the 
country — and from which nothing is so likely 
to deliver him, as a repetition of the same 
remedy by which they were formerly removed. 
Let him come again then to England, and try 
the effect of a second course of "personal 
experience and observation" — let him make 
another pilgrimage to Mecca, and observe 
whether his faith is not restored and confirmed 
— let him, like the Indians of his own world, 
visit the Tombs of his Fathers in the old land, 
and see whether he can there abjure the friend- 
ship of their other children'? If he will ven- 
ture himself among us for another two years' 
residence, we can promise him that he will 
find in substance the same England that he 
left : — Our laws and our landscapes — our in- 
dustry and urbanity ; — our charities, our learn- 
ing, and our personal beauty, he will find 
unaltered and unimpaired ; — and we think we 
can even engage, that he shall find also a still 
greater "correspondence of feeling in the body 
of our People," and not a less disposition to 
welcome an accomplished stranger who comes 
to get rid of errors and prejudices, and to learn 
— or. if he pleases, to teach, the great lessons 
of a generous and indulgent philanthropy. 

We have done, however, with this topic. — 
We have a considerable contempt for the ar- 
gumentum ad hominem in any case — and have 
no desire to urge it further at present. The 
truth is, that neither of Mr. W.'s portraitures 
of us appears to be very accurate. We are 
painted en beau in the one, and en laid in the 
other. The particular traits in each may be 
given with tolerable truth — but the whole 
truth most certainly is to be found in neither; 
and it will not even do to take them together 
— any more than it would do to make a correct 
likeness, by patching or compounding together 
a flattering portrait and a monstrous carica- 
ture. We have but a word or two, indeed, 

to add on the general subject, before we take 
a final farewell of this discussion. 

We admit, that many of the charges which 
Mr. W. has here made against our country, 
are justly made — and that for many of the 
things with which he has reproached us, there 
is just cause of reproach. It would be strange, 
indeed, if we were to do otherwise — consi- 
dering that it is from our pages that he has on 
many occasions borrowed the charge and the 
reproach. If he had stated them therefore, 



with any degree of fairness or temper, and 
had not announced that they were brought 
forward as incentives to hostility and national 
alienation, we should have been so far from 
complaining of him, that we should have been 
heartily thankful for the services of such an 
auxiliary in our holy war against vice and 
corruption ; and rejoiced to obtain the testi- 
mony of an impartial observer, in corrobora- 
tion of our own earnest admonitions. Even 
as it is, we are inclined to think that this ex- 
position of our infirmities will rather do good 
than harm, so far as it produces any effect at 
all, in this country. Among our national vices, 
we have long reckoned an insolent and over- 
weening opinion of our own universal superi- 
ority • and though it really does not belong to 
America to reproach us with this fault, and 
though the ludicrous exaggeration of Mr. W.'s 
charge is sure very greatly to weaken his au- 
thority, still such an alarming catalogue of 
our faults and follies may have some effect, 
as a wholesome mortification of our vanity. — 
It is with a view to its probable effect in his 
own country, and to his avowal of the effect 
he wishes it to produce there, that we consider 
it as deserving of all reprobation ; — and there- 
fore beg leave to make one or two very short 
remarks on its manifest injustice, and indeed 
absurdity, in so far as relates to ourselves, and 
that great majority of the country whom we 
believe to concur in our sentiments. The ob- 
ject of this violent invective on England is, 
according to the author's own admission, to 
excite a spirit of animosity in America, to 
meet and revenge that which other invectives 
on our part are said to indicate here j and also 
to show the flagrant injustice and malignity 
of the said invectives : — And this is the shape 
of the argument — What right have you to 
abuse us for keeping and whipping slaves, 
when you yourselves whip your soldiers, and 
were so slow to give up your slave trade, and 
use your subjects so ill in India and Ireland 1 
— or what right have you to call our Marshall 
a dull historian, when yon have a Belsham and 
a Gifford who are still duller ? Now, though 
this argument would never show that whipping 
slaves was a right thing, or that Mr. Marshall 
was not a dull writer, it might be a very smart 
and embarrassing retort to these among us 
who had defended our slave trade or our 
military floggings, or our treatment of Ireland 
and India — or who had held out Messrs. Bel- 
sham and Gifford as pattern histor ans, and 
ornaments of our national literature. But what 
meaning or effect can it have when addressed 
to those who have always testified against the 
wickedness and the folly of the practices 
complained of? and who have treated the 
Ultra-Whig and the Ultra-Tory historian with 
equal scorn and reproach ? We have a right 
to censure cruelty and dulness abroad, because 
we have censured them with more and more 
frequent severity at home ; — and their home 
existence, 'though it may prove indeed that 
our censures have not yet been effectual in 
producing amendment, can afford no sort of 
reason for not extending them \v*\ero *hey 
might be more attended to. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



We have generally blamed what we thought 
worthy of blame in America, without any ex- 
press reference to parallel cases in England, 
or any invidious comparisons. Their books 
we have criticised just as should have done 
those of any other country ; and in speaking 
more generally of their literature and man- 
ners, we have rather brought them into com- 
petition with those of Europe in general, than 
those of our own country in particular. When 
we have made any comparative estimate of our 
own advantages and theirs, we can say with 
confidence, that it has been far oftener in their 
favour than against them ; — and, after repeat- 
edly noticing their preferable condition as to 
taxes, elections, sufficiency of employment, 
public economy, freedom of publication, and 
many other points of paramount importance, 
it surely was but fair that we should notice, 
in their turn, those merits or advantages which 
might reasonably be claimed for ourselves, 
and bring into view our superiority in eminent 
authors, and the extinction and annihilation 
of slavery in every part of our realm. 

We would also remark, that while we have 
thus praised America far more than we have 
blamed her — and reproached ourselves far 
more bitterly than we have ever reproached 
her, Mr. W.. while he affects to be merely 
following our example, has heaped abuse on 
us without one grain of commendation — and 
praised his own country extravagantly, with- 
out admitting one fault or imperfection. Now, 
this is not a fair way of retorting the proceed- 
ings, even of the Quarterly; for they have 
occasionally given some praise to America, 
and have constantly spoken ill enough of the 

f>aupers ; and radicals, and reformers of Eng- 
and. But as to us, and the great body of the 
nation which thinks with us, it is a proceeding 
without the colour of justice or the shadow 
of apology — and is not a less flagrant indica- 
tion of impatience or bad humour, than the 
marvellous assumption which runs through 
the whole argument, that it is an unpardon- 
able insult and an injury to find any fault with 
any thing in America, — must necessarily pro- 
ceed from national spite and animosity, and 
affords, whether true or false, sufficient reason 
for endeavouring to excite a corresponding 
animosity against our nation. Such, however, 
is the scope and plan of Mr. W.'s whole work. 
Whenever he thinks that his country has been 
erroneously accused, he points out the error 
with sufficient keenness and asperity; — but 
when he is aware that the imputation is just 
and unanswerable, instead of joining his re- 
buke or regret to those of her foreign censors, 
he turns fiercely and vindictively on the 
parallel infirmities of this country — as if 
those also had not been marked with repro- 
bation, and without admitting that the cen- 
sure was merited, or hoping that it might 
work amendment, complains in the bitterest 
terms of malignity, and arouses his country 
to revenge ! 

Which, then, we would ask, is the most 
fair and reasonable, or which the most truly 
patriotic 1 — We. who, admitting our own mani- 
fold faults and corruptions, testifying loudly 



against them, and feeling grateful to any fo- 
reign auxiliary who will help us to reason, to 
rail, or to shame our countrymen out of them, 
are willing occasionally to lend a similar as- 
sistance to others, and speak freely and faiily 
of what appear to us to be the faults and er 
rors, as well as the virtues and merits, of all 
who may be in any way affected by our ob- 
servations; — or Mr. Walsh, who will admit no 
faults in his own country, and no good quali- 
ties in ours — sets down the mere extension 
of our domestic censures to their corresponding 
objects abroad, to the score of national rancour 
and partiality ; and can find no better use for 
those mutual admonitions, which should lead 
to mutual amendment or generous emulation, 
than to improve them into occasions of mutual 
animosity and deliberate hatred 1 

This extreme impatience, even of merited 
blame from the mouth of a stranger — this still 
more extraordinary abstinence from any hint 
or acknowledgment of error on the part of 
her intelligent defender, is a trait too remark- 
able not to call for some observation ; — and 
we think we can see in it one of the worst and 
most unfortunate consequences of a republican 
government. It is the misfortune of Sove- 
reigns in general, that they are fed with flat- 
tery till they loathe the wholesome truth, and 
come to resent, as the bitterest of all offences, 
any insinuation of their errors, or intimation 
of their dangers. But of all sovereigns, the, 
Sovereign People is most obnoxious to this cor- 
ruption, and most fatally injured by its preva- 
lence. In America, every thing depends on 
their suffrages, and their favour and support; 
and accordingly it would appear, that they are 
pampered with constant adulation, from the 
rival suitors to their favour — so that no one 
will venture to tell them v of their faults; and 
moralists, even of the austere character of 
Mr. W., dare not venture to whisper a syllable 
to their prejudice. It is thus, and thus only, 
that we can account for the strange sensitive- 
ness which seems to prevail among them on 
the lightest sound of disapprobation, and for 
the acrimony with which, what would pass 
anywhere else for very mild admonitions, are 
repelled and resented. It is obvious, how- 
ever, that nothing can be so injurious to the 
character either of an individual or a nation, 
as this constant and paltry cockering of praise ; 
and that the want of any native censor, makes 
it more a duty for the moralists of other coun- 
tries to take them under their charge, and Jet 
them know now and then what other people 
think and say of them. 

We are anxious to part with Mr. W. in good 
humour ; — but we- must say that we rather 
wish he would not go on with the work he has 
begun — at least if it is to be pursued in the 
spirit which breathes in the part now before 
us. Nor is it so much to his polemic and vin- 
dictive tone that we object, as this tendency 
to adulation, this passionate, vapouring, rhe- 
torical style of amplifying and exaggerating 
the felicities of his country. In point of talent 
and knowledge and industry, we have no 
doubt that he is eminently qualified for the 
task — (though we must tell him that he does 



BRACEBRIDGE HALL. 



637 



not write so well now as when he left Eng- 
land) — but no man will ever write a book of 
authority on the institutions and resources of 
his country, who does not add some of the 
virtues of a Censor to those of a Patriot — or 
rather, who does not feel, that the noblest, as 
well as the most difficult part of patriotism is 
that which prefers his country's Good to its J 
Favour, and is more directed to reform its 
vices, than to cherish the pride of its virtues. ! 
With foreign nations, too, this tone of fondness j 
and self-admiration is always suspected; and I 
most commonly ridiculous — while calm and 
steady claims of merit, interspersed with ac- 
knowledgments of faults, are sure to obtain 
credit, and to raise the estimation both of the 
writer and of his country. The ridicule, too, 
which naturally attaches to this vehement self- 
laudation, must insensibly contract a darker 
shade of contempt, when it comes to be sus- 
pected that it does not proceed from mere 
honest vanity, but from a poor fear of giving 
offence to power — sheer want of courage, in 
short (in the wiser part at least of the popu- 
lation), to let their foolish AHMOX know what 
in their hearts they think of him. 

And now we must at length close this very 
long article — the very length and earnestness 
of which, we hope, will go some way to satisfy 
our American brethren of the importance we 



attach to their good opinion, and the anxiety 
we feel to prevent any national repulsion from 
being aggravated by a misapprehension of our 
sentiments, or rather of those of that great 
body of the English nation of which we are 
here the organ. In what we have now written, 
there may be much that requires explanation 
— and much, we fear, that is liable to miscon- 
struction. — The spirit in which it is written, 
however, cannot, we think, be misunderstood 
We cannot descend to little cavils and alter- 
cations; and have no leisure to maintain a 
controversy about words and phrases. We 
have an unfeigned respect and affection for 
the free people of America; and we mean 
honestly to pledge ourselves for that of the 
better part of our own country. We are very 
proud of the extensive circulation of our Jour- 
nal in that great country, and the importance 
that is there attached to it. But we should 
be undeserving of this favour, if we could 
submit to seek it by any mean practices, 
either of flattery or of dissimulation ; and feel 
persuaded that we shall not only best deserve, 
but most surely obtain, the confidence and re- 
spect of Mr. W. and his countrymen, by 
speaking freely what we sincerely think of 
them, — and treating them exactly as we treat 
that nation to which we are here accused of 
being too favourable. 



(JToaember, 1822.) 

Braccbridge Hall; or, the Humorists. By Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Author of ''The Sketch 
Book," &c. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 800. Murray. London: 1822.* 



We have received so much pleasure from 
this book, that we think ourselves bound in 
gratitude, as well as justice, to make a public 
acknowledgment of it, — and seek to repay, by 
a little kind notice, the great obligations we 
shall ever feel to the author. These amiable 
sentiments, however, we fear, will scarcely 
furnish us with materials for an interesting 
article; — and we suspect we have not much 
else to say, that has not already occurred to 
most of our readers — or, indeed, been said by 
ourselves with reference to his former publi- 
cation. For nothing in the world can be so 
complete as the identity of the author in these 
two productions — identity not of style merely 
and character, but of merit also, both in kind 
and degree, and in the sort and extent of popu- 
larity which that merit has created — not mere- 
ly the same good sense and the same good 
humour directed to the same good ends, and 

* My heart is still so much in the subject of the 
preceding paper, that I am tempted to add this to it ; 
chiefly for the sake of the powerful backing which 
my English exhortation to amity among brethren, 
is there shown to have received from the most amia- 
ble and elegant of American writers. I had said 
nearly the same things in a previous review of 
"The Sketch Book, and should have reprinted 
that article also, had it not been made up chiefly of 
extracts, with which I do not think it quite fair to 
fill up this publication. 



with the same happy selection and limited 
variety, but the same proportion of things that 
seem scarcely to depend on the individual — > 
the same luck, as well as the same labour, and 
an equal share of felicities to enhance the 
fair returns of judicious industry. There are 
few things, we imagine, so rare as this sus- 
tained level of excellence in the works of a 
popular writer — or, at least, if it does exist 
now and then in rerum natura, there is scarce- 
ly any thing that is so seldom allowed. When 
an author has once gained a large share of 
public attention, — when his name is once up 
among a herd of idle readers, they can never 
be brought to believe that one who has risen 
so far can ever remain stationary. In their 
estimation, he must either rise farther, or be- 
gin immediately to- descend ; so that, when 
he ventures before these prepossessed judges 
with a new work, it is always discovered, 
either that he has infinitely surpassed him- 
self, or, in the far greater number of cases, 
that there is a sad falling off, and*.that he is 
hastening to the end of his career. In this 
way it may in general be presumed, that 
an author who is admitted by the public not 
to have fallen off in a second work, has in re- 
ality improved upon his first; and has truly 
proved his title to a higher place, by mere- 
ly maintaining that which he had formerly 
3 T> 



638 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



earned. We would not have Mr. Crayon, 
however, plume himself too much upon this 
sage observation : for though ice, and other 
great lights of public judgment, have decided 
that his former level has been maintained in. 
this work with the most marvellous precision, 
we must whisper in his ear that the million 
are not exactly of that opinion ; and that the 
common buzz among the idle and impatient 
critics of the drawing-room is, that, in com- 
parison with the Sketch Book, it is rather 
monotonous and languid; and there is too 
little variety of characters for two thick vol- 
umes; and that the said few characters come 
on so often, and stay so long, that the gentlest 
reader detects himself in rejoicing at being 
done with them. The premises of this en- 
thymem we do not much dispute; but the 
conclusion, for all that, is wrong: For, in 
spite of these defects, Bracebridge Hall is 
quite as good as the Sketch Book ; and Mr. C. 
may take comfort, — if he is humble enough 
to be comforted with such an assurance — and 
trust to us that it will be quite as popular, and 
that he still holds his own with the efficient 
body of his English readers. 

The great charm and peculiarity of this 
work consists now, as on former occasions, in 
the singular sweetness of the composition, and 
the mildness of the sentiments, — sicklied over 
perhaps a little, now and then, with that cloy- 
ing heaviness into which unvaried sweetness 
is too apt to subside. The rythm and melody 
of the sentences is certainly excessive : As it 
not only gives an air of mannerism, from its 
uniformity, but raises too strong an impres- 
sion of the labour that must have been be- 
stowed, and the importance which must have 
been attached to that which is, after all, but 
a secondary attribute to good writing. It is 
very ill-natured in us, however, to object to 
what has given us so much pleasure; for we 
happen to be very intense and sensitive ad- 
mirers of those soft harmonies of studied 
speech in wdiich this author is so apt to in- 
dulge; and have caught ourselves, oftener 
than we shall confess, neglecting his excellent 
matter, to lap ourselves in the liquid music of 
his periods — and letting ourselves float pas- 
sively down the mellow falls and windings of 
his soft-flowing sentences, with a delight not 
inferior to that which we derive from fine 
versification. 

We should reproach ourselves still more, 
however, and with better reason, if we were 
to persist in the objection which we were also 
at first inclined to take, to the extraordinary 
kindliness and disarming gentleness of all this 
author's views and suggestions; and we only 
refer to it now, for the purpose of answering, 
and discrediting it, with any of our readers to 
whom also it may happen to have occurred. 

It first struck us as an objection to the au- 
thor's courage and sincerity. It was quue 
unnatural, we said to ourselves, for any body 
to be always on such ^ery amiable terms with 
his fellow-creatures; and this air of eternal 
philanthropy could be nothing but a pretence 
put on to bring himself into favour; and then 
we proceeded to assimilate him to those silken 



parasites who are in raptures with every body 
they meet, and ingratiate themselves in gene- 
ral society by an unmanly suppression of all 
honest indignation, and a timid avoidance of 
all subjects of disagreement. Upon due con- 
sideration, however, we are now satisfied that 
this was an unjust and unworthy interpreta- 
tion. An author who comes deliberately be- 
fore the public with certain select monologues 
of doctrine and discussion, is not at all in the 
condition of a man in common society; on 
whom various overtures of baseness and folly 
are daily obtruded, and to whose sense and 
honour appeals are perpetually made, which 
must be manfully answered, as honour and 
conscience suggest. The author, on the 
other hand, has no questions to answer, and 
no society to select: his professed object is to 
instruct and improve the world — and his real 
one, if he is tolerably honesty is nothing worse 
than to promote his ownfame and fortune by 
succeeding in that which he professes. Now, 
there, are but two ways that we have ever 
heard of by which men may be improved — 
either by cultivating and encouraging their 
amiable propensities, or by shaming and 
frightening them out of those that are vicious; 
and there can be but little doubt, we should 
imagine, which of the two offices is the high- 
est and most eligible — since the one is left in 
a great measure to Hell and the hangman, — 
and for the other, we are taught chiefly to 
look to Heaven, and all that is angelic upon 
earth. The most perfect moral discipline 
would be that, no doubt, in which both were 
combined ; but one is generally as much as 
human energy is equal to ; and, in fact, they 
have commonly been divided in practice, with- 
out surmise of blame. And truly, if men have 
been hailed as great public benefactors, mere- 
ly for having beat tyrants into moderation, or 
coxcombs into good manners, we must be per- 
mitted to think, that one whose vocation is 
different may be allowed to have deserved 
well of his kind, although he should have 
confined his efforts to teaching them mutual 
charity and forbearance, and only sought to 
repress their evil passions, by strengthening 
the springs and enlarging the sphere of those 
that are generous and kindly. 

The objection in this general form, there- 
fore, we soon found could not be maintained: 
— But, as we still felt a little secret spite lin- 
gering within us at our author's universal 
affability, we set about questioning ourselves 
more strictly as to its true nature and tenden- 
cy; and think we at last succeeded in tracing 
it to an eager desire to see so powerful a pen 
and such great popularity employed in de- 
molishing those errors and abuses to which 
we had been accustomed to refer most of the 
unhappiness of our country. Though we love 
his gentleness and urbanity on the whole, we 
should have been very well pleased to see 
him a little rude and surly, now and then, to 
our particular opponents ; and could not but 
think it showed a want of spirit and discrimi- 
nation that he did not mark his sense of their 
demerits, by making them an exception to his 
general system of toleration and indulgence. 



BRACEBRIDGE HALL. 



639' 



Being Whigs ourselves, for example, we could 
not but take it a little amiss, that one born 
and bred a republican, and writing largely on 
the present condition of England, should make 
so little distinction between that party and its 
opponents — and should even choose to attach 
himself to a Tory family, as the proper type 
and emblem of the old English character. Nor 
could we well acquit him of being "pigeon- 
livered — and lacking gall," when Ave found 
that nothing could provoke him to give a pal- 

Eable hit to the Ministry, or even to employ 
is pure and powerful eloquence in reproving 
the shameful scurrilities of the ministerial 
press. We were also a little sore, too, we be- 
lieve, on discovering that he took no notice of 
Scotland! and said absolutely nothing about 
our Highlanders, our schools, and our poetry. 
Now, though we have magnanimously cho- 
sen to illustrate this grudge at his neutrality 
in our own persons, it is obvious that a dis- 
satisfaction of the same kind must have been 
felt by all the other great and contending par- 
ties into which this and all free countries are 
necessarily divided. Mr. Crayon has rejected 
the alliance of any one of these ; and reso- 
lutely refused to take part with them in the 
struggles to which they attach so much im- 
portance ; and consequently has, to a certain 
extent, offended and disappointed them all. 
But we must carry our magnanimity a step 
farther, and confess, for ourselves, and for 
others, that, upon reflection, the offence and 
disappointment seem to us altogether unrea- 
sonable and unjust. The ground of complaint 
is, that we see talents arid influence — inno- 
cently, Ave must admit, and even beneficially 
employed — but not engaged on our side, or in 
the particular contest which we may feel it 
our duty to wage against the errors or delu- 
sions of our contemporaries. Now, in the first 
place, is not this something like the noble in- 
dignation of a recruiting serjeant^ who thinks 
it a scandal that any stout fellow should de- 
grade himself by a pacific employment, and 
takes offence accordingly at every pair of 
broad shoulders and gootl legs which he finds 
in the possession of a priest or a tradesman 1 
But the manifest absurdity of the grudge con- 
sists in this. First, That it is equally reason- 
able in all the different parties who sincerely 
believe their own cause to be that which ought 
to prevail ; while it is manifest, that, as the 
desired champion could only side with one, 
all the rest would be only worse off by the 
termination of his neutrality ; and secondly, 
That the weight and authority, for the sake of 
which his assistance is so coveted, and which 
each party is now so anxious to have thrown 
into its scale, having been entirely created by 
virtues and qualities which belong only to a 
stale of neutrality, are, in reality, incapable 
of being transferred to contending parties, and 
would utterly perish and be annihilated in the 
attempt. A good part of Mr. C.'s reputation, 
and certainly a very large share of his in- 
fluence and popularity with all parties, has 
been acquired by the indulgence with which 
he has treated all, and his abstinence from all 
sorts of virulence and hostility ; and it is no 



doubt chiefly on account of this pfluence and 
favour that we and others are rashly desiious 
to see him take part against our adversaries — 
forgetting that those very qualities which ren- 
der his assistance valuable, would infallibly 
desert him the moment that he complied with 
our desire, and vanish in the very act of his 
compliance. 

The question then comes to be, not properly 
whether there should be any neutrals in great 
national contentions — but whether any man 
should be allowed to aspire to distinction by 
acts not subservient to party purposes? — a 
question which, even in this age of party and 
polemics, we suppose there are not many 
who would have the hardihood seriously to 
propound. Yet this, we must be permitted to 
repeat, is truly the question: — For if a man 
may lawfully devote his talents to music, or 
architecture, or drawing, or metaphysics, or 
poetry, and lawfully challenge the general ad- 
miration of his age for his proficiency in those 
pursuits, though totally disjoined from all po- 
litical application, we really do not see why 
he may not write prose essays on national 
character and the ingredients of private hap- 
piness, with the same large and pacific pur- 
poses of pleasure and improvement. To Mr. 
C. especially, who is not a citizen of this coun- 
try, it can scarcely be proposed as a duty to 
take a share in our internal contentions; and 
though the picture which he professes to give 
of our country may be more imperfect, and 
the estimate he makes of our character less 
complete, from the omission of this less tract- 
able element, the value of the parts that he 
has been able to finish will not be lessened, 
and the beneficial effect of the representation 
will, in all probability, be increased. For our 
own parts, we have ventured, on former occa- 
sions, to express our doubts whether the po- 
lemical parts, even of a statesman's duty, do 
not hold too high a place in public esteem — 
and are sure, at all events, that they ought not 
to engross the attention of those to whom such 
a station has not been intrusted. It should 
never be forgotten, that good political institu- 
tions, the sole end and object of all our party 
contentions, are only valuable as means of 
promoting the general happiness and virtue 
of individuals ; — and that, important as they 
are, there are other means, still more direct 
and indispensable for the attainment of that 
great end. The cultivation of the kind affec- 
tions, we humbly conceive, to be of still more 
importance to private happiness, than the 
good balance of the constitution under which 
we live ; and, if it be true, as we most firmly 
believe, that it is the natural effect of political 
freedom to fit and dispose the mind for all 
gentle as well as generous emotions, Ave hold 
it to be equally true, that habits of benevo- 
lence, and sentiments of philanthropy, are the 
surest foundations on which a love of liberty 
can rest. A man must love his fellows before 
he loves their liberty ; and if he has not learned 
to interest himself in their enjoyments, it is 
impossible that he can have any genuine con- 
cern for that liberty, which, after all, is only 
valuable as a means of enjoyment. We con- 



640 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



skier, therefore, the writers who seek to soften 
and improve our social affections, not only as 
aiming directly at the same great end which 
politicians more circuitously pursue, but as 
preparing those elements out of which alone 
a generous and enlightened love of political 
freedom can ever be formed — and without 
which it could neither be safelylrusted in the 
hands of individuals, nor prove fruitful of in- 
dividual enjoyment. We conclude, therefore, 
that Mr. Crayon is in reality a better friend to 
Whig principles than if he had openly attacked 
f he Tories — and end this long, and perhaps 
needless apology for his neutrality, by discov- 
ering, that such neutrality is in effect the best 
nursery for the only partisans that ever should 
be encouraged — the partisans of whatever can 
be shown to be clearly and unquestionably 
right. And now we must say a word or two 
more of the book before us. 

There are not many of our readers to whom 
it can be necessary to mention, that it is in 
substance, and almost in form, a continuation 
of the Sketch Book j and consists of a series 
of little descriptions, and essays on matters 
principally touching the national character 
and old habits of England. The author is 
supposed to be resident at Bracebridge Hall, 
the Christmas festivities of which he had 
commemorated in his former publication, 
and among the inmates of which, most of the 
familiar .incidents occur which he turns to 
account in his lucubrations. These incidents 
can scarcely be said to make a story in any 
sense, and certainly not one which would 
admit of being abstracted ; and as we are 
under a vow to make but short extracts from 
popular books, we must see that we choose 
well the few passages upon which we may 
venture. There is a short Introduction, and 
a Farewell, by the author; in both which he 
alludes to the fact of his being a citizen of 
America in a way that appears to us to de- 
serve a citation. The first we give chiefly 
for the beauty of the writing. 

" England is as classic ground to an American, as 
Italy is to an Englishman ; and old London teems 
with as much historical association as mighty Rome. 

" But what more especially attracts his notice, 
are those peculiarities which distinguish an old 
country, and an old state of society, from a new 
one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with 
the crumbling monuments of past ages, to blunt 
the intense inlerest with which I at first beheld 
them. Accustomed always to scenes where history 
was, in a manner, in anticipation ; where every 
thing in art was new and progressive, and pointed 
to the future rather than to the past ; where, in 
short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of 
young existence, and prospective improvement ; 
there was something inexpressibly touching in the 
6ight of enormous piles of architecture, grey with 
antiquity, and sinking to decay. I cannot describe 
the mute but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I 
have contemplated a vast monastic ruin, like Tin- 
tern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, 
and shut up from the world, as though it had existed 
merely for itself; or a warrior pile, like Conway 
Castle, standing in stern loneliness, on its rocky 
height, a mere hollow, yet threatening phantom of 
departed power. They spread a grand and melan- 
chciy, and, to me. an unusual charm over the land- 
scape. I for the first time beheld signs of national 
old age, and empire's decay ; and proofs of the tran- 



sient and perishing glories of art, amidst the ever* 
springing and reviving fertility of nature. 

"But, in fact, to me every thing was full of 
matter: The footsteps of history were every where 
to be traced ; and poetry had breathed over and 
sanctified the land. I experienced the delightful 
freshness of feeling of a child, to whom every thing 
is new. I pictured to myself a set of inhabitants 
and a mode of life for every habitation that I saw ; 
from the aristocratical mansion, amidst the lordly 
repose of stately groves and solitary parks, to the 
straw-thatched cottage, with its seamy garden and 
its cherished woodbine. I thought 1 never could 
be sated wiih the sweetness and freshness of a 
country so completely carpeted with verdure; 
where every air breathed of the balmy pasture and 
the honeysuckled hedge. I was continually coming 
upon some little document of poetry, in the blos- 
somed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the prim- 
rose, or some other simple object that has received 
a supernaiural value from the Muse. The first 
time that I heard the song of the nightingale, I was 
intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remem- 
bered associations, than by the melody of its notes ; 
and I shall never forget the thrill of ecstasy with 
which I first saw the lark rise, almost from beneath 
my feet, and wing its musical flight up into the 
morning sky." — Vol. i. pp. 6 — 9. 

We know nothing more beautiful than the 
melody of this concluding sentence ; and if 
the reader be not struck with its music, we 
think he has no right to admire the Vision of 
Mirza, or any of the other delicious cadences 
of Addison. 

The Farewell we quote for the matter ; and 
it is matter to which we shall miss no fit oc- 
casion to recur, — being persuaded not only 
that it is one of higher moment than almost 
any other to which we can now apply our- 
selves, but one upon which the honest perse- 
verance, even of such a work as ours may in 
time produce practical and beneficial effects. 
We allude to the animosity which intemperate 
writers on both sides are labouring to create, 
or exasperate, between this country and 
America, and which we, and the writer be- 
fore us, are most anxious to allay. There is 
no word in the following quotation in which 
we do not most cordially concur. We receive 
with peculiar satisfaction the assurances of 
the accomplished author, as to the kindly 
disposition of the better part of his country- 
men ; and are disposed to place entire confi- 
dence in it, not only from our reliance on his 
judgment and means of information, but from 
the accuracy of his representation of the sort 
of persons to whom the fashion of abusing the 
Americans has now gone down, on this side 
of the Atlantic. Nothing, we think, can be 
more handsome, persuasive, or grateful, than 
the whole following passage. 

" And here let me acknowledge my warm, my 
ttiankful feelings, at the effect produced by one of 
my trivial lucubrations. I allude to the essay in 
the Sketch-Book, on the subject of the literary 
feuds between England and America. I cannot 
express the heartfelt delight I have experienced at 
the unexpected sympathy and approbation with 
which those remarks have been received on both 
sides of the Atlantic. I speak this not from any 
paliry feelings of gratified vanity ; for I attribute 
the effect to no merit of my pen. The paper in 
question was brief and casual, and the ideas it con- 
veyed were simple and obvious. ' It was the cause ; 
it was the cause ' alone. There was a predisposi- 



BRACEBRIDGE HALL. 



641 



tion on the part of my readers to be favourably af- 
fected. My countrymen responded in heart to the 
filial feelings I had avowed in their name towards 
the parent country ; and there was a generois 
sympathy In every English bosom towards a soli- 
tary individual, lifting up his voice in a strange land, 
to vindicate the injured character of his nation. — 
There are some causes so sacred as to carry with 
them an irresistible appeal to every virtuous bosom ; 
and he needs but little power of eloquence, who 
defends the honour of his wife, his mother, or his 
country. 

4 ' I hail, therefore, the success of that brief paper, 
as showing how much good may be done by a kind 
word, however feeble, when spoken in season — as 
showing how much dormant good feeling actually 
exists in each country, towards the other, which 
only wants the slightest spark to kindle it into a 
genial flame — as showing, in fact what I have all 
along believed and asserted, that the two nations 
would grow together in esteem and amity, if med- 
dling and malignant spirits would but throw by their 
mischievous pens, and leave kindred hearts to the 
kindly impulses of nature. 

''I once more assert, and I assert it with in- 
creased conviction of its truth, that there exists, 
among the great majority of my countrymen, a 
favourable feeling towards England. I repeat this 
assertion, because I think it a truth that cannot too 
often be reiterated, and because it has met with 
some contradiction. Among all the liberal and en- 
lightened minds of my countrymen, among all those 
which eventually give a tone to national opinion, 
there exists a cordial desire to be on terms of cour- 
tesy and friendship. But, at the same time, there 
unfortunately exists in those very minds a distrust 
of reciprocal goodwill on the part ot" England. 
They have been rendered morbidly sensitive by the 
attacks made upon their country by the English 
press ; and their occasional irritability on this sub- 
ject has been misinterpreted into a settled and un- 
natural hostility. 

" For my part, I consider this jealous sensibility 
as belonging to generous natures. I should look 
upon my countrymen as fallen indeed from that 
independence of spirit which is their birth-gift ; as 
fallen indeed from that pride of character, which 
they inherit from the proud nation, from which they 
sprung, could they tamely sit down under the in- 
fliction of contumely and insult. Indeed, the very 
impa'ience which they show as to the misrepre- 
sentations of the press, proves their respect for Eng- 
lish opinion, and their desire for English amity ; for 
there is never jealousy where there is not strong 
regard. 

" To the magnanimous spirits of both countries 
must we trust to carry such a natural alliance of 
affection into full effect. To pens more powerful 
than mine 1 leave the noble task of promoting the 
cause of national amity. To the intelligent and 
enlightened of my own country, I address my 
parting voice, entreating them to show themselves 
superior to the petty attacks of the ignorant and the 
worthless, and still to look with a dispassionate and 
philosophic eye to the moral character of England, 
as the intellectual source of our own rising great- 
ness; while I appeal to every generous-minded 
Englishman from the slanders which disgrace the 
press, insult the understanding, and belie the mag- 
nanimity of his country : and I invite him to look 
to America, as to a kindred nation, worthy of its 
origin ; giving, in the healthy vigour of its growth, 
the best of comments on its parent stock ; and re- 
flecting, in the dawning brightness of its fame, the 
moral effulgence of British glory. 

'*/ am sure, too, that such appeal will not be 
made in vain. Indeed I have noticed, for some 
time past, an essential change in English sentiment 
with regard to America. In Parliament, that foun- 
tain-head of public opinion, there seems to be an 
emulation, on both sides of the House, in holding 
the language of courtesy and friendship. The same 
31 



spirit is daily becoming more and more prevalent in 
good society. There is a growing curiosity con- 
cerning my country ; a craving desire lor correct 
information, that cannot fail to lead to a favourable 
understanding. The scoffer, I trust, has had his 
day; the time of the slanderer is gone by. The 
ribald jokes, the stale commonplaces, which have 
so long passed current when America was the 
theme, are now banished to the ignorant and the 
vulgar, or only perpetuated by the hireling scrib- 
blers and traditional jesters of the press. The in- 
telligent and high-minded now pride themselves 
upon making America a study. 

Vol. ii. pp. 396—403. 

From the body of the work, we must in- 
dulge ourselves with very few citations. But 
we cannot resist the following exquisite de- 
scription of a rainy Sunday at an inn in a 
country town. It is part of the admirable 
legend of "the Stout Gentleman," of which 
we will not trust ourselves with saying one 
word more. The following, however, is per- 
fect, independent of its connections. 

"It was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month 
of November. I had been detained, in the course 
of a journey, by a slight indisposition, from which 
I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and 
was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn 
of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a 
country inn ! whoever has had the luck to experi- 
ence one can alone judge of my situation. The 
rain paltered against the casements ; the bells 
tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I 
went to the windows in quest of something to 
amuse the eye ; but it seemed as if 1 had been 
placed completely out of the reach of all amuse- 
ment. The windows of my bed-room looked out 
among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while 
those of my sitting-room commanded a full view 
of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calcu- 
lated to make a man sick of this world than a stable- 
yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with 
wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers 
and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant 
pool of water, surrounding an island of muck. 
There were several half-drowned fowls crowded 
together under a cart, among which was a misera- 
ble, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and 
spirit ; his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a 
single feather, along which the water trickled from 
his back. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow, 
chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained 
on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking 
hide. A wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness 
of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of 
a window, with the rain dripping on it from the 
eaves. An unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house 
hard by, uttered something every now and then, 
between a bark and a yelp. A drab of a kitchen 
wench tramped backwards and forwards through 
the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather 
itself. Every thing, in short, was comfortless and 
forlorn — excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, 
assembled like boon companions round a puddle, 
and making a riotous noise over their liquor. 

" I sauntered to the window and stood gazing at 
the people, picking their way to church, with petti- 
coats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. 
The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became 
silent. I then amused myself with watching the 
daughters of a tradesman opposite ; who, being con- 
fined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday 
finery, played off their charms at the front win 
dows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. 
They at length were summoned away by a vigifan; 
vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further 
from without to amuse me. 

" The day continued lowering and gloomy. The 
slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds, drifted heavily 
3d2 



642 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



along. There was no variety even in the rain ; it 
was one dull, continued, monotonous patter — pat- 
ter — patter, excepting that now and then I was 
enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the 
rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It 
was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hack- 
neyed phrase of the day) when, in the course of the 
morning, a horn blew, and a stage coach whirled 
through the street, with outside passengers stuck 
all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and 
seethed together, and reeking with the steams of 
wet box-coats and upper Benjamins. The sound 
brought out from their lurking-places a crew of 
vagabond boys, and vagabond dogs, and the car- 
roty-headed hostler, and that nondescript animal 
ycleped Boots, and all the other vagabond race that 
infest the purlieus of an inn ; but the bustle was 
transient. The coach again whirled on its way ; 
and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk 
back again to their holes. The street again became 
silent, and the rain continued to rain on. 

" Th6 evening gradually wore away. The travel- 
lers read the papers two or three times over. Some 
drew round the fire, and told long stories about 
their horses, about their adventures, their overturns, 
and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of 
different merchants and different inns ; and the two 
wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty cham- 
bermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as 
they were quietly taking what they called their 
night-caps, that is to say, strong glasses of brandy 
and water and sugar, or some other mixture of the 
kind ; after which, they one after another rang for 
" Boots" and the chambermaid, and walked off to 
bed, in old shoes, cut down into marvellously un- 
comfortable slippers. 

" There was only one man left ; a short-legged, 
long-bodied, plethoric fellow, with a very large 
sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port 
wine negus, and a spoon ; sipping and stirring, and 
meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but 
the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in 
his chair, with the empty glass standing before him ; 
and the candle seemed to fall asleep too ! for the 
wick grew long, and black, and cabbaged at the 
end, and dimmed the little light that remained in 
the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was 
contagious. Around hung the shapeless, and almost 
spectral box-coats of departed travellers, long since 
buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of 
the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the 
sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain, drop 
— drop — drop, from the eaves of the house." 

Vol. i. pp. 112—130. 

The -whole description of the Lady Lilly- 
craft is equally good in its way; but we can 
only make room for the portraits of her canine 
attendants. 

li She has brought two dogs with her also, out 
of a number of pets which she maintains at home. 
One is a fat spaniel, called Zephyr — though heaven 
defend me from such a zephyr ! He is fed out of 
all shape and comfort ; his eyes are nearly strained 
out of his head ; he wheezes with corpulency, and 
cannot walk without great difficulty. The other 
is a little, old, grey-muzzled curmudgeon, with an 
unhappy eye, that kindles like a coal if you only 
look at him ; his nose turns up ; his mouth is drawn 
into wrinkles, so as to show his teeth ; in short, he 
has altogether the look of a dog far gone in misan- 
thropy, and totally sick of the world. When he 
walks, he has his tail curled up so tight that it seems 
to lift his hind feet from the ground ; and he seldom 
makes use of more than three legs at a time, keep- 
ing the other drawn up as a reserve. This last 
wretch is called Beauty. 

*' These dogs are full of elegant ailments un- 
known to vulgar dogs; and are petted and nursed 
by Lady Lillycraft with the tenderest kindness. 
They have cushions for their express use, on which 
ihev lie before, the fire, and yet are apt to shiver 



and moan if there is the least draught of air Whon 
any one enters the room, they make a most tyran- 
nical barking that is absolutely deafening. They 
are insolent to all the other dogs of the establish- 
ment. There is a noble stag-hound, a great favourite 
of the squire's, who is a privileged visitor to the 
parlour ; but the moment he makes his appearance, 
these intruders fly at him with furious rage ; and I 
have admired the sovereign indifference and con- 
tempt with which he seems to look down upon his 
puny assailants. When her ladyship drives out, 
these dogs are generally carried with her to take 
the air ; when they look out of each window of the 
carriage, and bark at all vulgar pedestrian dogs." 
Vol. i. pp. 75 — 77. 

We shall venture on but one extract more 
— and it shall be a specimen of the author's 
more pensive vein. It is from the chapter 
of " Family Reliques ;" and affords, especially 
in the latter part, another striking instance of 
the pathetic melody of his style. The intro- 
ductory part is also a good specimen of his 
sedulous, and not altogether unsuccessful 
imitation of the inimitable diction and collo- 
quial graces of Addison. 

" The place, however, which abounds most with 
mementos of past times, is the picture gallery ; and 
there is something strangely pleasing, though mel- 
ancholy, in considering the long rows of portraits 
which compose the greater part of the collection. 
They furnish a kind of narrative of the lives of the 
family worthies, which I am enabled to read with 
the assistance of the venerable housekeeper, who 
is the family chronicler, prompted occasionally by 
Master Simon. There is the progress of a fine 
lady, for instance, through a variety of portraits. 
One represents her as a little girl, with a long waist 
and hoop, holding a kitten in her arms, and ogling 
the spectator out of the corners of her eyes, as if 
she could not turn her head. In another we find 
her in the freshness of youthful beauty, when she 
was a celebrated belle, and so hard-hearted as to 
cause several unfortunate gentlemen to run despe- 
rate and write bad poetry. In another she is de- 
picted as a stately dame, in the maturity of her 
charms, next to the portrait of her husband, a gal- 
lant colonel in full-bottomed wig and gold-laced hat, 
who Was killed abroad : and, finally, her monument 
is in the church, the spire of which may be seen 
from the window, where her effigy is carved in 
marble, and represents her as a venerable dame of 
seventy-six. — There is one group that particularly 
interested me. It consisted of four sisters of nearly 
the same age, who flourished about a century since, 
and, if I may judge from their portraits, were ex- 
tremely beautiful. I can imagine what a scene of 
gaiety and romance this old mansion must have 
been, when they were in the hey-day of their 
charms ; wherMjiey passed like beautiful visions 
through its halls, or stepped daintily to music in the 
revels and dances of the cedar gallery ; or printed, 
with delicate feet, the velvet verdure of these 
lawns," & c. 

" When I look at these faint records of gallantry 
and tenderness; when T contemplate the fading 
portraits of these beautiful girls, and think that 
they have long since bloomed, reigned, grown old, 
died, and passed away, and with them all their 
graces, their triumphs, their rivalries, their admi- 
rers ; the whole empire of love and pleasure in which 
they ruled — 'all dead, all buried, all forgotten,' — 
I find a cloud of melancholy stealing over the pres- 
ent gaieties around me, I was gazing, in a musing 
mood, this very morning, at the portrait of the lady 
whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair 
Julia entered the gallery, leaning on the arm of the 
captain. The sun shone through the row of win- 
dows on her as she passed a'ong, and she seemed 
to beam out each time into brightness, and rclapso 



CLARKSON ON QUAKERISM. 



«4a 



again ii:to shade, until the door at the bottom of the 
gallery finally closed after her. I felt a sadness of 
heart at the idea, that this was an emblem of her 
lot ; a few more years of sunshine and shade, and 
all this life, and loveliness, and enjoyment, will 
have ceased, and nothing be left to commemorate 
this beautiful being but one more perishable por- 
trait : to awaken, perhaps, the trite speculations of 
some future loiterer, like myself, when I also and 
my scribblings shall have lived through our brief 
existence and been forgotten." — Vol. i. pp. 64, 65. 

We can scarcely afford room even to al- 
lude to the rest of this elegant miscellany. 
u Ready-money Jack" is admirable through- 
out — and the old General very good. The 
lovers are, as usual, the most insipid. The 
Gypsies are sketched with great elegance as 
well as spirit — and Master Simon is quite de- 
lightful, in all the varieties of his ever versa- 
tile character. Perhaps the most pleasing 
thing about all these personages, is the perfect 
innocence and singleness of purpose which 
seems to belong to them — and which, even 
when it raises a gentle smile at their expense, 
breathes over the whole scene they inhabit 
an air of attraction and respect — like that 
which reigns in the De Coverley pictures of 



Addison. Of the exotic Tales which serve to 
fill up the volumes, that of "Dolph Heyliger 1 ' 
is incomparably the best — and is more char- 
acteristic, perhaps, both of the author's turn 
of imagination and cast of humour, than any 
thing else in the work. " The Student of 
Salamanca" is too long; and deals rather 
largely in the commonplaces of romantic ad- 
venture: — while ■■ Annette de la Barbe;" 
though pretty and pathetic in some passages, 
is, on the whole, rather fade and finical — ana 
too much in the style of the sentimental after- 
pieces which we have lately borrowed from 
the Parisian theatres. 

On the whole, we are very sorry to receive 
Mr. Crayon's farewell — and we return it with 
the utmost cordiality. We thank him most 
sincerely, for the pleasure he has given us — 
for the kindness he has shown to our country 
— and for the lessons he has taught, both 
here and in his native land, of good taste, 
good nature, and national liberality. We hope 
he will come back among us soon — and re- 
member us while he is away : and can assure 
him, that he is in no danger of being speedily 
forgotten. 



(april, 1807.) 



& Portraiture of Quakerism, as taken from a View of the Moral Education, Discipline, Peculiar 
Customs, Religious Principles, Political and Civil Economy, and Character of the Society of 
Friends. By Thomas Clarkson, M. A. Author of several Essays on the Subject of the 
Slave Trade. 8vo. 3 vols. London : 1806. 



This, we think, is a book peculiarly fitted 
for reviewing: For it contains many things 
which most people will have some curiosjjy 
to hear about ; and is at the same time so in- 
tolerably dull and tedious, that no voluntary 
reader could possibly get through with it. 

The author, whose meritorious exertions for 
the abolition of the slave trade brought him 
into public notice a great many years ago, 
was recommended by this circumstance to 
the favour and the confidence of the Quakers, 
who had long been unanimous in that good 
cause ; and was led to such an extensive and 
cordial intercourse with them in all parts of 
the kingdom, that he came at. last to have a 
more thorough knowledge of tneir tenets and 
living manners than any other person out of 
the society could easily obtain. The effect 
of this knowledge has evidently been to ex- 
cite in him such an affection and esteem 
for those worthy sectaries, as we think can 
ecarcely fail to issue in his public conversion; 
and, in the mean time, has produced a more 
minute exposition, and a more elaborate de-* 
fence of their doctrines and practices, than 
has recently been drawn from any of their 
own body. 

The book, which is full of repetitions and 
plagiarisms, is distributed into a number of 
needless sections, arranged in a most unna- 
tural and inconvenient order. All that any 
body can want to know about the Quakers, 



might evidently have been told, either under 
the head of their Doctrinal tenets, or of their 
peculiar Practices; but Mr. Clarkson, with a 
certain elaborate infelicity of method, chooses 
to discuss the merits of this society under the 
several titles, of their moral education — their 
discipline — their peculiar customs — their re- 
ligion—their great tenets — and their charac- 
ter; and not finding even this ample distribu- 
tion sufficient to include all he had to say on 
the subject, he fills a supplemental half-vo- 
lume, with repetitions and trifles, under the 
humiliating name of miscellaneous particulars. 
Quakerism had certainly undergone a con- 
siderable change in the quality and spirit of 
its votaries, from the time when George Fox 
went about pronouncing woes against cities, 
attacking priests in their pulpits, and exhort- 
ing justices of the peace to do justice, to the 
time when such men as Penn and Barclay 
came into the society " by convincement," 
and published such vindications of its doc- 
trine, as few of its opponents have found it 
convenient to answer. The change since 
their time appears to have been much less 
considerable. The greater part of these vo- 
lumes may be considered, indeed, as a wilful 
deterioration of Barclay's Apology : and it is 
only where he treats of the private manners 
and actual opinions of the modern Quakers, 
that Mr. Clarkson communicates any thing 
which a curious reader might not have learn* 



641 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



from that celebrated production. The lauda- 
tory and argumentative tone which he main- 
tains throughout, gives an air of partiality to 
his statements which naturally diminishes 
our reliance on their accuracy: and as the 
argument is often extremely bad, and the 
praise apparently unmerited, we are rather 
inclined to think that his work will make a 
less powerful impression in favour of the 
" friends/' than might have been effected by 
a more moderate advocate. With many praise- 
worthy maxims and principles for their moral 
conduct, the Quakers, we think, have but little 
to say for most of their peculiar practices ; and 
make a much better figure when defending 
their theological mysteries, than when vindi- 
cating the usages by which they are separated 
from the rest of the people in the ordinary in- 
tercourse of life. It will be more convenient, 
however, to state our observations on their 
reasonings, as we attend Mr. Clarkson through 
his account of their principles and practice. 

He enters upon his task with such a wretch- 
ed display of false eloquence, that we were 
very near throwing away the book. Our 
readers will scarcely accuse us of impatience, 
when we inform them that the dissertation 
on the moral education of the Quakers begins 
with the following sentence : — 

" When the blooming spring sheds abroad its 
benign influence, man feels it equally with the rest 
of created nature. The blood circulates more freely, 
and a new current of life seems to be diffused in his 
veins. The aged man is enlivened, and the sick 
man feels himself refreshed. Good spirits and 
cheerful countenances succeed. But as the year 
changes in its seasons, and rolls round to its end, 
the tide seems to slacken, and the current of feeling 
to return to its former level." — Vol. i. p. 13. 

This may serve, once for all, as a specimen 
of Mr. Clarkson's' taste and powers in fine 
writing, and as an apology for our abstaining, 
in our charity, for making any further ob- 
servations on his style. Under the head of 
moral education, we are informed that the 
Quakers discourage, and strictly prohibit in 
their youth, all games of chance, music, dan- 
cing, novel reading, field sports of every de- 
scription, and, in general, the use of idle 
words and unprofitable conversation. The 
motives of these several prohibitions are dis- 
cussed in separate chapters of extreme dul- 
ness and prolixity. It is necessary, however, 
in order to come to a right understanding 
with those austere persons and their apologist, 
to enter a little into the discussion. 

The basis of the Quaker morality seems 
evidently to be, that gaiety and merriment 
ought, upon all occasions, to be discouraged; 
that everything which tends merely to ex- 
hilaration or enjoyment, has in it a taint of 
criminality ; and that one of the chief duties 
of man is to be always serious and solemn, 
and constantly occupied, either w T ith his 
worldly prosperity, or his eternal welfare. If 
it were not for the attention which is thus 
permitted to the accumulation of wealth, the 
Quakers would scarcely be distinguishable 
from the other gloomy sectaries, who main- 
tain, that man was put into this world for no 



other purpose, but to mortify himself into a 
proper condition for the next; — that all our 
feelings of ridicule and sociality, and all the 
spring and gaiety of the animal spirits of 
youth, were given us only for our temptation ; 
and that, considering the shortness of this life, 
and the risk he runs of damnation after it, 
man ought evidently to pass his days in de- 
jection and terror, and to shut his heart to 
every pleasurable emotion which this transi- 
tory scene might hold out to the unthinking. 
The fundamental folly of these ascetic max- 
ims has prevented the Quakers from adopt- 
ing them in their full extent; but all the 
peculiarities of their manners may evidently 
be referred to this source ; and the qualifica- 
tions and exceptions under which they main- 
tain the duty of abstaining from enjoyment, 
serve only, in most instances, to bring upon 
their reasonings the additional charge of in- 
consistency. 

Their objection to cards, dice, wagers, horse- 
races, &c. is said to be, first, that they may 
lead to a spirit of gaming, which leads, again, 
to obvious unhappiness and immorality; but 
chiefly, that they are sources of amusement 
unwo'rthy of a sober Christian, and tend, by 
producing an unreasonable excitement, to dis- 
turb that tranquillity and equanimity which 
they look upon as essential to moral virtue 

" They believe," says Mr. Clarkson, " that st ill- 
ness and quietness both of spirit and of body, are 
necessary, as far as they can be obtained. Hence, 
Quaker children are rebuked for all expressions of 
anger, as tending to raise those feelings which 
ought to be suppressed : a raising even of the voice 
beyond due bounds, is discouraged as leading to 
the disturbance of their minds. They are taught 
to rise in the morning in quietness ; to go about 
their ordinary occupation with quietness; and to 
retire in quietness to their beds." 

JNW this, we think, is a very miserable 
picture. The great curse of life, we believe, 
in all conditions above the lowest, is its ex- 
cessive stillness and quietness, and the want 
of interest and excitement which it affords : 
and though we certainly do not approve of 
cards and wagers as the best exhilarators of 
the spirits, we cannot possibly concur in the 
principle upon which they are rejected with 
such abhorrence by this rigid society. A re- 
mark which Mr. Clarkson himself makes af- 
terwards, might have led him to doubt of the 
soundness of their petrifying principles. 

" It has often been observed," he says, " that a 
Quaker Boy has an unnatural appearance. The 
idea has arisen from hi3 dress and his sedateness, 
which, taken together, have produced, an appear- 
ance of age above the youth in his countenance. [ 
have often been surprised to hear young Quakers 
talk of the folly and vanity of pursuits in which per- 
sons, older than themselves, were then embarking 
in pursuit of pleasure." &c. 

We feel no admiration, we will confess, foi 
prodigies of this description; and think that 
the world is but little indebted to those moral- 
ists, who, in their efforts to ameliorate our 
condition, begin with constraining the volatile 
spirit of childhood into sedateness, and extin- 
guishing the happy carelessness and anima- 
tion of youth, by lessons of eternal quietness. 



CLARKSON ON QUAKERISM. 



645 



The next chapter is against music; and is, 
as might be expected, one of the most absurd 
and extravagant of the whole. This is Mr. 
CJarkson's statement of the Quarker reasoning 
against this delightful art. 

" Providence gave originally to man a beautiful 
and a perfect world. He filled it with things neces- 
sary, and things delightful: and yet man has often 
turned these from their true and original design. 
The very wood on the surface of the earth he has 
cut down, and the very stone and metal in its bowels 
he has hewn and cast, atid converted into a graven 
image, and worshipped in the place of his benefi- 
cent Creator. The food which he has given him 
for his nourishment, he has frequently converted 
by his intemperance into the means of injuring his 
health. The wine, that was designed to make his 
heart glad, on reasonable and necessary occasions, 
he has used often to the stupefaction of his senses, 
and the degradation of his moral character. The 
very raiment, which has been afforded him for his 
body, he has abused also, so that it has frequently 
become a source for the excitement of his pride. 

" Just so it has been, and so it is, with Music, at 
the present day." 

We do not think we ever before met with 
an argument so unskilfully, or rather so pre- 
posterously put : Since, if it follows, from these 
premises, that music ought to be entirely re- 
jected and avoided, it must follow also, that 
we should go naked, and neither eat nor drink ! 
and as to the arguments that follow against 
the cultivation of music, because there are 
some obscene and some bacchanalian songs, 
which it would be improper for young persons 
to learn, they are obviously capable of being 
used, with exactly the same force, against 
their learning to read, because there are im- 
moral and heretical books, which may possi- 
bly fall into their hands. The most authentic 
and sincere reason, however, we believe, is 
one which rests immediately upon the gene- 
ral ascetic principle to which we have already 
made reference, viz. that "music tends to 
self-gralijication, which is not allowable in the 
Christian system." Now, as this same self- 
denying principle is really at the bottom of 
most of the Quaker prohibitions, it may be 
worth while to consider, in a few words, how 
far it can be reconciled to reason or morality. 

All men, we humbly conceive, are under 
the necessity of pursuing their own happiness; 
and cannot even be conceived as ever pursu- 
ing any thing else. The only difference be- 
tween the sensualist and the ascetic is, that 
the former pursues an immediate, and the 
other a remote happiness ; or, that the one 
pursues an intellectual, and the other a bodily 
gratification. The penitent who passes his 
days in mortification, does so unquestionably 
from the love of enjoyment ; either because 
he thinks this the surest way to attain eternal 
happiness in a future world, or because he 
finds the admiration of mankind a sufficient 
compensation, even in this life, for the hard- 
ships by which he extorts it. It appears, 
therefore, that self-gratification, so far from 
being an unlawful object of pursuit, is neces- 
sarily the only object which a rational being- 
can be conceived to pursue ; and consequently, 
that to argue against any practice, merely that 
it is attended with enjoyment, is to give it a 



recommendation which must operate in its fa- 
vour, in the first instance at least, even with 
the most rigid moralist. The only sound or 
consistent form of the argument, in short, ia 
that which was manfully adopted by the mor- 
tified hermits of the early ages; but is ex- 
pressly disclaimed for the Quakers by their 
present apologist, viz. that our well-being in 
this world is a matter of so very little con- 
cern, that it is altogether unworthy of a rea- 
sonable being to bestow any care upon it ; and 
that our chance of well-being in another world 
depends so much upon our anxious endeavours 
after piety upon earth, that it is our duty to 
employ every moment of our fleeting and 
uncertain lives in meditation and prayer; and 
consequently altogether sinful and imprudent 
to indulge any propensities which may inter- 
rupt those holy exercises, or beget in us any 
interest in sublunary things. 

There is evidently a tacit aspiration after 
this sublime absurdity in almost all the Qua- 
ker prohibitions; and we strongly suspect, 
that honest George Fox, when he inhabited a 
hollow tree in the vale of Beevor, taught noth- 
ing less to his disciples. The condemnation 
of music and dancing, and all idle speaking, 
was therefore quite consistent in him; but 
since the permission of gainful arts, and of 
most of the luxuries which w r ealth can pro- 
cure, to his disciples, it is no longer so easy to 
reconcile these condemnations, either to rea- 
son, or to the rest of their practice. A Quaker 
may suspend all apparent care of his salva- 
tion, and occupy himself entirely with his 
worldly business, for six days in the week, 
like any other Christian. It is even thought 
laudable in him to set an example of diligence 
and industry to those around him; and the 
fruits of this industry he is by no means re- 
quired to bestow in relieving the poor, or for 
the promotion of piety. He is allowed to em- 
ploy it for self-gratification, in almost every 
way — but the most social and agreeable ! He 
may keep an excellent table and garden, and 
be driven about in an easy chariot by a pious 
coachman and two, or even four, plump horses; 
but his plate must be without carving, and his 
carriage and horses (perhaps his flowers also) 
of a dusky colour. His guests may talk ot 
oxen and broadcloth as long as they think fit , 
but wit and gaiety are entirely proscribed, 
and topics of literature but rarely allowed. 
His boys and girls are bred up to a premature 
knowledge of bargaining and housekeeping ; 
but when their bounding spirits are struggling 
in every limb, they must not violate theii se- 
dateness by a single skip ; — their stillness must 
not be disturbed by raising their voices be- 
yond their common pitch ; — and they would 
be disowned, if they were to tune their inno- 
cent voices in a hymn to their great Benefac- 
tor ! We cannot help saying, that all this is 
absurd and indefensible. Either let the Qua- 
kers renounce all the enjoyments of this life, 
or take all that are innocent. The pursuit of 
wealth surely holds out a greater temptation 
to immorality, than the study of music. Let 
them, then, either disown those who accumu- 
late more than is necessary for their subsist- 



646 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



ence, or permit those who have leisure, to 
employ it in something better than money- 
getting. To allow a man to have a house and 
retinue, from the expenses of which fifty poor 
families might be supported, and at the same 
time to interdict a fold in his coat, or a ruffle 
to his shirt, on account of their costliness and 
vanity, is as ridiculous, and as superstitions, 
as it is for the Church of Rome to permit one 
of her cardinals to sit down, on a meagre day, 
to fifty costly and delicious dishes offish and 
pastry, while it excommunicates a peasant for 
breaking through the holy abstinence with a 
morsel of rusty bacon. With those general 
impressions, we shall easily dispose of their 
other peculiarities. 

The amusements of the theatre are strictly 
forbidden to Quakers of every description ; 
and this, partly because many plays are im- 
moral, but chiefly because, on the stage, 
u men personate characters that are not their 
own; and thus become altogether sophisti- 
cated in their looks, words, and actions, which 
is contrary to the simplicity and truth requir- 
ed by Christianity!" We scarcely think the 
Quakers will be much obliged to Mr. Clarkson 
for imputing this kind of reasoning to them : 
And, for our own parts, we would much rather 
hear at once that the play-house was the Devil's 
drawing-room, and that the actors painted 
their faces, and therefore deserved the fate of 
Jezebel. As to the sin of personating charac- 
ters not their own, and sophisticating their 
looks and words, it is necessarily committed 
by every man who reads aloud a Dialogue 
from the New Testament, or who adopts, 
from the highest authority, a dramatic form 
in his preaching. As to the other objection, 
that theatrical amusements produce too high 
a degree of excitement for the necessary se- 
dateness of a good Christian, we answer, in 
the first place, that we do not see why a good 
Christian should be more sedate than his inno- 
cence and natural gaiety may dispose him to 
be; and, in the second place,. that the objection 
proves Mr. Clarkson to be laudably ignorant of 
the state of the modern drama, — which, we 
are credibly informed, is by no means so ex- 
tremely interesting, as to make men neglect 

, their business and their duties to run after it. 

^ Next comes dancing. — The Quakers pro- 
hibit this strictly; 1st, because it implies the 
accompaniment of music, which has been 
already interdicted; 2dly, because "it is use- 
less, and below the dignity of the Christian 
character ;" 3dly, because it implies assem- 
blies of idle persons, which lead to thought- 
lessness as to the important duties of life; 
4thly, because it gives rise to silly vanity, and 
envying, and malevolence. The lovers of 
dancing, we think, will be able to answer 
those objections without our farther assist- 
ance ; such of them as have not been already 
obviated, are applicable, and are in fact ap- 
plied by the Quakers, to every species of ac- 
complishment. They are applicable also, 
though the Quakers do not so apply them, to 
all money-getting occupations in which there 
is room for rival] y and competition. 

The reading of novels is next prohibited, 



not so much, Mr. Clarkson assures us, on av 
count of their fictitious nature, though that in 
ground enough for the abhorrence of many 
Quakers, but on account of their general im- 
morality, and their tendency to produce an 
undue excitement of mind, and to alienate 
the attention from objects of serious import- 
ance. These are good reasons against the 
reading of immoral novels, and against mak- 
ing them our sole or our principal study. 
Other moralists are contented with selecting 
and limiting the novels they allow to be read. 
The Quakers alone make it an abomination to 
read any; which is like prohibiting all use of 
wine or animal food, instead of restricting our 
censures to the excess or abuse of them. 

Last of all, the sports of the field are pro- 
hibited, partly on account of the animal suf- 
fering they produce, and partly from the hab- 
its of idleness and ferocity which they are 
supposed to generate. This is Mr. Clarkson's 
account of the matter ; but we shall probably 
form a more correct idea of the true Quaker 
principle, from being told that George Fox 
" considered that man in the fall, or the apos- 
tate man. had a vision so indistinct and vitia- 
ted, that he could not see the animals of the 
creation as he ought; but that the man who 
was restored, or the spiritual Christian, had a 
new and clear discernment concerning them, 
which would oblige him to consider and treat 
them in a proper manner." The Quakers, 
however, allow the netting of animals for 
food; and cannot well object therefore to 
shooting them, provided it be done about for 
the same economical purpose, and not for 
self-gratification, — at least in the act of killing. 

Mr. Clarkson proceeds next to discuss the 
discipline, as he calls it, or interior govern- 
ment of the Quaker society ; but we think it 
more natural to proceed to the consideration 
of what he announces as their peculiar cus- 
toms, which, for any thing we see, might all 
have been classed among the prohibitions 
which constitute their moral education. 

The first, is the peculiarity of their dress. 
The original rule, he says, was only that it 
should be plain and cheap. He vindicates 
George Fox, we think very successfully, from 
the charge of having gone about in a leathern 
doublet : and maintains, that the present dress 
of the Quakers is neither more nor less than 
the common dress of grave and sober persons 
of the middling rank at the first institution of 
the society; and that they have retained it. 
not out of any superstitious opinion of its 
sanctity, but because they thought it would 
indicate a frivolous vanity to change it, unless 
for some reason of convenience. We should 
have thought it convenience enough to avoid 
singularity and misconstruction of motives. 
Except that the men now wear loops to their 
hats, and that the women have in a great 
measure given up their black hoods and green 
aprons, their costume is believed to be almost 
exactly the same as it was two hundred years 
ago. They have a similar rule as to their 
furniture; which, though sometimes elegant 
and costly, is uniformly plain, and free from 
glare or ostentation. In conformity with this 



CLARKSON ON QUAKERISM. 



647 



principle,they do not decorate their houses with 
pictures or prints, and in general discourage 
the practice of taking portraits; for which 
piece of abstinence Mr. Clarkson gives the fol- 
lowing simple reason. "The first Quakers con- 
sidering themselves as poor helpless creatures, 
and as little better than dust and ashes, had 
but a mean idea of their own images !" 

One of the most prominent peculiarities in 
the Quaker customs, relates to their language. 
They insist, in the first place, upon saying 
thou instead of you ; and this was an innova- 
tion upon which their founder seems to have 
valued himself at least as much as upon any 
other part of his system. " The use of thou," 
says honest George Fox, with visible com- 
placency, "was a sore cut to proud flesh!" 
and many beatings, and revilings, and hours 
of durance in the stocks, did he triumphantly 
endure for his intrepid adherence to this gram- 
matical propriety. Except that it is (or rather 
was) grammatically correct, we really can see 
no merit in this form of speech. The chief 
Quaker reason for it, however, is, that the use 
of " you " to a single person is a heinous piece 
of flattery, and an instance of the grossest 
and meanest adulation. It is obvious, how- 
ever, that what is applied to all men without 
exception, cannot well be adulation. If princes 
and patrons alone were called " you," while 
"thou" was still used to inferiors or equals, 
we could understand why the levelling prin- 
ciple of the Quakers should set itself against 
the distinction; but if "you" be invariably 
and indiscriminately used to the very lowest 
of mankind, — to negroes, felons, and toad- 
eaters, — it is perfectly obvious, that no per- 
son's vanity can possibly be puffed up by re- 
ceiving it j and that the most contemptuous 
misanthropist may employ it without any 
scruple. Comparing the said pronouns to- 
gether, indeed, in this respect, it is notorious, 
that " thou " is, with us, by far the most flat- 
tering compellation of the two. It is the form 
in which men address the Deity ; and in which 
all tragical love letters, and verses of solemn 



adulation, are conceived. 



You" belongs 



unquestionably to familiar and equal conver- 
sation. In truth, it is altogether absurd to 
consider "you" as exclusively a plural pro- 
noun in the modern English language. It may 
be a matter of history that it was originally 
used as a plural only ; and it may be a matter 
of theory that it was first applied to individu- 
als on a principle of flattery ; but the fact is, 
that it is now our second person singular. 
When applied to an individual, it never ex- 
cites any idea either of plurality or of adula- 
tion ; but excites precisely and exactly the 
idea that was excited by the use of " thou " 
in an earlier stage of the language. There is 
no more impropriety in the use of it, there- 
fore, than in the use of any modern term 
which has superseded an obsolete one ; nor 
any more virtue in reviving the use of " thou," 
than there would be in reviving any other an- 
tiquated word. It would be just as reasonable 
to talk always of our doublets and hose, and 
eschew all mention of coats or stockings, as a 
fearful abomination. 



The same observations apply to the other 
Quaker principle of refusing to call any man 
Mr. or Sjr, or to subscribe themselves in their 
letters, as any man's humble servant. Their 
reasons for this refusal, are, first, that the 
common phrases import a falsehood ; and, 
secondly, that they puff up vain man with 
conceit. Now, as to the falsehood, we have 
to observe, that the words objected to, really 
do not mean any thing about bondage or do- 
minion when used on those occasions; anc? 
neither are so understood, nor are in danger 
of being- so understood, by any one who hears 
them. Words are significant sounds; and, 
beyond question, it is solely in consequence 
of the meaning they convey, that men can be 
responsible for using them. Now the only 
meaning which can be inquired after in this 
respect, is the meaning of the person who 
speaks, and of the person who hears ; but 
neither the speaker nor the hearer, with us. 
understand the appellation of Mr., prefixed to 
a man's name, to import any mastership or 
dominion in him relatively to the other. It is 
merely a customary addition, which means 
nothing but that you wish to speak of the in- 
dividual with civility. That the word em- 
ployed to signify this, is the same word, or 
very near the same word, with one which, on 
other occasions, signifies a master over ser- 
vants, does not at all affect its meaning upon 
this occasion. It does not, in fact, signify any 
such thing when prefixed to a man's proper 
name ; and though it might have been used 
at first out of servility, with a view to that re- 
lation, it is long since that connection has been 
lost ; and it now signifies nothing but what is 
perfectly true and correct. 

Etymology can point out a multitude of 
words which, with the same sound and ortho- 
graphy, have thus come to acquire a variety 
of significations, and which even the Quakers 
think it sufficiently lawful to use in them all. 
A stage, for example, signifies a certain dis- 
tance on the road — or a raised platform — or a 
carriage that travels periodically — or a certain 
point in the progress of any affair. It could 
easily be shown, too, that all these different 
meanings spring from each other, and were 
gradually attributed to what was originally 
one and the same word. The words, how- 
ever, are now substantially multiplied, to cor- 
respond with the meanings; and though they 
have the same sound and orthography, are 
never confounded by any one who is ac- 
quainted with the language. But there is, in 
fact, the same difference between the word 
master, implying power and authority over 
servants, and the word Master or Mister pre- 
fixed to a proper name, and implying merely 
a certain degree of respect and civility. That 
there is no deception either intended or effect- 
ed, must be admitted by the Quakers I hem- 
selves : and it is not easy to conceive how the 
guilt of falsehood can be inclined without 
some such intention. Upon the very same 
principle, they would themselves be guilty 
of falsehood, if they called a friend by his 
name of Walker, when he was mounted in 
his one-horse chaise, or by his name ef 



648 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Smith, if he did not happen to be a worker in 
metal. 

The most amusing part of the matter, how- 
ever, is, that in their abhorrence of this ety- 
mological falsehood, they have themselves 
adopted a practice, which is liable, on the 
same principles, to more serious objections. 
Though they will not call any body Sir, or 
Master, they call everybody "Friend;" al- 
though it is evident that, to a stranger, this 
must be mere civility, like the words they re- 
ject, and to an enemy must approach nearly 
to insincerity. They have rejected an estab- 
lished phraseology, therefore, to adopt one 
much more proper to fill them with scruples. 
We have dwelt too long, however, on this 
paltry casuistry ; and must leave our readers 
to apply these observations to our common 
epistolary salutations, which are exactly in 
the same predicament. 

For similar, or rather for more preposterous 
reasons, the Quakers have changed the names 
of the months and of the days of the week. 
Some of them are named, it seems, after the 
Heathen, gods ; and therefore the use of them 
11 seemed to be expressive of a kind of idola- 
tious homage." If such a new calendar had 
been devised by the original Christians, when 
March and June were not only named after 
Mars and Juno, but distinguished by particu- 
lar festivals in their honour, we could have 
comprehended the motive of the innovation ; 
but, now-a-days, when Mars and Juno are no 
more thought of than Hector or Hecuba, and 
when men would as soon think of worshipping 
an ape or a crocodile as either of them, it 
does appear to us the very acme of absurdity 
to suppose that there can be any idolatry in 
naming their names. In point of fact, what- 
ever the matter may be etymologically or 
historically, we conceive that Wednesday and 
Thursday are words in modern English that 
have no sort of reference to the gods Woden 
and Thor : Since rhey certainly raise no ideas 
connected with those personages, and are 
never used with the intention of raising any 
such ideas. As they are used at present, 
therefore, they do not signify days dedicated 
to these divinities; but merely the days that 
4 come between Tuesday and Friday in our 
\ calendar. Those who think otherwise must 
maintain also, that the English word expedient 
actually signifies untying of feet, and the word 
consideration a taking of stars together. 

Another of their peculiar customs is, that 
they will not pull off their hats, or make a 
bow to any body. This is one of their most 
ancient and respected canons. " George Fox," 
Mr. Clarkson assures us, " was greatly grieved 
about these idle ceremonies. He lamented 
that men should degrade themselves by the 
use of them, and that they should encourage 
habits that were abiiorrent of the truth." 
Honest George ! He was accordingly repeat- 
edly beaten and abused for his refractoriness 
in this particular; and a long story is told in 
this volume, of a controversy he had with 
Judge Glynn, whom he posed with a citation 
from Daniel, purporting, that the three children 
were cast into the fiery furnace u with their 



hats on." Is it possible however to believe, 
that any rational being can imagine that there 
is any sin in lifting off one's hat. or bendii-g 
the body 1 It is an easy and sufficiently con- 
venient way of showing our respect or atten- 
tion. A good-natured man could do a great 
deal more to gratify a mere stranger ; and if 
there be one individual who would take the 
omission amiss, that alone would be a suffi- 
cient reason for persisting in the practice. 

Mr. Clarkson next discusses the private 
manners . of this rigid sect, and admits that 
they are rather dull, cold, and taciturn. Their 
principles prohibit them from the use of idle 
words ; under which they include every sort 
of conversation introduced merely for gaiety 
or amusement. Their neglect of classical 
literature cuts off another great topic. Poli- 
tics are proscribed, as leading to undue 
warmth ; and all sorts of scandal and gossip, 
and allusion to public spectacles- or amuse- 
ments, for a more fundamental reason. Thus, 
they have little to talk about but their health, 
their business, or their religion ; and all these 
things they think it a duty to discuss in a 
concise and sober manner. They say no 
graces; but when their meal is on the table, 
they sit silent, and in a thoughtful posture for 
a short time, waiting for an illapse of the 
spirit. If they are not moved to make any 
ejaculation, they begin to eat without more 
ado. They drink no healths, nor toasts; 
though not so much from the inconvenience 
of the thing, as because they conceive this to 
have been a bacchanalian practice borrowed 
from the Heathens of antiquity. They are 
very sober; and instead of sitting over theii 
wine after dinner, frequently propose to theii 
guests a walk before tea ; the females do not 
leave the party during this interval. Theii 
marriages are attended with no other cere- 
mony, than that of taking each other by the 
hand in a public meeting, and declaring their 
willingness to be united. Notice, however, 
must be given of this intention at a previous 
meeting, when the consent of their parents is 
required, and a deputation appointed to in- 
quire whether they are free from all previous 
engagements. Quakers marrying out of the 
society are disowned, though they may be 
again received into membership, on express- 
ing their repentance for their marriage ; a de- 
claration which cannot be very flattering to 
the infidel spouse. There are many more 
women than men disowned for this transgres- 
sion. The funerals of the Quakers are as 
free from solemnity as their marriages. They 
wear no mourning, and do not even cover 
their coffins with black ;— they use no prayers 
on such occasions; — the body fs generally 
carried to the meeting-house, before it is com- 
mitted to the earth, and a short pause is made, 
during which any one who feels himself 
moved to speak, may address the congrega- 
tion; — it is set down for a little time, also, at 
the edge of the grave, for the same opportu- 
nity; — it is then interred, and the friends and 
relations walk away. They use no vaults, and 
erect no monuments, — though tiiey some- 
times collect and preserve some account of 



CLAUKSON ON QUAKERISM. 



649 



the lives and sayings of their more eminent 
and pious brethren. 

On the subject of trade there is a good deal 
of casuistry among the Quakers. They strictly 
prohibit the slave-trade, and had the merit of 
passing a severe censrve upon it so long ago 
as 1727. They also prohibit privateering, 
smuggling, and all traffic in weapons of war. 
Most other trades they allow ; but under cer- 
tain limitations. A Quaker may be a book- 
seller, but he must not sell any immoral 
book. He may be a dealer in spirits ; but he 
must not sell to those whom he knows to be 
drunkards. He may even be a silversmith; 
but he must not deal in splendid ornaments 
for the person. In no case may he recom- 
mend his goods as fashionable. It is much and 
learnedly disputed in this volume, whether 
he may make or sell ribands and other fine- 
ries of this sort ; or whether, as a tailor or 
hatter, he may furnish any other articles than 
such as the society patronises. Mention is 
also made of a Quaker tailor well known to 
King James II., who was so scrupulous in 
this respect, that "he would not allow his 
servants to put any corruptive finery upon 
the clothes which he had been employed to 
furnish;" and of one John Woolman, who 
'-'• found himself sensibly weakened as a Chris- 
tian, whenever he traded in things that served 
chiefly to please the vain mind, or people." 
Apart from these fopperies, however, the 
Quaker regulations for trade are excellent. 
They discourage all hazardous speculations, 
and all fictitious paper credit. If a member 
becomes bankrupt, a committee is appointed 
to inspect his affairs. If his insolvency is re- 
ported to have been produced by misconduct, 
he is disowned, and cannot be received back 
till he has paid his whole debts, even although 
he may have been discharged on a composition . 
If he has failed through misfortune, he conti- 
nues in the society, but no contributions are 
received from him till his debts are fully 
paid. 

When Quakers disagree, they seldom scold ; 
and never fight or go to law. George Fox 
recommended them to settle all their differ- 
ences by arbitration ; and they have adhered 
to this practice ever since. Where the arbi- 
trators are puzzled about the law. they may 
agree on a case, and consult counsel. When 
a Quaker disagrees with a person out of the 
society, he generally proposes arbitration in 
the first instance ; if this be refused, he has no 
scruple of going to law. 

We should now proceed to give some ac- 
count of what Mr. Clarkson has called the 
four Great Tenets of the Quakers; but the 
length to which we have already extended 
these remarks must confine our observations 
to very narrow limits. The first is, That the 
civil magistrate has no right to interfere in re- 
ligious matters, so as either to enforce attend- 
ance on one mode of worship, or to interdict 
any other which is harmless. In this, cer- 
tainly, their doctrine is liable to very little 
objection. Their second great tenet is. That 
it is unlawful to swear upon any occasion 
whatsoever. We have not leisure now to 
82 



discuss this point with Mr. Clarkson ; indeed, 
from the obstruction which this scruple has so 
often occasioned to law proceedings, it has 
been discussed much oftener than any of the 
rest. Those who want to see a neat and forci- 
ble abstract of the Quaker reasoning on the 
subject, had better look into Barclay at once, 
instead of wading through the amplification 
of Mr. Clarkson. 

Their third great tenet is, That it is unlaw- 
ful to engage in the profession of arms. This 
is founded entirely upon a literal interpretation 
of certain texts of scripture, requiring men to 
love and bless their enemies, and to turn one 
cheek to him who had smitten the other, &c. 
It is commonly supposed, we believe, that 
these expressions were only meant to shadow 
out, by a kind of figure, that amicable and 
gentle disposition by which men should be 
actuated in their ordinary intercourse with 
each other, and by no means as a literal and 
peremptory directory for their conduct through 
life. In any other sense, indeed, they would 
evidently amount to an encouragement to all 
sorts of violence and injustice ; and would en- 
tirely disable and annihilate all civil govern- 
ment, or authority among men. If evil is not 
to be resisted, and if the man who takes a 
cloak is to be pressed to a coat also, it is plain 
that the punishment of thieves and robbers 
must be just as unlawful as the resisting of 
invaders. It is remarkable, indeed, that the 
Quakers do not carry their literal submission 
to the scripture quite this length. They would 
struggle manfully for their cloaks; and, in- 
stead of giving the robber their coats also, 
would be very glad to have him imprisoned 
and flogged. If they can get rid of the letter 
of the law, however, in any case, it does ap- 
pear to us, that there are occasionally stronger 
reasons for dispensing with the supposed pro- 
hibition of war than with any of the others. 
If they would be justified in killing a wild 
beast that had rushed into their habitation, 
they must be justified in killing an invader 
who threatens to subject them and the whole 
community to his brutal lust, rapacity, and 
cruelty. We must call it a degrading super- 
stition that would withhold the hands of a 
man in such an emergency. The last great 
tenet is, That it is unlawful to give pecuniary 
hire to a gospel ministry. This, again, is en- 
tirely a war of texts; aided by a confused 
reference to the history of tithes, from which 
the following most logical deductions are made. 

"First, that ihey are not in equity dues of the 
Church, — secondly, that the payment of them being 
compulsory, it would, if acceded to he an acknow- 
ledgment that the civil magistral had a right to use 
force in matters of religion — and, thirdly, that, heing 
claimed upon an act which holds them forth as o? 
divine right, any payment of them would he an ac- 
knowledgment of the Jewish religion, and that 
Christ had not yet actually come !"— III. 141. 

After perusing all that we have now ab- 
stracted, Mr. Clarkson's readers mipht per- 
haps have been presumed capable of forming 
some conclusion for themselves as to the 
Quaker character; but the author chooses to 
make the inference for ihem. in a dissertation 
3 F 



tCu 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



of one hundred and fifty pages ; to which we 
must satisfy ourselves, for the present, with 
making this general reference. We must use 
the same liberty with the "miscellaneous 
particulars," which fill nearly as many pages 
with an attempt to prove that the Quakers are 
a very happy people, that they have done 
good by the example of their virtues, and that 
those who have thoughts of leaving the so- 
ciety, had better think twice before they take 
a step of so much consequence. 

We come now to say a few words on the 
subject of their interior government ; which 
appears to us to be formed very much upon 
the "model of the Presbyterian churches so 
long established in this part of the kingdom. 
The basis of the whole system is, that every 
member of the society is not only entitled, but 
bound in duty, to watch over the moral and 
religious deportment of any other whom he 
has an opportunity of observing, and to inter- 
fere for his admonition and correction when 
he sees cause. Till the year 1698, this duty- 
was not peculiarly imposed upon any indivi- 
dual ; but, since that time, four or five persons 
are named in each congregation, under the 
title of overseers, who are expected to watch 
over the conduct of the flock with peculiar 
anxiety. The half of these are women, who 
take charge of their own sex only. Four or 
five congregations are associated together, and 
hold a general monthly meeting of deputies, 
of both sexes, from each congregation. Two 
or more of each sex are deputed from these 
monthly meetings to the general quarterly 
meeting; which reunites all the congregations 
of a county, or larger district, according to the 
extent of the Quaker population ; and those, 
again, send four of each sex to the great yearly 
meeting or convocation ; which is regularly 
assembled in London, and continues its sitting 
for ten or twelve days. 

The method of proceeding, where the con- 
duct of a member has been disorderly, is, first, 
by private admonition, either by individuals, 
or by the overseers; where this is not effectual, 
the case is reported to the monthly meeting; 
who appoint a committee to deal with h'm, 
and, upon their report, either receive him back 
into communion, or expel him from the so- 
ciety by a written document, entitled, A Tes- 
timony of Disownment. From this sentence, 
however, he may appeal to the quarterly 
meeting, and from that to the yearly. These 
. courts of review investigate the case by means 
of committees ; of which none of those who 
pronounced the sentence complained of can 
be members. 

In the monthly meetings, all presentations 
of marriages are received, and births and fu- 
nerals registered ; — contributions and arrange- 
ments are made for the relief of the pooi ; — 
persons are disowned, or received back ; — and 
cases of scruples are stated and discussed. 
They likewise prepare answers to a series of 
standing queries as to the state and condition 
of their several congregations, which they 
transmit to the quarterly meeting. The quar- 
terly meeting hears appeals, — receives the 
reports in answer to these queries, — and pre- 



pares, in its turn, a more general and compre- 
hensive report for the great annual meeting 
in London. This assembly, again, hears ap- 
peals from the quarterly meetings, and re- 
ceives their reports; and, finally, draws up a 
public or pastoral letter to the whole society, 
in which it communicates the most interesting 
particulars, as to its general state and condi- 
tion, that have been collected from the reports 
laid before it, — makes such suitable admoni- 
tions and exhortations for their moral and civil 
conduct, as the . complexion of the limes, or 
the nature of these reports have suggested, — 
and recommends to their consideration any 
project or proposition that may have been laid 
before it, for the promotion of religion, and 
the good of mankind. The slave-trade has, 
of late years, generally formed one of the 
topics of this general epistle, which is printed 
and circulated throughout the society. In all 
their meetings, the male and female deputies 
assemble, and transact their business, in sep- 
arate apartments ; meeting together only for 
worship, or for making up their general reports. 
The wants of the poor are provided for by the 
monthly meetings, who appoint certain over- 
seers to visit and relieve them : The greater 
part of these overseers are women ; and what- 
ever they find wanting in the course of their 
visits, money, clothes, or medicines, they or- 
der, and their accounts are settled by the 
treasurer of the monthly meeting. Where it 
happens that there are more poor in any one 
district than can easily be relieved by the more 
opulent brethren within it, the deficiency is 
supplied by the quarterly meeting to which it 
is subjected. The children of the poor are all 
taught to read and write at the public expense, 
and afterwards bound apprentice to trades; — 
the females are generally destined for set Ace, 
and placed in Quaker families. 

" Such," says Mr. Clarkson, with a very natural 
exultation on the good management of his favour- 
ites, " such is the organisation of the diioipline or 
government of the Quakers. Nor may it improp- 
erly be called a Government, when we consider, 
that, besides all matters relating to the church, it 
takes cognisance of the actions of Quakers to 
Quakers and of these to their fellow-citizens ; and 
of these, again, to the slate ; in fact, of all actions 
of Quakers, if immoral in the eye of the society, as 
soon as they are known. It gives out its prohibi 
tions. It marks its crimes. It imposes offices on 
its subjects. It calls them to disciplinary duties. 
This government, however, notwithstanding its 
power, has, as I observed before, no president or 
head, either permanent or temporary. There is no 
first man through the whole society. Neither has 
it anv badge of office — or mace, or constable's staff, 
or sword. It may be observed, also, that it has no 
office of emolument by which its hands can be 
strengthened — neither minister, elder, clerk, over- 
seer, or deputy, being paid : and yet its administra- 
tion is firmly conducted, and its laws are better 
obeyed than laws by persons under any other de- 
nomination or government." I. 246, 247. 

We have nothing now to discuss witn these 
good people, but their religion : and with this 
we will not meddle. It is quite clear to us, 
that their founder George Fox was exceedingly 
insane ; and though we by no means suspect 
many of his present followers of the same 
malady, we cannot help saying that most of 



CLARKSON'S LIFE OF PENN. 



651 



jheir peculiar doctrines are too high-flown for 
our humble apprehension. They hold that God 
has at ail times communicated a certain por- 
tion of the Spirit, or word, or light, to mankind ; 
but has given very different portions of it to 
different individuals : that, in consequence of 
this inward illumination, not only the ancient 
patriarchs and prophets, but many of the old 
heathen philosophers, were very good Chris- 
tians : that no kind of worship or preaching 
can be acceptable or profitable, unless it flow 
from the immediate inspiration and movement 
of this inward spirit ; and that all ordination, 
or appointment of priests, is therefore impious 
and unavailing. They are much attached to 
the Holy Ghost; but are supposed to reject 
the doctrine of the Trinity; as they certainly 
reject the sacraments of Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper, with all other rites, ordinances, 
and ceremonies, known or practised in any 
other Christian church. These tenets they 
justify by various citations from the New 
Testament, and the older fathers ; as any one 
may see in the works of Barclay and Penn, 
with rather more satisfaction than in this of 
Mr. Clarkson. We enter not at present into 
these disputations. 

Upon the whole, we are inclined to believe 
the Quakers to. be a tolerably honest, pains- 
taking, and inoffensive set of Christians. Very 
stupid, dull,- and obstinate, we presume, in 
conversation ; and tolerably lumpish and fa- 
tiguing in domestic society: active and me- 
thodical in their business, and narrow-minded 
and ill-informed as to most other particulars : 
beneficent from habit and the discipline of the 



society; but cold in their affections, and in- 
wardly chilled into a sort of Chinese apathy, 
by the restraints to which they are continually 
subjected ; childish and absurd in their reli- 
gious scruples and peculiar usages, and sin- 
gularly unlearned as a sect of theologians; 
but exemplary, above all other sects, for the 
decency of their lives, for their charitable in- 
dulgence to all other persuasions, for their care 
of their poor, and for the liberal participation 
they have afforded to their women in all the 
duties and honours of the society. 

We would not willingly insinuate anything 
against the general sincerity of those who re- 
main in communion with this body ; but Mr. 
Clarkson has himself noticed, that when they 
become opulent, they are very apt to fall oft 
from it ; and indeed we do not recollect ever 
to have seen either a Quaker gentleman of 
fortune, or a Quaker day-labourer. The truth 
is, that ninety-nine out of a hundred of them 
are engaged in trade ; and as they all deal and 
correspond with each other, it is easy to see 
what advantages they must have as traders, 
from belonging to so great a corporation. A 
few follow the medical profession ; and a still 
smaller number that of conveyancing; but 
they rely, in both, almost exclusively on the 
support of their brethren of the society. It is 
rather remarkable, that Mr. Clarkson has not 
given us any sort of estimate or calculation of 
their present numbers in England ; though, 
from the nature of their government, it must 
be known to most of their leading members. 
It is the general opinion, it seems, that they 
are gradually diminishing. 



(July, 1813.) 

Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn. By Thomas Clarkson, M. A. 
8vo. 2 vols. pp. 1020. London: 1813. 



It is impossible to look into any of Mr. 
Clarkson's books, without feeling that he is an 
excellent man — and a very bad writer. Many 
of the defects of his composition, indeed, seem 
to be directly referrible to the amiableness of 
his disposition. An earnestness for truth and 
virtue, that does not allow him to waste any 
thought upon the ornaments by which they 
may be recommended — and a simplicity of 
character which is not aware that what is 
substantially respectable may be made dull 
or ridiculous by the manner in which it is 
presented — are virtues which we suspect not 
to have been very favourable to his reputation 
as an author. Feeling in himself not only an 
entire toleration of honest tediousness, but a 
decided preference for it upon all occasions 
over mere elegance or ingenuity, he seems to 
have transferred a little too hastily to books 
those principles of judgment which are admi- 
rable when applied to men ; and to have for- 
gotten, that though dulness may be a very 
venia. fault in a good man, it is such a fault 
in a book as to render its goodness of no avail 



whatsoever. Unfortunately for Mr. Clarkson, 
moral qualities alone will not make a good 
writer ; nor are they even of the first import- 
ance on such an occasion : And accordingly, 
with all his philanthropy, piety, and inflexible 
honesty, he has not escaped the sin of tedious- 
ness,— and that to a degree that must render 
him almost illegible to any but Quakers, Re- 
viewers, and others, who make -public profes- 
sion of patience insurmountable. He has no 
taste, and no spark of vivacity — not the vestige 
of an ear for harmony — and a prolixity of 
which modern times have scarcely preserved 
any other example. He seems to have a suffi- 
ciently sound and clear judgment, but no great 
acuteness of understanding: and, though visi- 
bly tasking himself to judge charitably and 
speak candidly of all men, is evidently beset 
with such antipathy to all who persecute 
Quakers, or maltreat negroes, as to make him 
very unwilling to report any thing in their fa- 
vour. On the other hand, he has great in- 
dustry — scrupulous veracity — and that serious 
and sober enthusiasm for his subject, which 



652 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



is sure in the long run to disarm ridicule, and 
win upon inattention — and is frequently able 
to render vulgarity impressive, and simplicity 
sublime. Moreover, and above all, he is per- 
fectly free from affectation ; so that, though 
we may be wearied, we are never disturbed 
or offended — and read on, in tranquillity, till 
we find it impossible to read any more. 

It will be guessed, however, that it is not on 
account of its literary merits that we are in- 
duced to take notice of the work before us. 
William Penn, to whose honour it is wholly 
devoted, was. beyond all doubt, a personage 
of no ordinary standard — and ought, before this 
time, to have met with a biographer capable 
of doing him justice. He is most known, and 
most deserving of being known, as the settler 
of Pennsylvania; but his private character 
also is interesting, and full of those peculiari- 
ties which distinguished the temper and man- 
ners of a great part of the English nation at 
the period in which he lived. His theological 
and polemical exploits are no less character- 
istic of the man and of the times ; — though 
all that is really edifying in this part of his 
history might have been given in about one- 
twentieth part of the space which is allotted 
to it in the volumes of Mr. Clarkson. 

William Penn was born in 1644. the only 
son of Admiral Sir W. Penn, the representa- 
tive of an ancient and honourable family in 
Buckingham and Gloucestershire. He was 
regularly educated; and entered a Gentle- 
man Commoner at Christ's Church, Oxford, 
where he distinguished himself very early for 
his proficiency both in classical learning and 
athletic exercises. When he was only about 
sixteen, however, he was roused to a sense of 
the corruptions of the established faith, by the 
preaching of one Thomas Loe, a Quaker — and 
immediately discontinued his attendance at 
chapel; and, with some other youths of his 
own way of thinking, began to hold prayer 
meetings in their private apartments. This, 
of course, gave great* scandal and offence to 
his academical superiors; and a large fine, 
with suitable admonitions, were imposed on 
the young nonconformist. Just at this critical 
period, an order was unluckily received from 
Court to resume the use of the surplice, which 
it seems had been discontinued almost ever 
since the period of the Reformation; and the 
sight of this unfortunate vestment, "opera- 
ted," as Mr. Clarkson expresses it, u so dis- 
agreeably on William Penn, that he could not 
bear it ! and. joining himself with some other 
young gentlemen, he fell upon those students 
who appeared in surplices, and tore them 
every where over their heads." This, we 
conceive, was not quite correct, even as a 
Quaker proceeding; and was but an unpro- 
mising beginning for the future champion of 
religious liberty. Its natural consequence, 
however, was, that he and his associates were, 
without further ceremony, expelled from the 
University; and when he went home to his 
father, and attempted to justify by argument 
the measures he had adopted, it was no less na- 
tural that the good Admiral should give him a 
good box on the ear, and turn him to the door. 



This course of discipline, however, not 
proving immediately effectual, he was sent 
upon his travels, along with some other young 
gentlemen, and resided for two years in France, 
and the Low Countries; but without any 
change either in those serious views of reli- 
gion, or those austere notions of morality, by 
which his jouth had been so prematurely dis- 
tinguished. On his return, his father again 
endeavoured to subdue him to a more worldly 
frame of mind ; first, by setting him to study 
law at Lincoln's Inn ; and afterwards, by send- 
ing him to the Duke of Ormond's court at 
Dublin, and giving him the charge of his large 
possessions in that kingdom. These expedi- 
ents might perhaps have been attended with 
success, had he not accidentally again fallen 
in (at Cork) with his old friend Thomas Loe, 
the Quaker, — who set before him such a view 
of the dangers of his situation, that he seems 
from that day forward to have renounced all 
secular occupations, and betaken himself to 
devotion, as the main business of his life. 

The reign of Charles II., however, was not 
auspicious to dissenters; and in those evil 
days of persecution, he was speedily put in 
prison for attending Quaker meetings; but 
was soon liberated, and again came back to 
his father's house, where a long disputation 
took place upon the subject of his new creed. 
It broke up with this moderate and very loyal 
proposition on the part of the Vice-Admiral — 
that the young Quaker should consent to sit 
with his hat off, in presence of the King — the 
Duke of York — and the Admiral himself! in 
return for which slight compliance, it was 
stipulated that he should be no longer molest- 
ed for any of his opinions or practices. The 
heroic convert, however, would listen to no 
terms of composition; and, after taking some 
days to consider of it, reported, that his con- 
science could not comport with any species 
of Hat worship — and was again turned out of 
doors for his pains. 

He now took openly to preaching in the 
Quaker meetings ; and shortly after began that 
course of theological and controversial pub- 
lications, in which he persisted to his dying 
days ; and which has had the effect of over- 
whelming his memory with two vast folio 
volumes of Puritanical pamphlets. His most 
considerable work seems to have been that 
entitled, --'No Cross, no Crown ;" in which he 
not only explains and vindicates, at great 
length, the grounds of the peculiar doctrines 
and observances of the Society to which he 
belonged, — but endeavours to show, by a very 
large and entertaining induction of instances 
from profane history, that the same general 
principles had been adopted and acted upon 
by the wise and good in every generation ; and 
were suggested indeed to the reflecting mind 
by the inward voice of conscience, and the 
analogy of the whole visible scheme of God's 
providence in the government of the world. 
The intermixture of worldly learning, and ihe 
larger and bolder scope of this performance, 
render it far more legible than the pious ex- 
hortations and pertinacious polemics which 
fill the greater part of his subsequent publica- 



CLARKSON'S LIFE OF PENN. 



653 



tions. In his love of controversy and of print- 
ing, indeed, this worthy sectary seems to have 
been the very Priestley of the 17th century. 
He not only responded in due form to every 
work in which the principles of his sect were 
directly or indirectly attacked, — but whenever 
he heard a sermon that he did. not like, — 
or learned that any of the Friends had been 
put in the stocks ; — whenever he was pre- 
vented from preaching. — or learned any edi- 
fying particulars of the death of a Quaker, or 
of a persecutor of Quakers, he was instantly 
at the press, with a letter, or a narrative, or 
an admonition — and never desisted from the 
contest till he had reduced the adversary to 
silence. 

The members of the established Church, 
indeed, were rarely so unwary as to make any 
rejoinder; and most of his disputes, accord- 
ingly, were with rival sectaries: in whom the 
spirit of proselytism and jealous zeal is always 
stronger than in the members of a larger and 
more powerful body. They were not always 
contented indeed with the regular and genera] 
war of the press, but frequently challenged 
each other to personal combat, in the form of 
solemn and public disputations. William Penn 
had the honour of being repeatedly appointed 
the champion of the Quakers in these theo- 
logical duels; and never failed, according to 
his partial biographer, completely to demolish 
his opponent; — though it appears that he did 
not always meet with perfectly fair play, and 
that the chivalrous law of arms was by no 
means correctly observed in these ghostly en- 
counters. His first set to, was with one Vincent, 
the oracle of a neighbouring congregation of 
Presbyterians; and affords rather a ludicrous 
example of the futility and indecorum which 
are apt to characterise all such exhibitions. — 
After the debate had gone on for some time, 
Vincent made a long discourse, in which he 
openly accused the Quakers of blasphemy ; 
and as soon as he had done, he made off, and 
desired all his friends to follow him. Penn 
insisted upon being heard in reply : but the 
Presbyterian troops pulled him down by the 
skirts; and proceeding to blow out the can- 
dles, (for the battle had already lasted till 
midnight.) left the indignant orator in utter 
darkness ! He was not to be baffled or ap- 
palled, however, by a privation of this de- 
scription; and accordingly went on to argue 
and retort in the dark, with such force and 
effect, that it was thought advisable to send 
out for his fugitive opponent, who, after some 
time, reappeared with a candle in his hand, 
and begged that the debate might be adjourn- 
ed to another day. But he could never be 
prevailed on, Mr. Clarkson assures us, to re- 
new the combat ; and Penn. after going and 
defying him in his own meeting-house, had 
recourse, as usual, to the press; and put forth 
"The Sandy Foundation Shaken," for which 
ne had the pleasure of being committed to 
the Tower, on the instigation of the Bishop 
of London : and solaced himself, during his 
confinement, bv writing six other pamphlets. 

Soon after his deliverance, he was again 
taken up. and bought *n trial before the Lord 



Mayor and Recorder for preaching in a Qua- 
ker meeting. He afterwards published an ac- 
count of this proceeding; — and it is in our 
opinion one of the most curious and instruc- 
tive pieces that ever came from his pen. The 
times to which it relates, are sufficiently 
known to have been times of gross oppression 
and judicial abuse ; — but the brutality of the 
Court upon this occasion seems to us to ex- 
ceed any thing that is recorded elsewhere ; — 
and the noble firmness of the jury still de- 
serves to be remembered, for example to hap- 
pier days. The prisoner came into court, ac- 
cording to Quaker costume, with his hat on 
his head ; — but the doorkeeper, with a due 
zeal for the dignity of the place, pulled it off 
as he entered. — Upon this, however, the Lord 
Mayor became quite furious, and ordered the 
unfortunate beaver to be instantly replaced — 
which was no sooner clone than he fined the 
poor culprit for appearing covered in his pre- 
sence ! — William Penn now insisted upon 
knowing what law he was accused of having 
broken, — to which simple question the Re- 
corder was reduced to answer, <• that he was 
an impertinent fellow, — and that many had 
studied thirty or forty years to understand the 
law, which he was for having expounded in a 
moment !" The learned controversialist how- 
ever was not to be silenced so easily ; — he 
quoted Lord Coke and Magna Chart a on his 
antagonist in a moment; and chastised his in- 
solence by one of the best and most charac- 
teristic repartees that we recollect ever to have 
met with. " I tell you to be silent," cried the 
Recorder, in a great passion ; " if we should 
suffer you to ask questions till to-morrow 
morning, you will be never the wiser!" — 
'•'That," replied the Quaker, with his immov- 
able tranquillity, '-'that is, according as the 
answers are." — -Take him away, take him 
away?" exclaimed the Mayor and the Ro- 
corder in a breath — '-turn him into the Bale 
Dock ;" — and into the Bale Dock, a filthy and 
pestilent dungeon in the neighbourhood, he 
was accordingly turned — discoursing calmly 
all the way on Magna Charter and the rights 
of Englishmen; — while the courtly Recorder 
delivered a very animated charge to the Jury, 
in the absence of the prisoner. 

The Jury, however, after a short consulta- 
tion, brought in a verdict, finding him merely 
'•'guilty of speaking in Grace-Church Street." 
For this cautious and most correct deliverance, 
they were loaded with reproaches by ihe 
Court, and sent out to amend their verdict, — 
but in half an hour they returned with the 
same ingenious finding, written out at large, 
and subscribed with all their names. The 
Court now became more furious than ever, and 
shut them up without meat, drink, or fire, till 
next morning; when they twice over came 
back with the same verdict ; — upon which they 
were reviled, and threatened so outrageously 
by the Recorder, that William Penn protest 
ed against this plain intimidation of the per- 
sons, to whose free suffrages the law had en- 
trusted his cause. The answer of theRecouler 
was. "Stop his mouth, jailor — bring fetters 
and stake him to the ground." William Pmp 
3 k 2 



654 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



replied with the temper of a Quaker, and the 
spirit of a martyr, u Do your pleasure — I mat- 
ter not your fetters !" And the Recorder took 
occasion to observe, " that, till now, he had 
never understood the policy of the Spaniards 
in suffering the Inquisition among them. But 
now he saw that it would never be well with 
us, till we had something like the Spanish In- 
quisition in England !" After this sage re- 
mark, the Jury were again sent back, — and 
kept other twenty-four hours, without food or 
refreshment. On the third day, the natural 
and glorious effect of this brutality on the 
spirits of Englishmen was at length produced. 
Instead of the special and unmeaning form of 
their first verdict, they now, all in one voice, 
declared the prisoner Not Guilty. The Re- 
corder again broke out into abuse and menace ; 
and, after "praying God to keep his life out 
of such hands," proceeded, we really do not 
see on what pretext, to fine every man of them 
in forty marks, and to order them to prison till 
payment. William Penn then demanded his 
liberty ; but was ordered into custody till he 
paid the fine imposed on him for wearing his 
hat; and was forthwith dragged away to his 
old lodging in the Bale Dock, while in the 
very act of quoting the twenty-ninth chapter 
the Great Charter, " N alius liber homo," &c. 
As he positively refused to acknowledge the 
legality of this infliction by paying the fine, 
he might have lain long enough in this dun- 
geon ; but his father, who was now reconciled 
to him, sent the money privately ; and he was 
at last set at liberty. 

The spirit, however, which had dictated 
these proceedings was not likely to cease from 
troubling; and, within less than a year, the 
poor Quaker was again brought before the 
Magistrate on an accusation of illegal preach- 
ing; and was again about to be dismissed for 
want of evidence, when the worthy Justice 
ingeniously bethought himself of tendering to 
the prisoner the oath of allegiance, which, as 
well as every other oath, he well knew that 
his principles would oblige him to refuse. In- 
stead of the oath, W. Penn, accordingly offer- 
ed to give his reasons for not swearing; but 
the Magistrate refused to hear him : and an 
altercation ensued, in the course of which the 
Justice having insinuated, that, in spite of his 
sanctified exterior, the young preacher was as 
bad as other folks in his practice, the Quaker 
forgot, for one moment, the systematic meek- 
ness and composure of his sect, and burst out 
into this triumphant appeal — 

4< I make this bold challenge to all men, women, 
and children upon earth, justly to accuse me with 
having seen me drunk, heard me swear, utter a 
curse, or speak one obscene word, much less that I 
ever made it my practice. I speak this to God's 
gmrv, who has ever preserved me from the power 
of these pollutions, and who from a child begot an 
hatred in rne towards them. Thy words shall be 
thy burthen, and I trample thy slander as dirt un- 
der my feet !"— pp. 99, 100. 

The greater part of the audience confirmed 
this statement ; and the judicial calumniator 
had nothing for it, but to sentence this unrea- 
sonable Puriian to six months' imprisonment 



in Newgate ; where he amused himself, as 
usual, by writing and publishing four pam- 
phlets in support of his opinions. 

It is by no means our intention, however, 
to digest a chronicle either of his persecutions 
or his publications. In the earlier part of his 
career, he seems to have been in prison every 
six months; and, for a very considerable pe- 
riod of it, certainly favoured the world with 
at least six new pamphlets every year. In all 
these, as well as in his public appearances, 
there is a singular mixture of earnestness and 
sobriety — a devotedness to the cause in which 
he was engaged, that is almost sublime ; and 
a temperance and patience towards his oppo- 
nents, that is truly admirable : while in the 
whole of his private life, there is redundant 
testimony, even from the mouths of his ene- 
mies, that his conduct was pure and philan- 
thropic in an extraordinary degree, and distin- 
guished at the some time for singular pru- 
dence and judgment in all ordinary affairs. 
His virtues and his sufferings appear at last to 
have overcome his father's objections to his 
peculiar tenets , and a thorough and cordial 
reconciliation took place previous to fheir final 
separation. On his death-bed, indeed, the ad- 
miral is said to have approved warmly of 
every part of his son's conduct ; and to nave 
predicted, that "if he and his friends kept to 
their plain way of preaching and of living, 
they would speedily make an end of the 
priests, to the end of the world." — By his 
father's death he succeeded to a handsome es- 
tate, then yielding upwards of 1500Z. a year; 
but made no change either in his professions 
or way of life. He was at the press and in 
Newgate, after this event, exactly as before : 
and defied and reviled the luxury of the age, 
just as vehemently, when he was in a condi- 
tion to partake of it, as in the days of his po- 
verty. Within a short time after his succes- 
sion, he made a pilgrimage to Holland and 
Germany in company with George Fox; where 
it is said that they converted many of all 
ranks, including young ladies of quality and 
old professors of divinity. They were ill 
used, however, by a surly Graf or two, who 
sent them out of their dominions under a cor- 
poral's guard ; an attention which they repaid, 
by long letters of expostulation and advice, 
which the worthy Grafs were probably neither 
very able nor very willing to read. 

In the midst of these labours and trials, he 
found time to marry a lady of great beaut)- 
and accomplishments; and settled himself in 
a comfortable and orderly house in the coun 
try — but, at the same time, remitted nothing 
of his zeal and activity in support of the causu 
in which he had embarked. When the penal 
statutes against Popish recusants were about 
to be passed, in 1678, by the tenor of whichj 
certain grievous punishments were inflictet- 
upon all who did not frequent the established 
church, or purge themselves upon oath, from 
Popery, William Perm was allowed to be hearO 
before a Committee'of the House of Commons, 
in support of the Quakers' application fov 
some exemption from the unintended severity 
of these edicts; — and what has been preserved 



CLARKSON'S LIFE OF PENN. 



655 



(if his speech, upon that occasion, certainly is 
not the least respectable of his performances. 
Jt required no ordinary magnanimity for any 
one, in the very height of the frenzy of the 
Popish plot, boldly to tell the House of Com- 
mons, "that it was unlawful to inflict punish- 
ment upon Catholics themselves, on account 
of a conscientious dissent." This, however, 
William Penn did, with the firmness of a true 
philosopher; but, at the same time, with so 
much of the meekness and humility of a 
Quaker, that he was heard without offence or 
interruption : — and having thus put in his pro- 
test against the general principle of intoler- 
ance, he proceeded to plead his own cause, 
and that of his brethren, w T ith admirable force 
and temper as follows : — 

" I was bred a Pro'estant, and that strictly too. 
I lost nothing by time or study. For years, read- 
ing, travel, and observation, made the religion of 
my educaiion the religion of my judgment. My 
alteration hath brought none to that belief; and 
though i he posture I am in may seem odd or strange 
to you. yet I am conscientious; and. till you know 
me better, I hope your charity will call it rather my 
unhappiness than my crime. I do tell you again, 
and here solemnly declare, in the presence of the' 
Almighty God, and before you all, that the profes- 
sion I now make, and the Society I now adhere to. 
have been so far from altering that Protestant judg- 
ment I had, that I am not conscious to myself of 
having; receded from an iota of any one principle 
maintained by those first Protestants and Reformers 
of Germany, and our own martyrs at home, against 
the see of Rome : And therefore it is, we think it 
hard, that though we deny in common with you 
tho?e doctrines of Rome so zealously protested 
against, (from whence the name of Protestants.) 
yet that we should be so unhappy as to suffer, and 
that with extreme severi'v, by laws made only 
against the main'ainers of those doctrines which we 
do so deny. We choose no suffering ; for God 
knows what we have already suffered, and how 
many sufficient and trading families are reduced to 
great poverty by it. We think ourselves an useful 
people. We are sure we are a peaceable people ; 
yet, if we must still suffer, let us not suffer as 
Popish Recusants, but as Protestant Dissenters." 

pp. 220, 221. 

About the same period we find him closely 
leagued with no less a person than Algernon 
Sydney, and busily employed in canvassing 
for him in the burgh of Guildford. But the 
most important of his occupations at this time 
were those which connected him with that 
region which was destined to be the scene 
of his greatest and most memorable exertions. 
An accidental circumstance had a few years 
before engaged him in some inquiries with 
regard to the state of that district in North 
America, since called New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania. A great part of this territory had 
been granted by the Crown to the family of 
Lord Berkeley, who had recently sold a large 
part of it to a Quaker of the name of Billynge : 
and this person having fallen into pecuniary 
embarrassments, prevailed upon William Penn 
to accept of a conveyance of this property, 
and to undertake the management of it, as 
trustee for his creditors. The conscientious 
trustee applied himself to the discharge of this 
duty withfrs habitual scrupulousness and ac- 
tivity; — and having speedily made himself 
acquainted with the condition and capabilities 



of the great province in question, was imme- 
diately struck with the opportunity it afforded, 
both for a beneficent arrangement of the inte- 
rests of its inhabitants, and for providing a 
pleasant and desirable retreat for such of his 
own communion as might be willing to leave 
their native land in pursuit of religious liberty. 
The original charter had vested the proprietor, 
under certain limitations, with the power oi 
legislation ; and one of the first works of Wil- 
liam Penn was to draw up a sort of constitu- 
tion for the land vested in Billynge — the car- 
dinal foundation of which was, that no man 
should be troubled, molested, or subjected to 
any disability, on account of his religion. He 
then superintended the embarkation of two or 
three ship-loads of Quakers, who set off for 
this land of promise; — and continued, from 
time to time, both to hear so much of their 
prosperity, and to feel how much a larger pro- 
prietor might have it in his power to promote 
and extend it, that he at length conceived the 
idea of acquiring to himself a much larger 
district, and founding a settlement upon a still 
more hberal and comprehensive plan. The 
means of doing this were providentially placed 
in his hands, by the circumstance of his father 
having a claim upon the dissolute and needy 
government of the day, for no less than 
16,000L, — in lieu of which W. Penn proposed 
that the district, since called Pennsylvania, 
should be made over to him, with such ample 
p<wvers of administration, as made him little 
less than absolute sovereign of the country. 
The right of legislation was left entirely to 
him, and such councils as he might appoint ; 
with no other limitation, than that his laws 
should be liable to be rescinded by the Privy 
Council of England, within six months after 
they were reported to it. This memorable 
charter was signed on the 4th of March, 1681. 
He originally intended, that the country should 
have been called New Wales; but the Under- 
Secretary of State, being a Welshman, thought, 
it seems, that this was using too much liberty 
with the ancient principality, and objected to 
it! He then suggested Sylvania; but the 
king himself insisted upon adding Penn to it, 
— and after some struggles of modesty, it was 
found necessary to submit to his gracious 
desires. 

He now proceeded to encourage settlers of 
all sorts, — but especially such sectaries as 
were impatient of the restraints and persecu- 
tions to which they were subjected in Eng- 
land ; and published certain conditions and 
regulations, " the first fundamental of which," 
as he expresses it, was, '-That every person 
should enjoy the free profession of his faith, 
and exercise of worship towards God, in such 
a way as he shall in his conscience believe is 
most acceptable ; and should be protected in 
this liberty by the authority of the civil magis- 
trate." With regard to the native inhabitants, 
he positively enacted, that " whoever should 
hurt, wrong, or offend any Indian, should in- 
cur the same penalty as if he had offended in 
like manner against his fellow planter :" and 
that the planters should not be their own 
judges in case of any difference with the h\ 



656 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



dians, but that all such differences should be 
settled by twelve referees, six Indians and six 
planters, under the direction, if need were, 
of the Governor of the province, and the Chief, 
or King of the Indians concerned. Under 
these wise and merciful regulations, three 
ships full of passengers sailed for the new 
province in the end of 1681. In one of these 
was Colonel Markham, a relation of Penn ; s, 
and intended to act as his secretary w T hen he 
should himself arrive. He was the chief of 
several commissioners, who were appointed to 
confer with the Indians w T ith regard to the ces- 
sion or purchase of their lands, and the terms 
of a perpetual peace, — and was the bearer of 
the following letter to them from the Governor, 
a part of which we think worthy of being- 
transcribed, for the singular plainness, and 
engaging honesty, of its manner. 

"Now, I would have you well observe, that I 
am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice 
which have been too much exercised toward you 
by the people of these parts of the world, who have 
sought themselves to make great advantages by you, 
rather than to b*e examples of goodness and patience 
unto you. This I hear hath been a matter of trouble 
to you, and cau'sed great grudging and animosities, 
sometimes to the shedding of blood. But I am not 
such a man; as is well known in my own country 
I have great love and regard toward you, and desire 
to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, 
just, and peaceable life ; and the people I send are 
of the same mind, and shall in all things behave 
themselves accordingly ; and if in any thing any 
shall offend you or your people, you shall hffve 
a full and speedy satisfaction for the same, by an 
equal number of just men on both sides, that by no 
means you may have just occasion of being offended 
against them. 

" I shall shortly come to see you myself, at 
which time we may more largely and freely confer 
and discourse of these matters. In the mean time 
I have sent my Commissioners to treat with you, 
about land, and a firm league of peace. Let me 
desire you to be kind to them and to the people, 
and receive the presents and tokens, which I have 
sent you, as a testimony of my good will to you, 
and of my resolution to live justly, peaceably, and 
friendly with you. I am, your loving Friend, 

" William Penn." 

In the course of the succeeding year, he 
prepared to follow these colonists; and ac- 
cordingly embarked, with about an hundred 
other Quakers, in the month of September, 
1682. Before separating himself, however, 
from his family on this long pilgrimage, he 
addressed a long letter of love and admoni- 
tion to his wife and children, from which we 
are tempted to make a pretty large extract 
for the entertainment and edification of our 
readers. There is something, we think, very 
touching and venerable in the affectionateness 
of its whole strain, and the patriarchal sim- 
plicity in which it is conceived ; while the 



language appears to us to be one of the most 
beautiful specimens of that soft and mellow 
English, which, with all its redundancy and 
cumbrous volume, has, to our ears, a far richer 
and more pathetic sweetness than the epigrams 
and apothegms of modern times. The letter 
begins in this manner — 

" My dear Wife and Children, 
" My love, which neither sea, norland, nor death 
itself, can extinguish or lessen toward you, most 



endearedly visits you with eternal embraces, and 
will abide with you for ever : and may the God of 
my life watch over you, and bless you, and do you 
good in this world and for ever ! — Some things are 
upon my spirit to leave with you in your respective 
capacities, as I am to one a husband, and to the 
rest a father, if I should never see you more in this 
world. 

"My dear wife ! remember thou wast the love 
of my youth, and much the joy of my life ; the 
most beloved, as well as most worthy of all my 
earthly comforts: and the reason of that love was 
more thy inward than thy outward excellencies, 
which yet were many. God knows, and thou 
knowest it, I can say it was a match of Providence's 
making ; and God's image in us both was the first 
thing, and the most amiable and engaging orna- 
ment in our eyes. Now I am to leave thee, and 
that without knowing whether I shall ever see thee 
more in this world, take my counsel into thy bosom, 
and let it dwell with thee in my stead while thou 
livest." 

Then, after some counsel about godliness 
and economy, he proceeds — 

"And now, my dearest, let me recommend to 
thy care my dear children ; abundantly beloved of 
me, as the Lord's blessings, and the sweet pledges 
of our mutual and endeared affection. Above all 
things endeavour to breed them up in the love of 
virtue, and that holy plain way of it which we have 
lived in, that the world in no part of it get into 
my family. I had rather they were homely than 
finely bred as to outward behaviour; yet I love 
sweetness mixed with gravity, and cheerfulness 
tempered with sobriety. Religion in the heart leads 
into this true civility, teaching men and women to 
be mild and courteous in their behaviour ; an ac- 
complishment worthy indeed of praise. 

" Next breed them up in a love one of another : 
tell them it is the charge I left behind me ; and 
that it is the way to have the love and blessing of 
God upon them. Somo'tmes separate them, but 
not long ; and allow thorn to send and give each 
other small things, to endear one another with. 
Once more I say, tell them it was my counsel they 
should be tender and affectionate one to another. 
For their learning be liberal. Spare no cost ; for 
by such parsimony all is lost that is saved : but let 
it be useful knowledge, such as is consistent with 
truth and godliness, not cherishing a vain conversa- 
tion or idle mind ; but ingenuity mixed with indus- 
try is good for the body and the mind too. Rather 
keep an ingenious person in the house to teach 
them, than send them to schools; too many evil 
impressions being commonly received there. Be 
sure to observe their genius, and do not cross it as 
to learning; let them not dwell too long on one 
thing; but let their change be agreeable, and all 
their diversions have some little bodily labour in 
them. When grown big, have most care for them ; 
for then there are more snares, both within and 
without. When marriageable, see that ihey have 
worthy persons in their eye, of good life, and good 
fame for piety and understanding. I desire no 
wealth, but sufficiency; and be sure their love be 
dear, fervent, and mutual, that it may be happy for 
them. I choose not they should be married to 
earthly, covetous kindred : and of cities and towns 
of concourse, beware : the world is apt to stick 
close to those who have lived and got wealth there : 
a country life and estate I like best for my children. 
I prefer a decent mansion of a hundred pounds per 
annum, before ten thousand pounds in London, or 
such like place, in a way of trade." 

He next addresses himself to his children. 

"Be obedient to your dear mother, a woman 
whose virtue and good name is an honour to you ; 
for she hath been exceeded by none in her time for 
her integrity, humanity, virtue, and good under- 



CLARKSON'S LIFE OF PENN. 



657 



itanding ; qualities not usual among women of her 
worldly condition and quality. Therefore honour 
and obey her, my dear children, as your mother, 
and your father's love and delight; nay, love her 
too, for she loved your father with a deep and 
upright love, choosing him before all her many 
suitors: and though she be of a delicate constitu- 
tion and noble spirit, yet she descended to the ut- 
most tenderness and care for you, performing the 
painfullest acts of service to you in your infancy, 
as a mother and a nurse too. I charge you, before 
the Lord, honour and obey, love and cherish your 
dear mother." 

After a great number of other affectionate 
counsels, he turns particularly to his elder 
boys. 

" And as for you, who are likely to be concerned 
in the government of Pennsylvania, I do charge 
you before the Lord God and his holy angels, that 
you be lowly, diligent, and tender; fearing God, 
> loving the people, and hating covetousness. Let 
justice have its impartial course, and the law free 
passage. Though to your loss, protect no man 
against it ; for you are not above the law, but the 
law above you. Live therefore the lives yourselves 
you would have the people live, and then shall you 
have right and boldness to punish the transgressor. 
Keep upon the square, for God sees you : therefore 
do your duty, and be sure you see with your own 
eyes, and hear with your own ears. Entertain no 
lurchers ; cherish no informers for gain or revenge ; 
use no tricks ; fly to no devices to support or cover 
injustice ; but let your hearts be upright before the 
Lord, trusting in him above the contrivances of men, 
and none shall be able to hurt or supplant you." 

We should like to see any private letter of 
instructions from a sovereign to his heir-appa- 
rent, that will bear a comparison with the 
injunctions of this honest Sectary. He con- 
cludes as follows : — 

" Finally, my children, love one another with a 
true endeared love, and your dear relations on both 
sides, and take care to preserve tender affection in 
your children to each other, often marrying within 
themselves, so as it be without the bounds forbidden 
in God's law, that so they may not, like the forget- 
ting unnatural world, grow out of kindred, and as 
cold as strangers ; but, as becomes a truly natural 
and Christian stock, you and yours after you, may 
live in the pure and fervent love of God towards 
one another, as becoming brethren in the spiritual 
and natural relation. 

"So farewell to my thrice dearly beloved wife 
and children ! 

"Yours, as God pleaseth, in that which no 
waters can quench, no time forget, nor distance 
wear away, but remains for ever, 

" William Penn." 
" Worminghursl, fourth of 
sixth month, 1682." 

Immediately after writing this letter, he 
embarked, and arrived safely in the Dela- 
ware with all his companions. The country 
assigned to him by the royal charter w r as yet 
full of its original inhabitants ; and the prin- 
ciples of William Penn did not allow him 
to look upon that gift as a warrant to dis- 
possess the first proprietors of the land. He 
had accordingly appointed his commissioners, 
the preceding year, to treat with them for 
the fair purchase of a part of their lands, and 
for their joint possession of the remainder ; 
and the terms of the settlement being now 
nearly agreed upon, he proceeded, very soon 
after his arrival, to conclude the transac- 



tion, and solemnly to pledge his faith, and 
to ratify and confirm the treaty, in sight both 
of the Indians and Planters. For this pur- 
pose a grand convocation of the tribes nad 
been appointed near the spot where Philadel- 
phia now stands; and it was agreed that he 
and the presiding Sachems should meet and 
exchange faith, under the spreading branches 
of a prodigious elm-tree that grew on the bank 
of the river. On the day appointed, accord- 
ingly, an innumerable multitude of the In- 
dians assembled in that neighbourhood j and 
were seen, with their dark visages and brand- 
ished arms, moving, in vast swarms, in the 
depth of the woods which then overshadowed 
the whole of that now cultivated region. On 
the other hand, William Penn, with a mode- 
rate attendance of Friends, advanced to meet 
them. He came of course unarmed — in his 
usual plain dress — without banners, or mace, 
or guards, or carriages ; and only distinguished 
from his companions by wearing a blue sash 
of silk network (which it seems is still pre- 
served by Mr. Kett of Seething-hall, near 
Norwich), and by having in his hand a roll 
of parchment, on which was engrossed the 
confirmation of the treaty of purchase and 
amity. As soon as he drew near the spot 
where the Sachems were assembled, the 
whole multitude of Indians threw down their 
weapons, and seated themselves on the ground 
in groups, each under his own chieftain ; and 
the presiding chief intimated to William Penn, 
that the nations were ready to hear him. Mr. 
Clarkson regrets, and we cordially join in the 
sentiment, that there is no written, contempo- 
rary account of the particulars attending this 
interesting and truly novel transaction. He 
assures us, how T ever, that they are still in a 
great measure preserved in oral tradition, and 
that both what we have just stated, and what 
follows, may be relied on as perfectly accu- 
rate. The sequel we give in his own words. 

" Having been thus called upon, he began. The 
Great Spirit, he said, who made him and them, who 
ruled the Heaven and the Earth, and who knew 
the innermost thoughts of man, knew that he and 
his friends had a hearty desire to live in peace and 
friendship with them, and to serve them to the 
utmost of their power. It was not their custom to 
use hostile weapons against their fellow-creatures, 
for which reason they had come unarmed. Their 
object was not to do injury, and thus provoke the 
Great Spirit, but to do good. They were then met 
on the broad pathway of good faith and good will, 
so that no advantage was to be taken on either 
side, but all was to be openness, brotherhood, and 
kve. After these and other words, he unrolled 
fffe parchment, and by means of the same inter- 
preter conveyed to them, article by article, the con- 
ditions of the Purchase, and the Words of the Com- 
pact then made for their eternal Union. Among 
other things, they were not to be molested in theii 
lawful pursuits, even in the territory they had alien- 
ated, for it was to be common to them and the 
English. They were to have the same liberty to 
do all things therein relating to the improvement 
of their grounds, and providing sustenance for their 
families, which the English had. If any disputes 
should arise between the two, they should be set- 
tled by twelve persons, half of whom should be 
English, and half Indians. He then paid them for 
the land ; and made them many presents besides, 
from the merchandize which had been spread before 



658 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



them. Having done this, he laid the roll of parch- 
ment on the ground, observing again, that the 
ground should be common to both people. He 
then added, that he would not do as the Maryland- 
ers did, that is, call them Children or Brothers 
only ; for often parents were apt to chastise their 
children too severely, and Brothers sometimes 
would differ: neither would he compare the Friend- 
ship between him and them to a Chain, for the 
rain might sometimes rust it, or a tree might fall 
and break it ; but he should consider them as the 
same flesh and blood with the Christians, and the 
same as if one man's body were to be divided into 
two parts. He then took up the parchment, and 
presented it to the Sachem, who wore the horn in 
his chaplet, and desired him and the other Sachems 
to preserve it carefully for three generations; that 
their children might know what had passed between 
them, just as if he had remained himself with them 
to repeat it." — pp. 341 — 343. 

The Indians, in return, made long and 
stately harangues — of which, however, no 
more seems to have been remembered, but 
that •' they pledged themselves to live in love 
with William Penn and his children, as long 
as the sun and moon should endure." And 
thus ended this famous treaty; — of which 
Voltaire has remarked, with so much truth 
and severity, " that it was the only one ever 
concluded between savages and Christians 
that was not ratified by an oath — and the only 
one that never was broken I" 

Such, indeed, was the spirit in which the 
negotiation was entered into, and the corres- 
ponding settlement conducted, that for the 
space of more than seventy years — and so 
long indeed as the Quakers retained the chief 
power in the government, the peace and amity 
which had been thus solemnly promised and 
concluded, never was violated; — and a large 
and most striking, though solitary example 
afforded, of the facility with which they who 
are really sincere and friendly in their own 
views, may live in harmony even with those 
who are supposed to be peculiarly fierce and 
faithless. We cannot bring ourselves to wish 
that there were nothing but Quakers in the 
world — because we fear it would be insup- 
portably dull : — but when we consider what 
tremendous evils daily arise from the petu- 
lance and profligacy, and ambition and irri- 
tability, of Sovereigns and Ministers, we can- 
not help thinking that it would be the most 
efficacious of all reforms to choose all those 
ruling personages out of that plain, pacific, 
and sober-minded sect. 

William Penn now held an assembly, in 
which fifty-nine important laws were passed 
in the course of three days. The most re- 
markable were those which limited the num- 
ber of capital crimes to two — murder and 
high treason — and which provided for the 
reformation, as well as the punishment of 
offenders, by making the prisons places of 
compulsive industry, sobriety, and instruc- 
tion. It was likewise enacted, that all chil- 
dren, of whatever rank, should be instructed 
in some art or trade. The fees of law pro- 
ceedings were fixed, and inscribed on public 
tables ; — and the amount of fines to be levied 
for offences also limited by legislative au- 
thority Many admirable regulations were 



added, for the encouragement of industry, 
and mutual usefulness and esteem. There 
is something very agreeable in the content- 
ment, and sober and well-earned self-corn 
placency, which breathe in the following ] et- 
ter of this great colonist — written durir% his 
first rest from those great labours. 

" I am now casting the country into townships 
for large lots of land. I have held an Assembly, 
in which many good laws are passed. We could 
not stay safely till the spring for a Government. I 
have annexed the Territories lately obtained to the 
Province, and passed a general naturalization for 
strangers; which hath much pleased the people. — 
As to outward things, we are satisfied ; the land 
good, the air clear and sweet, the springs plentiful, 
and provision good and easy to come at ; an innu- 
merable quantity of wild fowl and fish : in fine, 
here is what an Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would 
be well contented with ; and service enough for 
God, for the fields are here white for harvest. O, 
how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from 
the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, 
and perplexities of woful Europe !" — pp. 350, 351. 

We cannot persuade ourselves, however, 
to pursue any farther the details of this edify- 
ing biography. W. Penn returned to England 
after a residence of about two years in his 
colony — got into great favour with James II. 
— and was bitterly calumniated as a Jesuit, 
both by churchmen and sectaries — went on 
doing good and preaching Quakerism — was 
sorely persecuted and insulted, and deprived 
of his Government, but finally acquitted, and 
honourably restored, under King William — 
lost his wife and son — travelled and married 
again — returned to Pennsylvania in 1699 for 
two years longer — came finally home to Eng- 
land — continued to preach and publish as 
copiously as ever — was reduced to a state of 
kindly dotage by three strokes of apoplexy — 
and died at last at the age of seventy -two, in 
the year 1718. 

He seems to have been a man of kind affec- 
tions, singular activity and perseverance, and 
great practical wisdom. Yet we can well 
believe with Burnet, that he was " a little 
puffed up with vanity;" and that "he had a 
tedious, luscious way of talking, that was apt 
to tire the patience of his hearers. 77 He was 
very neat in his person ; and had a great hor- 
ror at tobacco, which occasionally endangered 
his popularity in his American domains. He 
was mighty methodical, too, in ordering his 
household ; and had stuck up in his hall a 
written directory, or General Order, for the 
regulation of his family, to which he exacted 
the strictest conformity. According to this 
rigorous system of discipline, he required — 

" That in that quarter of the year which included 
part of the winter and part of the spring, the mem- 
bers of it were to rise at seven in the morning, in 
the next at six, in the next at five, and in the last 
at six again. Nine o'clock was" the hour for break- 
fast, twelve for dinner, seven for supper, and ten 
to retire to bed. The whole family were to assem- 
ble every morning for worship. They were to be 
called together at eleven again, that each might 
read in turn some portion of the holy Scripture, or 
of the Martyrology, or of Friends' books ; and 
finally they were to meet again for worship at six 
in the evening. On the days of public meeting, no 
one was to be absent, except on the plea of health 



ADMIRAL LORD Cu-LiNGWOOD. 



659 



or of unavoidable engagement. The servants were 
to be called up after supper to render to their mas- 
ter and mistress an account of what they had done 
in the day, and to receive instructions for the next ; 
and were particularly exhorted to avoid lewd dis- 
courses and troublesome noises." 

We shall not stop to examine what dregs 
of ambition, or what hankerings after worldly 
prosperity, may have mixed themselves with 



the pious and philanthropic principles that 
were undoubtedly his chief guides in forming 
that great settlement which still bears his 
name, and profits by his example. Human 
virtue does not challenge, nor admit of such 
a scrutiny ! And it should be sufficient for 
the glory of William Penn, that he stands 
upon record as the most humane, the most 
moderate, and the most pacific of all rulers. 



(ittaS, 1828.) 

A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice- Admiral Lord Collingwood: 
interspersed with Memoirs of his Life. By G. L. Newnham Collingwood, Esq. F. R. S. 
2 vols. 8vo. Ridgway. London : 1828. 



We do not know when we have met with 
so delightful a book as this, — or one with 
Which we are so well pleased with ourselves 
for being delighted. Its attraction consists 
almost entirely in its moral beauty; and it 
has the rare merit of filling us with the deep- 
est admiration for heroism, without suborning 
our judgments into any approbation of the 
vices and weaknesses with which poor mortal 
heroism is so often accompanied. In this re- 
spect, it is not only more safe, but more agree- 
able reading than the Memoirs of Nelson; 
where the lights and shadows are often too 
painfully contrasted, and the bane and the 
antidote exhibited in proportions that cannot 
but be hazardous for the ardent and aspiring 
spirits on which they are both most calculated 
to operate. 

It is a mere illusion of national vanity 
which prompts us to claim Lord Collingwood 
as a character peculiarly English % Certainly 
we must admit, that we have few English- 
men left who resemble him ; and even that 
our prevailing notions and habits make it 
likely that we shall have still fewer hereafter. 
Yet we do not know where such a character 
could have been formed but in England ; — 
and feel quite satisfied, that it is there only 
that it can be properly valued or understood. 
The combination of the loftiest daring w T ith 
the most watchful humanity, and of the no- 
blest ambition with the greatest disdain of 
personal advantages, and the most generous 
sympathy with rival merit, though rare enough 
to draw forth at all times the loud applause 
of mankind, have not been without example, 
in any race that boasts of illustrious ances- 
tors. But, for the union of those high quali- 
ties with unpretending and almost homely 
simplicity, sweet temper, undeviating recti- 
tude, and all the purity and sanctity of do- 
mestic affection and humble content — we can 
look, we think, only to England, — or to the 
fabulous legends of uncorrupted and unin- 
structed Rome. All these graces, however, 
and more than these, were united in Lord 
Collingwood: For he had a cultivated and 
even elegant mind, a taste for all simple en- 
joyments, and a rectitude of understanding — 
which seemed in him to be but the emanation 



of a still higher rectitude. Inferior, perhaps, 
to Nelson, in original genius and energy, and 
in that noble self-confidence in great emer- 
gencies which these qualities usually inspire, 
he was fully his equal in seamanship and the 
art of command ; as well as in that devoted- 
ness to his country and his profession, and 
that utter fearlessness and gallantry of soul 
which exults and rejoices in scenes of tre- 
mendous peril, which have almost ceased to 
be remarkable in the character of a British 
sailor. On the other hand, we think it will 
scarcely be disputed, that he was superior to 
that great commander in general information 
and accomplishment, and in those thoughtful 
habits, and that steadiness and propriety of 
personal deportment, which are their natural 
fruit. His greatest admirers, however, can 
ask no higher praise for him than that he stood 
on the same lofty level with Nelson, as to that 
generous and cordial appreciation of merit in 
his brother officers, by which, even more, per- 
haps, than by any of his other qualities, that 
great man was distinguished. It does one's 
heart good, indeed, to turn from the petty 
cabals, the paltry jealousies, the splendid de- 
tractions, the irritable vanities, which infest 
almost every other walk of public life, and 
meet one, indeed, at every turn in all scenes 
of competition, and among men otherwise 
eminent and honourable, — to the brother-like 
frankness and open-hearted simplicity, even 
of the official communications between Nelson 
and Collingwood ; and to the father-like in- 
terest with which they both concurred in fos- 
tering the glory, and cheering on the fortunes 
of their younger associates. In their noble 
thirst for distinction, there seems to be abso- 
lutely no alloy of selfishness: and scarcely 
even a feeling of rivalry. If the opportunity 
of doing a splendid thing has not come to 
them, it has come to some one who deserved 
it as well, and perhaps needed it more. It 
will come to them another day — and then the 
heroes of this will repay their hearty congra- 
tulations. There is something inexpressibly 
beautiful and attractive in this spirit of mag- 
nanimous fairness ; and if we could only be- 
lieve it to be general in the navy, we should 
gladly recant all our heretical doubts as to the 



660 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



superior virtues of men at sea, join chorus to 
all the slang songs of Dibdin on the subject, 
and applaud to the echo all the tirades about 
British tars and wooden walls, which have so 
often nauseated us at the playhouses. 

We feel excessively obliged to the editor 
of this book ; both for making Lord Colling- 
wood known to us. and for the very pleasing, 
modest, and effectual way he has taken to do 
it in. It is made up almost entirely of his 
Lordship's correspondence ; and the few con- 
necting statements and explanatory observa- 
tions are given with the greatest clearness and 
brevity; and very much in the mild, concili- 
atory, and amiable tone of the remarkable 
person to whom they relate. When we say 
that this .publication has made Lord Colling- 
wood known to us, we do not mean that we. 
or the body of the nation, were previously 
ignorant that he had long served with distinc- 
tion in the navy, and that it fell to his lot, as 
second in command at Trafalgar, to indite that 
eloquent and touching despatch which an- 
nounced the final ruin of the hostile fleets, 
and the death of the Great Admiral by whose 
might they had been scattered. But till this 
collection appeared, the character of the man 
was known, we believe, only to those who 
had lived with him ; and the public was gene- 
rally ignorant both of the detail of his ser- 
vices, and the high principle and exemplary 
diligence which presided over their perform- 
ance. Neither was it known, we are per- 
suaded, that those virtues and services actually 
cost him his life ! and that the difficulty of 
finding, in our large list of admirals, any one 
fit to succeed him in the important station 
which he filled in his declining years, induced 
the government, — most ungenerously, we 
must say, and unjustly, — to refuse his earnest 
desire to be relieved of it ; and to insist on 
his remaining to the last gasp, at a post which 
he would not desert so long as his country 
required him- to maintain it, but at which, it 
was apparent to himself, and all the world, 
that he must speedily die. The details now 
before us will teach the profession, we hope, 
by what virtues and what toils so great and 
so pure a fame can alone be won ; and by 
rendering in this way such characters less 
rare, will also fender the distinction to which 
they lead less fatal to its owners : While they 
cannot fail, we think, to awaken the govern- 
ment to a sense of its own ingratitude to those 
who have done it the noblest service, and of 
the necessity of at last adopting some of the 
suggestions which those great benefactors 
have so long pressed on its attention. 

We have not much concern with the gene- 
alogy or early history of Lord Collingwood. 
He was born in 1750, of an honourable and 
ancient family of Northumberland, but of 
slender patrimony; and went to sea, under 
the care of his relative, Captain, afterwards 
Admiral Brathwaite, when only eleven years 
old. He used, himself, to tell, as an instance 
of his youth and simplicity at this time, 
" that as he was sitting crying for his sepa- 
ration from home, the first lieutenant ob- 
served him , and pitying the tender years of 



the poor child, spoke to him in terms of much 
encouragement and kindness; which, as Lord 
Collingwood said, so won upon his heart, that, 
taking this officer to his box, he offered him 
in gratitude a large piece of plumcake which 
his mother had given him! ; ' Almost from 
this early period he was the intimate friend 
and frequent associate of the brave Nelson; 
and had his full share of the obscure perils 
and unknown labours which usually form the 
noviciate of naval eminence. He was made 
commander in 1779 ; and being sent to the 
West Indies after the peace of 1783, was only 
restored to his family in 1786. He married 
in 1791 ; and was again summoned upon 
active service on the breaking out of the war 
with France in 1793; from which period to 
the end of his life, in 1810, he was continually 
in employment, and never permitted to see 
that happy home, so dear to his heart, and so 
constantly in his thoughts, except for one short 
interval of a year, during the peace of Amiens. 
During almost the whole of this period he 
was actually afloat ; and was frequently, for 
a year together, and once for the incredible 
period of twenty-two months, without drop- 
ping an anchor. He was in almost all the 
great actions, and had more that his share of 
the anxious blockades, which occurred in that 
memorable time; and signalised himself in 
all, by that mixture of considerate vigilance 
and brilliant courage, which may be said to 
have constituted his professional character. 
His first great battle was that which ended in 
Lord Howe's celebrated victory of the 1st of 
June, 1794: and we cannot resist the tempta- 
tion of heading our extracts with a part of 
the account he has given of it, in a letter to 
his father-in-law, Mr. Blackett — not so much 
for the purpose of recalling the proud feelings 
which must ever cling to the memory of our 
first triumph over triumphant France, as for 
the sake of that touching mixture it presents, 
of domestic affection and family recollections, 
with high professional enthusiasm, and the 
kindling^ spirit of war. In this situation he 
says : — 

" We cruised for a few days, like disappointed 
people looking for what we could not find, until the 
morning of little Sarah's birth-day, between eight 
and nine o'clock, when the French fleet, of twenty- 
five sail of the line was discovered to windward. 
We chased them, and they bore down wiihin about 
five miles of us. The night was spent in watching 
and preparation for the succeeding day ; and many 
a blessing did I send forth to my Sarah, lest I should 
never bless her more ! At dawn, we made our ap- 
proach on the enemy, then drew up, dressed our 
ranks, and it was about eight when the Admiral 
made the signal for each ship to engage her oppo- 
nent, and bring her to close action, — and then down 
we went under a crowd of sail, and in a manner 
that would have animated the coldest heart, and 
struck terror into the most intrepid enemy. The 
ship we were to engage was two a-head of the 
French Admiral, so that we had to go through his 
fire and that of the two ships next him, and received 
all their broadsides two or three times before we 
fired a gun. It was then near ten o'clock. I ob- 
served to the Admiral, that about that time our 
wives were going to church, but that I thought that 
the peal we should ring about the Frenchman's ears 
would outdo their parish bells ! Lord Howe began 



ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD. 



661 



his fire some time before we did ; and he is not in 
the habit of firing soon. We got very near indeed, 
and then began such a fire as would have done you 
good to have heard ! During the whole action the 
most exact order was preserved, and no accident 
happened but what was inevitable, and the conse- 
quence of the enemy's shot. In ten minutes the 
Admiral was wounded; I caught him in my arms 
before he fell: the first lieutenant was slightly 
wounded by the same shot, and I thought I was in 
a fair way of being left on deck by myself; but the 
lieutenant got his head dressed, and came up again. 
Soon after, they called from the forecastle that the 
Frenchman was sinking; at which the men started 
up and gave three cheers. I saw the French ship 
dismasted and on her broadside, but in an instant 
she was clouded with smoke, and I do not know 
whether she sunk or not. All the ships in our 
neighbourhood were dismasted, and are taken, ex- 
cept the French Admiral, who was driven out of the 
line by Lord Howe, and saved himself by flight." 

In 1796 he writes to the game gentleman, 
from before Toulon — 

" Ii is but dull work, lying off the enemy's port : 
they cannot move a ship without our seeing them, 
which must be very mortifying to them ; but we 
have the mortification also to see their merchant- 
vessels going along shore, and cannot molest them. 
It is not a service on which we shall get fat ; and 
often do I wish we had some of those bad potatoes 
which Old Scott and William used to throw over 
the wall of the garden, for we feel the want of vege- 
tables more than anything ! 

" The accounts I receive of my dear girls give 
me infinite pleasure. How happy I shall be to see 
them again ! but God knows when the blessed day 
will come in which we shall be again restored to the 
comforts of domestic life ; for here, so far from any 
prospect of peace, the plot seems to thicken, as if 
the most serious part of the war were but beginning." 

In 1797 he had a great share in the splendid 
victory off Cape St. Vincent, and writes, as 
usual, a simple and animated account of it to 
Mr. Blackett. We omit the warlike details, 
however, and give only these characteristic 
sentences : — 

" I wrote to Sarah the day after the action with 
the Spaniards, but I am afraid I gave her but an 
imperfect account of it. H is a very difficult thing 
for those engaged in such a scene to give the de- 
tail of the whole, because all the powers they have 
are occupied in their own part of it. As to myself, 
I did my duty to the utmost of my ability, as I have 
ever done: That is acknowledged now; and that 
is the only real difference between this and the 
former action. One of the great pleasures I have 
received from this glorious event is, that I expect it 
will enable me to provide handsomely for those who 
serve me well. Give my love to my wife, and 
blessing to my children. What a day it will be to 
me when I meet them again ! The Spaniards 
always carry their patron saint to sea with them, 
and I have given St. Isidro a berth in my cabin: It 
was the least I could do for him, after he had con- 
signed his charge to me. It is a good picture, as 
you will see when he goes to Morpeth." . . . 

By some extraordinary neglect, Captain 
Collingwood had not received one of the 
medals generally distributed to the officers 
who distinguished themselves in Lord Howe's 
action; and it is to this he alludes in one of 
the passages we have now cited. His efforts, 
however, on this last occasion, having been 
the theme of universal admiration throughout 
the fleet, and acknowledged indeed by a va- 
riety of grateful and congratulary letters from 



the admirals, and from Captain Nelson, to 
whose aid he came most gallantly in a mo- 
ment of great peril, it was at last thought nec- 
essary to repair this awkward omission. 

" When Lord St. Vincent informed Captain Col- 
lingwood that he was to receive one of the medals 
which were distributed on this occasion, he told the 
Admiral, with great feeling and firmness, that he 
could not consent to receive a medal, while that for 
the 1st of June was withheld. 'I feel,' said he, 
' that I was then improperly passed over ; and to re- 
ceive such a distinction now, would be to acknow- 
ledge the propriety of that injustice.' — ' That is pre- 
cisely the answer which I expected from you, Cap- 
tain Collingwood,' was Lord St. Vincent's reply. 

" The two medals were afterwards — and as Cap- 
tain Collingwood seems to have thought, by desire 
of the King — transmitted to him at the same time 
by Lord Spencer, the then First Lord of the Admi- 
ralty, with a civil apology for the former omission. 
1 1 congratulate you most sincerely,' said his Lord- 
ship, ' on having had the good fortune to bear so 
conspicuous a part on two such glorious occasions ; 
and have troubled you with this letter, only to say, 
that the former medal would have been transmitted 
to you some months ago, if a proper conveyance 
had been found for it.' " 

We adfl the following little trait of the un- 
daunted Nelson, from a letter of the same 
year : — 

" My friend Nelson, whose spirit is equal to all 
undertakings, and whose resources are fitted to all 
occasions, was sent with three sail of the line and 
some other ships to Teneriffe, to surprise and cap- 
ture it. After a series of adventures, tragic and 
comic, that belong to romance, they were obliged 
to abandon the enterprise. Nelson was shot in the 
right arm when landing, and was obliged to be car- 
ried on board. He himself hailed the ship, and de- 
sired the surgeon would get his instruments ready 
to dis-arm him ; and in half an hour after it was off, 
he gave all the orders necessary for carrying on their 
operations, as if nothing had happened to him. In 
three weeks after, when he joined us, he went on 
board the Admiral, and I think exerted himself to 
a degree of great imprudence." 

The following letter to Captain Ball, on oc- 
casion of the glorious victory of the Nile, may 
serve to illustrate what we have stated, as to 
the generous and cordial sympathy with rival 
glory and fortune, which breathes throughout 
the whole correspondence : — 

" I cannot express to you how great my joy was 
when the news arrived of the complete and unparal- 
leled victory which you obtained over the French ; 
or what were my emotions of thankfulness, that the 
life of my worthy and much-respected friend was 
preserved through such a day of danger, to his 
family and his country. I congratulate you, my 
dear friend, on your success. Oh, my dear Ball, 
how I have lamented that I was not one of you ! 
Many a victory has been won, and I hope many 
are yet to come, but there never has *>een, nor will 
be perhaps again, one in which the fnihs have been 
so completely gathered, the blow so nobly followed 
up, and the consequences so fairly brought to ac- 
count. I have heard with great pleasure, that your 
squadron has presented Sir H. Nelson with a sword ; 
it is the honours to which he led you reflec:ed back 
upon himself, — the finest testimony of his merits for 
having led you to a field in which you all so nobly 
displayed your own. The expectation of the people 
of England was raised to the highest pitch ; the 
event has exceeded all expectation." 

After this he is sent, for repairs, for a few 
seks to Portsmouth 
in-law as follows: — 



weeks to Portsmouth, and writes to his father 



3 F 



662 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



" We never know, till it is too late, whether we 
are going too fast or too slow ; but I am now re- 
penting that I did not persuade my dear Sarah to 
come to me as soon as I knew I was not to go from 
this port ; but the length of the journey, the inclem- 
ency of the weather, and the little prospect of my 
staying here half this time, made me think it an un- 
necessary fatigue for her. I am now quite sick at 
heart with disappointment and vexation ; and though 
I hope every day for relief, yet I find it impossible 
to say when I shall be clear. 

"Last night I went to Lady Parker's twelfth- 
night, where all the gentlemen's children of the 
town were at dance and revelry : But I thought of 
my own ! and was so completely out of spirits that 
I left them in the middle of it. My wife shall know 
all my movements, even the very hour in which I 
shall be able to come to you. I hope they will not 
hurry me to sea again, for my spirit requires some 
respite from the anxieties which a ship occasions. 

"Bless my precious girls for me, and their be- 
loved mother." 

The following are in the same tone of ten- 
derness and considerate affection ; and coming 
from the hand of the fiery warrior, and de- 
voted servant of his country, are to us ex- 
tremely touching: — 

" Would to God that this war were happily con- 
cluded ! It is anguish enough to me to be thus for 
ever separated from my family ; but that my Sarah 
should, in my absence, be suffering from illness, 
is complete misery. Pray, my dear sir, have the 
goodness to write a line or two very often, to tell 
me how she does. I am quite pleased at the ac- 
count you give me of my girls. If it were peace, I do 
not think there would be a happier set of creatures 
in Northumberland than we should be ! . . . . 

" It is a great comfort to me, banished as I am 
from all that is dear to me, to learn that my beloved 
Sarah and her girls are well. Would to Heaven it 
were peace ! that I might come, and for the rest of 
my life be blessed in their affection. Indeed, this 
unremitting hard service is a great sacrifice ; giving 
up all that is pleasurable to the soul, or soothing to 
the mind, and engaging in a constant contest with 
the elements, or with tempers and dispositions as 
boisterous and untractable. Great allowance should 
be made for us when we come on shore : for being 
long in the habits of absolute command, we grow 
impatient of contradiction, and are unfitted, I fear, 
for the gentle intercourse of quiet life. I am really 
in great hopes that it will not be long before the ex- 
periment will be made upon me — for I think we 
shall soon have peace ; and 1 assure you that I will 
endeavour to conduct myself with as much modera- 
tion as possible ! I have come to another resolution, 
which is, when this war is happily terminated, to 
think no more of ships, but pass the rest of my days' 
in the bosom of my family, where I think my pros- 
pects of happiness are equal to any man's." . . . . 

"You have been made happy this winter in the 
visit of your daughter. How glad should I have 
been could I have joined you ! but it will not be 
long; two year? more will, I think, exhaust me 
completely, ar.a then I shall be fit only to be nursed. 
God knows now little claim I have on anybody to 
take that trouble. My daughters can never be to 
me what yours have been, whose affections have 
been nurtured by daily acts of kindness. They may 
be told that it is a duty to regard me, but it is not 
reasonable to expect that they should have the same 
feeling for a person of whom they have only heard : 
But if they are good and virtuous, as I hope and be- 
lieve they will be, I may share at least in their kind- 
ness with the rest of the world." 

He decides at last on sending for his wife and 
child, in the hope of being allowed to remain 
for some months at Portsmouth.' but is sud- 
denly ordered off on the very day they are ex- 



pected ! It is delightful to have to record suck 
a letter as the following, on occasion of such 
an affliction, from such a man as Nelson: — 

" My dear Friend, — I truly feel for you, and as 
much for poor Mrs. Collingwood. How sorry I 
am! For Heaven's sake, do not think I had the 
gift of foresight ; but something told me, so it would 
be. Can't you contrive and stay to-night? it will 
be a comfort if only to see your family one hour. 
Therefore, had you not better stay on shore and 
wait for her? Ever, my dear Collingwood, believe 
me, your affectionate and faithful friend, 

" Nelson and Bronte. 

" If they would only have manned me and sent 
me off, it would have been real pleasure tome. How 
cross are the fates !'' 

He does stay accordingly, and sees ihose 
beloved pledges for a few short hours. We 
will not withhold from our readers his account 
of it :— 

" Sarah will have told you how and when we 
met; it was a joy to me that I cannot describe, and 
repaid me, short as our interview was, for a world 
of woe which I was suffering on her account. I had 
been reckoning on the possibility of her arrival that 
Tuesday, when about two o'clock I received an 
express to go to sea immediately with all the ships 
that were ready, and had we not then been engaged 
at a court martial, I might have got outthat day ; 
but this business delaying me till near night, I de- 
termined to wait on shore until eight o'clock for the 
chance of their arrival. I went to dine wiih Lord 
Nelson ; and while we were at dinner their arrival 
was announced to me. I flew to the inn where I 
had desired my wife to come, and found her and 
little Sarah as well after their journey as if it had 
lasted only for the day. No greater happiness is 
human nature capable of than was mine that even- 
ing; but at dawn we parted — and I went to sea !" 

And afterwards — 

" You will have heard from Sarah what a meet- 
ing we had, how short our interview, and how sud- 
denly we parted. It is grief to me to think of it 
now ; it almost broke my heart then. Alter such a 
journey, to see me but for a few hours, with scarce 
time for her to relate the incidents of her journey, 
and no time for me to tell her half that my heart felt 
at such a proof of her affection : But I am thankful 
that I did see her, and my sweet child. It was a 
blessing to me, and composed my mind, which was 
before very much agitated. I have little chance of 
seeing her again, unless a storm should drive us into 
port, for the French fleet is in a state of prepara- 
tion, which makes it necessary for us to watch them 
narrowly. 

" I can still talk to you of nothing but the delight 
I experienced in the little I have had of the company 
of my beloved wife and of my little Sarah. What 
comfort is promised to me in the. affections of that 
child, if it should please Sod that we ever again re- 
turn to the quiet domestic cares of peace ! I should 
be much obliged to you if you would send Scott a 
guinea for me, for these hard times must pinch the 
poor old man, and he will miss my wife, who was 
very kind to him !" 

Upon the peace of Amiens he at last got 
home, about the middle of 1802. The follow- 
ing brief sketch of his enjoyment there, is 
from the hand of his affectionate editor : — 

" During this short period of happiness and rest, 
he was occupied in superintending the education o{ 
his daughters-,' and in continuing those habits of 
study which ha'd long been familiar to him. His 
reading was extensive, particularly in history; and 
it was his constant practice to exercise himself in 
composition, by making abstracts from the books 



ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD. 



663 



which he read ; and some of his abridgments, with 
the observations by which he illustrated them, are 
written with singular conciseness and power- 4 I 
know not,' said one of the most eminent English 
diplomatists, with whom he had afterwards very 
frequent communications, 'I know not where Lord 
Collingwood got his style, but he writes better 
than any of us.' His amusements were found in 
the intercourse with his family, in drawing, plant- 
ing, and the cultivation of his garden, which was on 
the bank of the beautiful river Wansbeck. This was 
his favourite employment ; and on one occasion, a 
brother Admiral; who had sought him through the 

farden in vain, at last discovered him with his gar- 
ener, old Scott, to whom he was much attached, 
in the bottom of a deep trench, which they were 
both busily occupied in digging." 

In spring 1803. however, he was again call- 
ed upon duty by his ancient commander, 
Admiral Cornwallis, who hailed him as he ap- 
proached, by saying, "Here comes Colling- 
wood ! — the last to leave, and the first to re- 
join me !' ? His occupation there was to watch 
and blockade the French fleet at Brest, a duty 
which he performed with the most unwearied 
and scrupulous anxiety. 

" During this time he frequently passed the whole 
night on the quarter-deck, — a practice which, in 
circumstances of difficulty, he continued till the 
latest years of his life. When, on these occasions, 
he has told his friend Lieutenant Clavell, who had 
gained his entire confidence, that they must not 
leave the deck for the night, and that officer has 
endeavoured to persuade him that there was no oc- 
casion for it, as a good look-out was kept, and re- 
presented that he was almost exhausted with fa- 
tigue ; the Admiral would reply, 'I fear you are. 
You have need of rest ; so go to bed, Clavell, and 
I will watch by myself.' Very frequently have 
they slept together on a gun ; from which Admiral 
Collingwood would rise from time to time, to sweep 
the horizon with his night-glass, lest the enemy 
should escape in the dark." 

In 1805 he was moved to the station off 
Cadiz, and condemned to the same weary 
task of watching and observation. He here 
writes to his father-in-law as follows : — 

" How happy should I be, could I but hear from 
home, and know how my dear girls are going on ! 
Bounce is my only pet now, and he is indeed a good 
fellow ; he sleeps by the side of my cot, whenever 
I lie in one. until near the time of tacking, and then 
marche's off, to be out of the hearing of the guns, 
for he is not reconciled to them yet. I am fully de- 
termined, if I can get home and manage it properly, 
to go on shore next spring for the rest of my life, for 
I am very weary. There is no end to my business ; 
I am at work from morning till even ; but I dare 
say Lord Nelson will be out next month. He told 
me he should; and then what will become of me I 
do not know. I should wish to go home : but I must 
go or stay as the exigencies of the times require." 

At last, towards the close of the year, the 
enemy gave some signs of an intention to 
come out — and the day of Trafalgar was at 
hand. In anticipation of it, Lord Nelson ad- 
dressed the following characteristic note to his 
friend, which breathes in every line the noble 
frankness and magnanimous confidence of his 
soul : — 

"They surely cannot escape us. I wish we 
could get a fine dny. Isend you my plan of attack, 
as far as a man dare venture to guess at the very 
uncertain position the enemy may be found in : but, 
say dear friend, it is to place you perfectly at ease 



respecting my intentions, and to give full scope to 
your judgment for carrying them into effect. We 
can, my dear Coll., have no little jealousies: we 
have only one great object in view — that of anni- 
hilating our enemies, and getting a glorious peace 
for our country. No man has more confidence in 
another than I have in you ; and no man will ren- 
der your services more justice than your very old 
friend, Nelson and Bronte." 

The day at last came ; and though it is 
highly characteristic of its author, we will not 
indulge ourselves by transcribing any part of 
the memorable despatch, in which Lord Col- 
lingwood, after the fall of his heroic command- 
er, announced its result to his country. We 
cannot, however, withhold from our readers 
the following particulars as to his personal 
conduct and deportment, for which they 
would look in vain in that singularly modest 
and generous detail. The first part, the editor 
informs us, is from the statement of his confi- 
dential servant. 

" 'I entered the Admiral's cabin,' he observed, 
'about daylight, and found him already up and 
dressing. He asked if I had seen the French fleet; 
and on my replying that I had not, he told me to 
look out at them, adding, that, in a very short time, 
we should see a great deal more of them. 1 then 
observed a crowd of ships to leeward ; but I could 
not help looking, with stiil greater interest, at the 
Admiral, who, during all this time, was shaving 
himself with a composure that quite astonished 
me !' Admiral Collingwood dressed himself that 
morning with peculiar care ; and soon after, meet- 
ing Lieutenant Clavell, advised him to pull off his 
boots, ' You had better,' he said, ' put on silk 
stockings, as I have done : for if one should get a 
shot in the leg, they would be so much more 
manageable for the surgeon.' He then proceeded 
to visit the decks, encouraged the men to the dis- 
charge of their duty, and addressing the officers, 
said to them, ' Now, gentlemen, let us do some- 
thing to-day which the world may talk of hereafter.' 

"He had changed his flag about ten days before 
the action, from the Dreadnought; the crew of 
which had been so constantly practised in the exer- 
cise of the great guns, under his daily superinten- 
dence, that few ships' companies could equal them 
in rapidity and precision of firing. He had begun 
by telling them, that if they could fire three well- 
directed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel could 
resist them ; and, from constant practice, they were 
enabled to do so in three minutes and a half. But 
though he left a crew which had thus been disci- 
plined under his own eye, there was an advantage 
in the change ; for the Royal Sovereign, into which 
he went, had lately returned from England, and as 
her copper was quite clean, she much outsailed the 
other ships of the lee division. While they were 
running down, the well-known telegraphic signal 
was made of ' England expects every man to do his 
duty.' When the Admiral observed it first, he said 
that he wished Nelson would make no more signals, 
for they ail understood what they were to do: but 
when the purport of it was communicated to him he 
expressed great delight and admiration, and made 
it known to the officers and ship's company. Lord 
Nelson had been requested by Captain Blackwood 
(who was anxious for the preservation of so invalu- 
able a life) to allow some other vessel to take the 
lead, and at last gave permission that the Temeraire 
should go a-head of him ; but resolving to defeat 
the order which he had given, he crowded more 
sail on the Victory, and maintained his place. The 
Royal Sovereign was far in advance when Lieute- 
nant Clavell observed that the Victory was setting 
her studding sails, and with that spirit of honour- 
able emulation which prevailed between the squad- 
rons, and particularly between these two ships, ne 



664 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



pointed it out to Admiral Collingwood, and re- 
quested his permission to do the same. ' The ships 
of our division,' replied the Admiral, ' are not yet 
sufficiently up for us to do so now ; but you may be 
getting ready.' The studding sail and royal halliards 
were accordingly manned, and in about ten minutes 
the Admiral, observing Lieutenant Clavell's eyes 
fixed upon him with a look of expectation, gave him 
a nod ; on which that officer went to Captain 
Rotherham and told him that the Admiral desired 
him to make all sail. The order was then given to 
rig out and hoist away, and in one instant the ship 
was under a crowd of sail, and went rapidly a-head. 
The Admiral then directed the officers to see that 
all the men lay down on the decks, and were kept 
quiet. At this time the Fougueux, the ship astern 
of the Santa Anna, had closed up with the intention 
of preventing the Royal Sovereign from going 
through the line ; and when Admiral Collingwood 
observed it, he desired Captain Rotherham to steer 
immediately for the Frenchman and carry away his 
bowsprit. To avoid this the Fougueux backed her 
main top sail, and suffered the Royal Sovereign to 
pass, at the same time beginning her fire ; when 
the Admiral ordered a gun to be occasionally fired 
at her, to cover his ship with smoke. 

" The nearest of the English ships was now dis- 
tant about a mile from the Royal Sovereign ; and 
it was at this time, while she was pressing alone 
into the midst of the combined fleets, that Lord 
Nelson said to Captain Blackwood, ' See how that 
noble fellow, Collingwood, takes his ship into 
action. How I envy him !' On the other hand, 
Admiral Collingwood, well knowing his comman- 
der and friend, observed, ' What would Nelson 
give to be here !' and it. was then, too, that Admiral 
Villeneuve, struck with the daring manner in which 
the leading ships of the English squadrons came 
down, despaired of the issue of the contest. In 
passing the Santa Anna, the Royal Sovereign gave 
her a broadside and a half into her stern, tearing it 
down, and killing and wounding 400 of her men ; 
then, with her helm hard a-starboard, she ranged 
up alongside so closely that the lower yards of the 
two vessels were locked together. The Spanish 
admiral, having seen that it was the intention of the 
Royal Sovereign to engage to leeward, had col- 
lected all his strength on the starboard ; and such 
was the weight of the Santa Anna's metal, that her 
first broadside made the Sovereign heel two streaks 
out of the water. Her studding-sails and halliards 
were now shot away ; and as a top-gallant studding- 
sail was hanging over the gangway hammocks, 
Admiral Collingwood called out to Lieutenant 
Clavell to come and help him to take it in, observ- 
ing that they should want it again some other day. 
These two officers accordingly rolled it carefully 
up and placed it in the boat."* 

We shall add only what he says in his let- 
ter to Mr. Blackett of Lord Nelson: — 

" When my dear friend received his wound, he 
immediately sent an officer to me to tell me of it, — ■ 
and give his love to me ! Though the officer was 
(directed to say the wound was not dangerous, I read 
in his countenance what I had to fear; and before 
the action was over, Captain Hardy came to inform 
<me of his death. I cannot tell you how deeply I was 
•affected ; my friendship for him was unlike any- 
thing that I have left in the navy ; a brotherhood of 



* " Of his economy, at all times, of the ship's 
stores, an instance was often mentioned in the navy 
•as having occurred at the battle of St. Vincent. 
The Excellent shortly before the action had bent a 
t*cw fore-topsail : and when she was closely en- 
gaged with the St. Tsidro, Captain Collingwood 
•called out to his boatswain, a very gallant man, 
who was shortly afterwards killed, ' Bless me ! 
Mr. PefFers, how came we to forget to bend our 
eld top-sail? They will quite ruin that new one. It 
will never be worth a farthing again.' " 



more than thirty years. In this affair he did nothing 
without my counsel : we made our line of battle 
together, and concerted the mode of attack, which 
was put in execution in the most admirable style. 
I shall grow very tired of the sea soon ; my health 
has suffered so much from the anxious state I have 
been in, and the fatigue I have undergone, that 1 
shall be unfit for service. The severe gales which 
immediately followed the day of victory ruined our 
prospect of prizes." 

He was now elevated to the peerage, and a 
pension of 2000?. was settled on him by parlia- 
ment for his own life, with lOOOZ. in case of his 
death to Lady Collingwood, and 500? to each 
of his daughters. His Royal Highness the Duke 
of Clarence also honoured him with a very kind 
letter, and presented him with a sword. The 
way in which he received all those honours, 
is as admirable as the services by which they 
were earned. On the first tidings of his peer- 
age he writes thus to Lady Collingwood :— 

11 It would be hard if I could not find one hour to 
write a letter to my dearest Sarah, to congratulate 
her on the high rank to which she has been advanc- 
ed by my success. Blessed may you be, my dear- 
est love, and may you long live the happy wife of 
your happy husband ! I do not know how you bear 
your honours; but I have so much business on my 
hands, from dawn till midnight, that I have hardly 
time to think of mine, except it be in gratitude to 
my King, who has so graciously conferred them 
upon me. But there are many things of which I 
might justly be a little proud — for extreme pride is 
folly — that I must share my gratification with you. 
The first is the letter from Colonel Taylor, his Ma- 
jesty's private secretary to the Admiralty, to be 
communicated to me. I enclose you a copy of it. 
It is considered the highest compliment the King 
can pay; and, as the King's personal compliment, 
I value it above everything. But I will tell you 
what I feel nearest to my heart, after the honour 
which his Majesty has done me, and that is the 
praise of every officer of the fleet. There is a thing 
which has made a considerable impression upon me. 
A week before the war, at Morpeth, I dreamed dis- 
tinctly many of the circumstances of our late battle 
off the enemy's port, and I believe I told you of it 
at the time : but I never dreamed that I was to be a 
peer of the realm ! How are my darlings ? I hope 
they will take pains to make themselves wise and 
good, and fit for the station to which they are raised." 

And again, a little after : — 

" I labour from dawn till midnight, till I can hard- 
ly see ; and as my hearing fails me too, you will 
have but a mass of infirmities in your poor Lord, 
whenever he returns to you. I suppose I must not 
be seen to work in my garden now ! but tell old 
Scott that he need not be unhappy on that account. 
Though we shall never again be able to plant the 
Nelson potatoes, we will have them of some other 
sort, and right noble cabbages to boot, in great per- 
fection. You see I am styled of Hethpoole and 
Caldburne. Was that by your direction ? I should 
prefer it to any other title if it was ; and I rejoice, 
my love, that we are an instance that there are other 
and better sources of nobility than wealth." 

At this time he had not heard that it was 
intended to accompany his dignity with any 
pension ; and though the editor assures us 
that his whole income, even including his full 
pay, was at this time scarcely 1100Z. a year, 
he never seems to have wasted a thought on 
such a consideration. Not that he was not at 
all times a prudent and considerate person, 
but, with the high spirit of a gentleman, and 
an independent Englishman, who had mad© 



ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD. 



663 



h!s own way in the world, he disdained all 
sordid considerations. Nothing can be nobler, 
or more natural, than the way in which he ex- 
presses this sentiment, in another letter to his 
wife, written a few weeks after the prece- 
ding:— 

" Many o( the Captains here have expressed a 
desire that I would give ihem a general notice when- 
ever I go to court ; and if they are within five hun- 
dred miles, they will come up to attend me ! Now 
all this is very pleasing ; but, alas! my love, until 
we have peace, I shall never be happy: and yet, 
how we are to make it out in peace, I know not, — 
with high rank and no fortune. At all events, we 
can do as we did before. It is true I have the chief 
command, but there are neither French nor Span- 
iards on the sea, and our cruisers find nothing but 
neutrals, who carry on all the trade of the enemy. 
Our prizes you see are lost. Villeneuve's ship had 
a great deal of money in her, but it all went to the 
bottom. I am afraid the fees for this patent will be 
large, and pinch me: But never mind; let others 
solicit pensions, I am an Englishman, and will never 
ask for money as a favour. How do my darlings 
go on ? I wish you would make them write to me 
by turns, and give me the whole history of their 
proceedings. Oh! how 1 shall rejoice, when I 
come home, to find them as much improved in 
knowledge as I have advanced them in station in 
the world : But take care they do not give them- 
selves foolish airs. Their excellence should be in 
knowledge, in virtue, and benevolence to all ; but 
most to those who are humble, and require their aid. 
This is true nobility, and is now become an incum- 
bent duty on them. I am out of all patience with 
Bounce. The consequential airs he gives himself 
since he became a Right Honourable dog, are insuf- 
ferable. He considers it beneath his dignity to play 
with Commoners' dogs, and, truly, thinks that he 
does them grace when he condescends to lift up his 
leg against them. This, I think, is carrying the in- 
solence of rank to the extreme ; but he is a dog that 
does it. — 25th December. This is Christmas-day ; 
a merry and cheerful one, I hope, to all my darlings. 
May God bless us, and grant that we may pass the 
next together. Everybody is very good to me ; but 
his Majesty's letters are my pride : it is there I feel 
the object of my life attained." 

And again, in the same noble spirit is the 
following to his father-in-law : — 

" I have only been on shore once since I left 
England, and do not know when I shall go again. 
I am unceasingly writing, and the day is not long 
enough for me to get through my business. I hope 
my children are every day acquiring some know- 
ledge, and wish them to write a French letter every 
day to me or their mother. I shall read them all 
when I come home. If there were an opportunity, 
I sboald like them to be taught Spanish, which is 
the most elegant language in Europe, and very easy. 
I hardly know how we shall be able to support the 
dignity to which his Majesty has been pleased to 
raise me. Let others plead for pensions ; I can be 
rich without money, by endeavouring to be supe- 
rior to everything poor. I would have my services 
to my country unstained by any interested motive ; 
and old Scott and I can go on in our cabbage-garden 
without much greater expense than formerly. But 
I have had a great destruction of my furniture and 
stock ; I have hardly a chair that has not a shot in 
it, and many have lost both legs and arms — without 
hope of pension ! My wine broke in moving, and 
my pigs slain in battle ; and these are heavy losses 
where they cannot be replaced 

" I suppose I shall have great demands on me for 
patents and fees : But we must pay for being great. 
1 get no prize-money. Since I left England, I have 
received only 183?., which has not quite paid for my 
wine ; but I do not care about being rich, if we can 
84 



but keep a good fire in winter. How I long to have 
a peep into my own house, and a walk in my own 
garden ! It is the pleasing object of all my hopes." 

In the midst of all those great concerns, it 
is delightful to find the noble Admiral writing 
thus, from the Mediterranean, of his daugh- 
ter's sick governess, and inditing this post- 
script to the little girls themselves : — 

" How sorry am I for poor Miss ! I am 

sure you will spare no pains for her ; and do not 
lose sight of her when she goes to Edinburgh. Tell 
her that she must not want any advice or any com- 
fort ; but I need not say this to you, my beloved, 
who are kindness itself. I am much obliged to the 
Corporation of Newcastle for every mark which 
they give of their esteem and approbation of my 
service. But where shall we find a place in our 
small house for all those vases and epergnes ? A 
kind letter from them would have gratified me as 
much, and have been less trouble to them." 

" My darlings, Sarah and Mary, 

" I was delighted with- your last letters, my bless- 
ings, and desire you to write to me very often, and 
tell me all the news of the city of Newcastle and 
town of Morpeth. I hope we shall have many happy 
days, and many a good laugh together yet. Be 
kind to old Scott ; and when you see him weeding 
my oaks, give the old man a shilling ! 

" May God Almighty bless you." 

The patent of his peerage was limited to 
the heirs male of his body ; and, having only 
daughters, he very early expressed a wish 
that it might be extended to them and their 
male heirs. But this was not attended to. 
When he heard of his pension, he wrote, in 
the same lofty spirit, to Lord Barham, that if 
the title could be continued to the heirs of his 
daughters, he did not care for the pension at 
all ! and in urging his request for the change, 
he reminded his Lordship, with an amusing 
naivete, that government oupht really to show 
some little favour to his daughters, considering 
that, if they had not kept him constantly at 
sea since 1793, he would probably have had 
half a dozen sons by this time, to succeed him 
in his honours ! 

It is delightful to read and extract passages 
like these ; but we feel that we must stop ; 
and that we have already exhibited enough 
of this book, both to justify the praises we 
have bestowed on it, and to give our readers 
a full impression of the exalted and most 
amiable character to which it relates. We 
shall add no more, therefore, that is merely 
personal to Lord Collingwood, except what 
belongs to the decay of his health, his applica- 
tions for recall, and the death that he magnani- 
mously staid to meet, when that recall was so 
strangely withheld. His constitution had been 
considerably impaired even before the action 
of Trafalgar; but in 1808 his health seemed 
entirely to give way ; and he wrote, in August 
of that year, earnestly entreating to be allowed 
to come home. The answer to his application 
was, that it was so difficult to supply his place, 
that his recall must, at all events, be suspend- 
ed. In a letter to Lady Collingwood, he refers 
to this correspondence, and after mentioning 
his official application to the Admiralty, he 
says : — 

" What their answer will be, I do not know yet , 
but I had before mentioned my declining health to 
3 f2 a 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Lord Mulgrave, and he tells me in reply, that he 
hopes I will stay, for he knows not how to supply 
my place. The impression which his letter made 
upon me was one of grief and sorrow : first, that 
with such a list as we have — including more than a 
hundred admirals — ihere should be thought to be 
any difficulty in finding a successor of superior ability 
to me ; and next, that there should be any obstacle 
in the way of the only comfort and happiness that I 
have to look forward to in this world." 

In answer to Lord Mulgrave's statement, 
he afterwards writes, that his infirmities had 
sensibly increased : but " I have no object in 
the world that I put in competition with my 
public duty ; and so long as your lordship thinks 
it proper to continue me in this command, my 
utmost efforts shall be made to strengthen the 
impression which you now have ; but I still 
hope, that whenever it may be done with con- 
venience, your lordship will bear in mind my 
request." Soon after he writes thus to his 
family: — "I am an unhappy creature — old 
and worn out. I wish to come to England ; 
but some objection is ever made to it." And, 
again, K I have been very unwell. The phy- 
sician tells me that it is the effect of constant 
confinement — which is not very comfortable, 
as there seems little chance of its being other- 
wise. Old age and its infirmities are coming 
on me very fast ; and I am weak and tottering 
on my legs. It is high time I should return 
to England ; and I hope I shall be allowed to 
do it before long. It will otherwise be too late." 

And it was too late ! He was not relieved — 
and scorning to leave the post assigned to him, 
while he had life to maintain it, he died at it, 
in March, 1810, upwards of eighteen months 
after he had thus stated to the government his 
reasons for desiring a recall. The following 
is the editor's touching and affectionate ac- 
count of the closing scene — full of pity and of 
grandeur — and harmonising beautifully with 
the noble career which was destined there to 
be arrested : — 

" Lord Collingwood had been repeatedly urged 
by his friends to surrender his command, and to 
seek in England that repose which had become so 
necessary in his declining health ; but his feelings 
on the subject of discipline were peculiarly strong, 
and he had ever exacted the most implicit obedience 
from others. He thought it therefore his duty not 
to quit the post which had been assigned to him, 
until he should be duly relieved, — nnd replied, • that 
his life was his country's, in whatever way it might 



be required of him. ' When he moored in the hap 
bour of Port Mahon, on the 25th of February, ho 
was in a state of great suffering and debility ; and 
having been strongly recommended by his medicai 
attendants to try the effect of gentle exercise on 
horseback, he went immediately on shore, accom- 
panied by his friend Captain Hallowell, who left his 
ship to attend him in his illness : but it was then too 
late. He became incapable of bearing the slightest 
fatigue ; and as it was represented to him that his 
return to England was indispensably necessary for 
the preservation of his life, he, on the 3d of March, 
surrendered his command to Rear Admiral Martin. 
The two following days were spent in unsuccessful 
attempts to warp the Ville de Paris out of Port Ma- 
hon; but on the 6th the wind came round to the 
westward, and at sunset the ship succeeded in clear- 
ing the harbour, and made sail for England. When 
Lord Collingwood was informed that he was again 
at sea, he rallied for a time his exhausted strength, 
and said to those around him, ' Then I may yet live 
to meet the French once more.' On the morning 
of the 7th there was a considerable swell, and his 
friend Captain Thomas, on entering his cabin, ob- 
served, that he feared the motion of the vessel dis- 
turbed him. • No, Thomas,' he replied ; 'lam now 
in a state in which nothing in this world can disturb 
me more. I am dying ; and I am sure it must be 
consolatory to you, and all who love me, to see how 
comfortably I am coming to my end.' He told one 
of his attendants that he had endeavoured to review, 
as far as was possible, all the actions of his past life, 
and that he had the happiness to say, that nothing 
gave him a moment's uneasiness. He spoke at 
times of his absent family, and of the doubtful con- 
test in which he was about to leave his country in- 
volved, but ever with calmness and perfect resigna- 
tion to the will of God ; and in this blessed state of 
mind, after taking an affectionate farewell of his at- 
tendants, he expired without a struggle at six o'clock 
in the evening of that day, having attained the age 
of fifty-nine years and six months. 

" After his decease, it was found that, with the 
exception of the stomach, all the other organs of 
life were peculiarly vigorous and unimpaired ; and 
from this inspection, and the age which the surviving 
members of his family have attained, there is every 
reason to conclude that if he had been earlier re- 
lieved from his command, he would still have been 
in the enjoyment of the honours and rewards which 
would doubtless have awaited him on his return to 
England." 



The remainder of this article, containing 
discussions on the practices of flogging in the 
Navy, and of Impressment (to both which 
Lord Collingwood, as well as Nelson, were 
opposed), is now omitted ; as scarcely possess- 
ing sufficient originality to justify its republi- 
cation, even in this Miscellany. 



(JDetembtr, 1828.) 

Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824, 
1825 {with Notes upon Ceylon); an Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern 
Provinces, 1826 ; and Letters written in India. By the late Right Reverend Reginald 
Heber, Lord Bishop of Calcutta. Second Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1828. 



This is another book for Englishmen to be 
proud of — almost as delightful as the Memoirs 
of Lord Collingwood, and indebted for its at- 
tractions mainly to the same cause — the sin- 
gularly amiable and exalted character of the 



person to whom it relates — and that combina- 
tion of gentleness with heroic ambition, and 
simplicity with high station, which we would 
still fondly regard as characteristic of our own 
nation. To us in Scotland the combination 



BISHOP HEBER'S INDIA. 



667 



see/ns, in this instance, even more admirable j 
than in that of the great Admiral. We have 
no Bishops on our establishment; and have 
been accustomed to think that we are better 
without them. But if we could persuade our- 
selves that Bishops in general were at ail like 
Bishop Heber, we should tremble for our Pres- 
byterian orthodoxy; and feel not only venera- 
tion, but something very like envy for a com- 
munion which could number many such men 
among its ministers. 

The notion entertained of a Bishop, in our 
antiepiscopal latitudes, is likely enough, we 
admit, not to be altogether just: — and we are 
far from upholding it as correct, when we say, 
that a Bishop, among us, is generally supposed 
to be a stately and pompous person, clothed 
in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptu- 
ously every day — somewhat obsequious to 
persons in power, and somewhat haughty and 
imperative to those who are beneath him — 
with more authority in his tone and manner, 
than solidity in his learning; and yet with 
much more learning than charity or humility 
—very fond of being called my Lord, and 
driving about in a coach with mitres on the 
panels, but little addicted to visiting the sick 
and fatherless, or earning for himself the 
blessing of those who are ready to perish — 



Familiar with a round 



Of Ladyships — a stranger to the poor"-— 

decorous in manners, but no foe to luxurious 
indulgences — rigid in maintaining discipline 
among his immediate dependents, and in ex- 
acting the homage due to his dignity from the 
andignified mob of his brethren ; but perfectly 
willing to leave to them the undivided privi- 
leges of teaching and of comforting their peo- 
ple, and of soothing the sins and sorrows of 
iheir erring flocks — scornful, if not openly 
hostile, upon all occasions, to the claims of 
the People, from whom he is generally sprung 
— and presum.m^ every thing in favour of the 
royal will anJ /derogative, by which he has 
been exalted — setting, indeed, in all cases, a 
much higher vahie on the privileges of the 
few, than the rights that are common to all, 
and exerting himself strenuously that the 
former may ever prevail — caring more, ac- 
cordingly, for the interests of his order than 
the geneial good of the church, and far more 
for the Church than for the Religion it was 
established to teach — hating dissenters still 
mere bitterly than infidels — but combating 
tv>tl rather with obloquy and invocation of 
civil penalties, than with the artillery of a 
pcvcrful reason, or the reconciling influences 
of a i humble and holy life — uttering now 
and .hen haughty professions of humility, 
land Rg/ularly bewailing, at fit seasons, the 
"severx*. f of those Episcopal labours, which 
saddei , and even threaten to abridge a life, 
which W) all other eyes appears to flow on in 
almost unbroken leisure and continued in- 
dulgenc \ ! 

This, or something like this, we take to be 
the notion that most of us Presbyterians have 
been used to entertain of a modern Bishop : 
and it is mainly because they believed that 



the rank and opulence which the station im- 
plied, were likely to realise this character in 
those who should be placed in it, that our 
ancestors contended so strenuously for the 
abrogation of the order, and thought their 
Reformation incomplete till it was finally put 
down — till all the ministers of the Gospel 
were truly pastors of souls, and stood in no 
other relation to each other than as fellow- 
labourers in the same vineyard. 

If this notion be utterly erroneous, the 
picture which Bishop Heber has here drawn 
of himself, must tend powerfully to correct 
it. If, on the other hand, it be in any respect 
just, he must be allowed, at all events, to 
have been a splendid exception. We are 
willing to take it either way. Though we 
must say that we incline rather to the latter 
alternative — since it is difficult to suppose, 
with all due allowance for prejudices, that 
our abstract idea of a Bishop should be in 
such flagrant contradiction to the truth, that 
one who was merely a fair specimen of the 
order, should be most accurately character- 
ised by precisely reversing every thing that 
entered into that idea. Yet this is manifestly 
the case with Bishop Heber — of whom we do 
not know at this moment how we could give 
a better description, than by merely reading 
backwards all we have now ventured to set 
down as characteristic of his right reverend 
brethren. Learned, polished, and dignified, 
he was undoubtedly; yet far more conspicu- 
ously kind, humble, tolerant, and laborious — 
zealous for his church too, and not forgetful of 
his station ; but remembering it more for the 
duties than for the honours that were attached 
to it, and infinitely more zealous for the re- 
ligious improvement, and for the happiness, 
and spiritual and worldly good of his fellow- 
creatures, of every tongue, faith, and com- 
plexion : indulgent to all errors and infirmi- 
ties — liberal, in the best and truest sense of 
the word — humble and conscientiously diffi- 
dent of his own excellent judgment and never- 
failing charity — looking on all men as the 
children of one God, on all Christians as the 
redeemed of one Saviour, and on all Christian 
teachers as fellow-labourers, bound to help 
and encourage each other in their arduous 
and anxious task. His portion of the work, 
accordingly, he wrought faithfully, zealously, 
and well; and, devoting himself to his duty 
with a truly apostolical fervour, made no 
scruple to forego, for its sake, not merely his 
personal ease and comfort, but those domestic 
affections which were ever so much more 
valuable in his eyes, and in the end, we fear, 
consummating the sacrifice with his life ! If 
such a character be common among the dig- 
nitaries of the English Church, we sincerely 
congratulate them on the fact, and bow our 
heads in homage and veneration before them. 
If it be rare, as we fear it must be in any 
church, we trust we do no unworthy service 
in pointing it out for honour and imitation to 
all; and in praying that the example, in all 
its parts, may promote the growth of similar 
virtues among-all denominations o r Christians^ 
in every region of the world. 



668 



MfSCELLANEOUS. 



But though th3 great charm of the book be 
derived from the character of its lamented 
author, we are not sure that this is by any 
means what will give it its great or most per- 
manent value. Independently of its moral 
attraction, we are inclined to think it, on the 
whole, the most instructive and important 
publication that has ever been given to the 
world, on the actual state and condition of our 
Indian Empire : Not only exhibiting a more 
clear, graphic, and intelligible account of the 
country, and the various races by which it is 
peopled, by presenting us with more candid, 
judicious, and reasonable views of all the 
great questions relating to its destiny, and our 
interests and duties with regard to it, than are 
any where else to be met with. It is the result, 
no doubt, of a hasty and somewhat superficial 
survey. But it embraces a very wide and 
various range, and thus affords the means of 
correcting errors, which are almost insepara- 
ble from a narrower observation; and has, 
above all, the inestimable advantage of being 
given while the freshness of the first impres- 
sion was undiminished, and the fairness of 
the first judgment unperverted by the gradual 
accumulation of interests, prejudices, and de- 
ference to partial authorities ; and given by 
a man not only free from all previous bias, 
but of such singular candour, calmness, and 
deliberation of judgment, that we would, in 
almost any case, take his testimony, even 
on a superficial view, against that of a much 
cleverer person, who, with ampler opportuni- 
ties, had surveyed or reported with the feel- 
ings, consciously or unconsciously cherished, 
of an advocate, a theorist, a bigot, or a partisan. 

Unhappily, almost all who have hitherto 
had the means of knowing much about India, 
have been, in a greater or less degree, subject 
to these influences ; and the consequence has 
been, that though that great country is truly 
a portion of our own — and though we may 
find, in every large town, whole clubs of in- 
telligent men, returned after twenty or thirty 
years' residence in it in high situations, it is 
nearly impossible to get any distinct notion 
of its general condition, or to obtain such in- 
formation as to its institutions and capacities 
as may be furnished by an ordinary book of 
travels, as to countries infinitely less important 
or easy of access. Various causes, besides 
the repulsions of a hostile and jealous reli- 
gion, have conspired to produce this effect. 
In the first place, the greater part of our reve- 
nans have been too long in the other world, 
to be able to describe it in such a w r ay as to 
be either interesting or intelligible to the in- 
habitants of this. They have been too long 
familiar with its aspect to know how they 
would strike a stranger; and have confounded, 
in their passive and incurious impressions, the 
most trivial and insignificant usages, with 
practices and principles that are in the highest 
degree curious, and of the deepest moral con- 
cernment. In the next place, by far the greater 
part of these experienced and authoritative 
residents have seen but a very small portion 
of the mighty regions with which they are 
too hastily presumed to be generally acquaint- 



ed ; and have for the most part seen even 
those, only in the course of some limited pro- 
fessional or official occupation, and only with 
the eyes of their peculiar craft or profession. 
They have been traders, or soldiers, or tax- 
gatherers — with here and there a diplomatic 
agent, an engineer, or a naturalist — all, too 
busy, and too much engrossed with the special 
object of their several missions, to have time 
to look to the general condition of the country — 
and almost all moving through it, with a reti- 
nue and accompaniment of authority, which 
excluded all actual contact with the People, 
and even, in a great degree, the possibility ot 
seeing them in their natural state. We have 
historical memoirs accordingly, and accounts 
of military expeditions, of great value and 
accuracy ; and are beginning to have reports 
of the culture of indigo, of the general profits 
of trade, and of the heights and structure of 
mountains, that may be depended on. But, 
with the exception of Mr. Elphinstone's Cau- 
bul and Sir John Malcolm's Central India — 
both relating to very limited and peculiar dis- 
tricts — we have no good account of the country 
or the people. But by far the worst obstruc- 
tion to the attainment of correct information 
is to be found in the hostility which has pre- 
vailed for the last fifteen or twenty years, be- 
tween the adversaries and the advocates of 
the East India Company and its monopoly ; 
and which has divided almost all who are now 
able and willing to enlighten us on its con- 
cerns, into the champions of opposite factions; 
characterised, we fear we must add, with a 
full share of the partiality, exaggeration, and 
inaccuracy, which has at all times been 
chargeable upon such champions. In so large 
and complicated a subject, there is room of 
course, for plausible representations on both 
sides ; but what w r e chiefly complain of is, 
that both parties have been so anxious to 
make a case for themselves, that neither of 
them have thought of stating the whole facts, 
so as to enable the public to judge between 
them. They have invariably brought forward 
only what they thought peculiarly favourable 
for themselves, or peculiarly unfavourable for 
the adversary, and have fought to the utter- 
ance upon those high grounds of quarrel ; but 
have left out all that is not prominent and re- 
markable — that is, all that is truly character- 
istic of the general state of the country, and 
the ordinary conduct of its government; by 
reference to which alone, however, the real 
magnitude of the alleged benefits or abuses 
can ever be truly estimated. 

It is chiefly for these reasons that we have 
hitherto been shy, perhaps to a blamable ex- 
cess, in engaging with the great questions of 
Indian policy, which have of late years en- 
grossed so much attention. Feeling the ex- 
treme difficulty of getting safe materials for 
our judgment, we have been conscientiously 
unwilling to take a decided or leading part in 
discussions which did not seem to us to be 
conducted, on either part, in a spirit of per- 
fect fairness, on a sufficient view of well-es- 
tablished facts, or on a large and comprehen- 
sive perception of the principles to which 



BISHOP HEBER'S INDIA, 



669 



they referred. With a strong general leaning 
against all monopoly and arbitrary restrictions, 
we could not but feel that the case of India 
was peculiar in many respects : and that more 
than usual deliberation was due, not only to 
its vast practical importance, but to the weight 
of experience and authority that seemed ar- 
rayed against our predilections; and we long- 
ed, above all things, for a calm and dispas- 
sionate statement of facts, from a recent and 
intelligent observer, unconnected, if possible, 
either by interest or any other tie, with either 
of the parties, and untainted even by any 
preparatory study of their controversies; but 
applying his mind with perfect freedom and 
fairness to what fell under his own immediate 
observation, and recording his impressions 
with that tranquil sincerity which can scarcely 
ever be relied on but where the record is 
meant to be absolutely private, and is conse- 
quently made up without any feeling of re- 
sponsibility, ambition, or deference. 

Such a statement, and much more than 
such a statement, we have in the work before 
us; and both now, and on all future occasions, 
we feel that it has relieved us from the chief 
difficulty we have hitherto experienced in 
forming our opinions, and supplied the most 
valuable elements for the discussions to which 
we have alluded. The author, it must be ad- 
mitted, was more in connection with the Gov- 
ernment than with any party or individual 
opposed to it, and was more exposed, there- 
fore, to a bias in that direction. But he was, 
at the same time, so entirely independent of 
its favours, and so much more removed from 
its influence than any one with nearly the 
same means of observation, and was withal 
of a nature so perfectly candid, upright, and 
conscientious, that he may be regarded, we 
think, as altogether impartial ; and we verily 
believe has set down nothing in this private 
journal, intended only for his own eye or that 
of his wife, not only that he did not honestly 
think, but that he would not have openly 
stated to the Governor in Council, or to the 
Court of Directors themselves. 

The Bishop sailed for India with his family, 
in 1S23; and in June 1824, set out on the 
visitation of his Imperial Diocese, having been 
obliged, much against his will, to leave his 
wife and children, on account of their health, 
behind him. He ascended the Ganges to 
Dacca and Benares, and proceeded by Oude 
and Lucknow to Delhi and Agra, and to Al- 
morah at the base of the Himalaya mountains, 
and so onward through the newly-acquired 
provinces of Malwah, to Guzerat and Bombay, 
where he had the happiness of rejoining Mrs. 
Heber. They afterwards sailed together to 
Ceylon ; and after some stay in that island, re- 
turned, in October 1825, to Calcutta. In Jan- 
uary 1826. the indefatigable prelate sailed 
again for Madras, and proceeded in March to 
the visitation of the southern provinces ; but 
had only reached Tanjore, when his arduous 
and exemplary career was cut short, and all 
his labours of love and duty brought to an end, 
by a sudden and most unexpected death — 
having been seized with a fit in stepping into 



the bath, after having spent the morning in 
the offices of religion, on the 3d of April of 
that year. 

The work before us consists of a very co- 
pious journal, written for and transmitted to 
his wife, during his long peregrinations; and 
of several most valuable and interesting let* 
ters, addressed to her, and to his friends in 
England, in the course of the same journey; 
all written in a very pleasing, and even ele- 
gant, though familiar style, and indicating in 
every line not only the clear judgment and 
various accomplishments of the writer, but 
the singular kindness of heart and sweetness 
of temper, by which he seems to have been 
still more distinguished. He surveys every 
thing with the vigilance and delight of a cul- 
tivated and most active intellect — w T ith the 
eye of an artist, an antiquary, and a naturalist 
— the feelings and judgment of an English 
gentleman and scholar — the sympathies of a 
most humane and generous man — and the 
piety, charity, and humility of a Christian. 
The work is somewhat diffuse, and exhibits 
some repetitions, and perhaps some inconsis- 
tencies. It is not such a work, in short, as 
the author wmild himself have offered to the 
public. But we do not know whether it is 
not more interesting than any that he could 
have prepared for publication. It carries us 
more completely into the very heart of the 
scenes he describes than any such work could 
have done, and it admits us more into his in- 
timacy. We pity those, we confess, who find 
it tedious to accompany such a man on such 
a journey. 

It is difficult to select extracts from a work 
like this ; or, rather, it is not worth while to 
stand on selection. We cannot pretend to 
give any abstract of the whole, or to transfer 
to our pages any reasonable proportion of the 
beauty or instruction it contains. We can 
only justify our account of it by a few speci- 
mens, taken very much at random. The fol- 
lowing may serve to show the unaffected and 
considerate kindness with which he treated 
his attendants, and all the inferior persons 
who came in contact with him; and the effects 
of that kindness on its objects. 

" Two of my sepoys had been ill for several days, 
in much the same way with myself. I had treated 
them in a similar manner, and they were now doing 
well : But being Brahmins of high caste, I had 
much difficulty in conquering their scruples and 
doubts about the physic which I gave them. They 
both said that they would rather die than taste wine. 
They scrupled at my using a spoon to measure their 
castor-oil, and insisted that the water in which their 
medicines were mixed, should be poured by them- 
selves only. They were very grateful however, 
particularly for the care I took of them when I was 
myself ill, and said repeatedly that the sight of me 
in good health would be better to them than all 
medicines. They seemed now free from disease, 
but recovered their strength more slowly than I did ; 
and I was glad to find that the Soubahdar said he 
was authorized, under such circumstances, to engage 
a hackery at the Company's expense, to carry them 
till they were fit to march. He mentioned this in 
consequence of my offering them a lift on a camel, 
which they were afraid of trying." 

" I had a singular instance this evening of the 
fact how mere children all soldiers, and I think par- 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



ticularly sepoys, are, when put a little out of their 
usual way. On going to the place where my es- 
cort was nutted, I found that there was not room for 
them all under its shelter, and that four were pre- 
paring to sleep on the open field. Within a hun- 
dred yards stood another similar hut unoccupied, a 
little out of repair, but tolerably tenantable. ' Why 
do you not go thither ?' was my question. ' We 
like to sleep altogether,' was their answer. 'But 
why not bring the branches here, and make your 
own hut larger? see, I will show you the way.' 
They started up immediately in great apparent de- 
light ; every man brought a bough, and the work 
was done in five minutes — being only interrupted 
every now and then by exclamations of ' Good, 
good, poor man's provider !' " 

" A little before five in the morning, the servants 
came to me for directions, and to say that the good 
careful old Soubahdar was very ill, and unable to 
leave his tent. I immediately put on my clothes 
and went down to the camp, in my way to which 
they told me, that he had been taken unwell at 
night, and that Dr. Smith had given him medicine. 
He opened a vein, and with much humane patience, 
continued to try different remedies while any chance 
remained ; but no blood flowed, and no sign of life 
could be detected from the time of his coming up, 
except a feeble flutter at the heart, which soon 
ceased. He was at an advanced age, at least for 
an Indian, though apparently hale and robust. I 
felt it a comfort that I had not urged him to any ex- 
ertion, and that in fact I had endeavoured to persuade 
him to lie still till he was quite well. But I was 
necessarily much shocked by the sudden end of one 
who had travelled with me so far, and whose con- 
duct had, in every instance, given me satisfaction. 
Nor, while writing this, can I recollect without a 
real pang, his calm countenance and grey hairs, as 
he sate in his tent door, telling his beads in an after- 
noon, or walked with me, as he seldom failed to 
do, through the villages on an evening, with his 
own silver-hilted sabre under his arm, his loose cot- 
ton mantle folded round him, and his golden neck- 
lace and Rajpoot string just visible above it. 

44 The death of the poor Soubahdar led to the 
question, whether there would be still time to send 
on the baggage. All the Mussulmans pressed our 
immediate departure; while the Hindoos begged 
that they might he allowed to stay, at least, till 
sunset. I determined on remaining, as, in my opin- 
ion, more decent and respectful to the memory of a 
good and aged officer." 

44 In the way, at Futtehgunge, I passed the tents 
pitched for the large party which were to return to- 
wards Cawnpoor next day, and I was much pleased 
and gratified by the Soubahdar and the greater 
number of the sepoys of my old escort running into 
the middle of the road to bid me another farewell, 
and again express their regret that they were not 
going on \vi:h me ' to the world's end.' They who 
talk of the ingratitude of the Indian character, 
should, I think, pay a little more attention to cases 
of this sort. These men neither got nor expected 
any thine: by this little expression of good-will. If 
I had offered them money, they would have been 
bound, by the rules of the service, and their own 
dignity, not to take it. Sufficient civility and re- 
spect would have been paid if any of them who 
happened to be near the road had touched their 
caps, and I really can suppose them actuated by no 
motive but good- will. It had not been excited, so 
far as I know, by any particular desert on my part : 
but I had always spoken to them civilly, had paid 
some attention to their comforts in securing them 
tents, firewood, and camels for their knapsacks, and 
had ordered them a dinner, after their own fashion, 
on their arrival at Lucknow, at the expense of, I 
believe, not more than four rupees ! Surely if 
good- will is to be bought by these sort of attentions, 
it is a pity that any body should neglect them." 

"In crossing a nuddee, which from a ford had 
or come a ferry, we saw some characteristic groups 



and occurrences ; the price of passage in the boat 
was only a few cowries; but a number of country 
folk were assembled, who could not, or would not, 
pay, and were now sitting patiently by the brink, 
waiting till the torrent should subside, or, what was 
far less likely to happen, till the boatmen should 
take compassion on them. Many of these poor 
people came up to beg me to make ihe boatmen 
take them over, one woman pleading that her 
4 maiik our bucher,' (literally master, or lord, and 
young one) had run away from her, and she wanted 
to overtake them; another that she and her two 
grandchildren were following her son, who was a 
Havildar in the regiment which we had passed just 
before; and some others, that they had been inter- 
cepted the previous day by this torrent, and had 
neither money nor food till they hod reached their 
homes. Four anas purchased a passage for the 
whole crowd, of perhaps thirty people, and they 
were really very thankful. I bestowed two anas 
more on the poor deserted woman, and a whimsical 
scene ensued. She at first took the money with 
eagerness, then, as if she recollected herself, she 
blushed very deeply, and seemed much confused, 
then bowed herself to my feet, and kissed my hands, 
and at last said, in a very modest tone, 'it was not 
fit for so great a man as I was, (o give her two anas, 
and she hoped that I and the 'chota Sahib,' (little 
lord) would give her a rupee each !' She was an 
extremely pretty little woman, but we were inexor- 
able ; partly, I believe, in my own case at least, 
because we had only just rupees enough to take us 
to Cawnpoor, and to pay for our men's provisions ; 
however, I gave her two more anas, my sole re- 
maining stock of small change." 

These few traits will do, we believe ; but 
we must add a few more, to let the reader 
fully into the noble humanity and genuine 
softness of this man's heart. 

44 In the course of this evening a fellow, who 
said he was a gao-waia brought me two poor little 
leverets, which he said he had just found in a field. 
They were quite unfit to eat, and bringing them 
was an act of cruelty of which there are few in- 
stances among the Hindoos, who are generally 
humane to wild animals. In this case, on my scold- 
ing the man for bringing such poor little things from 
their mother, all the crowd of camel-drivers and 
camp-followers, of whom no inconsiderable number 
were around us, expressed great satisfaction and an 
entire concurrence in my censure. It ended in the 
man promising to take them back to the very spot 
(which he described) where he had picked them up, 
and in my promising him an ana if he did so. To 
see him keep his word two stout waggoner's boys 
immediately volunteered their services, and I have 
no doubt kept him to his contract. 

44 The same adviser wanted me to take off a joint 
of Cabal's tail, under the hair, so as not to injure 
his appearance. 4 It was known,' he said, 4 that by 
how much the tail was made shorter, so much the 
taller the horse grew.' I said 4 1 could not believe 
that God gave any animal a limb too much, or one 
which tended to its disadvantage, and that asHe 
had made my horse, so he should remain.' This 
speech, such as it was, seemed to chime in wonder- 
fully with the feelings of most of my hearers ; and 
one old man ssid, that 'during all the twenty-two 
years that the English held the country, he had not 
heard so grave and godly a saying from any of them 
before.' I thought of Sancho Panza and his wise 
apophthegms ! 

44 Our elephants were receiving their drink at a 
well, and I gave the largest some bread, which, 
before my illness, I had often been in the habit of 
doing. 4 He is glad to see you again,' observed the 
goomashta, and 1 certainlv was much struck by the 
calm, clear, attentive, intelligent eye which he fixed 
on me, both while he was eating, and afterwards 
while I was patting his trunk and talking about him. 



BISHOP HEBER'S INDIA. 



671 



lie was, he said, a fine-tempered beast, but the two 
Others were ' great rascals.' One of them hard once 
almost killed his keeper. I have got these poor 
beasts' allowance increased, in consideration of their 
long march ; and that they may not be wronged, 
have ordered the mohout to give them all their gram 
in presence of a sentry. The gram is made up in 
cakes, about as large as the top of a hat-box, and 
baked on an earthen pot. Each contains a seer, 
and sixteen of them are considered as sufficient for 
one day's food for an elephant on a march. The 
suwarree elephant had only twelve, but I ordered 
him the full allowance, as well as an increase to the 
others. If they knew this, they would indeed be 

glad to see me." 

" The morning was positively cold, and the whole 
scene, with the exercise of the march, the pictur- 
esque groups of men and animals round me, — the 
bracing air, the singing of birds, the light mist hang- 
ing on the trees, and the glistening dew, had some- 
thing at once so Oriental and so English, I have 
seldom found any thing belter adapted to raise a 
man's animal spirits, and put him in good temper 
with himself and all the world. How I wish those 
I love were with me ! How much my wife would 
enjoy this sort of life, — its exercise, its cleanliness, 
and purity ; its constant occupation, and at the same 
time iis comparative freedom from form, care, and 
vexation ! At the same time a man who is curious 
in his eating had better not come here. Lamb and 
kid (and we gel no other flesh) most people would 
soon tire of. The only fowls which are attainable 
are as tough and lean as can be desired ; and the 
milk and butter are generally seasoned with the 
never-failing condiments of Hindostan — smoke and 
soot. These, however, are matters to which it is 
not difficult to become reconciled ; and all the more 
serious points of warmth, shade, cleanliness, air, 
and water, are at this season nowhere enjoyed better 
than in the spacious and well-contrived tents, the 
ample means of transport, the fine climate, and 
fertile regions of Northern Hindostan. Another 
time, by God's blessing, I will not be alone in this 
Eden ; yet I confess that there are few people whom 
I greatly wish to have as associates in such a jour- 
ney. It is only a wife, or a friend so intimate as to 
be quite another self, whom one is really anxious to 
be with one while travel ling through a new country." 

Instead of wishing, as we should have ex- 
pected a Bishop to do, to move in the digni- 
fied and conspicuous circle at the seat of 
Government, it is interesting to find this ex- 
emplary person actually languishing for a 
more retired and obscure situation. 

"Do you know, dearest, that I sometimes think 
we should be more useful, and happier, if Cawn- 
poor or Benares, not Calcutta, were our home? — 
My visitations would be made with far more con- 
venience, the expense of house rent would be less 
to the Company, and our own expenses of living 
would be. reduced very considerably. The air, even 
of Cawnpoor, is, I apprehend, better than that of 
Bengal, and that of Benares decidedly so. The 
greater part of my business with government may 
be done as well by letters as personal interviews ; 
and, if the Archdeacon of Calcutta were resident 
there, it seems more natural that the Bishop of 
India should remain in the centre of his diocese. — 
The only objection is the great number of Christians 
in Calcutta, and the consequent probability that my 
preaching is more useful there than it would be any 
where else. We may talk these points over when 
we meet." 

One of the most characteristic passages in 
the book, is the account of his interview with 
a learned and very liberal Brahmin in Guzerat, 
whom he understood to teach a far purer mo- 
rality than is usually enjoined by his brethren, 
and also to discountenance the distinction of 



castes, and to inculcate a signal toleration 
We can now afford, however, to give little 
more than the introductory narrative. 

" About eleven o'clock I had the expected visit 
from Swaamee Narain, to my interview with whom 
I had looked forward with an anxiety and eagerness 
which, if he had known it, would perhaps have 
flattered him. He came in a somewhat different 
style from what I expected ; having with him nearly 
two hundred horsemen, mostly well-armed with 
matchlocks and swords, and several of them with 
coats of mail and spears. Besides them he had a 
large rabble on foot, with bows and arrows ; and 
when I considered that I had myself more than fifty 
horse, and fifty muskets and bayonets, I could not 
help smiling, though my sensations were in some 
degree painful and humiliating, at the idea of two 
religious teachers meeting at the head of little 
armies! and filling the city, which was the scene 
of their interview, with the rattling of quivers, the 
clash of shields, and the tramp of the war-horse. 
Had our troops been opposed to each other, mine, 
though less numerous, would have been doubtless 
far more effective, from the superiority of arms and 
discipline. But, in moral grandeur, what a differ- 
ence was there between his troop and mine ! Mine 
neither knew me nor cared for me. They escorted 
me faithfully, and would have defended me bravely, 
because they were ordered by their superiors to do 
so ; and as they would have done for any other 
stranger of sufficient worldly rank to make such 
attendance usual. The guards of Swaamee Narain 
were his own disciples and enthusiastic admirers ; 
men who had voluntarily repaired to hear his les- 
sons, who now took a pride in doing him honour, 
and who would cheerfully fight to the last drop of 
blood rather than suffer a fringe of his garment to 
be handled roughly. In the parish of Hodnet there 
were once perhaps a few honest countrymen who 
felt something like this for me ; but how long a time 
must elapse before any Christian teacher in India 
can hope to be thus loved and honoured ! 

" After the usual mutual compliments, I said that 
I had heard much good of him, and the good doc- 
trine which he preached among the poor people of 
Guzerat, and that I greatly desired his acquaint- 
ance; that I regretted that I knew Hindostanee so 
imperfectly, but that I should be very glad, so far 
as my knowledge of the language allowed, and by 
the interpretation of friends, to learn what he be- 
lieved on religious matters, and to tell him what I 
myself believed ; and that if he would come and see 
me at Kairah, where we should have more leisure, 
I would have a tent pitched for him and treat him 
like a brother. I said this, because I was very 
earnestly desirous of getting him a copy of the 
Scriptures, of which I had none with me, in the 
Nagree character, and persuading him to read 
them ; and because I had some further hopes of 
inducing him to go with me to Bombay, where I 
hoped that, by conciliatory treatment, and tho 
conversations to which I might introduce him with 
the Church Missionary Society established in that 
neighbourhood, I might do him more good than I 
could otherwise hope. 

" I saw that both he, and, still more, his disciples, 
were highly pleased by the invitation which I gave 
him ; but he said, in reply, that his life was one of 
very little leisure ; that he had five thousand disciples 
now attending on his preaching in the neighbouring 
villages, and nearly fifty thousand in different parts 
of Guzerat ; that a great number of these were to 
assemble together in the course of next week, on 
occasion of his brother's son coming of age to re- 
ceive the Brahminical string ; but that if I staid 
long enough in the neighbourhood to allow him to 
get this engagement over, he would gladly come 
again to see me. ' In the meantime,' I said, ' have 
you any objection to communicate some part of 
your doctrine now?' It was evidently what he 
came to do; and his disciples very visibly exuited 
in the opportunity of his perhaps converting me." 



672 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



The conference is too long to extract, but 
it is very curious ; though the result fell some- 
thing short of what the worthy Bishop, in the 
zeal of his benevolence, had anticipated. — 
We should now leave the subject of the au- 
thor's personal character ; but it shines out so 
strongly in the account of the sudden death 
of one of his English friends and fellow-tra- 
vellers, that we cannot refrain from gratifying 
our readers and ourselves with one other ex- 
tract. Mr. Stowe, the individual alluded to, 
died rdter a short illness at Dacca. The day 
after his burial, the Bishop writes to his wife 
as follows : — 

" Sincerely as I have mourned, and do mourn 
him continually, the moment perhaps at which I 
felt his loss most keenly was on my return to this 
house. I had always after airings, or other short 
absences, been accustomed to run up immediately 
to his room to ask about his medicines and his 
nourishment, to find if he had wanted any thing 
during my absence, and to tell him what I had seen 
and heard. And now, as I went up stairs, I felt 
most painfully that the object of my solicitude was 
gone, and that there was nobody now to derive 
comfort or help from my coming, or whose eyes 
would faintly sparkle as 1 opened the door. 

' : It will be long before I forget the guilelessness 
of his nature, the interest which he felt and ex- 
pressed in all the beautiful and sequestered scenery 
which we passed through ; his anxiety to be useful 
to me in any way which I could point out to him, 
(he was indeed very useful,) and above all, the un- 
affected pleasure which he took in discussing reli- 
gious subjects ; his diligence in studying the Bible, 
and the fearless humanity with which he examined 
the case, and administered to the wants, of nine 
poor Hindoos, the crew of a salt-barge, whom, as 
I mentioned in my Journal, we found lying sick 
together of a jungle fever, unable to leave the place 
where they lay, and unaided by the neighbouring 
villagers. I then little thought how soon he in his 
turn would require the aid he gave so cheerfully." 

On the day after, he writes in these terms 
to Miss Stowe, the sister of his departed 
friend : — 

" With a heavy heart, my dear Miss Stowe, I 
send you the enclosed keys. How to offer you 
consolation in your present grief, I know not ; for 
by my own deep sense of the loss of an excellent 
friend, I know how much heavier must be your 
burden. Separation of one kind or another is, in- 
deed, one of the most frequent trials to which 
affectionate hearts are exposed. And if you can 
only regard your brother as removed for his own 
advantage to a distant country, you will find, per- 
haps, some of that misery alleviated under which 
you are now suffering. Had you remained in Eng- 
land when he came out hither, you would have 
been, for a time, divided no less effectually than 
you are now. The difference of hearing from him 
is almost all; and though you now have not-that 
comfort, yet even without hearing from him you 
may be well persuaded (which there you could not 
always have been) that he. is well and happy; and, 
above all, you may be persuaded, as your dear bro- 
ther was most fully in his time of severest suffering, 
that God never smites his children in vain, or out 
of cruelty. 

"So long as you choose to remain with us, we 
will be, to our power, a sister and a brother to you. 
And it may be worth your consideration whether, 
in your present state of heahh and spirits, a jour- 
ney, in my wife's society, will not be better for you 
than a dreary voyage home. But this is a point 
on which you must decide for yourself; I would 
scarcely venture to advise, far less dictate, where I 



am only anxious to serve. In my dear Emily yoo 
will already have had a most affectionate and sen 
sible counsellor." 

We dare not venture on any part, either of 
the descriptions of scenery and antiquities, or 
of the persons and presentations at the several 
native courts. But we have no hesitation in 
recommending them as by far the best and 
most interesting, in both sorts, that we have 
ever met with. The account of his journey- 
ings and adventures in the mountain region at 
the foot of the Himalaya is peculiarly striking, 
from the affecting resemblance the author is 
continually tracing to the scenery of his be- 
loved England, his more beloved Wales, or 
his most beloved Hodnet ! Of the natives, 
in all their orders, he is a most indulgent and 
liberal judge, as well as a very exact observer. 
He estimates their civilisation higher, we 
think, than any other traveller who has given 
an account of them, and is very much struck 
with the magnificence of their architecture — 
though very sceptical as to the high antiquity 
to which some of its finest specimens pretend. 
We cannot afford to give any of the splendid 
and luminous descriptions in which the work 
abounds. In a private letter he says, — 

" I had heard much of the airy and gaudy style 
of Oriental architecture ; a notion, I apprehend, 
taken from that of China only, since solidity, solem- 
nity, and a richness of ornament, so well managed 
as not to interfere with solemnity, are the charac- 
teristics of all the ancient buildings which I have 
met with in this country. 1 recollect no correspond- 
ing parts of Windsor at all equal to the entrance 
of the castle of Delhi and its marble hall of au- 
dience ; and even Delhi falls very short of Agra in 
situation, in majesty of outline, in size, and the 
costliness and beauty of its apartments." 

The following is a summary of his opinion 
of the people, which follows in the same letter 

11 Of the people, so far as their natural character 
is concerned, I have been led to form, on the whole, 
a very favourable opinion. They have, unhappily, 
many of the vices arising from slavery, from an un- 
settled state of society, and immoral and erroneous 
systems of religion. But they are men of high and 
gallant courage, courteous, intelligent, and most 
eager after knowledge and improvement, with a re- 
markable aptitude for the abstract sciences, geome- 
try, astronomy, &c, and for the imitative arts, 
painting and sculpture. They are sober, indus- 
trious, dutiful to their parents, and affectionate to 
their children, of tempers almost uniformly gentle 
and patient, and more easily affected by kindness 
and attention to their wants and feelings than almost 
any men whom I have met with. Their faults 
seem to arise from the hateful superstiiionsto which 
they are subject, and the unfavourable state of 
society in which they are placed. 

" More has been done, and more successfully, to 
obviate these evils in the Presidency of Bombay, 
than in any part of India which I have yet visited, 
through the wise and liberal policy of Mr. Elphin- 
stone ; to whom this side of the Peninsula is also 
indebted for some very important and efficient im- 
provements in the administration of justice, and 
who, both in amiable temper and manners, exten- 
sive and various information, acute good sense, 
energy, and application to business, is one of the 
most extraordinary men, as he is quite the most 
popular governor, that I have fallen in with." 

The following is also very important ; and 
gives more new and valuable information 



BISHOP HEBER'S INDIA. 



673 



ihan many pretending volumes, by men who 
nave been halt* their lives in the countries to 
which they relate : — 

" Of the people of this country, and the manner 
in which they are governed, I have, as yet, hardly 
seen enough to form an opinion. 1 have seen 
enough, however, to find that the customs, the 
habits, and prejudices of the former are much mis- 
understood in England. We have all heard, for 
instance, of the humanity of the Hindoos towards 
brute creatures, their horror of animal food, &.c. ; 
and you may be, perhaps, as much surprised as I 
was,' to find that those who can afford it are hardly 
less carnivorous than ourselves ; that even the 
purest Brahmins are allowed to eat mutton and 
venison ; that fish is permitted to many castes, and 
pork to many others ; and that, though they con- 
sider it a grievous crime to kill a cow or bullock 
for the purpose of eating, yet they treat their draft 
oxen, no less than their horses, with a degree of 
barbarous severity which would turn an English 
hackney coachman sick. Nor have their religious 
prejudices, and the unchangeableness of their habits, 
been less exaggerated. Some of the best informed 
of their nation, with whom I have conversed, assure 
me that half their most remarkable customs of civil 
and domestic life are borrowed from their Mahom- 
niedan conquerors ; and at present there is an ob- 
vious and increasing disposition to imitate the Eng- 
lish in every thing, which has already led to very 
remarkable changes, and will, probably, to still 
Ciore important. The wealthy natives now all 
affect to have their houses decorated with Corin- 
thian pillars, and filled with English furniture. They 
drive the best horses and the most dashing carriages 
in Calcutta. Many of them speak English fluently, 
and are tolerably read in English literature ; and 
the children of one of our friends I saw one day 
dressed in jackets and trousers, with round hats, 
shoes and stockings. In the Bengalee newspapers, 
of which there are two or three, politics are can- 
vassed, with a bias, as I am told, inclining to Whig- 
gism ; and one of their leading men gave a great 
dinner not long since in honour of the Spanish Revo- 
lution. Among the lower orders the same feeling 
shows itself more beneficially, in a growing neg- 
lect of caste — in not merely a willingness, but an 
- anxiety, to send their children to our schools, and 
a desire to learn and speak English, which, if 
properly encouraged, might, T verily believe, in 
fifty years' time, make c».\r language what the 
Oordoo, or court and camp language of the country 
(the Hindostanee), is at present. And though in- 
stances of actual conversion to Christianity are, as 
yet, very uncommon, yet the number of children, 
both male and female, who are now receiving a sort 
of Christian education, reading the New Testa- 
ment, repealing the Lord's Prayer and Command- 
ments, and all with the consent, or at least without 
the censure, of their parents or spiritual guides, 
have increased, during the last two years, to an 
amount which astonishes the old European resi- 
dents, who were used to tremble at the name of a 
Missionary, and shrink from the common duties of 
Christianity, lest they should give offence to their 
heathen neighbours. So far from that being a con- 
sequence of the zeal which has been lately shown, 
many of the Brahmins ihemselves express admira- 
tion of the morality of the Gospel, and profess to 
entertain a better opinion of the English since they 
have found that they too have a religion and- a Shas- 
ter. All that seems necessary for the best effects 
to follow is, to let things take their course ; to make 
the Missionaries discreet ; to keep the government 
as it now is, strictly neuter ; and to place our confi- 
dence in a general diffusion of knowledge, and in 
making ourselves really useful to the temporal as 
well as spiritual interests of the people among whom 
we live. 

" In all these points there is, indeed, great room 
for improvement : But I do not by any means as- 
85 



sent to the pictures of depravity and general worth- 
lossncss which some have drawn of the Hindoos 
They are decidedly, by nature, a mild, pleasing, 
and intelligent race; sober, parsimonious, and, 
where an object is held out to them, most indus- 
trious and persevering. But the magistrates and 
lawyers all agree that in no country are lying and 
perjury so common, and so little regarded ; and 
notwithstanding the apparent mildness of iheir man- 
ners, the criminal calendar is generally as full as in 
Ireland, with gang-robberies, setting fire to build- 
ings, stacks, &c.; and the number of children who 
are decoyed aside and murdered, for the sake of 
their ornaments, Lord Amherst assures me, is 
dreadful." 

We may add the following direct testimony 
on a point of some little curiosity, which has 
been alternately denied and exaggerated : — 

" At Broach is one of those remarkable institu- 
tions which have made a good deal of noise in Eu- 
rope, as instances of Hindoo benevolence to inferior 
animals. I mean hospitals for sick and infirm 
beasts, birds, and insects. I was not able to visit 
it; but Mr. Corsellis described it as,, a very dirty 
and neglected place, which, though it has consider- 
able endowments in land, only serves to enrich 
the Brahmins who manage it. They have really 
animals of several different kinds there, not only 
those which are accounted sacred by the Hindoos, 
as monkeys, peacocks, &c, but horses, dogs, and 
cats ; and they have also, in little boxes, an assort- 
ment of lice and fleas ! It is not true, however, 
that they feed those pensioners on the flesh of beg- 
gars hired for the purpose. The Brahmins say that 
these insects, as well as the other inmates of their 
infirmary, are fed with vegetables only, such as 
rice. &c. How the insects thrive, I did not hear ; 
but the old horses and dogs, nay the peacocks and 
apes, are allowed to starve ; and the only creatures 
said to be in any tolerable plight are some miich 
cows, which may be kept from other motives than 
charity." 

He adds afterwards, — 

M I have not been led to believe that our Govern- 
ment is generally popular, or advancing towards 
popularity. It is, perhaps, impossible that we should 
be so in any great degree ; yet I really think there 
are some causes of discontent which it is in our 
own power, and which it is our duty to remove or 
diminish. One of these is the distance and haugh- 
tiness with which a very large proportion of the 
civil and military servants of the Company treat 
the upper and middling class of natives. Against 
their mixing much with us in society, there are cer- 
tainly many hindrances ; though even their objec 
tion to eating with us might, so far as the Mussul 
mans are concerned, I think, be conquered by any 
popular man in the upper provinces, who made the 
attempt in a right way. But there are some of our 
amusements, such as private theatrical entertain- 
ments and the sports of the field, in which they 
would be delighted to share, and invitations to which 
would be regarded by them as extremely flattering, 
if they were not, perhaps with some reason, voted 
bores, and treated accordingly. The French, under 
Perron and Des Boignes, who in more serious mat- 
ters left a very bad name behind them, had, in this 
particular, a great advantage over us ; and the easy 
and friendly intercourse in which they lived with 
natives of rank, is still often regretted in Agra and 
the Dooab. This is not all, however. The foolish 
pride of the English absolutely leads them to set at 
nought the injunctions of their own Government. 
The Tussildars, for instance, or principal active 
officers of revenue, ought, by an order of council, 
to have chairs always offered them in the presence 
of their European superiors; and the same, by the 
standing orders of the army, should be done to tne 
Soubahdars. Yet there are hardly su collectors in 
3G 



674 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



India who observe the former etiquette : and the 
latter, which was fifteen years ago never omitted 
in the army, is now completely in disuse. At the 
same time, the regulations of which I speak are 
known to every Tussildar and Soubahdar in India, 
and they feel themselves aggrieved every time 
fhese civilities are neglected. ' 

Of the state of the Schools, and of Education 
in general, he speaks rather favourably ; and 
is very desirous that, without any direct at- 
tempt at conversion, the youth should be ge- 
nerally exposed to the humanising influence 
of the New Testament morality, by the gene- 
ral introduction of that holy book, as a lesson 
book in the schools; a matter to which he 
states positively that the natives, and even 
their Brahminical pastors, have no sort of ob- 
jection. Talking of a female school, lately 
established at Calcutta, under the charge of a 
very pious and discreet lady, he observes, that 
"Rhadacant Deb, one of the wealthiest natives 
in Calcutta, and regarded as the most austere 
and orthodox of the worshippers of the Ganges, 
bade, some time since, her pupils go on and 
prosper; and added, that 'if they practised 
the Sermon on the Mount as well as they re- 
peated it, he would choose all the handmaids 
for his daughters, and his wives, from the 
English school.' n 

He is far less satisfied with the administra- 



tion of Justice ; especially in the local or dis- 
trict courts, called Adawlut, which the costli- 
ness and intricacy of the proceedings, and the 
needless introduction of the Persian language, 
have made sources of great practical oppres- 
sion, and objects of general execration through- 
out the country. At the Bombay Presidency 
Mr. Elphinstone has discarded the Persian, 
and appointed every thing to be done in the 
ordinary language of the place. 

And here we are afraid we must take leave 
of this most instructive and delightful publi- 
cation ; which we confidently recommend to 
our readers, not only as more likely to amuse 
them than any book of travels with which we 
are acquainted, but as calculated to enlighten 
their understandings, and to touch their hearts 
with a purer flame than they generally catch 

| from most professed works of philosophy or 
devotion. It sets before us, in every page, 

j the most engaging example of devotion to 
God and good-will to man j and, touching every 

I object with the light of a clear judgment and 
a pure heart, exhibits the rare spectacle of a 
work written by a priest upon religious creeds 
and establishments, without a shade of in- 
tolerance; and bringing under review the 
characters of a vast multitude of eminent in- 
dividuals, without one trait either of sarcasm 
or adulation. 



(©ttobtr, 1824.) 

1. Sketches oj India. Written by an Officer, for Fire-Side Travellers at Home. Second 

Edition, with Alterations. 8vo. pp. 358. London: 1824. 

2. Scenes and Impressions in Egypt and Italy. By the Author of Sketches of India, and 

Recollections of the Peninsula. 8vo. pp. 452. London: 1824. 



These are very amiable books : — and, be- 
sides the good sentiments they contain, they 
are very pleasing specimens of a sort of travel- 
writing, to which we have often regretted 
that so few of those who roam loose about the 
world will now condescend — we mean a brief 
and simple notice of what a person of ordinary 
information and common sensibility may see 
and feel in passing through a new country, 
which he visits without any learned prepara- 
tion, and traverses without any particular ob- 
ject. There are individuals, no doubt, who 
travel to better purpose, and collect more 
weighty information — exploring, and record- 
ing as they go, according to their several 
habits and measures of learning, the mineral- 
og) antiquities, or statistics of the different 
regions they survey. But the greater part, 
even of intelligent wanderers, are neither so 
ambitious in their designs, nor so industrious 
in their execution; — and, as most of those 
who travel for pleasure, and find pleasure in 
travelling, are found to decline those tasks, 
which mi^ht enrol them among the contribu- 
tors to science, while they turned all their 
movements into occasions of laborious study, 
it seems reasonable to think that a lively and 
succinct account of what actually delighted 



them, will be more generally agreeable than 
a digest of the information they might have 
acquired. We would by no means undervalue 
the researches of more learned and laborious 
persons, especially in countries rarely visited : 
But, for common readers, their discussions 
require too much previous knowledge, and 
too painful an effort of attention. They are 
not books of travels, in short, but works of 
science and philosophy; and as the principal 
delight of travelling consists in the impressions 
which we receive, almost passively, from the 
presentment of new objects, and the reflec- 
tions to wdiich they spontaneously give rise, 
so the most delightful books of travels should 
be those that give us back those impressions 
in their first freshness and simplicity, and ex- 
cite us to follow out the train of feelings and 
reflection into which they lead us, by the di- 
rect and unpretending manner in which they 
are suggested. By aiming too ambitiously at 
instruction and research, this charm is lost , 
and we often close these copious dissertations 
and details, needlessly digested in the form 
of a journal, without having the least idea 
how we, or any other ordinary person, would 
have felt as companions of the journey — tho- 
roughly convinced, certainly, that we should 



SKETCHES OF INDIA— EGYPT AND ITALY. 



675 



not have occupied ourselves as the writers 
before us seem to have been occupied ; and 
pretty well satisfied, after all, that they them- 
selves were not so occupied during the most 
agreeable hours of their wanderings, and had 
omitted in their books what they would most 
frequently recall in their moments of enjoy- 
ment and leisure. 

Nor are these records of superficial obser- 
vation to be disdained as productive of enter- 
tainment only, or altogether barren of instruc- 
tion. Very often the surface presents all that 
is really worth considering — or all that we are 
capable of understanding : — and our observer, 
we are taking it for granted, is, though no 
great philosopher, an intelligent and educated 
man — looking curiously at all that presents 
itself, and making such passing inquiries as 
may satisfy a reasonable curiosity, without 
greatly disturbing his indolence or delaying 
his progress. Many themes of reflection and 
topics of interest will be thus suggested, which 
more elaborate and exhausting discussions 
would have strangled in the birth — while, in 
the variety and brevity of the notices which 
such a scheme of writing implies, the mind 
of the reader is not only more agreeably ex- 
cited, but is furnished, in the long run, with 
more materials for thinking, and solicited to 
more lively reflections, than by any quantity 
of exact knowledge on plants, stones, ruins, 
manufactures, or history. 

Such, at all events, is the merit and the 
charm of the volumes before us. They place 
us at once by the side of the author — and 
bring before our eyes and minds the scenes 
he has passed through, and the feelings they 
suggested. In this last particular, indeed, we 
are entirely at his mercy; and we are afraid 
he sometimes makes rather an unmerciful 
use of his power. It is one of the hazards 
of this way of writing, that it binds us up in 
the strictest intimacy and closest companion- 
ship with the author. Its attraction is in its 
direct personal sympathy — and its danger in 
the temptation it holds out to abuse it. It 
enables us to share the grand spectacles with 
which the traveller is delighted — but compels 
us in a manner to share also in the sentiments 
with which he is pleased to connect them. 
For the privilege of seeing with his eyes, we 
must generally renounce that of using our 
own judgment — and submit to adopt im- 
plicitly the tone of feeling which he has found 
most congenial with the scene. 

On the present occasion, we must say, the 
reader, on the whole, has been fortunate. 
The author, though an officer in the King's 
service, and not without professional predi- 
lections, is, generally speaking, a speculative, 
sentimental, saintly sort of person — with a 
taste for the picturesque, a singularly poeti- 
cal cast of diction, and a mind deeply imbued 
with principles of philanthropy and habits of 
affection : — And if there is something of fa- 
daise. now and then in his sentiments, and 
something of affectation in 'his style, it is no 
more than we can easily forgive, in con- 
sideration of his brevity, his amiableness, and 
rariety. 



'•The -'Sketches of India," a loose-printed 
octavo of 350 pages, is the least interesting 
perhaps of the two volumes now before us — 
though sufficiently marked with all that is 
characteristic of the author. It may be aa 
well to let him begin at the beginning. 

" On the afternoon of July the 10th, 1818, our 
vessel dropped anchor in Madras Roads, after a fine 
run of three months and ten days from the Mother- 
bank. — How changed the scene! how great the 
contrast ! — Ryde, and its little snug dwellings, with 
slated or thatched roofs, its neat gardens, its green 
and sloping shores. — Madras and its naked fort, 
noble-looking buildings, tall columns, lofty veran- 
dahs, and terraced roofs. The city, large and 
crowded, on a flat site; a low sandy beach, and a 
foaming surf. The roadstead, there, alive with 
beautiful yachts, light wherries, and tight-built 
fishing barks. Here, black, shapeless Massoolah 
boats, with their naked crews, singing the same 
wild (yet not unpleasing) air, to which, for ages, 
the dangerous surf they fearlessly ply over has been 
rudely responsive. 

" I shall never forget the sweet and strange sen- 
sations which, as I went peacefully forward, the new 
objects in nature excited in my bosom. The rich 
broad-leaved plantain; the gracefully drooping 
bamboo; the cocoa nut, with that mat-like-looking 
binding for every branch; the branches themselves 
waving with a feathery motion in the wind ; the 
bare lofty trunk and fan-leaf of the tall palm ; the 
slender and elegant stem of the areca ; the large 
aloes; the prickly pear; the stalely banian with 
drop-branches, here fibrous and pliant, there strong 
and columnar, supporting its giant arms, and form- 
ing around the parent stem a grove of beauty ; and 
among these wonders, birds, all strange in plumage 
and in note, save the parroquet(at home, the lady's 
pet-bird in a gilded cage), here spreading his bright 
green wings in happy fearless flight, and giving his 
natural and untaught scream. 

" It was late and dark when we reached Poona- 
mallee ; and during the latter part of our march we 
had heavy rain. We found no fellow-countryman 
to welcome us: But the mess-room was open and 
lighted, a table laid, and a crowd of smart, roguish- 
looking natives, seemed waiting our arrival to seek 
service — Drenched to the skin, without changes of 
linen, or any bedding, we sat down to the repast 
provided ; and it would have been difficult to have 
found in India, perhaps, at the moment, a more 
cheerful party than ours. — Four or five clean-look- 
ing natives, in white dresses, wiih red or white 
turbans, ear-rings of gold, or with emerald drops, 
and large silver signet rings on their fingers, crowded 
round each chair, and watched our every glance, to 
anticipate our wishes. Curries, vegetables, and 
fruits, all new to us, were tasted and pronounced 
upon ; and after a meal, of which every one seemed 
to partake with grateful good humour, we lay down 
for the night. One attendant brought a small carpet, 
another a mat, others again a sheet or counterpane, 
till all were provided with something; and thus 
closed our first evening in India. — The morning 
scene was very ludicrous. Here, a barber uncalled 
for, was shaving a man as he still lay dozing ! there, 
another was cracking the joints of a man half 
dressed; here were two servants, one pouring water 
on, the other washing, a Saheb's hands. In spite 
of my efforts to prevent them, two well-dressed 
men were washing my feet ; and near me was q 
lad dexterously putting on the clothes of a sleepy 
brother officer, as if he had been an infant under 
his care ! — There was much in all this to amuse 
the mind, and a great deal, I confess, to pain the 
heart of a free-born Englishman." 

Sketches of India, pp. 3 — 10. 

With all this profusion of attendance, the 
march of a British officer in India seems 9 
matter rather of luxury than fatigue. 



676 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



11 Marching in this country is certainly pleasant ; 
although perhaps you rise too early for comfort. 
An hour before daybreak you mount your horse; 
and, travelling at an easy pace, reach your ground 
before the sun has any power ; and find a small 
tent pitched with breakfast ready on the table. — 
Your large tent follows with couch and baggage, 
carried by bullocks and coolies ; and before nine 
o'clock, you may be washed, dressed, and em- 
ployed with your books, pen, or pencil. Mats, 
made of the fragrant roots of the Cuscus grass, are 
hung before the doors of your tent to windward ; 
and being constant wetted, admit, during the hottest 
winds, a cool refreshing air. 

" VVhile our forefathers were clad in wolf-skin, 
dwelt in caverns, and lived upon the produce of 
the chase, the Hindoo lived as now. As now, his 
princes were clothed in soft raiment, wore jewelled 
turbans, and dwelt in palaces. As now, his haughty 
half-naked priests received his offerings in temples 
of hewn and sculptured granite, and summoned him 
to rites as absurd, but yet more splendid and de- 
bauching, than the present. His cottage, garments, 
household utensils, and implements of husbandry 
or labour, the same as now. Then, too, he wa- 
tered the ground with his foot, by means of a plank 
balanced transversely on a lofty pole, or drew from 
the deep bowerie by the labour of his oxen, in large 
bags of leather, supplies of water to flow through 
the little channels by which their fields and gardens 
are interse^ed. His children were then taught to 
shape laMHrs in the sand, and to write and keep 
accoua|flflfi the dried leaves of the palm, by the 
villagejjMoolmaster. His wife ground corn at the 
same j^Bor pounded it in a rude mortar with her 
neigh/SfPF. He could make purchases in a regular 
ba^iar, change money at a shroff's, or borrow it 
•cft'usury, for the expenses of a wedding or festival. 
In short, all the traveller sees around him of social 
or civilized life, of useful invention or luxurious 
refinement, is of yet higher antiquity than the days 
of Alexander the Great. So that, in fact, the eye. 
of the British officer looks upon the same forms and 
dresses, the same buildings, manners, and customs, 
on which the Macedonian troops gazed with the 
same astonishment two thousand years ago." 

Sketches of India, pp. 23— 26. 

If the traveller proceeds in a palanquin, his 
comforts are not less amply provided for. 

" You generally set off after dark ; and, habited 
in loose drawers and a dressing gown, recline at 
full length and slumber away the night. If you 
are wakeful, you may draw back the sliding panel 
of a lamp fixed behind, and read. Your clothes 
are packed in large neat baskets, covered with 
green oil-cloth, andcarried by palanquin boys; two 
pairs will contain two dozen complete changes. 
Your palanquin is fitted up with pockets and 
drawers. You can carry in it, without trouble, a 
writing desk and two or three books, with a few 
canteen conveniences for your meals, — and thus 
you may be comfortably provided for many hundred 
miles' travelling. You stop for half an hour, morn- 
ing and evening, under the shade of a tree, to wash 
and take refreshment; throughout the day read, 
think, or gaze round you. The relays of bearers 
lie ready every ten or twelve miles ; and the aver- 
age of your run is about four miles an hour." 

Ibid. pp. 218, 219. 

We cannot make room for his descriptions, 
though excellent, of the villages, the tanks, 
the forest — and the dresses and deportment 
of the different classes of the people ; but we 
must give this little sketch of the Elephant 
and Camel. 

" While breakfast was getting ready, I amused 
myself with looking at a baggage-elephant and a 
few camels, which some servants, returning with a 



general's tents from the Deccan, wc re in thr acv 

of loading." The intelligent obedience of the \le- 
phant is well known ; but to look upon this huge 
and powerful monster kneeling down at the mere 
bidding of the human voice ; and, when he has 
risen again, to see him protrude his trunk for the 
foot of his mahout or attendant, to help him into 
his seat ; or, bending the joint of his hind leg, 
make a step for him to climb up behind ; and then, 
if any loose cloths or cords fall off, with a dog-like 
docility pick them up with his proboscis and put 
them up again, will delight and surprise long alter 
it ceases to be novel. When loaded, this creature 
broke off a large branch from the lofty tree near 
which he stood, and quietly fanned and fly -flapped 
himself, with all the nonchalance of an indolent 
woman of fashion, till the camels were ready. 
These animals also kneel to be laden. When in 
motion, they have a very awkward gait, and seem 
to travel at a much slower pace than they really 
do. Their tall out-stretched necks, long sinewy 
limbs, and broad spongy feet, — their head furni- 
ture, neck-bells, and the rings in their nostrils, 
with their lofty loads, and a driver generally on the 
top of the leading one, have a strange appearance." 
Ibid. pp. 46—43. 

We must add the following very clear des- 
cription of a Pagoda. 

" A high, solid wall, encloses a large area in the 
form of an oblong square ; at one end is the gate- 
way, above which is raised a large pyramidal tower ; 
its breadth at the base and height proportioned to 
the magnitude of the pagoda. This tower is as- 
cended by steps in the inside, and divided into 
stories ; the central spaces on each are open, and 
smaller as the tower rises. The light is seen di- 
rectly through them, producing, at times, a very 
beautiful effect, as when a fine sky, or trees, form 
the back ground. The front, sides, and top of this 
gateway and tower, are crowded with sculpture ; 
elaborate, but tasteless. A few yards from the 
gate, on the outside, you often see a iofty octagonal 
stone pillar, or a square open building, supported 
by tall columns of stone, with the figure of a bull 
couchant, sculptured as large, or much larger than 
life, beneath it. 

"Entering the gateway, you pass into a spacious 
paved court, in the centre of which stands the inner 
temple, raised about three feet from the ground, 
open, and supported by numerous stone pillars. An 
enclosed sanctuary at the far end of this central 
building, contains the idol. Round the whole court 
run3 a Targe deep verandah, also supported by col- 
umns of stone, the front rows of which are often 
shaped by the sculptor into various sacred animals 
rampant, rode by their respective deities. All the 
other parts of the pagoda, walls, basements, entab- 
latures, are covered with imagery and ornament of 
all sizes, in alto or demi-relievo." 

The following description and reflections 
among the ruins of Bijanagur, the last capital 
of the last Hindu empire, and finally over- 
thrown in 1564, are characteristic of the au- 
thor's most ambitious, perhaps most question- 
able, manner. 

" You cross the garden, where imprisoned beauty 
once strayed. You look at the elephant-stable and 
the remaining gateway, with a mind busied in con- 
juring up some associations of luxury and magnifi- 
cence. — Sorrowfully I passed on. Every stone be- 
neath my feet bore the mark of chisel, or of human 
skill and labour. You tread continually on steps, 
pavement, pillar, capital, or cornice of rude relief, 
displaced, or fallen, and mingled in confusion. Here, 
large masses of such* materials have already formed 
bush-covered rocks, — there, pagodas are still stand- 
ing entire. You may for miles trace the city walls, 
and can often discover, by the fallen pillars of the 



SKETCHES OF INDIA— EGYPT AND ITALY. 



oT7 



<ong piazza, wrtore *t has been adorned bystreets 
;f uncommon width. Ore. indeed, yet remains 
.«ar!y perfect; at one end of it a few poor ryots, 
•vlio contrive to cultivate 8 »me patches of rice, cot- 
ton, or sugar-cane, in detached spots near the river, 
have formed mud-dwellings under the piazza. 

" While, with a mind thus occupied, you pass on 
through this wilderness, the desolating judgments 
on other renowned cities, so solemnly foretold, so 
dreadfully fulfilled, rise naturally to your recollec- 
tion. I climbed the very loftiest rock at day-break, 
on the morrow of my first visit to the ruins, by rude 
and broken steps, winding between and over im- 
mense and detached masses of stone; and seated 
myself near a small pagoda, at the very summit. 
From hence I commanded the whole extent of what 
was once a city, described by Caesar Frederick as 
twenty-four miles in circumference. Not above 
eight or nine pagodns are standing; but there are 
choultries innumerable. Fallen columns, arches, 
piazzas, and fragments of all shapes on every side 
for miles. — Can there have been streets and roads 
in these choked-up valleys? Has the war-horse 
pranced, the palfrey ambled there? Have jewelled 
turbans once glittered where those dew-drops now 
sparkle on the thick-growing bamboos ? H <ve the 
delicate small feet of female dancers practised their 
graceful steps where that rugged and thorn-covered 
ruin bars up the patr ? Have their soft voices, and 
the Indian guitar, t>nd ihe gold bells on their an- 
kles, ever made music in so lone and silent a spot ? 
They have; but otiier sights, and other sounds, 
have also been seen and heard among these ruins. 
— There, near that beautiful banyan-tree, whole 
families, at the will of a merciless prince, have been 
thrown to trampling elephants, kept for a work so 
savage that they learn it with reluctance, and must 
be taught by mci7i. Where those cocoas wave, once 
stood a vast seraglio, filled at the expense of tears 
and crimes; there, within that retreat of voluptu- 
ousness, have poison, or the creese, obeyed, oftei! 
anticipated, the sovereign's wish. By those green 
banks, near which the sacred waters of the Toom- 
budra flow, many aged parents have been carried 
forth and exposed to nerish by those whose infancy 
they fostered." — Sketches of India. 

The following reflections are equally just 
and important .— 

" Nothing, perhaps, so much damps the ardour 
of a traveller in India, as to find that he may wan- 
d^ r league after league, visit city after city, village 
&i-.r village, and still only see the outside of Indian 
9 *<ety. The house he cannot enter, the group he 
'-'V'not join, the domestic circle he cannot gaze upon, 
the free unrestrained converse of the natives he can 
never listen to. He may talk with his moonshee or 
his pundit ; ride a few miles with a Mahometan 
6irdar ; receive and return visits of ceremony among 
petty nawabs and rajahs; or be presented at a 
native court: But behind the scenes in India he 
cannot advance one step. All the natives are, in 
comparative rank, a few far above, the many far 
below him: and the bars to intercourse with Ma- 
hometans as well as Hindoos, arising from our faith, 
are so many, that to live upon terms of intimacy or 
acquaintance with them is impossible. Nay, in this 
particular, when our establishments were young 
and small, our officers few, necessarily active, nec- 
essarily linguists, and unavoidably, as well as from 
policy, conforming more to native manners, it is 
probable that more was known about the natives 
from practical experience than is at present, or may 
be again."— Ibid. pp. 213, 214. 

The author first went up the country as far 
as Agra, visiting, and musing over, all the re- 
markable places in his way — and then return- 
ed through the heart of India — the country of 
Scindiah and the Deccan, to the Mysore. 
Though travelling only as a British regimental 



officer, and without public character <il any 
kind, it is admirable to see with what uniform 
respect and attention he was treated, even by 
the lawless soldiery among whom he had fre- 
quently to pass. The indolent and mercenary 
Brahmins seem the only class of persons from 
whom he experienced any sort of incivility. 
In an early part of his route he had the good 
luck to fall in with Scindiah himself; and the 
picture he has given of that turbulent leader 
and his suite is worth preserving. 

" First came loose light-armed horse, either in 
the road, or scrambling and leaping on the rude 
banks and ravines near ; then some better clad, with 
the quilted poshauk ; and one in a complete suit of 
chain-armour; then a few elephants, among them 
the hunting elephant of Scindiah, from which he 
had dismounted. On one small elephant, guiding 
it himself, rode a fine boy, a foundling protege of 
Scindiah, called the Jungle Rajah ; then came, 
slowly prancing, a host of fierce, haughty chief ains, 
on fine horses, showily caparisoned. They darted 
forward, and all took their proud stand behind and 
round us, planting their long lances on the earth, 
and reining up their eager steeds to see, I suppose, 
our salaam. Next, in a common native palkee, its 
canopy crimson, and not adorned, came Scindiah 
himself. He was plainly dressed, with a reddish 
turban, and a shawl over his vest, and lay reclined, 
smoking a small gilt or golden calean. 

" I looked down on the chiefs under us, and saw 
that they eyed us most haughtily, which very much 
increased the effect they would otherwise have pro- 
duced. They were armed with lance, scimitar and 
shield, creese and pistol ; wore some shawls, some 
tissues, some plain muslin or cotton ; were all mucji 
wrapped in clothing; and wore, almost all, a large 
fold of muslin, tied over the turban top, which they 
fasten under the chin ; and which, strange as it may 
sound to those who have never seen it, looks war~ 
like, and is a very important defence to the sides 
of the neck. 

" How is it that we can have a heart-stirring sort 
of pleasure in gazing on brave and armed men, 
though we know them to be fierce, lawless, and 
cruel? — though we know stern ambition to be the 
chief feature of many warriors, who, from the cra- 
dle to the grave, seek only fame ; and to which, in 
such as I write of, is added avarice the most piti- 
less? I cannot tell. But I recollect often before, in 
my life, being thus moved. Once, especially, I 
stood over a gateway in France, as a prisoner, and 
saw file in, several squadrons of gens-d'armerie 
d'elite, returning from the fatal field of Leipsic. 
They were fine, noble-looking men, with warlike 
helmets of steel and brass, and drooping plumes of 
black horse-hair; belts handsome and broad ; heavy 
swords; were many of them decorated with the 
cross of the Legion of Honour. Their trumpets 
flourished ; and I felt my heart throb with an ad- 
miring delight, which found relief only in an invol- 
untary tear. What an inconsistent riddle is the 
human heart V'—Ibid. pp. 260—264. 

In the interior of the country there are large 
tracts of waste lands, and a very scanty and 
unsettled population. 

" On the route I took, there was only one inhab- 
ited village in fifty-five miles; the spots named for 
halting-places were in small valleys, green wiih 
young corn, and under cultivation, but neglected 
sadly. A f cw straw huts, blackened and beat down 
by rain : J-iih rude and broken implements of hus 
bandry lying about, and a few of those round harden 
ed thrashing-floors, tell the traveller that some wan- 
dering families, of a rude unsettled people, visit 
these vales at sowing time and harvest; and labour 
indolently at the necessary, but despised, tas'^ of 
the peaceful ryot." — Ibid. p. °00 
3g$ 



678 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



" I enjoyed my march through these wilds great- 
ly. Now you wound through narrow and deeply 
wooded glens ; now ascended ghauts, or went dosvn 
the mouths of passes ;■ now skirted the foot of a 
mountain ; now crossed a small plain covered with 
the tall jungled-grass, from which, roused by your 
horse tramp, the neelgau looked upon you ; then 
flying with active bound, or pausing doubtful trot, 
joined the more distant herd. You continually 
cross clear sparkling rivulets, with rocky or pebbly 
beds ; and you hear the voice of waters among all 
the woody hills around you. There was a sort of 
thrill, too, at knowing these jungles were filled 
with all the ferocious beasts known in India (except 
elephants, which are not found here), and at night, 
in hearing their wild roars and cries. I saw, one 
morning, on the side of a hill, about five hundred 
yards from me, in an open glade near the summit, 
a lioness pass along, and my guide said there were 
many in these jungles." — Sketches of India. 

We should like to have added his brilliant 
account of several native festivals, both Hindu 
and Mahometan, and his admirable descrip- 
tions of the superb monuments at Agra, and 
the fallen grandeur of Goa : But the extracts 
we have now given must suffice as specimens 
of the " Sketches of India" — and the length of 
them,' indeed, we fear, will leave us less room 
than we could have wished for the " Scenes 
^M Impressions in Egypt and in Italy. 77 

This volume, which is rather larger than 
the other, contains more than the title prom- 
ises : and embraces, indeed, the whole history 
of the authors peregrinations, from his em- 
barkation at Bombay to his landing at Dover. 
It is better written, we think, than the former. 
The descriptions are better finished, the re- 
flections bolder, and the topics more varied. 
There is more of poetical feeling, too, about 
it; and a more constant vein of allusion to 
subjects of interest. He left India in Decem- 
ber 1822, in an Arab vessel for the Red Sea — 
and is very happy, we think, in his first 
sketches of the ship and the voyage. 

" Our vessel was one, rude and ancient in her 
construction as those which, in former and succes- 
sive ages, carried the rich freights of India for the 
Ptolemies, the Roman prefects, and the Arabian 
caliphs of Egypt. She had, indeed, the wheel and 
the compass; and our nakhoda, with a beard as 
black and long, and a solemnity as great as that of 
a magician, daily performed the miracle of taking 
an observation ! But although these " peeping con- 
trivances " of the Giaours have been admitted, yet 
they build their craft with the same clumsy inse- 
curity, and rig them in the same inconvenient man- 
ner as ever. Our vessel had a lofty broad stern, 
unmanageable in wearing ; one enormous sail on a 
heavy yard of immense length, which was tardily 
hoisted by the efforts of some fifty men on a stout 
mast, placed a little before midships, and raking 
forwards; her head low, without any bowsprit; 
and, on the poop, a mizen uselessly small, with 
hardly canvass enough for a fishing-boat. Our 
lading was cotton, and the bales were piled up on 
her decks to a height at once awkward and unsafe. 
In short, she looked like part of a wharf, towering 
with bales, accidentally detached from its quay, and 
floating on the waters." — Scenes in Egypt, pp. 3, 4. 

He then gives a picturesque description of 
the crew, and the motley passengers — among 
whom there were some women, who were 
never seen or heard during the whole course 
of the voyage. So jealous, indeed, and com- 



plete was their seclusion, that though one of 
them died and was committed to the sea dur.vj 
the passage, the event was not known to the. 
crew or passengers for several days after i% 
had occurred. "Not even a husband entered 
their apartment during the voyage — because 
the women were mixed : an eunuch who 
cooked for them, alone had access. 77 

"Abundantly, however," he adds, "was I 
amused in looking upon the scenes around me, 
and some there were not readily to be forgotten : — 
when, at the soft and still hour of sunset, while the 
full sail presses down the vessel's bows on th* 
golden ocean-path, which swells to meet, and then 
sinks beneath them, — then, when these Arabs 
group for their evening sacrifice, bow down with 
their faces to the earth, and prostrate their bodies 
in the act of worship — when the broad ameen, 
deeply intoned from many assembled voices, strikes 
upon the listener's ear — the heart responds, and 
throbs with its own silent prayer. There is a so- 
lemnity and a decency in their worship, belonging, 
in its very forms, to the age and the country of the 
Patriarchs ; and it is necessary to call to mind all 
that the Mohammedans are and have been — all that 
their prophet taught, and that their Koran enjoins 
and promises, before we can look, without being 
strongly moved, on the Mussulman prostrate before 
his God."— Ibid. pp. 13, 14. 

They land prosperously at Mocha, of which 
he gives rather a pleasing account, and again 
embark with the same fine weather for Djidda 
— anchoring every night under the rocky 
shore, and generally indulging the passengers 
with an hour 7 s ramble among its solitudes. 
The following poetical and graphic sketch of 
the camel is the fruit of one of these excur- 
sions : — 

"The grazing camel, at that hour when the 
desert reddens with the setting sun, is a fine object 
to the eye which seeks and feeds on the picturesque 
— his tall, dark form — his indolent leisurely walk — 
his ostrich neck, now lilted to its full height, now 
bent slowly, and far around, with a look of un- 
alarmed inquiry. You cannot gaze upon him with- 
out, by the readiest and most natural suggestions, 
reverting in thought to the world's infancy — to the 
times and possessions of the shepherd kings, their 
tents and raiment, their journeyings and settlings. 
The scene, too, in the distance, and the hour, even- 
tide, and the uncommon majesty of that dark, lofty, 
and irregular range of rocky mountain, which ends 
in the black cape of Ras el Askar, formed an as- 
semblage not to be forgotten." — Ibid. p. 42. 

At Djidda they had an audience of the Aga, 
which is well described in the following short 
passage : — 

" Rustan Aga himself was a fine-looking, haughty, 
martial man, with mustachios, but no beard ; he 
wore a robe of scarlet cloth. Hussein Aga, who 
sat on his left, had a good profile, a long grizzled 
beard, with a black ribbon bound over one eye, to 
conceal its loss. He wore a robe of pale blue. The 
other person, Araby Jellauny, was an aged and a 
very plain man. The attendants, for the most parr, 
wore large dark brown dresses, fashioned into the 
short Turkish vest or jacket, and the large, full 
Turkish trowsers ; their sashes were crimson, an*, 
the heavy ornamented buts of their pistols protru- 
ded from them; their crooked scimitars hung in 
silken cords before them; they had white turbans, 
large mustachios. but the cheek and cb»" *,eanly 
shaven. Their complexions were in general very 
pale, as of men who pass their lives in confinement. 
They stood with their arms folded, and their eyes 
fixed on us. I shall never forget them. There 



SKETCHES OF INDIA— EGYPT AND ITALY. 



679 



were a dozen or more. I saw nothing like this 
after, not even in Egypt ; for Djidda is an excellent 
government, both on account of its port, and its 
vicinity 10 Mecca; and Rustan Aga had a large 
establishment, and was something of a magnifico. 
He has the power of life and death. A word, a 
sign from him, and these men, who stand before 
you in an attitude so respectful, with an aspect so 
calm, so pale, would smile — and 6lay you! — Here 
I first saw the true scribe ; well robed, and dressed 
m turban, trowsers, and soft slipper, like one of rank 
among the people : his inkstand with its pen-case 
has the look of a weapon, and is worn like a dagger 
in the folds of the sash ; it is of silver or brass — this 
was of silver. When summoned to use it, he takes 
some paper out of his bosom, cuts it into shape 
with scissors, then writes his letter by dictation, pre- 
sents it for approval ; it is tossed back to him wiih 
a haughty and careless air, and the ring drawn off 
and and passed or thrown to him, to affix the seal. 
He does every thing on his knees, which are tucked 
up to serve him as a desk." — Sce?ies in Egypt, 
pp. 47—49. 

They embark a third time, for Kosseir, and 
then proceed on camels across the Desert to 
Thebes. The following account of their pro- 
gress is excellent — at once precise, pictur- 
esque, and poetical : — 

" The road through the desert is most wonderful 
in its features: a finer cannot be imagined. It is 
wide, hard, firm, winding, for at least two-thirds of 
the way, from Kosseir to Thebes, between ranges 
of rocky hills, rising often perpendicularly on either 
side, as if they had been scarped by art ; here, again, 
rather broken, and overhanging, as if they were 
the lofty banks of a mighty river, and you travers- 
ing its dry and naked bed. Now you are quite 
landlocked ; now again you open on small valleys, 
and see, upon heights beyond, small square towers. 
It was late in the evening when we came to our 
ground, a sort of dry bay ; sand, burning sand, with 
rock and cliff, rising in jagged points, all around — a 
spot where the waters of ocean might sleep in still- 
ness, or, with the soft voice of their gentlest ripple, 
lull the storm-worn mariner. The dew of the night 
before had been heavy ; we therefore pitched our 
tent, and decided on starting, in future, at a very 
early hour in the morning, so as to accomplish our 
march before noon. It was dark when we moved 
off", and even cold. Your camel is impatient to rise 
ere you are well seated on him ; gives a shake, too, 
to warm his blood, and half dislodges you ; marches 
rather faster than by day, and gives occasionally, a 
hard quick stamp with his callous foot. Our moon 
was far in her wane. She rose, however, about an 
hour after we started, all red, above the dark hills 
on our left ; yet higher rose, and paler grew, till at 
last she hung a silvery crescent in the deep blue sky. 

"Who passes the desert and says all is barren, 
all lifeless? In the grey morning you may see the 
common pigeon, and the partridge, and the pigeon 
of the rock, alight before your very feet, and come 
upon the beaten camel-paths for food. They are 
tame, for they have not learned to fear, or to distrust 
the men who pass these solitudes. The camel-driver 
would not lift a stone to them;" and the sportsman 
could hardly find it in his heart to kill these gentle 
tenants of the desert. The deer might tempt him ; 
I saw but one ; far, very far, he caught the distant 
camel tramp, and paused, and raised and threw 
back his head to listen, then away to the road in- 
stead cf from it; but far ahead he crossed it, and 
then away up a long slope he fleetly stole, and off 
to some solitary spring which wells, perhaps, where 
no traveller, no human being has ever trod." — 
Ibid. pp. 71—74. 

The emerging from this lonely route is given 
with equal spirit and freshness of colouring. 

" It was soon after daybreak, on the morrow, just 



as the sun was beginning to give his rich colouring 
of golden yellow to the while pale sand, that as I 
was walking alone at some distance far ahead of my 
companions, my eyes bent on the ground, and lost 
in thought, their kind and directing shout made me 
stop, and raise my head, when lo! a green vale, 
looking through the soft mist of morning, rather a 
vision than a reality, lay stretched in its narrow 
length before me. The Land of Egypt ! We 
hurried panting on, and gazed and were t-ilcnt. In 
an hour we reached the village of Hejazi, situated 
on the very edge of the Desert. We alighted at a 
cool, clean serai, having its inner room, with a large 
and small bath for the Mussulmans' ablutions, its 
kiblah in the wall, and a large brimming water- 
trough in front for the thirsting camel. We walked 
forth into the fields, saw luxuriant crops of green 
bearded wheat, waving with its lights and shadows ; 
stood under the shade of trees, saw fluttering and 
chirping birds; went down to a well and a water- 
wheel, and stood, like children, listening to the 
sound of the abundant and bright-flashing water, 
as it fell from the circling pots ; and marked all 
around, scattered individually or in small groups, 
many people in the fields, oxen and asses grazing, 
and camels too among them." — Ibid. pp. 80, 81. 

All this, however, is inferior to his first elo- 
quent account of the gigantic ruins of Luxore, 
and the emotions to which they gave rise. 
We know nothing, indeed, better, in its way, 
than most of the following passages : — 

" Before the grand entrance of this vast edifice, 
which consists of many separate structures, formerly 
united in one harmonious design, two lofty obelisks 
stand proudly pointing to the sky. fair as the daring 
sculptor left them. The sacred figures and hiero- 
glyphic characters which adorn them, are cut beauti- 
fully into the hard granite, and have the sharp finish 
of yesterday. The very stone looks not discoloured. 
You see them, as Cambyses saw them, when he 
stayed his chariot wheels to gaze at them, and the 
Persian war-cry ceased before these acknowledged 
symbols of the sacred element of fire. — Behind them 
are two colossal figures, in part concealed by the 
sand ; as is the bottom of a choked-up gateway, the 
base of a massive propylon, and, indeed, their own. 
— Very noble are all these remains; and on the 
propylon is a war-scene, much spoken of; but my 
eyes were continually attracted to the aspiring obe- 
lisks, and again and again you turn to look at them, 
with increasing wonder and silent admiration." — 
Ibid. pp. 86, 87. 

" With a quick-beating heart, and steps rapid as 
my thoughts, I strode away, took the path to the 
village of Karnac, skirted it, and passing over loose 
sand, and, among a few scattered date trees, I found 
myself in the grand alley of the sphinxes, and di- 
rectly opposite that noble gateway, which has been 
called triumphal; certainly triumph never passed 
under one more lofty, or, to my eye, of a more im- 
posing magnificence. On the bold curve of its 
beautifully projecting cornice, a globe, coloured as 
of fire, stretches forth long over-shadowing wings 
of the very brightest azure. — This wondrous and 
giant portal stands well ; alone, detached a little way 
from the mass of the great ruins, with no columns, 
walls, or propylaea immediately near. I walked 
slowly up to it, through the long lines of sphinxes 
which lay couchant on either side of the broad road 
(once paved), as they were marshalled by him who 
planned these princely structures — we know not 
when. They are of stone less durable than granite : 
their general forms are fully preserved, but the de- 
tail of execution is, in most of them, worn away.- 
In those forms, in that couched posturp, in the de 
caving, shapeless heads, the huge worn paws, this 
little image between them, and the sacred tau grasp 
ed in its crossed hands, there is something which 
disturbs you with a sense of awe. In the locality 
you cannot err ; you are on a highway to a heathen 



680 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



temple ; one that the Roman came, as you come, to 
visit and admire, and the Greek hefore him. And 
you know that priest and king, lord and slave, the 
festival throng and the solitary worshipper, trod for 
centuries where you do: and you know that there 
flfas been tlie crowding flight of the vanquished to- 
^wawls their sanctuary and last hold, and the quick 
Sampling of armed pursuers, and the neighing of the 
war-horse, and the voice of the trumpet, and the 
shout, as of a king, among them, all on this silent 
spot . And you see before you, and on all sides, 
ruins ! — the stones which formed wells and square 
temple-towers thrown down in vast heaps ; or still, 
in large masses, erect as the builder placed them, 
and where their material has been fine, their sur- 
faces and corners smooth, sharp, and uninjured by 
time. They are neither grey nor blackened; like 
the bones of man, they seem to whiten under the 
sun of the desert. Here is no lichen, no moss, no 
rank grass or mantling ivy, no wall-flower or wild 
fig-tree to robe them, and to conceal their deformi- 
ties, and bloom above them. No; — all is the na- 
kedness of desolation — the colossal skeleton of a 
giant fabric standing in the unwatered sand, in soli- 
tude and silence." 

This we think is very fine and beautiful : 
But what follows is still better; and gives a 
clearer, as well as a deeper impression, of the 
true character and effect of these stupendous 
remains, than all the drawings and descrip- 
tions of Denon and his Egyptian Institute. 

" There are no ruins like these ruins. In the 
first court you pass into, you find one large, lofty, 
solitary column, erect among heaped and scattered 
fragments, which had formed a colonade of one- 
and-twenty like it. You pause awhile, and then 
move slowly on. You enter a wide portal, and find 
yourself surrounded by one hundred and fifty co- 
lumns,* on which I defy any man, sage or savage, 
to look unmoved. Their vast proportions the bet- 
ter taste of after days rejected and disused ; but the 
still astonishment, the serious gaze, the thickening 
breath of the awed traveller, are tributes of an ad- 
miration not to be checked or frozen by the chilling 
rules of taste. 

" We passed the entire day in these ruins ; each 
wandering about alone, as inclination led him. De- 
tailed descriptions I cannot give; I have neither the 
skill or the patience to count and to measure. I as- 
cended a wing of the great propylon on the west, 
and sat there long. I crept round the colossal statues! 
I seated myself on a fallen obelisk, and gazed up at 
the three, yet standing erect amid huge fragments 
of fallen granite. I sauntered slowly round every 
part, examining the paintings and hieroglyphics, 
and listening now and then, not without a smile, to 
our polite little cicerone, as with the air of a con- 
descending savant, he pointed to many of the sym- 
bols, saying, • this means water,' and ' that means 
land,' ' this stability,' ' that life.' and 'here is the 
name of Berenice.' — Scenes in Egypt, pp. 88 — 92. 

" From hence we bade our guide conduct us to 
some catacombs; he did so, in the naked hill just 
above. Some are passages, some pits ; but, in gene- 
ral, passages in the side of the hill. Here and there 
you may find a bit of the rock or clay, smoothed 
and painted, or bearing the mark of a thin fallen 
coating of composition ; but, for the most part, they 
are quite plain. Bones, rags, and the scattered 
limbs of skeletons, which have been torn from their 
coffins, stripped of their grave-clothes, and robbed 
of the sacred scrolls placed with them in the tomb, 
lie in or around these ' open sepulchres.' We found 
nothing; but surely the very rag blown to your feet 
is a relic. May it not «have been woven by some 
damsel under the shade of trees, with the song that 



* The central row have the enormous diameter 
«rf eleven French feet, the others that of eight. 



lightens labour, twenty centuries ago? or may it 
not have been carried with a sigh to the tiring- men 
of the temple by one who brought it to swathe the 
cold and stiffened limbs of a being loved in life, and 
mourned and honoured in his death ? Yes, it is a 
relic ; and one musing on which a warm fancy might 
find wherewithal to beguile a long and solitary 
walk."— -Ibid. p. 100, 101. 

" We then returned across the plain to our boat, 
passing and pausing before the celebrated sitting 
statues so often described. They are seated on 
thrones, looking to the east, and on the Nile ; in 
this posture (hey are upwards of fifty feet in height ; 
and their bodies, limbs, and heads, are large, spread- 
ing, and disproportioned. These are very awful 
monuments. They bear the form of man ; and 
there is a something in their very posture which 
touches the soul : There they sit erect, calm : 
They have seen generation upon generation swept 
away, and still their stony gaze is fixed on man toil- 
ing and perishing at their feet! 'Twas late and 
dark ere we reached our home. The day following 
we again crossed to the western bank, and rode 
through a narrow hot valley in the Desert, to the 
tombs of the kings. Your Arab catches at the head 
of your ass in a wild dreary-looking spot, about five 
miles from the river, and motions you to light. On 
every side of you rise low, but steep hills, of the 
most barren appearance, covered with loose and 
crumbling stones, and you stand in a narrow bridle- 
path, which seems to be the bottom of a natural 
ravine ; you would fancy that you had lost your 
way ; but your guide leads you a few paces forward, 
and you discover in the side of the hill an opening 
like the shaft of a mine. At the entrance, you ob- 
serve that the rock, which is a close-grained, but 
soft stone, has been cut smooth and painted. He 
lights your wax torch, and you pass into a long cor- 
ridor. On either side are small apartments which 
you stoop down to enter, and the walls of which you 
find covered with paintings : scenes of life faithfully 
represented ; of every -day life, its pleasures and la- 
bours ; the instruments of its happiness, and of its 
crimes! You turn to each other with a delight, 
not however unmixed with sadness, to mark how 
much the days of man then passed, as they do to 
this very hour. You see the labours of agriculture 
— the sower, the basket, the plough; the steers; 
and the artist has playfully depicted a calf skipping 
among the furrows. You have the making of bread, 
the cooking for a feast ; you have a flower garden, 
and a scene of irrigation ; you see couches, sofas, 
chairs, and arm-chairs, such as might, this day, 
adorn a drawing-room in London or Paris ; you 
have vases of every form down to the common jug, 
(ay ! such as the brown one of Toby Philpot); you 
have harps, with figures bending over them, and 
others seated and listening ; you have barks, with 
large, curious, and many-coloured sails ; lastly, you 
have weapons of war, the sword, the dagger, the 
bow, the arrow, the quiver, spears, helmets, and 
dresses of honour. — The other scenes on the walls 
represent processions and mysteries, and all the 
apartments are covered with them or hieroglyphics. 
There is a small chamber with the cow of Isis, and 
there is one large room in an unfinished state,— 
designs chalked off, that were to have been com- 
pleted on that to-morrow, which never came !" 
Ibid. pp. 104—109. 

But we must hurry on. We cannot afford 
to make an abstract of this book, and indeed 
can find room but for a few more specimens. 
He meets with a Scotch Mameluke at Cairo ; 
and is taken by Mr. Salt to the presence of Ali 
Pacha. He visits the pyramids of course, de- 
scribes rapidly and well the whole process of 
the visit — and thus moralises the conclusion: — 

" He who has stood on the summit of the most 
ancient, and yet the most mighty monument of his 



SKETCHES OF INDIA— EGYPT AND ITALY. 



681 



power and pride ever raised by man, and has looked 
out and round to the far horizon, where Lybia and 
Arabia lie silent, and hath seen, at his feet, the land 
of Egypt dividing their dark solitudes with a narrow 
vale, beautiful and green, the mere enamelled set- 
ting of one solitary shining river, must receive im- 
pressions which he can never convey, for he cannot 
define them to himself. 

" They are the tombs of Cheops and Cephrenes, 
Bays tne Grecian. They are the tombs of Seth and 
Enoch, says the wild and imaginative Arabian ; an 
English traveller, with a mind warmed, perhaps, 
and misled by his heart, tells you that the large py- 
ramid may have contained the ashes of the patriarch 
Joseph. It is all this which constitutes the very 
charm of a visit to these ancient monuments. You 
smile, and your smile is followed and reproved by 
a sigh. One thing you know — that the chief, and the 
philosopher, and the poet of the times of old, men 
* who mark fields as they pass with their own 
mighty names,' have certainly been here; that Al- 
exander has spurred his war-horse to its base ; and 
Pythagoras, with naked foot, has probably stood 
upon its summit. — Sce?ies in Egypt, pp. 158, 159. 

Cairo is described in great detail, and fre- 
quently with great feeling and eloquence. He 
saw a live cameleopard there — very beautiful 
and gentle. One of his most characteristic 
sketches, however, is that of the female slave 
market. 

11 We stopped before the gate of a large building, 
and, turning, entered a court of no great size, with 
a range of apartments all round ; open doors show- 
ed that they were dark and wretched. At them, or 
before them, stood or sat small groups of female 
slaves; also from within these chambers, you might 
catch the moving eyes and white teeth of those who 
shunned the light. There was a gallery above with 
other rooms, and slave girls leaning on the rail — 
laughter, all laughter ! — their long hair in numerous 
falling curls, white with fat ; their faces, arms, and 
bosoms shining with grease. Exposure in the market 
is the momentof their joy. Their cots, their country, 
the breast that gave them suck, the hand that led their 
tottering steps not forgotten, but resigned, given up, 
as things gone for ever, left in another world. The 
toils and terrors of the wide desert, the hard and 
scanty fare, the swollen foot, the whip, the scalding 
tear, the curse; all, all are behind: hope meets 
them again here.; and paints some master kind; 
some mistress gentle ; some babe or child to win 
the heart of; — as bond-women they may bear a 
son. and live and die the contented inmates of some 
quiet harem." — Ibid. pp. 178, 179. 

He does not think much of Ali's new Insti- 
tute — though he was assured by one of the tu- 
tors that its pupils were to be taught Cl every- 
thing!" We have learned, from unquestion- 
able authority, that from this everything, all 
that relates to Politics, Religion, and Philoso- 
phy, is expressly excluded ; and that little is 
proposed to be taught but the elements of the 
useful arts. There is a scanty library of Eu- 
ropean books, almost all French, — the most 
conspicuous backed, " Victoires des Francais; 
— and besides these, "Les Liaisons Dange- 
reuses!" — only one book in English, though 
not ill-chosen — " Malcolm's Persia." He was 
detained at Alexandria in a time of plague — 
and, after all, was obliged to return, when 
four days at sea, to land two sick men, and 
perform a new quarantine of observation. 

There is an admirable description of Va- 
letta. and the whole island — and then of Syra- 
cuse and Catania; but we can give only the 
liight ascent to iEtna — and that rather for the 
86 



scene of the Sicilian cottage, than for the 
sketch of the mighty mountain : — 

" It was near ten o'clock when the youth who 
led the way stopped before a small dark cottage in 
a by-lane of Nicolosi, the guide's he said it was, 
and hailed them. The door was opened; alight 
struck; and the family was roused, and collected 
round me ; a grey-headed old peasant and his wife ; 
two hardy, plain, dark young men, brothers (one 
of whom was in his holiday gear, new breeches, 
and red garters, and flowered waistcoat, and clean 
shirt, and shining buttons ;) a girl of sixteen, hand- 
some ; a ' mountain-girl beaten with winds,' look- 
ing curious, yet fearless and ' chaste as the har- 
dened rock on which she dwelt ;' and a boy of 
twelve, an unconscious figure in the group, fast 
slumbering in his clothes on the hard floor. Glad 
were they of the dollar-bringing stranger, but sur- 
prised at the excellenza's fancy for coming at that 
hour ; cheerfully, however, the gay youth stripped 
off his holiday-garb, and put on a dirty shirt and 
thick brown clothes, and took his cloak and went 
to borrow a mule (for I found, by their consulta- 
tion, that there was some trick, this not being the 
regular privileged guide family.' During his ab- 
sence, the girl brought me a draught of wine, and 
all stood round with welcoming and flattering 
laughings, and speeches in Sicilian, which I did 
not understand, but which gave me pleasure, and 
made me look on their dirty and crowded cottage 
as one I had rather trust to, if I knocked at it even 
without a dollar, than the lordliest mansion of the 
richest noble in Sicily. 

" For about four miles, your mule stumbles along 
safely over a bed of lava, lying in masses on the 
road ; then you enter the woody region : the wood 
is open, of oaks, not large, yet good-sized trees, 
growing amid fern ; and, lastly, you come out on a 
soft barren soil, and pursue the ascent till you find 
a glistering white crust of snow of no depth, crack- 
ing under your mule's tread ; soon after, you arrive 
at a stone cottage, called Casa Tnglese, of which 
my guide had not got the key ; here you dismount, 
and we tied up our mules clo?e by, and scrambling , 
over huge blocks of lava, and up ihe toilsome and 
slippery ascent of the cone, I sat me down on 
ground all hot, and smoking with sulphureous 
vapour, which has for the first few minutes the 
effect of making your eyes smart, and water, of 
oppressing and taking away your breath. It yet 
wanted half an hour to the break of day, and I 
wrapped my cloak close round me to guard me 
from the keen air which came up over the white 
cape of snow that lay spread at the foot of the 
smoking cone, where I was seated. 

" The earliest dawn gave to my view the awful 
crater, with its two deep mouths, from one whereof 
there issued large volumes of thick while smoke, 
pressing up in closely crowding clouds ; and all 
around, you saw the earth loose, and with crisped, 
yellow-mouthed small cracks, up which came little, 
light, thin wreaths of smoke that soon dissipated in 
the upper air, &c. — And when you turn to gaze 
downwards, and see the golden sun come up in 
light and majesty to bless the waking millions of 
your fellows, and the dun vapour of the night roll 
off below, "and capes, and hills, and towns, and the 
wide ocean are seen as through a thin unearthly 
veil; your eyes fill, and your heart swells; all the 
blessings you enjoy, all the innocent, pleasures you 
find in your wanderings, that preservation, which 
in storm, and in battle, and mid the pestilence was 
mercifully given to your half-breathed prayer, all 
rush in a moment on your soul. 

Ibid. pp. 253—257. 

The following brief sketch of the rustic 
auberges of Sicily is worth preserving, as 
well as the sentiment with which it closes. — 

" The chambers of these rude inns would please, 
at first, any one. Three or four beds (mere planks 



682 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



upon iron trestles), with broad, yellow-striped, 
coarse mattresses, turned up on them ; a table and 
chairs of wood, blackened by age, and of forms 
belonging to the past century ; a daub or two of a 
picture, and two or three coloured prints of Ma- 
donnas and saints : a coarse table cloth, and coarser 
napkin; a thin blue-tinted drinking glass; dishes 
and plates of a striped, dirty-coloured, pimply ware ; 
and a brass lamp with three mouths, a shape com- 
mon to Delhi, Cairo, and Madrid, and as ancient 
as the time of the Etruscans themselves. 

" To me it had another charm ; it brought Spain 
before me, the peasant and his cot, and my chance 
billets amonu; that loved and injured people. Ah ! 
I will not dwell on it ; but this only I will venture 
to say, they err greatly, grossly, who fancy that the 
Spaniard, the most patiently brave and resolutely 
nersevering man, as a man, on the continent of 
Europe, will wear long any yoke he feels galling 
nnd detestable." — Scenes in Egypt, pp. 268, 269. 

The picture of Naples is striking; and re- 
minds us in many places of Mad. de StaePs 
splendid sketches from the same subjects in 
Corrinne. But we must draw to a close now 
with our extracts ) and shall add but one or 
two more, peculiarly characteristic of the gen- 
tle mind and English virtues of the author. 

" I next went into the library, a noble room, and 
a vast collection. I should much like to have seen 
those things which are shown here, especially the 
handwriting of Tasso. I was led as far, and into 
the apartment where they are shown. I found 
priests reading, and men looking as if they were 
learned. I was confused at the creaking of my 
boots ; I gave the hesitating look of a wish, but I 
ended by a blush, bowed, and retired. I passed 
again into the larger apartment, and I felt composed 
as I looked around. Why life, thought I, would 
be too short for any human being to read these 
folios ; but yet, if safe from the pedant's frown, 
one could have a vast library to range in, there is 
little doubt that, with a love of truth, and a thirst- 
ing for knowledge, the man of middle age, who 
regretted his early closed lexicon, might open it 
again with delight and profit. While thus musing, 
in stamped two travellers, — my countrymen, my 
bold, brave countrymen — not intellectual, I could 
have sworn, or Lavater is a cheat — 

"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye :** — 

They strode across to confront the doctors, and 
demanded to see those sights to which the book 
directed, and the grinning domestique de place led 
them. I envied them, and yet was angry with 
them ; however, I soon bethought me, such are the 
men who are often sterling characters, true hearts. 
They will find no seduction in a southern sun ! but 
back" to the English girl they love best, to be liked 
^y her softer nature the better for having seen Italy, 
a_nd taught by her gentleness to speak about it 
pleasingly, and prize what they have seen ! — Such 
•are the men whom our poor men like, — who are 
generous masters and honest voters, faithful hus- 
bands and kind fathers; who, if they make us smiled 
at abroad in peace, make us feared in war, and any 
ne of whom is worth to his country far more than 
4 dozen mere sentimental wanderers." 

Ibid. pp. 296—298. 
• ' Always on quitting the museum it is a relief to 
drive somewhere, that you may relieve the mind 



and refresh the sight with a view of earth and ocean. 
The view from the Belvidere, in the garden of St, 
Martino, close to the fortress of St. Elmo, is said 
to be unequalled in the world. I was walking along 
the cloister to it, when I heard voices behind me, 
and saw an English family — father, mother, with 
daughter and son, of drawing-room and university 
ages. I turned aside that I might not intrude on 
them, and went to take my gaze when they came 
away from the little balcony. I saw no features; 
but the dress, the gentle talking, and the quietude 
of their whole manner, gave me great pleasure. A 
happy domestic English family! parents travelling to 
delight, improve, and protect their children ; younger 
ones at home perhaps, who will sit next summer on 
the shady lawn, and listen as Italy is talked over, 
and look at prints, and turn over a sister's sketch- 
book , and beg a brother's journal. Magically varied 
is the grandeur of the scene — the pleasant city ; its 
broad bay ; a little sea that knows no storms ; its 
garden neighbourhood ; its famed Vesuvius, not 
looking either vast, or dark, or dreadful — all bright 
and smiling, garmented with vineyards below, and 
its brow barren, yet not without a hue of that ashen 
er slaty blueness which improves a mountain's 
aspect ; and far behind, stretched in their full bold 
forms, the shadowy Appenines. Gaze and go back, 
English ! Naples, with all its beauties and its 
pleasures, its treasury of ruins, and recollections, 
and fair works of art ; its soft music and balmy airs 
cannot make you happy ; may gratify the gaze of 
taste, but never suit the habits of your mind. There 
are many homeless solitary Englishmen who might 
sojourn longer in such scenes, and be soothed by 
them; but to become dwellers, settled residents, 
would be, even for them, impossible." 

Ibid. pp. 301—303. 

We must break off here — though there is 
much temptation to go on. But we have now 
shown enough of these volumes to enable our 
readers to judge safely of their character — 
and it would be unfair, perhaps, to steal more 
from their pages. We think we have extract- 
ed impartially; and are sensible, at all events, 
that we have given specimens of the faults 
as well as the beauties of the author's style. 
His taste in writing certainly is not unexcep- 
tionable. He is seldom quite simple or natural, 
and sometimes very fade and affected. He 
has little bits of inversions in- his sentences, 
and small exclamations and ends of ordinary 
verse dangling about them, which we often 
wish away — and he talks rather too much of 
himself, and his ignorance, and humility, 
while he is turning those fine sentences, and 
laying traps for our applause. But, in spite 
of all these things, the books are very interest- 
ing and instructive; and their merits greatly 
outweigh their defects. If the author has 
occasional failures, he has frequent felicities : 
— and, independent of the many beautiful 
and brilliant passages which he has furnished 
for our delight, has contrived to breathe over 
all his work a spirit of kindliness and content- 
ment, which, if it does not minister (as it 
ought) to our improvement, must at least 
disarm our censure of all bitterness. 



WARBURTON'S LETTERS. 



683 



(Januarg, 1809.) 

Letters from a late eminent Prelate to one of his Friends. 4to. pp. 380. Kidderminster: 1808. 



Warburton, we think, was the last of our 
Great Divines — the last, perhaps, of any pro- 
fession, among us, who united profound learn- 
ing with great powers of understanding, and, 
along with vast and varied stores of acquired 
knowledge, possessed energy of mind enough 
to wield them with ease and activity. The days 
of the Cud worths and Barrows — the Hookers 
and Taylors, are long gone by. Among the 
other divisions of intellectual labour to which 
the progress of society has given birth, the 
business of reasoning, and the business of 
collecting knowledge, have been, in a great 
measure, put into separate hands. Our scho- 
lars are now little else than pedants, and an- 
tiquaries, and grammarians, — who have never 
exercised any faculty but memory; and our 
reasoners are, for the most part, but slenderly 
provided with learning ; or, at any rate, make 
but a slender use of it in their reasonings Of 
the two, the reasoners are by far the best off; 
and, upon many subjects, have really profited 
by the separation. Argument from authority- 
is, in general, the weakest and the most tedi- 
ous of all arguments; and learning, we are in- 
clined to believe, has more frequently played 
the part of a bully than of a fair auxiliary ; 
and been oftener used to frighten people than 
to convince them, — to dazzle and overawe, 
rather than to guide and enlighten. A mo- 
dern writer would not, if he could, reason as 
Barrow and Cud worth often reason ; and every 
reader, even of Warburton, must have felt 
that his learning often encumbers rather than 
assists his progress, and, like shining armour, 
adds more to his terrors than to his strength. 
The true theory of this separation may be, 
therefore, that scholars who are capable of 
reasoning, have ceased to make a parade of 
their scholarship; while those who have no- 
thing else must continue to set it forward — 
just as gentlemen now-a-days keep their gold 
in their pockets, instead of wearing it on their 
clothes — while the fashion of laced suits still 
prevails among their domestics. There are 
individuals, however, who still think that a 
man of rank looks most dignified in cut velvet 
and embroidery, and that one who is not a 
gentleman can now counterfeit that appear- 
ance a little too easily. We do not presume 
to settle so weighty a dispute ; — we only take 
the liberty of observing, that Warburton lived 
to see the fashion go out ; and was almost the 
last native gentleman who appeared in a full 
trimmed coat. 

He was not only the last of our reasoning 
scholars, but the last also, we think, of our 
powerful polemics. This breed too, we take 
it, is extinct; — and w r e are not sorry for it. 
Those men cannot be much regretted, who, 
instead of applying their great and active 
faculties in making their fellows better or 
•viser, or in promo Ing mutual kindness and 



cordiality among all the virtuous and enlight- 
ened, wasted their days in wrangling upon 
idle theories ; and in applying, to the specu- 
lative errors of their equals in talents and in 
virtue, those terms of angry reprobation which 
should be reserved for vice and malignity. 
In neither of these characters, therefore, can 
| we seriously lament that Warburton is not 
likely to have any successor. 

The truth is, that this extraordinary person 
was a Giant in Literature — w-ith many of the 
vices of the Gigantic character. Strong as he 
was, his excessive pride and overweening 
vanity were perpetually engaging him in en- 
terprises which he could not accomplish; 
whde such was his intolerable arrogance to- 
wards his opponents, and his insolence to- 
wards those whom he reckoned as his infe- 
riors, that he made himself very generally 
and deservedly odious, and ended by doing 
considerable injury to all the causes which 
he undertook to support. The novelty and 
the boldness of his manner — the resentment 
of his antagonists — and the consternation of 
his friends, insured him a considerable share 
of public attention at the beginning : But such 
was the repulsion of his moral qualities as a 
write*, and the fundamental unsoundness of 
most of his speculations, that he no sooner 
ceased to write, than he ceased to be read or 
inquired after, — and lived to see those erudite 
volumes fairly laid on the shelf, which he 
fondly expected to carry down a growing 
fame to posterity. 

The history of Warburton, indeed, is un- 
commonly curious, and his fate instinctive. 
He was bred an attorney at Newark ; and 
probably derived, from his early practice in 
that capacity, that love of controversy, and 
that habit of scurrility, for which he was after- 
wards distinguished. His first literary asso- 
ciates were some of the heroes of the Dunciad ; 
and his first literary adventure the publication 
of some poems, which well entitled him to a 
place among those worthies. He helped "pil- 
fering Tibbalds" to some notes upon Shake- 
speare ; and spoke contemptuously of Mr. 
Pope's talents, and severely of his morals, in 
his letters to Concannen. He then hired his 
pen to prepare a volume on the Jurisdiction 
of the Court of Chancery ; and having now 
entered the church, made a more successful 
endeavour to magnify his profession, and to 
attract notice to himself by the publication 
of his once famous book on a the Alliance 
between Church and State," in which all the 
presumption and ambition of his nature was 
first made manifest. 

By this time, however, he seems to have 
passed over from the party of the Dunces to 
that of Pope ; and proclaimed his conversion 
pretty abruptly, by writing an elaborate de 
fence of the Essay on Man from some imputa 



684 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



tions which had been thrown on its theology 
and morality. Pope received the services of 
this voluntary champion with great gratitude ; 
and Warburton having now discovered that 
he was not only a great poet, but a very honest 
man, continued to cultivate his friendship with 
great assiduity, and with very notable success: 
For Pope introduced him to Mr. Murray, who 
made him preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and to 
Mr. Allen of Prior Park, who gave him his 
niece in marriage, — obtained a bishopric for 
him, — and left him his whole estate. In the 
mean time, he published his "Divine Lega- 
tion of Moses," — the most learned, most arro- 
gant, and most absurd work, which had been 
produced in England for a century; — and his 
editions of Pope, and of Shakespeare, in which 
he was scarcely less outrageous and fantas- 
tical. He replied to some of his answerers in 
a style full of insolence and brutal scurrility; 
and not only poured out the most tremendous 
abuse on the infidelities of Bolingbroke and 
Hume, but found occasion also to quarrel 
with Drs. Middleton, Lowth, Jortin. Leland, 
and indeed almost every name distinguished 
for piety and learning in England. At the 
same time, he indited the most highflown 
adulation to Lord Chesterfield, and contrived 
to keep himself in the good graces of Lord 
Mansfield and Lord Hardwicke; — while, in 
the midst of affluence and honours, he was 
continually exclaiming against the barbarity 
of the age in rewarding genius so frugally, 
and in not calling in the aid of the civil ma- 
gistrate to put down fanaticism and infidelity. 
The public, however, at last, grew weary of 
these blustering novelties. The bishop, as 
old age stole upon him, began to doze in his 
mitre ; and though Dr. Richard Hurd, with 
Lhe true spirit of an underling, persisted in 
keeping up the petty traffic of reciprocal en- 
comiums, yet Warburton was lost to the pub- 
lic long before he sunk into dotage, and lay 
dead as an author for many years of his natu- 
ral existence. 

We have imputed this rapid decline of his 
reputation, partly to the unsoundness of his 
general speculations, and chiefly to the of- 
fensiveness of his manner. The fact is ad- 
mitted even by those who pretend to regret 
it; and, whatever Dr. Hurd may have thought, 
it must have had other causes than the decay 
of public virtue and taste. 

In fact, when we look quietly and soberly 
over the vehement and imposing treatises of 
Warburton, it is scarcely possible not to per- 
leive, that almost every thing that is original 
.ii his doctrine or propositions is erroneous; 
and that his great gifts of learning and argu- 
mentation have been bestowed on a vain at- 
tempt to give currency to untenable paradoxes. 
His powers and his skill in controversy may 
indeed conceal, from a careless reader, the 
radical fallacy of his reasoning; and as, in 
the course of the argument, he frequently 
has the better of his adversaries upon inci- 
dental and collateral topics, and never fails to 
make his triumph resound over the whole 
field of battle, it is easy to understand how 
oe should, for a while, nave got the credit of 



a victory, which is now generally adjudged to 
his opponents. The object of "the Divine 
Legation," for instance, is to prove that the 
mission of Moses was certainly from God, — 
because his system is the only one which 
does not teach the doctrine of a future state 
of rewards and punishments ! And the ob- 
ject of "the Alliance" is to show, that the 
church (that is, as he explains it, all the ad- 
herents of the church of England) is entitled 
to a legal establishment , and the protection of 
a test law, — because it constitutes a separate 
society from that which is concerned in the 
civil government, and, being equally sovereign 
and independent, is therefore entitled to treat 
with it on a footing of perfect equality. The 
sixth book of Virgil, we are assured, in the 
same peremptory manner, contains merely 
the description of the mysteries of Eleusis; 
and the badness of the New Testament Greek 
a conclusive proof both of the eloquence and 
the inspiration of its authors. These fancies, 
it appears to us. require no refutation ; and, 
dazzled and astonished as we are at the rich 
and variegated tissue of learning and argu- 
ment with which their author has invested 
their extravagance, we conceive that no man 
of a sound and plain understanding can ever 
mistake them for truths, or waver, in the least 
degree, from the conviction which his own 
reflection must afford of their intrinsic ab- 
surdity. •* - 

The case is very nearly the same with his 
subordinate general propositions; which, in 
so far as they are original, are all brought 
forward with the parade of great discoveries, 
and yet appear to us among the most futile 
and erroneous of modern speculations. We 
are tempted to mention two, which we think 
we have seen referred to by later writers with 
some degree of approbation, and which, at 
any rate, make a capital figure in all the fun- 
damental philosophy of Warburton. The one 
relates to the necessary imperfection of human 
laws, as dealing in Punishments only, and not 
in Rewards also. The other concerns his 
notion of the ultimate foundation of moral 
Obligation. 

The very basis of his argument for the 
necessity of the doctrine of a future state to 
the well-being of society, is, that, by human 
laws, the conduct of men is only controlled 
by the fear of punishment, and not excited by 
the hope of reward. Both these sanctions^ 
however, he contends, are necessary to regu- 
late our actions, and keep the world in order; 
and, therefore, legislators, not finding rewards 
in this world, have always been obliged to 
connect it with a future world, in which they 
have held out that they would be bestowed 
on all deservers. It is scarcely possible, we 
believe, to put this most important doctrine 
on a more injudicious foundation ; and if this 
were the only ground either for believing or 
inculcating the doctrine of a future state, we 
should tremble at the advantages which the 
infidel would have in the contest. We shall 
not detain our readers longer, than just to 
point out three obvious fallacies in this, the 
most vaunted and confident, perhaps, of all 



WARBURTON'S LETTERS. 



685 



the Warburtonian dogmata. In the first place, 
t is obvious that disorders in society can 
scarcely be said to be prevented by the hope 
of future rewards : the proper use of that doc- 
trine being, not to repress vice, but to console 
affliction. Vice and disorder can only be 
quelled by the dread of future punishment — 
whether in this world or the next ; while it is 
obvious that the despondency and distress 
which may be soothed by the prospect of 
future*bliss, are not disorders within the pur- 
view of the legislator. In the second place, 
it is obviously not true that human laws are 
necessarily deficient in the article of providing 
rewards. In many instances, their enact- 
ments have this direct object ; and it is ob- 
vious, that if it was thought essential to the 
well-being of society, they might reward quite 
as often as they punish. But, in the third 
place, the whole argument proceeds upon a 
gross and unaccountable misapprehension of 
the nature and object of legislation ; — a very 
brief explanation of which will show, both 
that the temporal rewards of virtue are just 
as sure as the temporal punishments of vice, 
and at the same time explain why the law 
has so seldom interfered to enforce the for- 
mer. The law arose from human feelings 
and notions of justice ; and those feelings and 
notions, were, of course, before the law, which 
only came in aid of their deficiency. The 
natural and necessary effect of kind and vir- 
tuous conduct is, to excite love, gratitude, 
and benevolence; — the effect of injury and 
vice is to excite resentment, anger, and re- 
venge. While there was no law and no 
magistrate, men must have acted upon those 
feelings, and acted upon them in their whole 
extent. He who rendered kindness, received 
kindness; and he who inflicted pain and suf- 
fering, was sooner or later overtaken by re- 
torted pain and suffering. Virtue was rewarded 
therefore, and vice punished, at all times; 
and both, we must suppose, in the same 
measure and degree. The reward of virtue, 
however, produced no disturbance or dis- 
order; and. after society submitted to regula- 
tion, was very safely left in the hands of 
gratitude and sympathetic kindness. But it 
was far otherwise with the punishment of 
vice. Resentment and revenge tended always 
to a dangerous excess, — were liable to be as- 
sumed as the pretext for unprovoked aggres- 
sion, — and, at all events, had a tendency to 
reproduce revenge and resentment, in an in- 
terminable series of violence and outrage. 
The law, therefore, took this duty into its own 
hands. It did not invent, or impose for the 
first time, that sanction of punishment, which 
was coeval with vice and with society, and 
is implied, indeed, in the very notion of in- 
jury : — it only transferred the right of apply- 
ing it from the injured individual to the pub- 
lic; and tempered its application by more 
impartial and extensive views of the circum- 
stances of the delinquency. But if the pun- 
ishment of vice be not ultimately derived from 
law, neither is the reward of virtue ; and al- 
though human passions made it necessary for 
law to undertake the regiuVioa of that pun- 



ishment, it evidently would not add to its per- 
fection, to make it also the distributer of re- 
wards ; unless it could be shown, that a simi- 
lar disorder was likely to arise from leaving 
these to the individuals affected. It is ob- 
vious, however, not only that there is no like- 
lihood of such a disorder, but that such an 
interference would be absurd and impractica- 
ble. It is true, therefore, that human laws 
do in general provide punishments only, and 
not rewards; but it is not true that they are, 
on this account, imperfect or defective ; or 
that human conduct is not actually regulated 
by the love of happiness, as much as by the 
dread of suffering. The doctrine of a future 
state adds, no doubt, prodigiously to both these 
motives; but it is a rash, a presumptuous, 
and, we think, a most shortsighted and nar- 
row view of the case, to suppose, that it is 
chiefly the impossibility of rewarding virtue 
on Earth, that has led legislators to secure the 
peace of society, by referring it for its recom- 
pense to Heaven. 

The other dogma to which we alluded, is 
advanced with equal confidence and preten- 
sions; and is, if possible, still more shallow 
and erroneous. Speculative moralists had 
been formerly contented with referring moral 
obligation, either to a moral sense, or to a 
perception of utility ; — Warburton, without 
much ceremony, put both these together: 
But his grand discovery is, that even this tie 
is not strong enough; and that the idea of 
moral obligation is altogether incomplete and 
imperfect, unless it be made to rest also on 
the Will of 'a Superior. There is no point in 
all his philosophy, of which he is more vain 
than ol this pretended discovery ; and he 
speaks of it, we are persuaded, twenty times, 
without once suspecting the gross fallacy 
which it involves. The fallacy is not, how- 
ever, in stating an erroneous proposition — for 
it is certainly true, that the command of a 
superior will generally constitute an obliga- 
tion : it lies altogether in supposing that this 
is a separate or additional ground of obliga- 
tion, — and in not seeing that this vaunted dis- 
covery of a third principle for the foundation 
of morality, was in fact nothing but an indi- 
vidual instance or exemplification of the prin- 
ciple of utility. 

Why are we bound by the will of a supe- 
rior? — evidently for no other reason, than be- 
cause superiority implies a. power to affect our 
happiness; and the expression of will assures 
ns. that our happiness will be affected by our 
disobedience. An obligation is something 
which constrains or induces us to act; — but 
there neither is nor can be any other motive 
for the actions of rational and sentient beings, 
than the love of happiness. It is the desire 
of happiness — well or ill understood — seen 
widely or narrowly, — that necessarily dictates 
all our actions, and is at the bottom of all our 
conceptions of morality or duty: and the will 
of a superior can only constitute a ground of 
obligation, by connecting itself with this sin- 
gle and universal agent. If it were possible 
to disjoin the idea of our own happiness or 
suffering from the idea of a superior, it is ob« 
3H 



686 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



vious, that we should no longer be under any 
obligation to conform to the will of that supe- 
rior. If we should be equally secure of hap- 
piness — in mind and in body — in time and in 
eternity, by disobeying his will, as by com- 
plying with it, it is evidently altogether incon- 
ceivable, that the expression of that will should 
impose any obligation upon us : And although 
it be true that we cannot suppose such a case, 
it is not the less a fallacy to represent the will 
of a superior as a third and additional ground 
of obligation, newly discovered by this author, 
and superadded to the old principle of a regard 
to happiness, or utility. We take these in- 
stances of the general unsoundness of all 
Warburton's peculiar doctrines, from topics 
on which he is generally supposed to have 
been less extravagant than on any other. 
Those who wish to know his feats in criticism, 
may be referred to the Canons of Mr. Ed- 
wards; and those who admire the originality of 
his Dissertation on the Mysteries, are recom- 
mended to look into the Elevsis of Meursius. 

Speculations like these could never be pop- 
ular ; and were not likely to attract the atten- 
tion, even of the studious, longer than their 
novelty, and the glare of erudition and orig- 
inality which was thrown around them, pro- 
tected them from deliberate consideration. 
But the real cause of the public alienation 
from the works of this writer, is undoubtedly 
to be found in the revolting arrogance of his 
general manner, and the offensive coarseness 
of his controversial invectives. These, we 
think, must be confessed to be somewhat 
worse than mere error in reasoning, or ex- 
travagance in theory. They are not only of- 
fences of the first .magnitude against good 
taste and good manners, but are likely to be 
attended with pernicious consequences in 
matters of much higher importance. Though 
we are not disposed to doubt of the sincerity 
of this reverend person's abhorrence for vice 
and infidelity, we are seriously of opinion, that 
his writings have been substantially prejudi- 
cial to the cause of religion and morality; and 
that it is fortunate for both, that they have 
now fallen into general oblivion. 

They have produced, in the first place, all 
the mischief of a conspicuous, and, in some 
sense, a successful example of genius and 
learning, associated with insolence, intoler- 
ance, and habitual contumely and outrage. 
All men who are engaged in controversy are 
apt enough to be abusive and insulting, — and 
clergymen, perhaps, rather more apt than 
others. It is an intellectual warfare, in which, 
as in other wars, it is natural, we suspect, to 
be ferocious, unjust, and unsparing; but ex- 
perience and civilisation have tempered this 
vehemence, by gentler and more generous 
maxims, — and introduced a law of honourable 
hostility, by which the fiercer elements of our 
nature are mastered and controlled. No great- 
er evil, perhaps, can be imagined, than the 
violation of this law from any quarter of influ- 
ence and reputation ; — yet the Warburtonians 
may be said to have used their best endeav- 
ours to introduce the use of poisoned weapons, 
and to abolish the practice of giving quarter. 



in the fields of controversy. Fortunately, 
their example has not been generally follow 
ed; and the sect itself, though graced with 
mitres, and other trophies of worldly success, 
has perished, we think, in consequence of the 
experiment. 

A second, and perhaps, a still more formi- 
dable mischief, arose from the discredit which 
was brought on the priesthood, and indeed 
upon religion in general, by this interchange 
of opprobrious and insulting accusations among 
its ministers. If ♦he abuse was justifiable, 
then the church itself gave shelter to folly 
and wickedness, at least as great as was to be 
found under the banners of infidelity ; — if it 
was not justifiable, then it was apparent, that 
abuse by those holy men was no proof of de- 
merit in those against whom it was directed ; 
and the unbelievers, of course, were furnished 
with an objection to the sincerity of those in- 
vectives of which they themselves were the 
objects. 

This applies to those indecent expressions 
of violence and contempt, in which Warburtoi 
and his followers were accustomed to indulge, 
when speaking of their Christian and clerica. 
opponents. But the greatest evil of all, we 
think, arose from the intemperance, coarse- 
ness, and acrimony of their remarks, even on 
those who were enemies to revelation. There 
is, in all well-constituted minds, a natural 
feeling of indulgence towards those errors of 
opinion, to which, from the infirmity of human 
reason, all men are liable, and of compassion 
for those whose errors have endangered their 
happiness. It must be the natural tendency 
of all candid and liberal persons, therefore, to 
regard unbelievers with pity, and to reason 
with them with mildness and forbearance. 
Infidel writers, we conceive, may generally 
be allowed to be actual unbelievers; for it is 
difficult to imagine what other motive than a 
sincere persuasion of the truth of their opin- 
ions, could induce them to become objects of 
horror to the respectable part of any commu- 
nity, by their disclosure. From vhat vices 
of the heart, or from what defects in the un- 
derstanding, their unbelief may have originat- 
ed, it may not always be easy to determine; 
but it seems obvious that, for the unbelief it- 
self, they are rather to be pitied than reviled ; 
and that the most effectual way of persuading 
the public that their opinions are refuted out 
of a regard to human happiness, is to treat 
their author (whose happiness is most in dan- 
ger) with some small degree of liberality and 
gentleness. It is also pretty generally take.i 
for granted, that a very angry disputant is 
usually in the wrong; that it is not a sign of 
much confidence in the argument, to take ad- 
vantage of the unpopularity or legal danger 
of the opposite doctrine ; and that, when an 
unsuccessful and unfair attempt is made to 
discredit the general ability or personal worth 
of an antagonist, no great reliance is under- 
stood to be placed on the argument by which 
he may be lawfully opposed. 

It is needless to apply these observations to 
the case of the Warburtonian controversies 
There is no man ; we believe, however he may 



WARBURTON'S LETTERS. 



687 



be convinced of the fallacy and danger of the 
principles maintained by Lord Bolingbroke, 
by Voltaire, or by Hume, who has not felt in- 
dignation and disgust at the brutal violence, 
the affected contempt, and the flagrant unfair- 
ness with which they are treated by this 
learned author, — who has not, for a moment, 
taken part with them against so ferocious and 
insulting an opponent, and wished for the 
mortification and chastisement of the advocate, 
even while impressed with the greatest vene- 
ration for the cause. We contemplate this 
scene of orthodox fury, in short, with some- 
th ; ng of the same emotions with which we 
sh. .'Id see a heretic subjected to the torture, 
i»r a freethinker led out to the stake by a zeal- 
ous inquisitor. If this, however, be the effect 
of such illiberal violence, even on those whose 
principles are settled, and whose faith is con- 
firmed by habifc and reflection, the conse- 
quences must obviously be still more perni- 
cious for those whose notions of religion are 
still uninformed and immature, and whose 
minds are open to all plausible and liberal 
impressions. Take the case, for instance, of 
a young man, who has been delighted with 
the eloquence of Bolingbroke. and the sagacity 
and ingenuity of Hume ; — who knows, more- 
over, that the one lived in intimacy with Pope, 
and Swift, and Atterbury. and almost all the 
worthy and eminent persons of his time; — 
and that the other was the cordial friend of 
Robertson and Blair, and was irreproachably 
correct and amiable in every relation of life; 
— and who, perceiving with alarm the ten- 
dency of some of their speculations, applies 
to Warburton for an antidote to the poison he 
may have imbibed. In Warburton he will then 
read that Bolingbroke was a paltry driveller — 
Voltaire a pitiable scoundrel — and Hume a 
nttny dialectician, who ought to have been set 
on the pillory, and whose heart was as base 
and corrupt as his understanding was con- 
temptible ! Now. what, we would ask any 
man of common candour and observation, is 
the effect likely to be produced on the mind 
of any ingenious and able young man by this 
style of confutation ? Infallibly to make him 
take part with the reviled and insulted literati, 
— to throw aside the right reverend confuter 
with contempt and disgust, — and most proba- 
bly to conceive a fatal prejudice against the 
cause of religion itself — thus unhappily asso- 
ciated with coarse and ignoble scurrility. He 
must know to a certainty, in the first place, 
that the contempt of the orthodox champion is 
either affected, or proceeds from most gross 
ignorance and incapacity ; — since the abilities 
of the reviled writers is proved, not only by 
his own feeling and experience, but by the 
suffrage of the public and of all men of intel- 
ligence. He must think, in the second place, 
that the imputations on their moral worth are 
false and calumnious, both from the fact of 
their long friendship with the purest and most 
exalted characters of their age, and from the 
obvious irrelevancy of this topic in a fair refu- 
tation of their errors; — and then, applying the 
ordinary maxims by which we judge of a dis- 
putant's cause, from his temper and his fair- 



ness, he disables both the judgment and the 
candour of his instructor, and conceives a 
strong prejudice in favour of the cause v\hich 
has been attacked in a manner so unwar- 
rantable. 

We have had occasion, oftener than once, 
to trace an effect like this, from this fierce 
and overbearing aspect of orthodoxy; — and 
we appeal to the judgment of all cur readers, 
whether it be not the very effect which it is 
calculated to produce on all youthful minds 
of any considerable strength and originality. 
It is to such persons, however, and to such 
only, that the refutation of infidel writers 
ought to be addressed. There is no need to 
write books against Hume and Voltaire for the 
use of the learned and orthodox part of the 
English clergy. Such works are necessarily 
supposed to be intended for the benefit of 
young persons, who have either conti acted 
some partiality for those seductive writers, or 
are otherwise in danger of being misled by 
them. It is to be presumed, therefore, that 
they know and admife their real excellences; 
— and it might consequently be inferred, that 
they will not listen with peculiar complacency 
to a refutation of their errors, which sets out 
with a torrent of illiberal and unjust abuse of 
their talents and characters. 

We are convinced, therefore, that the bully- 
ing and abusive tone of the Warburtonian 
school, even in its contention with infidels, 
has done more harm to the cause of religion, 
and alienated more youthful and aspiring 
minds from the true faith, than any other 
error into which zeal has ever betrayed ortho- 
doxy. It may afford a sort of vindictive de- 
light to the zealots who stand in no need of 
the instruction of which it should be the ve- 
hicle; but it will, to a certainty, revolt and 
disgust all those to whom that instruction was 
necessary, — enlist all the generous feelings 
of their nature on the side of infidelity. — and 
make piety and reason itself appear like pre- 
judice and bigotry. We think it fortunate, 
therefore, upon the whole, that the controver- 
sial writings of Warburton have already passed 
into oblivion, — since, even if we thought more 
highly than we do of the substantial merit of 
his arguments, we should still be of opinion 
that they were likely to do more mischief 
than the greater part of the sophistries which 
it was their professed object to counteract and 
discredit. 

These desultory observations have carried 
us so completely away from the book, by the 
title of which they were suggested, that we 
have forgotten to announce to our readers, 
that it contains a series of familiar letters, ad- 
dressed by Warburton to Doctor (afterwards 
Bishop) Hurd, from the year 1749, when their 
acquaintance commenced, down to 1776, when 
the increasing infirmities of the former put a 
stop to the correspondence. Some little use 
was made of these letters in the life of his 
friend, which Bishop Hurd published, after a 
very long delay, in 1794 ; but the treasure was 
hoarded up, in the main, till the death of that 
prelate; soon after which, the present volume 
was prepared for publication, in obedience to 



686 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



the following intimation prefixed to the origi- 
nal collection, and now printed in the front 
of the book : — 

" These letters give so true a picture of the 
writer's character, and are, besides, so worthy of 
aim in all respects (I mean, if the reader can forgive 
the playfulness of his wit in some instances, and the 
partiality of his friendship in many more), that, in 
honour of his memory, I would have them published 
after my death, and the profits arising from the sale 
of them, applied to the benefit of the Worcester 
Infirmary." 

The tenor of this note, as well as the name 
and the memory of Warburton, excited in us 
no small curiosity to peruse the collection ; 
and, for a moment, we entertained a hope of 
finding this intractable and usurping author 
softened down, in the gentler relations of pri- 
vate life, to something of a more amiable and 
engaging form : and when we found his right 
reverend correspondent speaking of the play- 
fulness of his wit, and the partiality of his 
friendships, we almost persuaded ourselves, 
that we should find, in these letters, not only 
many traits of domestic tenderness and cor- 
diality, but also some expressions of regret 
for the asperities with which, in the heat and 
the elation of controversy, he had insulted all 
who were opposed to him. It seems natural, 
loo, to expect, that along with "the confessions 
of an author's vanity, we should meet with 
some reflections on his own good fortune, and 
some expressions of contentment and gratitude 
for the honours and dignities which had been 
heaped upon him. In all this, however, we 
have been painfully disappointed. The arro- 
gance and irritability of Warburton was never 
more conspicuous than in these Letters, — nor 
his intolerance of opposition, and his prepos- 
terous estimate of his own merit and import- 
ance. There is some wit — good and bad — 
scattered through them; and diverse frag- 
ments of criticism : But the staple of the cor- 
respondence is his own praise, and that of his 
friend, whom he magnifies and exalts, indeed, 
in a way that is very diverting. To him, and 
his other dependants and admirers, and their 
patrons, he is kind and complimentary to ex- 
cess : but all the rest of the world he regards 
with contempt and indifference. The age is 
a good age or a bad age, according as it ap- 
plauds or neglects the Divine Legation and 
the Commentary on Horace. Those who 
write against these works are knaves and 
drivellers, — and will meet with their reward 
in the contempt of another generation, and 
the tortures of another world! — Bishoprics 
and Chancellorships, on the other hand, are 
too little for those who extol and defend them ; 
— and Government is reviled for leaving the 
press open to Bolingbroke, and tacitly blamed 
for not setting Mr. Hume on the pillory. 

The natural connection of the subject with 
the general remarks which we have already 
premised, leads us to begin our extracts with 
a few specimens of that savage asperity to- 
wards Christians and Philosophers, upon which 
we have felt ourselves called on to pass a 
sentence of reprobation. In a letter, dated in 
1749, we have the following passage about 
Mr. Hume, — 



"lam strongly tempted, too, to have a stroke at 
Hume in parting. He is the author of a little book, 
called Philosophical Essays; in one part of which 
he argues against the being of a God, and in another 
(very needlessly you will say) against the possibility 
of miracles. He has crowned the liberty of the press. 
And yet he has a considerable post under the Go- 
vernment ! I have a great mind to do justice on 
his arguments against miracles, which I think might 
be done in few words. But does he deserve no- 
tice? Is he known amongst you? Pray answer 
me these questions; for if his own weight keeps 
him down, I should be sorry to contribute to his ad- 
vancement — to any -place but the Pillory." — p. 11. 

In another place, he is pleased to sa3 T , under 
date of 1757, when Mr. Hume's reputation 
for goodness, as well as genius, was fully es- 
tablished : — 

" There is an epidemic madness amongst us ; to- 
day we burn with the feverish heat of Supers'ition ; 
to-morrow we stand fixed and frozen in Atheism. 
Expect to hear that the churclies are all crowded 
next Friday ; and that on Saturday they buy up 
Hume's new Essays ; the first of which (and phase 
you) is The Natural History of Religion, for which 
I will trim the rogue's jacket, at least sit upon his 
skirts, as you will see when you come hither, and 
find his margins scribbled over. In a word, the 
Essay is to establish an Atheistic naturalism, like 
Bolingbroke ; and he goes upon one of B.'s capital 
arguments, that Idolatry and Polytheism were be- 
fore the worship of the one God. It is full of ab- 
surdities ; and here I come in with him ; for they 
show themselves knaves : but, as you well observe, 
to do their business, is to show them fools. They 
say this man has several moral qualities. It may 
be so. But there are vices of the mind as well 
as body ; and a Wickeder Heart, and more deter, 
mined to do public Mischief, 1 think I never knew." 

p. 175. 

It is natural and very edifying, after all this, 
to find him expressing the most unmeasured 
contempt, even for the historical works of this 
author, and gravely telling hisbeloved friend, 
who was hammering out a puny dialogue on 
the English constitution, "As to Hume's His- 
tory, you need not fear being forestalled by a 
thousand such writers. But the fear is natural, 
as I have often felt, and as often experienced 
to be absurd !" We really were not aware, 
either that this History was generally looked 
upon as an irreligious publication ; or that 
there was reason to suspect that Dr. Robertson 
had no warm side to religion, more than his 
friend. Both these things, however, may be 
learned from the following short paragraph. 

" Hume has outdone himself in this new history, 
in showing his contempt of religion. This is one 
of those proof charges which Arbuthnot speaks of 
in his treatise of political lying, to try how much 
the public will bear. If this history be well received, 
I shall conclude that there is even an end of all pre- 
tence to religion. But I should think it will not : 
because I fancy the good reception of Robertson's 
proceeded from the decency of it." — p. 207. 

The following is the liberal commentary 
which this Christian divine makes upon Mr. 
Hume's treatment of Rousseau. 

" It is a truth easily discoverable from his wri- 
tings, that Hume could have but one motive in 
bringing him over (for he was under the protection 
of Lord Mareshab and that was, cherishing a man 
whose writings were as mischievous to society as his 
own. The merits of the two philosophers are soon 
adjusted. There is an immense distance between 



VVARBURTON'S LETTERS. 



689 



their natural genius : none at all in their excessive 
vanity ; and much again in their good faith. Rous- 
seau's warmth has made him act the madman in his 
philosophical inquiries, so that he oft saw not the 
mischief which he did : Hume's coldness made him 
not only see but rejoice in his. But it is neither parts 
nor logic that has made either of them philosophers, 
but Infidelity only. For which, to be sure, they 
both equally'deserve a pension." — pp. 286, 287. 

After all this, it can surprise us very little 
to hear him call Voltaire a scoundrel and a 
liar ; and, in- the bitterness of his heart, qua- 
lify Smollett by the name of "a vagabond 
Scot, who wrote nonsense," — because people 
had bought ten thousand copies of his History, 
while the Divine Legation began to lie heavy 
on the shelves of his bookseller. It may be 
worth while, however, to see how this ortho- 
dox prelate speaks of the church and of 
churchmen. The following short passage will 
give the reader some light upon the subject ; 
and also serve to exemplify the bombastic 
adulation which the reverend correspondents 
interchanged with each other, and the coarse 
but robust wit by which Warburton was cer- 
tainly distinguished. 

"You were made for higher things: and my 
greatest pleasure is, that you give me a hint you 
are impatient to pursue them. What will not such 
a capacity and such a pen do, either to shame or to 
improve a miserable nge ! The church, like the 
Ark of Noah, is worth saving ; not for the sake of 
the unclean beasts a?id vermin that almost filled it 
and probably made most noise and clamour in it, 
but for the little corner of rationality, that was as 
touch distressed by the stink within, as by the tem- 
pest without." — pp. 83, 84. 

In another place, he says, " I am serious 
upon it. I am afraid that both you and I shall 
outlive common sense, as well as learning, in 
our reverend brotherhood ;" and afterwards 
complains, that he has laboured all his life to 
support the cause of the clergy, and been re- 
paid with nothing but ingratitude. In the close 
of another letter on the same subject, he says, 
with a presumption, which the event has al- 
ready made half ridiculous, and half melan- 
choly, "Are not you and I finely employed? 
-but. Serimus arbores. alteri quce seculo pro- 
sttnf." 

But these are only general expressions, 
arising, perhaps, from spleen or casual irrita- 
tion. Let us inquire how he speaks of indi- 
viduals. It would be enough, perhaps, to say, 
that except a Dr. Balguy. we do not remember 
of his saying any thing respectful of a single 
clergyman throughout the whole volume. — 
The following is a pretty good specimen of 
the treatment which was reserved for such of 
them as dared to express their dissent from 
Sti3 paradoxes and fancies. 

" What could make that important blockhead 
V>rv.knuw whom) preach against me at St. James'? 
He never met me at Court, or at Powis or New- 
castle-House. And what was it to him, whether 
the Jews had a future life? It might be well for 
such as him, if the Christians had none neither ! — 
Nor, / dare say, does he much trouble himself about 
the matter, while he stands foremost, amongst you, in 
the new Land of Promise ; which, however, to the 
mortification of these modern Jews, is a lit le dis- 
tant from that of •performance." — p. ^5. 
87 



Now, this is not said m jest ; but in fierce 
anger and resentment ; and really affords as 
wonderful a picture of the temper and liberal- 
ity of a Christian divine, as some of the disputes 
among the grammarians do of the irritability 
of a mere man of letters. The contempt, in- 
deed; with which he speaks of his answerers, 
who were in general learned divines, is equally 
keen and cutting with that which he evinces 
towards Hume and Bolingbroke. He himself 
knew ten thousand faults in his work ; but 
they have never found one of them. Nobody 
has ever answered him yet, but at their own 
expense ; and some poor man whom he men- 
tions "'must share in the silent contempt 
with which I treat my answerers." This is 
his ordinary style in those playful and affec- 
tionate letters. Of known and celebrated 
individuals, he talks in Fhe same tone of dis- 
gusting arrogance and animosity. Dr. Lowth, 
the learned and venerable Bishop of London, 
had occasion to complain of some misrepre- 
sentations in Warburton's writings, relating 
to the memory of his father ; and, after some 
amicable correspondence, stated the matter to 
the public in a short and temperate pamphlet. 
Here is the manner in which he is treated for 
it in this Episcopal correspondence. 

" All you say about Lowth's pamphlet breathes 
the purest spirit of friendship. His wit and his 
reasoning, God knows, and I also (as a certain critic 
said once in a matter of the like great importance), 
are much below the qualities that deserve those 
names. But the strangest thing of all, is this man's 
boldness in publishing my letters without my leave 
or knowledge. I remember several long letters 
passed between us. And I remember you saw the 
letters. But I have so totally forgot the contents, 
that I am at a loss for the meaning of these words. 

"In a word, you are right. — If he expected an 
answer, he will certainly find himself disappointed : 
though I believe I could make as good sport with 
this Devil of a vice, for the public diversion, as ever 
was made with him, in the old Moralities." 

pp. 273, 274. 

Among the many able men who thought 
themselves called upon to expose his errors 
and fantasies, two of the most distinguished 
were Jortin and Leland. Dr. Jortin had ob- 
jected to Warburton's theory of the Sixti 
iEneid ; and Dr. Leland to his notion of the 
Eloquence of the Evangelists; and both with 
great respect and moderation. Warburton 
would not, or could not answer; — but his 
faithful esquire was at hand ; and two anony- 
mous pamphlets, from the pen of Dr. Richard 
Hurd, were sent forth, to extol Warburton, 
and his paradoxes, beyond the level of a 
mortal ; to accuse Jortin of envy, and to con- 
vict Leland of ignorance and error. Leland 
answered for himself; and, in the opinion of 
all the world, completely demolished his an- 
tagonist. Jortin contented himself with laugh- 
ing at the weak and elaborate irony of the 
Bishop's anonymous champion, and with won- 
dering at his talent for perversion. Hurd never 
owned either of these malignant pamphlets: 
— and in the life of his friend, no notice what- 
ever was taken of this inglorious controversy, 
What would have been better forgotten, how 
ever, for their ioint reputation, ; ? injudiciously 
3h2 



690 



MfSCELLANEOUS. 



brought back to notice in the volume now be- 
fore us; — and Warburton is proved by his 
letters to have entered fully into aril the paltry 
keenness of his correspondent and to have 
indulged a feeling of the most rancorous hos- 
tility towards both these excellent and accom- 
plished men. In one of his letters he says, 
11 1 will not tell you how much I am obliged 
to you for this correction of Leland. I have 
desired Colonel Harvey to get it reprinted in 
Dublin, which I tu ; i:k Hut a proper return for 
Leland's favour hi London." We hear noth- 
ing mo;e, however, on this subject, after the 
publication of Dr. Leland's reply. 

With regard to Jortin, again, he says, "Next 
to the pleasure of seeing myself so finely 
praised, is the satisfaction I take in seeing 
Jortin mortified. I know to what degree it 
will do it ; and he deserves to be mortified. 
One thing I in good earnest resented for its 
baseness," &c. In another place, he talks of 
his "mean, low, and ungrateful conduct;" 
and adds, " Jortin is as vain as he is dirty, to 
imagine that I am obliged to him," &c. And, 
after a good deal more about his "mean, low 
envy," "the rancour of his heart," his "self- 
importance," and other good qualities, he 
speaks in this way of his death — 

"I see by the papers that Jortin is dead. His 
overrating his abilities, and the public's underra- 
ting them, made so gloomy a temper eat, as the an- 
cients expressed it, his own heart. If his deaih dis- 
tresses his own family, I shall be heartily sorry for 
this accident of mortality. If not, there is no loss — 
even to himself !" — p. 340. 

That the reader may judge how far con- 
troversial rancour has here distorted the fea- 
tures of an adversar) T , we add part of an 
admirable character of Dr. Jortin, drawn by 
.ne who had good occasion to know him, as 
•*. appeared in a work in which keenness, 
T-andour, and erudition are very singularly 
--■lended. "He had a heart which never dis- 
^aced the powers of his understanding. — 
\\ith a lively imagination and an elegant 
taste, he united the artless and amiable negli- 
gence cf a schoolboy. Wit without ill-nature, 
and sense without effort, he could, at will, 
scatter on e7ery subject ; and. in every book, 
. ^e writer presents us with a near and dis- 
tinot view of the man. He had too much 
discernment to confound difference of opinion 
with malignity or dulness ; and too much can- 
dour to insult, where he could not persuade. 
He carried with him into every subject which 
he explored, a solid greatness of soul, which 
could spare an inferior, though in the offen- 
sive form of an adversary, and endure an 
equal, with or without the sacred name of a 
friend."* 

Dv. Middleton, too, had happened to differ 
from seme of Warburton's opinions on the 
*rigin of Popish ceremonies; and accordingly 
ho is very charitably represented as having 
renounced his religion in a pet, on account of 
the discourtesy of his brethren in the church. 
It is on an occasion no less serious and touch- 



* See preface <j» Two TVotfs by a Warburtonian. 
p. 194. 



ing, than the immediate prospect of Uiia 
learned man's death, who had once been his 
friend, that he gives vent to this liberal im- 
putation. 

" Had he had, / will not say piety, but greatness 
of mind enough not to suffer The pretended injuries 
of some churchmen to prejudice hi?n against reli- 
gion, I should love him living, and honour his 
memory when dead. But, gotfd God! that man, 
for the discourtesies done him by his miserable 
fellow-creatures, should be content to divest him 
self of the true viaticum, the comfort, I he solace, 
the asylum, &c. &c. is perfectly astonishing. 1 
believe no one (all things considered) has suffered 
more from the low and vile passions of the high and 
low amongst our brethren than myself. Yet, God 
forbid, &c." — pp*40, 41. 

When divines of the Church of England 
are spoken of in this manner, it may be sup- 
posed that Dissenters and Laymen do not 
.meet with any better treatment. Priestley, 
accordingly, is called "a wretched fellow;" 
and Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in spite of 
considerable temptations to the contrary, had 
spoken with great respect of aim, both in his 
preface to Shakespeare and in his notes, is 
thus rewarded by the meek and modest eccle- 
siastic for his forbearance. 

" The remarks he makes in every page on my 
commentaries, are full of insolence and malignant 
reflections, which, had they not in them as much 
folly as malignity, I should have had reason to be 
offended with. As it is, I think myself obliged to 
him in thus setting before the public so many of 
my notes with his remarks upon them ; for, though 
I have no great opinion of that trifling part of the 
public, which pretends to judge of this part of 
literature, in which boys and girls decide, yet 1 
think nobody can he mistaken in this comparison; 
though I think their thoughts have never yet ex- 
tended thus far as to reflect, that to discover the 
corruption in an author's text, and by a happy sa- 
gacity to restore it to sense, is no easy task : But 
when the discovery is mad*, then to cavil at the 
conjecture, to propose an equivalent, and defend 
nonsense, by producing, out of die thick darkness 
it occasions, a weak and faint glimmering of sense 
(which has been the business of this Editor through- 
out) is the easiest, as well as dullest of all literary 
efforts."— pp. 272, 273. 

It is irksome transcribing more of these 
insolent and vindictive personalities; and ??e 
believe we have already extracted enough, to 
satisfy our readers as to the probable effect 
of this publication, in giving the world a just 
impression of the amiable, playful, and af- 
fectionate character of this learned prelate. 
It is scarcely necessary, for this purpose, to 
refer to any of his pathetic lamentations over 
his own age, as a " barbarous age," an "?m- 
pions age," and "a dark age," — to quote h*"* 
murmurs at the ingratitude with which i;'vt 
own labours had been rewarded, — or. indee.\ 
to do more than transcribe his sage and mag- 
nanimous resolution, in the year 1768, to be 
gin to live for himself — having already livef 
for others longer than they had deserved ot 
him." This worthy and philanthropic person 
had by this time preached and written him- 
self into a bishopric and a fine estate ; and, 
at the same time, indulged himself in every 
sort of violence and scurrility against those 
I f r om whose opinions he dissented. In theso 



WARBURfON'S LETTERS. 



691 



circumstance?, "Ne really are not aware either 
how he could have lived more for himself, or 
less for others, than he had been all along 
doing. But we leave now the painful task of 
commenting upon this book, as a memorial 
oi his character; and gladly turn to those parts 
of it, from which our readers may derive more 
unmingled amusement. 

The wit which it contains is generally strong 
and coarse, with a certain mixture of profanity 
which does not always seem to consort well 
with the episcopal character. There are some 
allusions to the Lady of Babylon, which we 
dare not quote in our Presbyterian pages. The 
reader, however, may take the following: — 

" Poor Job ! It was his eternal fate to be perse- 
cuted by his friends. His three comforters passed 
sentence of condemnation upon him; and he has 
been executing i?i ejfigie ever since. He was first 
bound to the stake by a long catena of Greek 
Fathers; then tortured by Pineda ! then strangled 
*>y Caryl; and afterwards cut up by Westley, and 
anatomised by Garnet. Pray don't reckon me 
amongst his hangmen. I only acted the tender 
part of his wife, and was for making short work with 
him ! But he was ordained, I think, by a fate like 
that of Prometheus, to lie still upon his dunghill, 
and have his brains sucked out by owls. One 
Hodges, a head of Oxford, now threatens us with a 
new Auto de Fe." — p. 22. 

We have already quoted one assimilation 
of the Church to the Ark of Noah. This idea 
is pursued in the following passage, which 
is perfectly characteristic of the force, the 
vulgarity, and the mannerism of Warburton's 
writing: — 

" You mention Noah's Ark. I have really for- 
got what I said of it. But I suppose I compared 
the Church to it, as many a grave divine has done 
before me. — The rabbins make the giant Gog or 
Magog contemporary with Noah, and convinced by 
his preaching ; so that he was disposed to take the 
benefit of the nrk. But here lay the distress ; t dt by 
no means suited his dimensions. Therefore, as 
he could not enter in, he contented himself to ride 
upon it astride. And though you must suppose 
that, in that stormy weather, he was more than 
half-boots over, he kept his seat and dismounted 
safely, when the ark landed on Mount Ararat. — 
Image now to yourself this illustrious Cavalier 
mounted on his hackney: and see if it does not bring 
before you the Church, bestrid by some lumpish 
minister of stale, who turns and winds it at his 
pleasure. The only difference is, that Gog believed 
the preacher of righteousness and religion." 

pp. 87, 88. 

The following is in a broader and more am- 
bitious style, — yet still peculiar and forcible. 
After recommending a tour round St. James' 
Park, as far more instructive than the grand 
tour, he proceeds — 

" This is enough for any one who only wants to 
study men for his use. But if our aspiring friend 
would so higher, and study human nature, in arj 
for itself, he must take a much larger tour than that 
of Europe. He must first go and catch her un- 
dressed, nay, quite naked, in North America, and 
at the Cape of Good Hope. He may then examine 
how she appears cramped, contracted, and buttoned 
close up in the straight tunic of law and custom, as 
in China and Japan ; or spread out, and enlarged 
above her common size, in the long and flowing 
robe of enthusiasm amongst the Arabs and Sara- 
cens; or, lastly, as she flutters in the old rags of 
worn-out policy and civil government, and almost 



ready to run back naked to the deserts, as on the 
Mediterranean coast of Africa These, tell him, 
are the grand scenes for the true philosopher, foi 
the citizen of the world, to contenrplate. The 
Tour of Europe is like the er'.ertainment that Plu- 
tarch speaks of, which Pompey's host of Epirus 
gave him. There were many dishes, and they had 
a seeming variety ; but when he came to examine 
them narrowly, he found them all made out of one 
hog, and indeed nothing but pork differently dis- 
guised. 

" Indeed I perfectly agree with you, that a scholar 
by profession, who knowu how to employ his time 
in his study, for the benefit of mankind, would b# 
more than fantastical, he Aould be mad, to go ram- 
bling round Europe, though his fortune would per- 
mit him. For to travel with profit, must be when 
his faculties are at the height, his studies matured, 
and all his reading fresh in his head. But tc 
waste a considerable space of lime, at such a period 
of life, is worse than suicide. Yet, for all this, the 
knowledge of human nature (the only knowledge, 
in the largest sense of it, worth a wise man's con- 
cern or care) can never be well acquired without 
seeing it under all its disguises and distortions, ari- 
sing from absurd governments and monstrous reli- 
gions, in every quarter of the globe. Therefore, I 
think a collection of the best voyages no despicable 
part of a philosopher's library. Perhaps there wil r . 
be found more dross in this sort of literature, ever 
when selected most carefully, than in any other. 
But no matter for that ; such a collection will con- 
tain a great and solid treasure.'' — pp. Ill, 112. 

These, we think, are favourable specimens 
of wit, and of power of writing. The bad 
jokes, however, rather preponderate. There 
is one brought in, with much formality, about 
his suspicions of the dunces having stolen the 
lead off the roof of his coachhouse ; and two 
or three absurd little anecdotes, which seem 
to have co pretensions to pleasantry — but 
that they are narratives, and have no serious 
meaning. 

To pass from wit, however, to more serious 
matters, we find, in this volume, some very 
striking proofs of the extent and diligence of 
this author's miscellaneous reading, particu- 
larly in the lists and characters of the authors 
to whom he refers his friend as authorities 
for a history of the English constitution. In 
this part of his dialogues, indeed, it appears 
that Hurd has derived the whole of his learn- 
ing, and most of his opinions, from Warburton. 
The following remarks on the continuation of 
Clarendon's History are good and liberal : — 

" Besides that business, and age, and misfortunes 
hid perhaps sunk his spirit, the Continuation is not 
so properly the history of the first six years of 
'Charles the Second, as an anxious apology for the 
share himself had in the administration. This has 
hurt the composition in several respects. Amongst 
others, he could not, with decency, allow his pen 
that scope in his delineation of the chief characters 
of the court, who were all his personal enemies, as 
he had done in that of the enemies to the King and 
monarchy in the grand rebellion. The endeavour to 
keep up a 6how of candour, and especially to pre- 
vent the appearance of a rancorous resentment, has 
deadened his colouring very much, besides that it 
made him sparing in the use of it ; else, his inimit- 
able pencil had attempted, at least, to do justice to 
Bennet, to Berkley, to Coventry, to the nightly 
cabal of facetious memory, to the Lady, and, if his 
excessive loyalty had not intervened, to his in- 
famous master himself. With all this, I am apt to 
think there may still be something in what I saia 
of the nature of the subject. Exquisite virtue anc 



692 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



enormous vice afford a fine field for the historian's 
genius. And hence Livy and Tacitus are, in their 
way, perhaps equally entertaining. But the little 
intrigues of a selfish court, about carrying, or de- 
feating this or that measure, about displacing this 
and bringing in that minister, which interest no- 
body very much but the parties concerned, can 
hardly be made very striking by any ability of the 
relator. If Cardinal de Retz has succeeded, his 
scene was busier, and of a another nature from 
that of Lord Clarendon." — p. 217. 

His account of Tillotson seems also to be 
fair and judicious. 

" As to the Archbishop, he was certainly a virtu- 
ous, pious, humane, and moderate man ; which last 
quality was a kind of rarity in those times. I think 
the sermons published in his lifetime, are fine 
moral discourses. They bear, indeed, the charac- 
ter of their author, — simple, elegant, candid, clear, 
and rational. No orator, in the Greek and Roman 
sense of the word, like Taylor; nor a discourser, 
in their sense, like Barrow ; — free from their ir- 
regularities, but not able to reach their heights ; on 
which account, I prefer them infinitely to him. 
You cannot sleep with Taylor; you cannot forbear 
thinking with Barrow; but you maybe much at 
your ease in the midst of a long lecture from Til- 
lotson, clear, and rational, and equable as he is. 
Perhaps the last quality may account for it." 

pp. 93, 94. 

■ The following observations on the conduct 
of the comic drama were thrown out for Mr. 
Hurd's use, while composing his treatise. We 
think they deserve to be quoted, for their 
clearness and justness : — 

" As those intricate Spanish plots have been in 
use, and have taken both with us and some French 
writers for the stage, and have much hindered the 
main end of Comedy, would it not be worth while 
to give them a word, as it would tend to the further 
illustration of your subject ? On which you might 
observe, that when these unnatural plots are used, 
the mind is not only entirely drawn off from the 
characters by those surprising turns and revolu- 
tions, but characters have no opportunity even of 
being called out and displaying themselves ; for the 
actors of all characters succeed and are embarrassed 
alike, when the instruments for carrying on designs 
are only -perplexed apartments, dark entries, dis- 
guised habits, and ladders of ropes. The comic 
plot is, and must indeed be, carried on by deceit. 
The Spanish scene does it by deceiving the man 
through his senses; — Terence and Moliere, by de- 
ceiving him through Jiis passions and affections. 
And this is the right way ; for the character is not 
called out under the first species of deceit, — under 
..ne second, the character does all." — p. 57. 

There are a few of Bishop Hurd's own let- 
ters in this collection ;. and as we suppose they 
were selected with a view to do honour to bis 



memory, we think it our duty to lay one 0" 
them at least before our readers. Warburtoff 
had slipped in his garden, and hurt his arm 
whereupon thus indite th the obsequious Dr 
Hurd:— 

" I thank God that I can now, with some assur- 
ance, congratulate with myself on the prospect ot 
your Lordship's safe and speedy recovery from 
your sad disaster. 

" Mrs. Warburton's last letter was a cordial to 
me; and, as the ceasing of intense pain, so this 
abatement of the fears I have been tormented with 
for three or four days past, gives a certain alacrity 
to my spirits, of which your Lordship may look to 
feel the effects, in a long letter! 

" And now, supposing, as I trust I may do, that 
your Lordship will be in no great pain when you 
receive this letter, I am tempted to begin, as friends 
usually do when such accidents befal, with my 
reprehensions, rather than condolence. I have often 
wondered why your Lordship should not use a cane 
in your walks! which might haply have prevented 
this misfortune ! especially considering that Hea- 
ven, I suppose the better to keep its sons in some 
sort of equality, has thought fit to make your out- 
ward sight by many degrees less perfect than your 
inward. Even I, a young and stout son of the 
church, rarely trust my firm steps into my garden, 
without some support of this kind ! How improvi- 
dent, then, was it in a father of the church to com- 
mit his unsteadfast footing to this hazard !" &c. 

p. 251. 

There are many pages written with the 
same vigour of sentiment and expression, and 
in the same tone of manly independence. 

We have little more to say of this curious 
volume. Like all Warburton's writings, it 
bears marks of a powerful understanding and 
an active fancy. As a memorial of his per- 
sonal character, it must be allowed to be at 
least faithful and impartial ; for it makes us 
acquainted w r ith his faults at least, as distinct- 
ly as with his excellences ; and gives, indeed 
the most conspicuous place to the former. It 
has few of the charms, however, of a collec- 
tion of letters; — no anecdotes — no traits of 
simplicity or artless affection; — nothing of 
the softness, grace, or negligence of Cowper's 
correspondence — and little of the lightness or 
the elegant prattlement of Pope's or Lady 
Mary Wortley's. The writers always appear 
busy, and even laborious persons, — and per- 
sons who hale many people, and despise many 
more. — But they neither appear very happy, 
nor very amiable; and, at the end of the 
book, have excited no other interest in the 
reader, than as the authors of their respective 
publications. 



LIFE OF LORD CHARLEMONT. 



693 



(November, 1811.) 

Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of James Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont, Knight of 
St. Patrick, tVc fyc. By Francis Hardy, Esq., Member of the House of Commons in the 



three last Parliaments of Ireland. 4to. 



pp. 



This is the life of a Gentleman, written by 
a Gentleman, — and, considering the tenor of 
many of our late biographies, this of itself is 
no slight recommendation. But it is, more- 
over, the life of one who stood foremost in 
the political history of Ireland for fifty years 
preceding her Union, — that is, for the whole 
period during which Ireland had a history or 
politics of her own — written by one who was 
a witness and a sharer in the scene, — a man 
of fair talents and liberal views, — and distin- 
guished, beyond all writers on recent politics 
that we have yet met with, for the handsome 
and indulgent terms in which he speaks of 
his political opponents. The work is enliven- 
ed, too, with various anecdotes and fragments 
of the correspondence of persons eminent fox 
talents, learning, and political services in both 
countries ; and with a great number of char- 
acters, sketched with a very powerful, though 
somewhat too favourable hand, of almost all 
who distinguished themselves, during this mo- 
mentous period, on the scene of Irish affairs. 

From what we have now said, the reader 
will conclude that we think very favourably 
of this book : And we do think it both enter- 
taining and instructive. But (for there is 
always a but in a Reviewer's praises) it has 
also its faults and imperfections ; and these, 
alas! so great and so many, that it requires 
all the good nature we can catch by sympathy 
from the author, not to treat him now and 
then with a terrible and exemplary severity. 
He seems, in the first place, to have begun 
and ended his book, without ever forming an 
idea of the distinction between private and 
public history ; and sometimes tells us stories 
about Lord Charlemoijt, and about people 
who were merely among h's accidental ac- 
quaintance, far too long to find a place even 
in a biographical memoir; — and sometimes 
enlarges upon matters of general history, with 
which Lord Charlemont has no other connec- 
tion, than that they happened during his life, 
with a minuteness which would not be toler- 
ated in a professed annalist. The biography 
again is broken, not only by large patches of 
historical matter, but by miscellaneous reflec- 
tions, and anecdotes of all manner of persons; 
while, in the historical part, he successively 
makes the most unreasonable presumptions 
an the reader's knowledge, his ignorance, and 
his curiosity, — overlaying him, at one time, 

* I reprint only those paris of ibis paper which 
relate to the personal history of Lord Charlemont, 
and some of his contemporaries : — with the excep- 
tion of one brief reference to the revolution of 
1782, which I retain chiefly to introduce .a re- 
markable letter of Mr. Fox's on the formation 
and principles of the new government, of that 
year. 



426. London: 1810.* 

with anxious and uninteresting details, and, 
at another, omitting even such general and 
summary notices of the progress of events aa 
are necessary to connect his occasional narra- 
tives and reflections. 

The most conspicuous and extraordinary 
of his irregularities, however, is that of his 
! 6tyle; — which touches upon all the extremes 
of composition, almost in every page, or every 
paragraph ; — or rather, is entirely made up of 
' those extremes, without ever resting for an 
■ instant in a medium, or affording any pause 
for softening the effects of its contrasts and 
I transitions. Sometimes, and indeed most fre- 
quently, it is familiar, loose, and colloquial, 
j beyond the common pitch of serious conver- 
I sation ; at other times by far too figurative, 
; rhetorical, and ambitious, for the sober tone 
| of history. The whole work indeed bears 
more resemblance to the animated and ver- 
, satile talk of a man of generous feelings and 
: excitable imagination, than the mature pro- 
I duction of an author who had diligently cor- 
! rected his manuscript for the press, with the 
'' fear of the public before his eyes. There is 
a spirit about the work, however, — independ- 
ent of the spirit of candour and indulgence of 
which we have already spoken, — which re- 
deems many of its faults; and, looking upon 
I it in the light of a memoir by an intelligent 
j contemporary, rather than a regular history or 
! profound dissertation, we think that its value 
will not be injured by a comparison with any 
work of this description that has been recently 
offered to the public. 

The part of the work which relates to Lord 
Charlemont individually, — though by no 
means the least interesting, at least in its ad- 
juncts and digressions, — may be digested into 
a short summary. He was born in Ireland in 
1728 ; and received a private education, un- 
der a succession of preceptors, of various 
merit and assiduity. In 1746 he went abroad, 
without having be.en»either at a public school 
or an university; and yet appears to have 
been earlier distinguished, both for scholar- 
ship and polite manners, than most of the in- 
genuous youths that are turned out by these 
celebrated seminaries. He remained on the 
Continent no less than nine years; in the 
course of which, he extended his travels to 
Greece, Turkey, and Egypt ; and formed an 
intimate and friendly acquaintance with the 
celebrated David Hume, whom he met both 
at Turin and Paris — the President Montes- 
quieu — the Marchese Maffei — Cardinal Albani 
— Lord Rockingham — the Due de Nivernois — 
and various other eminent persons. He had 
rather a dislike to the French national charac- 
ter ; though he admired their literature, and 
the general politeness of their manners. 



694 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



In 1755 he returned to his native country, 
at the age of twenty-eight; an object of in- 
terest and respect to all parties, and to all indi- 
viduals of consequence in the kingdom. His 
intimacy with Lord John Cavendish naturally 
disposed him to be on a good footing with his 
brother, who was then Lord Lieutenant; and 
t! the outset of his politics/'' as he has himself 
observed, "gave reason to suppose that his 
life would be much more courtly than it prov- 
ed to be." The first scene of profligacy and 
court intrigue, however, which he witnessed, 
determined him to act a more manly part — 
" to be a Freeman," as Mr. Hardy says, c - in 
the purest sense of the word, opposing the 
court .or the people indiscriminately, when- 
ever he saw them adopting erroneous or mis- 
chievous opinions." To this resolution, his 
biographer adds, that he had the virtue and 
firmness to adhere ; and the consequence was, 
that he was uniformly in opposition to the 
court for the long remainder of his life ! 

Though very regular in his attendance on 
the Irish Parliament, he always had a house in 
London, where he passed a good part of the 
winter, till 1773; when feelings of patriotism 
and duty induced him to transfer his residence 
almost entirely to Ireland. The polish of his 
manners, however, and the kindness of his 
disposition, — his taste for literature and the 
arts, and the unsuspected purity and firmness 
of his political principles, had before this time 
secured him the friendship of almost all the 
distinguished men who adorned England at 
this period. With Mr. Fox, Mrs. Burke, and 
Mr. Beauclerk — Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. 
Johnson, Sir William Chalmers — and many 
others of a similar character — he was always 
particularly intimate. During the Lieuten- 
ancy of the Earl of Northumberland, in 1772, 
he was, without any solicitation, advanced to 
the dignity of an Earl ; and was very much 
distinguished and consulted during the short 
period of the Rockingham administration ; — 
though neither at that time, nor at any other, 
invested with any official situation. In 1768, 
he married ; and in 1780, he was chosen Gene- 
ral of the Irish Volunteers, and conducted him- 
self in that delicate and most important com- 
mand, with a degree of temper and judgment, 
liberality and firmness, which we have no 
doubt contributed, more than any thing else, 
both to the efficacy and the safety of that most 
perilous but necessary experiment. The rest 
of his history is soon told. He was the early 
patron and the constant friend of Mr. Grat- 
tan; and was the means of introducing the 
Single-Speech Hamilton to the acquaintance 
of Mr. Burke. Though very early disposed to 
relieve the Catholics from a part of their dis- 
abilities, he certainly was doubtful of the pru- 
dence, or propriety, of their more recent pre- 
tensions. He was from first to last a zealous, 
active, and temperate advocate for parlia- 
mentary reform. He was averse to the Legis- 
lative Union with Great Britain. He was uni- 
formly steady to his principles, and faithful 
to his friends ; and seems to have divided the 
latter part of his life pretty equally between 
those elegant studies of literature and art by 



which his youth had been delighted, and 
those patriotic duties to which he had devoted 
his middle age. The sittings of the Irish 
Academy, over which he presided from its 
first foundation, were frequently held at Char- 
lemont House; — and he always extended the 
most munificent patronage to the professors of 
art, and the kindest indulgence to youthful • 
talents of every description. His health had 
declined gradually from about the year 1790; 
and he died in August 1799, — esteemed and 
regretted "by all who had had any opportunity 
of knowing him, in public or in private, as a 
friend or as an opponent. — Such is the sure 
reward of honourable sentiments, and mild 
and steady principles ! 

To this branch of the history belongs a con- 
siderable part of the anecdotes and characters 
with which the book is enlivened; and, in a 
particular manner, those which Mr. Hardy 
has given, in Lord Charlemont's own words, 
from the private papers and memoirs which 
have been put into his hands. His Lordship 
appears to have kept a sort of journal of every 
thing interesting that befel him through life, 
and especially during his long residence on 
the Continent. From this document Mr. Har- 
dy has made copious extracts, in the earlier 
part of his narrative ; and the general style of 
them is undoubtedly very creditable to the 
noble author, — a little tedious, perhaps, now 
and then, — and generally a little too studiously 
and maturely composed, for the private me- 
moranda of a young man of talents ; — but 
always in the style and tone of a gentleman, 
and with a character of rationality, and calm 
indulgent benevolence, that is infinitely more 
pleasing than sallies of sarcastic wit, or periods 
of cold-blooded speculation. 

One of the first characters that appears on 
the scene, is our excellent countryman, the 
celebrated David Hume, whom Lord Charle- 
mont first met with at Turin, in the year 1750: 
— and of whom he has given an account rather 
more entertaining, we believe, than accurate. 
We have no doubt, however, that it records 
with perfect fidelity the impression which he 
then received from the appearance and con- 
versation of that distinguished philosopher. 
But, with all our respect for Lord Charlemont, 
we cannot allow a young Irish Lord, on his 
first visit at a foreign court, to have been pre 
cisely the person most capable of appreciating 
the value of such a man as David Hume; — 
and though there is a great fund of truth in 
the following observations, we think they il- 
lustrate the character and condition of the 
person who makes them, fully as much as 
that of him to whom they are applied. 

" Nature, I believe, never formed any man more 
unlike his real character than David Hume. The 
powers of physiognomy were baffled by his counte- 
nance ; nor could the most skilful in that science, 
pretend to discover the smallest trace of the facul- 
ties of his mind, in the unmeaning features of his 
visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth 
wide, and without any other expression than that 
of imbecility. His eyes, vacant and spiritless ; and 
the corpulence of his whole person was far better 
fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating al- 
derman, than of a refined philosopher. His speech. 



LIFE OF LORD CHARLEMONT. 



695 



in English, was rendered ridiculous by the broadest 
Scotch accent ; and his French was, if possible, 
6till more laughable ; so that wisdom, most certain- 
ly, never disguised herself before in so uncouth a 
garb. Though now near fifty years old he was 
healthy and strong; but his health and strength, 
far from being advantageous to his figure, instead 
jf manly comeliness, had only the appearance of 
rusticity. His wearing an uniform added greatly 
to his natural awkwardness ; for he wore it like a 
grocer of the trained bands. Sinclair was a lieuten- 
ant-general, and was sent to the courts of Vienna 
and Turin as a military envoy, to see that their 
quota of troops was furnished by the Austrians and 
Piedmontese. It was therefore thought necessary 
that his secretary should appear to be an officer ; 
and Hume was accordingly disguised in scarlet. 

"Having thus given an account of his exterior, it 
is but fair that I should state my good opinion of his 
character. Of all the philosophers of his sect, none, 
I believe, ever joined more real benevolence to its 
mischievous principles than my friend Hume. His 
love to mankind was universal, and vehement ; and 
there was no service he would not cheerfully have 
done to his fellow-creatures, excepting only that of 
suffering them to save their own souls in their own 
way. He was tender-hearted, friendly, and char- 
itable in the extreme." — pp. 8, 9. 

His Lordship then tells a story in illustration 
of the philosopher's benevolence, which we 
have no other reason for leaving out — but that 
we know it not to be true ; and concludes a lit- 
tle dissertation on the pernicious effects of his 
doctrines, with the following little anecdote ; 
of the authenticity of which also, we should 
entertain some doubts, did it not seem to have 
fallen within his own personal knowledge. 

" He once professed himself the admirer of a 
young, most beautiful, and accomplished lady, at 
Turin, who only laughed at his passion. One day 
he addressed her in the usual common-place strain, 
that he was abime, anianti. — ' Oh! pour aiieanti,' 
replied the lady, 'ce nest en ejfet qu une operation 
trcs-naticrelle de voire systeme. 1 " — p. 10. 

The following passages are from a later part 
of the journal : but indicate the same turn of 
mind in the observer : — 

" Hume's/as7«o?i at Paris, when he was there as 
Secretary to Lord Hertford, was truly ridiculous; 
and nothing ever marked in a more striking man- 
ner, the whimsical genius of the French. No man, 
from his manners, was surely less formed for their 
society, or less likely to meet with their approba- 
tion ; but that flimsy philosophy which pervades 
and deadens even their most licentious novels, was 
then the folly of the day. Freethinking and Eng- 
lish frocks were the fashion, and the Anglomanie 
was the ton du pais. From what has been already 
said of him, it is apparent that his conversation to 
strangers, and particularly to Frenchmen, could be 
little delightful; and still more particularly, one 
would suppose to Frenchwomen. And yet, no 
lady's toilette was complete without Hume's at- 
tendance! At the opera, his broad, unmeaning 
face was usually seen entre deuxjolis minois. The 
ladies in France give the ton, and the ton, at this 
time, was deism ; a species of philosophy ill suited 
to the softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness 
19 interesting, and timidity a charm. But the women 
in France were deists, as with us they were char- 
ioteers. How my friend Hume was able to endure 
the encounter of those French female Titans, I 
know not. In England, either his philosophic pride, 
or his conviction that infidelity was ill suited to 
women, made him always averse from the initia- 
tion of ladies into the mysteries of his doctrine." 
—pp. 121, 122. 

" Nothing," adds his Lordship, in anotner place, 



"ever showed a mind more truly benefices, than 
Hume's whole conduct with regard to Rousseau. 
That story is too well known to be repeated ; and 
exhibits a striking picture of Hume's heart, whilst 
it displays the strange and unaccountable vanity and 
madness of the French, or rather Swiss moralist. 
When first they arrived together from France, hap- 
pening to meet with Hume in the Park, I wished 
him joy of his pleasing connection ; and particularly 
hinted, that I was convinced he must be perfectly 
happy in his new friend, as their religious opinions 
were, I believed, nearly similar. ' Why no, man,' 
said he, ' in that you are mistaken. Rousseau is 
not what you think him. He has a hankering after 
the Bible ; and, indeed, is little better than a Chris- 
tian, in a way of his own ! ' " — p. 120. 

" In London, where he often did me the honour 
to communicate the manuscripts of his additional 
Essays, before their publication, I have sometimes, 
in the course of our intimacy, asked him, whether 
he thought that, if his opinions were universally to 
take place, mankind would not be rendered more 
unhappy than they now were; and whether ha did 
not suppose, that the curb of religion was necessary 
to human nature ? ' The objections,' answered he, 
' are not without weight ; but error never can pro- 
duce good; and truth ought to lake place of all con- 
siderations.' He never failed, indeed, in the midst 
of any controversy, to give its due praise to every 
thing tolerable that was either said or written 
against him. His sceptical turn made him doubt, 
and consequently dispute, every thing; yet was he 
a fair and pleasant disputant. He heard with pa- 
tience, and answered without acrimony. Neither 
was his conversation at any time offensive, even to 
his more scrupulous companions. His good sense, 
and good nature, prevented his saying any thing 
that was likely to shock ; and it was not till he was 
provoked to argument, that, in mixed companies, 
he entered into his favourite topics." — p. 123. 

Another of the eminent persons of whom 
Lord Charlemont has recorded his impressions 
in his own hand, was the celebrated Montes- 
quieu j of whose acquaintance he says, and 
with some reason, he was more vain, than of 
having seen the pyramids of Egypt. He and 
another English gentleman paid their first 
visit to him at his seat near Bourdeaux; and 
the following is the account of their introduc- 
tion : — 

" The first appointment with a favourite mistress 
could not have rendered our night more restless 
than this flattering invitation ; and the next morning 
we set out so early, that- we arrived at his villa be- 
fore he was risen. The servant showed us into his 
library; where the first object of curiosity that pre- 
sented itself was a table, at which he had apparently 
been reading the night before, a book lying upon 
it open, turned down, and a lamp extinguished. 
Eager to know the nocturnal studies of this great 
philosopher, we immediately flew to the book. It 
was a volume of Ovid's Works, containing hi? 
Elegies ; and open at one of the most gallant poems 
of that master of love ! Before we could overcome 
our surprise, it was greatly increased by the en- 
trance of the president, whose appearance and man- 
ner was totally opposite to the idea which we had 
formed to ourselves of him. Instead of a grave, 
austere philosopher, whose presence might strike 
with awe such boys as we were, the person who 
now addressed us, was a gay, polite, sprightly 
Frenchman ; who, after a thousand genteel compli- 
ments, and a thousand thanks for the honour we 
had done him, desired to know whether we would 
not breakfast; and, upon our declining the offer, 
having already eaten at an inn not far from the 
house, 'Come, then,' says he, Met us walk; the 
day is fine, and I long to show you my villa, as I 
have endeavoured to form it according to the Eng- 
lish taste, and to cultivate and dress it in the English 



696 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



manner.' Following him into the farm, we soon 
arrived at the skirts of a beautiful wood, cut into 
walks, and paled round, the entrance to which was 
barricadoed with a moveable bar, about three feet 
hi^li, fastened with a padlock. ' Come,' said he, 
searching in his pocket, ' it is not worth our while 
to wait for the key ; you. I am sure; can leap as well 
as I can, and this bar shall not stop me.' So saying, 
he ran at the bar, and fairly jumped over it, while 
we followed him with amazement, though not with- 
out delight, to see the philosopher likely to become 
our play-fellow." — pp. 32, 33. 

" In Paris, I have frequently met him in company 
with ladies, and have been as often astonished at 
the politeness, the gallantry, and sprightliness of 
nis behaviour. In a word, the most accomplished, 
the most refined petit-mattre of Paris, could not 
have been more amusing, from the liveliness of his 
chat, nor could have been more inexhaustible in 
that sort of discourse which is best suited to women, 
than this venerable philosopher of seventy years 
old. But at this we shall not be surprised, when 
we reflect, that the profound author of L' Esprit des 
Loix was also author of the Persian Letters, and of 
the truly gallant Temple de Gnide." — p. 36. 

The following opinion, from such a quarter, 
►night have been expected to have produced 
tiore effect than it seems to have done, on so 
rarm an admirer as Lord Charlemont : — 

" In the course of our conversations, Ireland, and 
ts interests, have often been the topic ; and, upon 
.hese occasions, I have always found him an advo- 
tate fbr an incorporating Union between that coun- 
>ry and England. ' Were I an Irishman,' said he, 
1 1 should certainly wish for it ; and, as a general 
lover of liberty, I sincerely desire it; and for this 
plain reason, that an inferior country, connected 
with one much her superior in force, can never be 
certain of the permanent enjoyment of constitutional 
freedom, unless she has, by her representatives, a 
proportional share in the legislature of the superior 
'tingdom.' " — Ibid. 

Of Lord Charlemont's English friends and 
associates, none is represented, perhaps, in 
more lively and pleasing colours than Topham 
Beauclerk ; to the graces of whose conversa- 
tion even the fastidious Dr. Johnson has borne 
such powerful testimony. Lord Charlemont, 
and, indeed, all who have occasion to speak 
of him, represent him as more accomplished 
and agreeable in society, than any man of his 
age — of exquisite taste, perfect good-breeding, 
and unblemished integrity and honour. Un- 
disturbed, too, by ambition, or political ani- 
mosities, and at his ease with regard to for- 
tune, he might appear to be placed at the very 
summit of human felicity, and to exemplify 
that fortunate lot to which common destinies 
afford such various exceptions. 

But there is no such lot. This happy man, 
so universally acceptable, and with such re- 
sources in himself, was devoured by ennui ! 
and probably envied, with good reason, the 
condition of one half of those laborious and 
discontented beings who looked up to him 
with envy and admiration . He was querulous, 
Lord Charlemont assures us — indifferent, and 
internally contemptuous to the greater part of 
the world ; — and, like so many other accom- 
plished persons, upon whom the want of em- 
ployment has imposed the heavy task of self- 
occupation, he passed his life in a languid 
and unsatisfactory manner; absorbed some- 
times in play, and sometimes in study ; and 



seeking, in vain, the wholesome exercise of a 
strong mind, in desultory reading or con- 
temptible dissipation. His Letters, however, 
are delightful; and we are extremely obligea 
to Mr. Hardy, for having favoured us with so 
many of them. It is so seldom that the pure, 
animated, and unrestrained language of polite 
conversation, can be found in a printed book, 
that we cannot resist the temptation of tran- 
scribing a considerable part of the specimens 
before us; which, while they exemplify, in 
the happiest manner, the perfect style of a 
gentleman, serve to illustrate, for more re- 
flecting readers, the various sacrifices that are 
generally required for the formation of the 
envied character to which that style belongs. 
A very interesting essay might be written on 
the unhappiness of those from whom nature 
and fortune seem to have removed all the 
causes of unhappiness: — and we are sure 
that no better assortment of proofs and illus- 
trations could be annexed to such an essay, 
than some of the following passages. 

" I have been but once at the club since you left 
England ; where we were entertained, as usual, by 
Dr. Goldsmith's absurdity. Mr. V. can give you 
an account of it. Sir Joshua intends painting your 
picture over again ; so you may set your heart at 
rest for some time : it is true, it will last so much 
the longer ; but then you may wait these ten years 
for it. Elmsly gave me a commission from you 
about Mr. Walpole's frames for prints, which i9 
perfectly unintelligible : I wish you would explain 
it, and it shall be punctually executed. The Duke 
of Northumberland has promised me a pair of his 
new pheasants for you ; but you must wait till all 
the crowned heads in Europe have been served first. 
I have been at the review at Portsmouth. If you 
had seen it, you would have owned, that it is a 
pleasant thing to be a King. It is true. — — — — made 

a job of the claret to , who furnished the first 

tables with vinegar, under that denomination. 
Charles Fox said, that Lord S — wich should have 
been impeached ! What an abominable world do 
we live in ! that there should not be above half a 
dozen honest men in the world, and that one of 
those should live in Ireland. You will, perhaps, 
be shocked at the small portion of honesty that I 
allot to your country : but a sixth part is as much 
as comes to its share ; and, for any thing I know to 
the contrary, the other five may be in Ireland too; 
for I am sure I do not know where else to find them. 

M I am rejoiced to find by your letter than Lady 
C. is as you wish. I have yet remaining so much 
benevolence towards mankind, as to wish that there 
may be a son of your's, educated by you, as a speci- 
men of what mankind ought to be. Goldsmith, the 
other day, put a paragraph into the newspapers, in 
praise of Lord Mayor Townshend. The same night 
we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne, at 
Drury Lane. I mentioned the circumstance of 
the paragraph to him. He said to Goldsmith, that 
he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about 
Malagrida in it. ' Do you know,' answered Gold- 
smith, ' that I never could conceive the reason why 
they call you Malagrida ; for Malagrida was a very 
good sort of man.' You see plainly what he meant 
to say ; but that happy turn of expression is pecu- 
liar to himself. Mr. Walpole says, that this story 
is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life. Johnson 
has been confined for some weeks in the Isle of 
Skye. We hear that he was obliged to swim over 
to the main land, taking hold of a cow's tail. Be 
that as it may, Lady Di. has promised to make a 
drawing of it. Our poor club is in a miserable 
decay ; unless you come and relieve it, it will cer- 
tainly expire. W ould you imagine, that Sir Joshna 



LIFE OF LORD CHARLEMONT. 



697 



Reynolds is extremely anxious to be a member of 
Almack's? You see what noble ambition will 
make a man attempt. That den is not yet opened, 
consequently I have not been there; so, for the 
Dresent, I am clear upon that score. I suppose 
our confounded Irish politics take up your whole 
iittention at present; but we cannot, do without 
you. If" you do not come here, I will bring all the 
club over to Ireland, to live with you, and that will 
drive you here in your own defence. Johnson shall 
spoil your books, Goldsmith pull your flowers, and 
Boswell talk to you. Stay then if you can. Adieu, 
my dear Lord."— pp. 176, 177, 178. 

" I saw a letter from Foote, the other day, with 
fin account of an Irish tragedy. The subject is 
Manlius ; and the last speech which he makes, 
when he is pushed off from theTarpeian Rock, is, 
Sweet Jesus, where am I going V Pray send me 
ford if this is true. We have a new comedy here, 
fvhich is good for nothing. Bad as it is, however,* 
it succeeds very well, and has almost killed Gold- 
smith with envy. I have no news, either literary 
or political, to send you. Every body, except my- 
self, and about a million of vulgars, are in the 
country. I am closely confined, as Lady Di. expects 
to be so every hour."— p. 178. 

" Why should you be vexed to find that mankind 
are fools and knaves? I have known it so long, 
that every fresh instance of it amuses me, provided 
it does not immediately affect my friends or myself. 
Politicians do not seem to me to be much greater 
rogues than other people ; and as their actions 
affect, in general, private persons less than other 
kinds of villany do, I cannot find that I am so an- 
gry with them. It is true, that the leading men in 
both countries at present, are, I believe, the most 
corrupt, abandoned people in the nation. But now 
that I am upon this worthy subject of human na- 
ture, I will inform you of a few particulars relating 
to the discovery of Otaheite." — p. 180. 

"There is another curiosity here, — Mr. Bruce. 
His drawings are the most beautiful things you ever 
saw, and his- adventures more wonderful than those 
of Sinbad the sailor, — and, perhaps, nearly as true. 
I am much more afflicted with the account you send 
me of your health, than I am at the corruption of 
your ministers. I always hated politics ; and I now 
hate them ten times worse ; as I have reason to 
think that they contribute towards your ill health. 
You do me great justice in thinking, that whatever 
concerns you, must interest me ; but as I wish you 
most sincerely to be perfectly happy, I cannot bear 
to think that the villanous proceedings of others 
should make you miserable : for, in that case, un- 
doubtedly you will never be happy. Charles Fox 
is a member at the Turk's Head ; but not till he 
was a patriot ; and you know, if one repents, &c. 
There is nothing new, but Goldsmith's Retaliation, 
which you certainly have seen. Pray tell Lady 
Charlemont, from me, that I desire she may keep 
you from politics, as they do children from sweet- 
meats, that make them sick." — pp. 181, 182. 

We look upon these extracts as very inter- 
esting and valuable; but they have turned 
out to be so long, that we must cut short this 
branch of the history. We must add, how- 
ever, a part of Lord Charlemont's account of 
Mr. Burke, with whom he lived in habits of 
'he closest intimacy, and continual corres- 
pondence, till his extraordinary breach with 
nis former political associates in 1792. Mr. 
Hardy does not exactly know at what period 
/.he following paper, which was found in Lord 
Charlemont's handwriting, was written. 

''This most amiable and ingenious man was 
private secretary to Lord Rockingham. It may not 
oe superfluous to relate the following anecdote, the 
.ruth of which I can assert, and whicJi does honour 
m him and his truly noble patron. Soon after Lord 
88 



Rockingham, upon the warm recommendation of 
many friends, had appointed Burke his secretary, 
the Duke of Newcastle informed him, that he had 
unwarily taken into his service a man of dangerous 
principles, and one who was by birth and education 
a papist and a jacobite ; a calumny founded upon 
Burke's Irish connections, which were most of 
them of that persuasion, and upon some juvenile 
follies arising from those connections. The Mar- 
quis, whose genuine Whiggism was easily alarmed, 
immediately sent for Burke, and told him what he 
had heard. It was easy for Burke, who had been 
educated at the university at Dublin, to bring testi- 
monies to his protestantism ; and with regard to the 
second accusation, which was wholly founded on 
the former, it was soon done away ; and Lord 
Rockingham, readily and willingly disabused, de- 
clared that he was perfectly satisfied of the false- 
hood of the information he had received, and that 
he no longer harboured the smallest doubt of the 
integrity of his principles ; when Burke, with an 
honest and disinterested boldness, told his Lordship 
that it was now no longer possible for him to be his 
secretary ; that the reports he had heard would 
probably, even unknown to himself, create in his 
mind such suspicions, as might prevent his tho- 
roughly confiding in him ; and that no earthly con- 
sideration should induce him to stand in that rela- 
tion with a man who did not place entire confidence 
in him. The Marquis, struck with this manliness 
of sentiment, which so exactly corresponded with 
the feelings of his own heort, frankly and positively 
assured him, that what had passed, far from leaving 
any bad impression on his mind, had only served 
to fortify his good opinion ; and that, if from no 
other reason, he might rest assured, that from his 
conduct upon that occasion alone, he should ever 
esteem, and place in him the most unreserved con- 
fidential trust — a promise which he faithfully per- 
formed. It must, however, be confessed, that his 
early habits and connections, though they could 
never make him swerve from his duty, had given 
his mind an almost constitutional bent towards the 
popish party. Prudence is, indeed, the only virtue 
he does not possess ; from a total want of which, 
and from the amiable weaknesses of an excellent 
heart, his estimation in England, though still great, 
is certainly diminished." — pp. 343, 344. 

We have hitherto kept Mr. Hardy himself 
so much in the back ground, that we think it 
is but fair to lay before the reader the sequel 
which he has furnished to the preceding notice 
of Lord Charlemont. The passage is perfectly 
characteristic of the ordinary colloquial style 
of the book, and of the temper of the author. 

" Thus far Lord Charlemont. Something, 
though slight, may be here added. Burke's dis- 
union, and final rupture with Mr. Fox, were at- 
tended with circumstances so distressing, so far 
surpassing the ordinary limits of political hostility, 
that the mind really aches at the recollection of 
them. But let us view him, for an instant, in better 
scenes, and better hours. He was social, hospit- 
able, of pleasing access, and most agreeably com- 
municative. One of the most satisfactory days, 
perhaps, that I y ever passed in my life, was going 
with him, tele-a-tete, from London to BeconsfielcT 
He stopped at Uxbridge, whilst his horses were 
feeding; and, happening to meet some gentlemen, 
of I know not what militia, who appeared to be 
perfect strangers to him, he entered into discourse 
with them at the gateway of the inn. His conver- 
sation, at that moment, completely exemplified 
what Johnson said of him — ' That you could not 
meet Burke for half an hour under a shed, without 
saying that he was an extraordinary man.' He 
was, on that day, altogether, uncommonly instruc- 
tive and agreeable. Every object of the slightest 
notoriety, as we passed along, whether of natural 
or local history, furnished him with abundant ma- 
31 



698 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



terials for conversation. The House at Uxbridge, 
where the treaty was held during Charles ihe First's 
time; the beautiful and undulating grounds of Bul- 
strode, formerly the residence of Chancellor Jeffe- 
ries; and Waller's tomb in Beconsfield church- 
yard, which, before we went home, we visited, and 
whose character, as a gentleman, a poet, and an 
orator, he shortly delineated, but with exquisite 
felicity of genius, altogether gave an uncommon 
interest to his eloquence; and, although one-and- 
twenty years have now passed since that day, I re- 
tain the most vivid and pleasing recollection of it. 
He reviewed the characters of many statesmen. — 
Lord Bath's, whom, I think, he personally knew, 
and that of Sir Robert Walpole, which he pour- 
trayed in nearly the same words which he used 
with regard to that eminent man. in his appeal from 
the Old Whigs to the New. He talked much of 
the great Lord Chatham; and, amidst a variety of 
particulars concerning him and his family, stated, 
that his sister, Mrs. Anne Pitt, used often, in her 
altercations with him, to say, ' That he knew 
nothing whatever except Spenser's Fairy Queen.' 
4 And,' continued Mr. Burke, ' no matter how that 
was said ; but whoever relishes, and reads Spenser 
as he ought to be read, will have a strong hold of 
(he English language.' These were his exact 
words. Of Mrs. Anne Pitt he said, that she had 
the most agreeable and uncommon talents, and was, 
beyond all comparison, the most perfectly eloquent 

f>erson be ever heard speak. He always, as he said, 
amented that he did not put on paper a conversa- 
tion he had once with her ; on what subject I forget. 
The richness, variety, and solidity of her discourse, 
absolutely astonished him.* 



Certainly no nation ever obtained such a 
deliverance by such an instrument, and hurt 
itself so little by the use of it ; and, if the 
Irish Revolution of 1782 shows, that power 
and intimidation may be lawfully employed 
to enforce rights which have been refused to 
supplication and reason, it shows also the ex- 
treme danger of this method of redress, and 
the necessity there is for resorting to every 
precaution in those cases where it has become 
indispensable. Ireland was now saved from 
all the horrors of a civil war, only by two cir- 
cumstances ; — the first, that the great military 
force which accomplished the redress of her 
grievances, had not been originally raised or 
organised with any view to such an interfer- 
ence ; and was chiefly guided, therefore, by 
men of loyal and moderate characters, who 
had taken up arms for no other purpose but 
the defence of their country against foreign 
invasion : — The other, that the just and rea- 
sonable demands to which these leaders ulti- 
mately limited their pretensions, were address- 
ed to a liberal and enlightened administration, 
— too just to withhold, when in power, what 
they had laboured to procure when in opposi- 
tion, — and too magnanimous to dread the 
effect of conceding, even to armed petitioners, 
what was clearly and indisputably their due. 

It was the moderation of their first demands, 
and the generous frankness with which they 
were so promptly granted, that saved Ireland 

* I here omit the long abstract which originally 
Allowed, of the Irish parliament and public history, 
from 1750 to the period of the Union, together with 
til) the details of the great Volunteer Association in 
*"80, and its fortunate dissolution in 1782 — to which 
cnar *able event the paragraph which now follows 
J) .he text refers. 



in this crisis. The volunteers were i resist, ble. 
while they asked only for their country what 
all the world saw she was entitled to : Bu'. 
they became impotent the moment they de- 
manded more. They were deserted, at thai 
moment, by all the talent and the respect- 
ability which had given them, for a time, the 
absolute dominion of the country. The con- 
cession of their just rights operated like a 
talisman in separating the patriotic from the 
factious : And when the latter afterwards at« 
tempted to invade the lofty regions of legiti 
mate government, they were smitten with in. 
stan taneous discord and confusion, and speed 
ily dispersed and annihilated from the face of 
the land. These events are big with instruc- 
tion to the times that have come after ; and 
read an impressive lesson to those who have 
now to deal with discontents and conventions 
in the same country. 

But if it be certain that the salvation of Ire- 
land was then owing to the mild, liberal, and 
enlightened councils of the Rockingham ad- 
ministration as a body, it is delightful to see, 
in some of the private letters which Mr. Hardy 
has printed in the volume before us, how cor- 
dially the sentiments professed by this min- 
istry were adopted by the eminent men who 
presided over its formation. There are letters 
to Lord Charlemont, both from Lord Rocking- 
ham himself, and from Mr. Fox, which would 
almost reconcile one to a belief in the possi- 
bility of ministerial fairness and sincerity. 
We should like to give the whole of them 
here ; but as our limits will not admit of that, 
we must content ourselves with some extract* 
from Mr. Fox's first letter after the new min- 
istry was formed, — for the tone and style of 
which, we fear, few precedents have been 
left in the office of the Secretary of State. 

" My dear Lord, — If I had had occasion to write 
to you a month ago, I should have written with 
great confidence that you would believe me perfectly 
sincere, and would receive any thing that came from 
me with the partiality of an old acquaintance, and 
one who acted upon the same political principles. I 
hope you will now consider me in the same light ; 
but I own I write with much more diffidence, as I 
am much more sure of your kindness to me per- 
sonally, than of your inclination to listen with fa- 
vour to any thing that comes from a Secretary of 
State. The principal business of this letter is to 
inform you, that the Duke of Portland is appointed 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Colonel Fitzpatrick 
his secretary ; and, when I have said this, [ need 
not add, that I feel myself, on every private as well 
as public account, most peculiarly interested in the 
success of their administration. That their persons 
and characters are not disagreeable to your Lord- 
ship, I may venture to assure myself, without being 
too sanguine ; and I think myself equally certain, 
that there are not in the world two men whose 
general way of thinking upon political subjects is 
more exactly consonant to your own. It is not, 
therefore, too much to desire and hope, that you 
will at least look upon the administration of such 
men with rather a more favourable eye, and incline 
to trust them rather more than you could do most 
of those who have been their predecessors." — 
" The particular time of year at which this change 
happens, is produciive of many great inconveniences, 
especially as it will be very difficult for the Duke 
of Portland to be at Dublin before your Parliament 
meets ; but I cannot help hoping that all reasonable 
Vmen will concur in removing some of these difS 



LIFE OF LORD CHARLEMONT. 



699 



£llttes, and- that a short adjournment will nut be 
ienii d, it asked. I do not throw out this as know- 
ing from any authority that it will be proposed, but 
as an idea that suggests itself to me ; and in order 
to show that 1 wish to talk wiih you, and consult 
wiih you in the same frank manner in which I 
Bhoukl have done before .1 was in this situation, so 
very new to me. I have been used to think ill of 
all the ministers whom I did know, and to suspect 
those whom I did not, that when I am obliged to 
call myself a minister, I feel as if I put myself into 
a very suspicious character ; but I do assure you I 
am the very same man, in all respects, that I was 
when you knew me, and honoured me with some 
^hare in your esteem — that I maintain the same 
opinions, and act with the same people. 

" " Pray make my best compliments to Mr. Grat- 
tan, and tell him, that the Duke of Portland and 
Fitzpatrick are thoroughly impressed with the im- 
portance of his approbation, and will do all they can 
to deserve it. I do most sincerely hope, that he 
may hit upon some line that may be drawn honour- 
ably and advantageously for both countries ; and 
that, when that is done, he will show the world that 
there may be a government in Ireland, of which he 
is not ashamed to make a part. That country can 
never prosper, where, what should be the ambition 
of men of honour, is considered as a disgrace." 

pp. 217—219. 

The following letter from Mr. Burke in the 
end of 1789, will be read with more interest, 
when it is recollected that he published his 
celebrated Reflections on the French Revolu- 
tion, but a few months after. 

" My dearest Lord, — I think your Lordship has 
acted with your usual zeal and judgment in estab- 
lishing a Whig club in Dublin. These meetings 
prevent the evaporation of principle in individuals, 
anr 1 qdve them joint force, and enliven their exer- 
tions lx emulation. You see the matter in its true 
light ; irfiii vith your usual discernment. Party is 
absolutely ntcessary at this time. I thought it al- 
ways so in this country, ever since I have had any 
thing to do in public business ; and I rather fear, 
that there is not virtue enough in this period to sup- 
port party, than that party should become necessa- 
ry, on account of the want of virtue to support itself 
by individual exertions. As to us here, our thoughts 
of every thing at home are suspended by our as- 
tonishment at the wonderful spectacle which is ex- 
hibited in a neighbouring and rival country. What 
spectators, and what actors ! England gazing with 
astonishment at a French struggle for liberty, and 
not knowing whether to blame, or to applaud. The 
thing, indeed, though I thought I saw something 
like it in progress for several years, has still some- 
what in it paradoxical and mysterious. The spirit 
it is impossible not to admire ; but the old Parisian 
ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner. It 
is true, that this may be no more than a sudden ex- 
plosion ; if so, no indication can be taken from it ; 
but if it should be character, rather than accident, 
then that people are not fit for liberty — and must 
have a strong hand, like that of their former mas- 
ters, to coerce them. Men must have a certain 
fund of natural moderation to qualify them for free- 
dom ; else it becomes noxious to themselves, and a 
perfect nuisance to every body else. What will be 
the event, it is hard, I think, still to say. To form 
a solid constitution, requires wisdom as well as 
spirit ; and whether the French have wise heads 
among them, or, if they possess such, whether they 
have authority equal to their wisdom, is yet to be 
seen. In the mean time, the progress of this whole 
affair is one of the most curious matters of specula 
tion that ever was exhibited." — pp. 321, 322. 

We should now take our leave of Mr. Hardy : 
— and yet it would not be fair to dismiss hirr 
from the scene entirely, without giving out 



readers one or two specimens of his gift of 
drawing characters ; in the exercise of which 
he generally rises to a sort of quaint and 
brilliant conciseness, and displays a degree 
of acuteness and line observation that are not 
to be found in the other parts of his writing. 
His greatest fault is, that he does not abuse 
any body, — even where the dignity of history, 
and of virtue, call loudly for such an iniliction. 
Yet there is something in the tone of all his 
delineations, that satisfies us that there is no- 
thing worse than extreme good nature at the 
bottom of his forbearance. Of Philip Tisdal, 
who was Attorney-general when Lord Charle- 
mont first came into Parliament, he says: — 

" He had an admirable and most superior under- 
standing; an understanding matured by years — by 
long experience — by habits with the best company 
from his youth — with the bar, with Parliament, 
with the State. To this strength of intellect was 
added a constitutional philosophy, or apathy, which 
never suffered him to be carried away by attach 
ment to any party, even his own. He saw men 
and things so clearly; he understood so well the 
whole farce and fallacy of life, that it passed beforo 
him like a scenic representation ; and, till almost 
the close of his days, he went through the world 
with a constant sunshine of soul, and an inexorable 
gravity of feature. His countenance was never gay, 
and his mind was never gloomy. He was an able 
speaker, as well at the bar as in the House of Com- 
mons, though his diction was very indifferent. He 
did not speak so much at length as many of his par- 
liamentary coadjutors, though he knew the whole 
of the subject much belter than they did. He was 
not only a good speaker in Parliament, but an ex- 
cellent manager of the House of Commons. He 
never said too much: and he had great merit in 
what he did not say; for Government was never 
committed by him. He plunged into no difficulty ; 
nor did he ever suffer his antagonist to escape from 
one." — pp. 78, 79. 

Of Hussey Burgh, afterwards Lord Chief 
Baron, he observes : — 

" To those who never heard him, as the fashion of 
this world in eloquence as in all things soon passes 
away, it may be no easy matter to convey a just 
idea of his style of speaking. It was sustained by 
great ingenuity, great rapidity of intellect, luminous 
and piercing satire ; in refinement abundant, in sim- 
plicity sterile. The classical allusions of this orator, 
for he was most truly one, were so apposite, they 
followed each other in such bright and varied suc- 
cession, and, at times, spread such an unexpected 
and triumphant blaze around his subject, that all 
persons who were in the least tinged with litera- 
ture, could never be tired of listening to him ; and 
when in the splendid days of the Volunteer Asso- 
ciation, alluding to some coercive English laws, 
and to that institution, then in its proudest array, 
he said, in the House of Commons, ' That such 
laws were sown like dragons' teeth, — and sprung 
up in armed men,' the applause which followed, 
and the glow of enthusiasm which he kindled in 
every mind, far exceed my powers of description." 
—pp. 140, 141. 

Of Gerard Hamilton, he give3 Us the fol- 
lowing characteristic anecdotes. 

"The uncommon splendour of his eloquence, 
which was succeeded by such inflexible taciturnity 
in St. Stephen's Chapel, became the subject, as 
might be supposed, of much, and idle speculation. 
The truth is, that all his speeches, whether delivered 
in London or Dublin, were not only prepared, but 
studied, with a minuteness and exactitude, of which 



70C 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



those who are only used to the carelessness of 
modern debating, can scarcely form any idea. Lord 
Charlemont, who had been long and intimately ac- 
quainted with him, previous to his coming to Ire- 
land, often mentioned that he was the only speaker, 
among the many he had heard, of whom he could 
say, with certainty, that all his speeches, however 
long, were written and got by heart. A gentleman, 
well known to his Lordship and Hamilton, assured 
him, that he heard Hamilton repeat, no less than 
three times, an oration, which he afterwards spoke 
in the House of Commons, and which lasted almost 
three hours. As a debater, therefore, he became 
as useless to his political patrons as Addison was to 
Lord Sunderland ; and, if possible, he was more 
scrupulous in composition than even that eminent 
man. Addison would stop the press to correct the 
most trivial error in a large publication ; and Ham- 
ilton, as I can assert on indubitable authority, 
would recall the footman, if, on recollection, any 
word, in his opinion, was misplaced or improper, in 
the slightest note to a familiar acquaintance." 

pp. 60, 61. 

No name is mentioned in these pages with 
higher or more uniform applause, than that 
of Henry Grattan. But that distinguished 
person still lives : and Mr. Hardy's delicacy 
has prevented him from attempting any de- 
lineation, either of his character or his elo- 
quence. We respect his forbearance, and 
shall follow his example : — Yet we cannot 
deny ourselves the gratification of extracting 
one sentence from a letter of Lord Charle- 



mont, in relation to that parliamentary grant, 
by which an honour was conferred on an in- 
dividual patriot, without place or official situa- 
tion of any kind, and merely for his personal 
merits and exertions, which has in other cases 
been held to be the particular and appropriate 
reward of triumphant generals aud command- 
ers. When the mild and equable temnera- 
ment of Lord Charlemont's mind is recol- 
lected, as well as the caution with which all 
his opinions were expressed, we do not know 
that a wise ambition would wish for a prouder 
or more honourable testimony than is con- 
tained in the following short sentences. 

" Respecting the grant, I know with certainty 
that Grattan, though he felt himself flattered by 
the intention, looked upon the act with the deepest 
concern, and did all in his power to deprecate if. 
As it was found impossible to defeat the design, all 
his friends, and I among others, were employed to 
lessen the sum. It was accordingly decreased by 
one half, and that principally- by his positive decla- 
ration, through us, that, if the whole were insisted 
on, he would refuse all but a few hundreds, which 
he would retain as an honourable mark of the good- 
ness of his country. By some, who look only into 
themselves for information concerning human na- 
ture, this conduct will probably be construed into 
hypocrisy. To such, the excellence and pre-emi- 
nency of virtue, and the character of Grattan, are 
as invisible and incomprehensibe, as the brightness 
of the sun to a man born blind." — p. 237. 



(September, 1813.) 



An Inquiry whether Crime and Misery are produced or prevented by our present System of Prison 
Discipline. Illustrated by Descriptions of the Borough Compter, Tothill Fields Prison, the 
Jail at St. Albans, the Jail at Guildford, the Jail at Bristol, the Jails at Bury and Ilchester, 
the Maison de Force at Ghent, the Philadelphia Prison, the Penitentiary at Millbank, and the 
Proceedings of the Ladies' Committee at Newgate. By Thomas Fowell Buxton. 8vo. p. 171. 
London: 1818. 



There are two classes of subjects which 
naturally engage the attention of public men, 
and divide the interest which society takes in 
their proceedings. The one may, in a wide 
sense, be called Party Politics — the other 
Civil or Domestic Administration. To the 
former belong all questions touching political 
rights and franchises — the principles of the 
Constitution — the fitness or unfitness of min- 
isters, and the interest and honour of the 
country, as it may be affected by its conduct 
and relations to foreign powers, either in peace 
or war. The latter comprehends most of the 
branches of political economy and statistics, 
and all the ordinary legislation of internal 
police and regulation; and, besides the two 
great heads of Trade and Taxation, embraces 
the improvements of the civil Code — the care 
of the Poor — the interests of Education, Re- 
ligion, and Morality — and the protection of 
Prisoners, Lunatics, and others who cannot 
claim protection for themselves. This dis- 
tinction, we confess, is but coarsely drawn 
— since every one of the things we have 
last enumerated may, in certain circumstan- 
tee, be made an occasion of party contention. 



But what we mean is, that they are not its 
natural occasions, and do not belong to those 
topics, or refer to those principles, in relation 
to which the great Parties of a free country 
necessarily arise. One great part of a states- 
man's business may thus be considered as 
Polemic — and another as Deliberative ; his 
main object in the first being to discomfit and 
expose his opponents — and, in the second, to 
discover the best means of carrying into effect 
ends which all agree to be desirable. 

Judging a priori of the relative importance 
or agreeableness of these two occupations,, 
we should certainly be apt to think that the 
latter was by far the most attractive and com- 
fortable in itself, as well as the most likely 
to be popular with the community. The fact, 
however, happens to be otherwise : For such 
is the excitement of a public contest for influ- 
ence and power, and so great the prize to be 
won in those honourable lists, that '..he highest 
talents are all put in requisition for that de- 
partment, and all their force and splendour 
reserved for the struggle : And indeed, when 
we consider that the object of this struggle is 
nothing less than to put the whole power of 



BUXTON'S INQUIRY. 



701 



ndminist ration into the hands of the victors, 
and thus to enable them not only to engross 
the credit of carrying through all those bene- 
ficial arrangements that may be called for by 
the voice of the country, but to carry them 
through in their own way, we ought not per- 
haps to wonder, that in the eagerness of this 
pursuit, which is truly that of the means to all 
ends, some of the ends themselves should, 
when separately presented, appear of inferior 
moment, and excite far less interest or concern. 

But, though this apology may be available 
in some degree to the actors, it still leaves us 
at a loss to account fo t the corresponding sen- 
timents that are found in the body of the peo- 
ple, who are but lookers on for the most part 
in this great scene of contention — and can 
scarcely fail to perceive, one would imagine, 
that their immediate interests were often post- 
poned to the mere gladiatorship of the parties, 
and their actual service neglected, while this 
fierce strife was maintained as to who should 
be allowed to serve them. In such circum- 
stances, we should naturally expect to find, 
that the popular favourites would not be the 
leaders of the opposite political parties, but 
those who, without regard to party, came for- 
ward to suggest and promote measures of ad- 
mitted utility — and laboured directly to en- 
large the enjoyments and advantages of the 
people, or to alleviate the pressure of their 
necessary sufferings. That it is not so in fact 
and reality, must be ascribed, we think, partly 
to the sympathy which, in a country like this, 
men of all conditions take in the party feel- 
. ings of their political favourites, and the sense 
they have of the great importance of their 
success, and the general prevalence of then- 
principles ; and partly, no doubt, and in a 
greater degree, to that less justifiable but very 
familiar principle of our nature, by which we 
are led, on so many other occasions, to prefer 
splendid accomplishments to useful qualities, 
and to take a much greater interest in those 
perilous and eventful encounters, where the 
prowess of the champions is almost all that is 
to be proved by the result, than in those hum- 
bler labours of love or wisdom, by which the 
enjoyments of the whole society are multi- 
plied or secured. 

There is a reason, no doubt, for this also — 
and a wise one — as for every other general 
law to which its great Author has subjected 
our being : But it is not the less true, that it 
often operates irregularly, and beyond it's 
province, — as may be seen in the familiar 
instance of the excessive and pernicious ad- 
miration which follows all great achievements 
in War, and makes Military fame so danger- 
ously seducing, both to those who give and to 
those who receive it. It is undeniably true, 
as Swift said long ago / that he who made two 
blades of grass to grow where one only grew 
before, was a greater benefactor to his country 
than all the heroes and conquerors with whom 
its annals are emblazed ; and yet it would be 
ludicrous to compare the fame of the most 
successful improver in agriculture with that 
of the most inconsiaerable soldier who ever 
signalised his courage in an unsuccessful cam- 



paign. The inrentors of the steam-engino 
and the spinning-machine have, beyond all 
question, done much more in our own limes, 
not only to increase the comforts and wealth 
of their country, but to multiply its resources 
and enlarge its power, than all the Statesmen 
and Warriors who have affected during the 
same period, to direct its destiny ; and yet, 
while the incense of public acclamation has 
been lavished upon the latter — while wealth 
and honours, and hereditary distinctions, have 
been heaped upon them in their lives, and 
monumental glories been devised to perpetu- 
ate the remembrance of their services, the 
former have been left undistinguished in the 
crowd of ordinary citizens, and permitted to 
close their days, unvisited by any ray of pub- 
lic favour or national gratitude, — for no other 
reason that can possibly be suggested, than 
that their invaluable services were performed 
without noise or contention, in the studious 
privacy of benevolent meditation, and with- 
out any of those tumultuous accompaniments 
that excite the imagination, or inflame the 
passions of observant multitudes. 

The case, however, is precisely the same 
with the different classes of those who occupy 
themselves with public interests. He who 
thunders in popular assemblies, and consumes 
his antagonists in the blaze of his patriotic 
eloquence, or withers them with the flash of 
his resistless sarcasm, immediately becomes, 
not merely a leader in the senate, but an idol 
in the country at large; — while he who by 
his sagacity discovers, by his eloquence recom- 
mends, and by his laborious perseverance ulti- 
mately effects, some great improvement in 
the condition of large classes of the commu- 
nity, is rated, by that ungrateful community, 
as a far inferior personage ; and obtains, for 
his nights and days of successful toil, a far 
less share even of the cheap reward of popu- 
lar applause than is earned by the other, 
merely in following the impulses of his own 
ambitious nature. No man in this country 
ever rose to a high political station, or even 
obtained any great personal power and influ- 
ence in society, merely by originating in Par- 
liament measures of internal regulation, or 
conducting with judgment and success im- 
provements, however extensive, that did not 
affect the interests of one or other of the two 
great parties in the state. Mr. Wilberforce 
may perhaps be mentioned as an exception ; 
and certainly the greatness, the long endu- 
rance, and the difficulty of the struggle, which 
he at last conducted to so glorious a termina- 
tion, have given him a fame and popularity 
which may be compared, in some respects, 
with that of a party leader. But even Mr. 
Wilberforce would be at once demolished in 
a contest with the leaders of party ; and could 
do nothing, out of doors, by his own ind i vidua, 
exertions; while it is quite manifest, that the 
greatest and most meritorious exertions to ex 
tend the reign of Justice by the correction of 
our civil code — to ameliorate the condition of 
the Poor — to alleviate the sufferings of the 
Prisoner, — or, finally, to regenerate the minda 
of the whole people by an improved system 
3 i 2 



702 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



of Education, will never give a man half the 
power or celebrity that may be secured, at 
any time, by a bvilliant speech on a motion 
of censure, or a flaming harangue on the 
boundlessness of our resources, and the glo- 
ries of our arms. 

It may be conjectured already, that with 
all due sense of the value of party distinc- 
tions, and all possible veneration for the talents 
which they ca'l most prominently into action, 
we are inclined to think, that this estimate 
of public services might be advantageously 
corrected ; and that the objects which would 
exclusively occupy our statesmen if they were 
all of one mind upon constitutional questions, 
ought more frequently to take precedence of 
the contentions to which those questions give 
rise. We think there is, of late, a tendency 
to such a change in public opinion. The na- 
tion, at least, seems at length heartily sick of 
those heroic vapourings about our efforts for 
the salvation of Europe, — which seem to have 
ended in the restoration of old abuses abroad, 
and the imposition of new taxes at home ; — 
and about the vigour which was required for 
the maintenance of our glorious constitution, 
which has most conspicuously displayed itself 
in the suspension of its best bulwarks, and the 
organisation of spy systems and vindictive per- 
secutions, after the worst fashion of arbitrary 
governments : — and seems disposed to re- 
quire, at the hands of its representatives, some 
substantial pledge of their concern for the 
general welfare, by an active and zealous co- 
operation in the correction of admitted abuses, 
and the redress of confessed wrongs. 

It is mortifying to the pride of human wis- 
dom, to consider how much evil has resulted 
from the best and least exceptionable of its 
boasted institutions — and how those establish- 
ments that have been most carefully devised 
for the repression of guilt, or the relief of mise- 
ry, have become themselves the fruitful and 
pestilent sources both of guilt and misery, in 
a frightful and disgusting degree. Laws, with- 
out which society could not exist, become, by 
their very multiplication and refinement, a 
snare and a burden to those they were intend- 
ed to protect, and let in upon us the hateful 
and most intolerable plagues, of pettifogging, 
chicanery, and legal persecution. Institutions 
for the relief and prevention of Poverty have 
the effect of multiplying it tenfold — hospitals 
for the cure of Diseases become centres of 
infection. The very Police, which is neces- 
sary to make our cities habitable, give birth 
to the odious vermin of informers, thief-catch- 
ers, and suborners of treachery; — and our 
Prisons, which are meant chiefly to reform the 
guilty and secure the suspected, are converted 
into schools of the most atrocious corruption, 
and dens of the most inhuman torture. 

Those evils and abuses, thus arising out of 
intended benefits and remedies, are the last to 
which the attention of. ordinary men is direct- 
ed — because they arise in such unexpected 
quarters, and are apt to be regarded as the 
unavoidable accompaniments of indispensable 
institutions. There is a selfish delicacy which 
makes us at all times averse to enter into de- 



tails of a painful and offensive nature : and an 
indolent sort of optimism, by which we natu- 
rally seek to excuse our want of activity, by 
charitably presuming that things are as well 
as they can easily be made, and that it is 
inconceivable that any very flagrant abuses 
should be permitted by the worthy and hu- 
mane people who are more immediately con- 
cerned in their prevention. To this is added 
a fear of giving offence to those same worthy 
visitors and superintendants — and a still more 
potent fear of giving offence to his Majesty's 
Government; — for though no administration 
can really have any interest in the existence 
of such abuses, or can be suspected of wish- 
ing to perpetuate them from any love for them 
or their authors, yet it is but too true that most 
long-established administrations have looked 
with an evil eye upon the detectors and re- 
dressors of all sorts of abuses, however little 
connected with politics or political persons — 
first, because they feel that their long and 
undisturbed continuance is a tacit reproach on 
their negligence and inactivity, in not having 
made use of their great opportunities to dis- 
cover and correct them — secondly, because 
all such corrections are innovations upon old 
usages and establishments, and practical ad- 
missions of the flagrant imperfection of those 
boasted institutions, towards which it is their 
interest to maintain a blind and indiscriminate 
veneration in the body of the people — and, 
thirdly, because, if general abuses affecting 
large classes of the community are allowed to 
be exposed and reformed in any one depart- 
ment, the people might get accustomed to look 
for the redress of all similar abuses in other 
departments, — and reform would cease to be a 
word of terror and alarm (as most ministers 
think it ought to be) to all loyal subjects. 

These, no doubt, are formidable obstacles ; 
and therefore it is, that gross abuses have 
been allowed to subsist so long. But they are 
so far from being insurmountable, that we are 
perfectly persuaded that nothing more is ne- 
cessary to insure the effectual correction, or 
mitigation at least, of all the evils to which we 
have alluded, than to satisfy the public, 1st, 
of their existence and extent — and. 2dly, of 
there being means for their effectual redress 
and prevention. Evils that are directly con- 
nected with the power of the existing admin- 
istration — abuses of which they are them- 
selves the authors or abettors, or of which they 
have the benefit, can only be corrected by 
their removal from office — and are substan- 
tially irremediable, however enormous, while 
they continue in power. All questions as to 
them, fherefore, belong to the department of 
party politics, and fall within the province of 
the polemical statesman. But with regard to 
all other plain violations of reason, justice, or 
humanity, it is comfortable to think that we 
live in such a stage of society as to make it 
impossible that they should be allowed to sub 
sist many years, after their mischief and ini- 
quity have been made manifest to the sense 
of the country at large. Public opinion, which 
is still potent and formidable even to Ministe- 
rial corruption, is omnipotent against all infe- 



BUXTON'S INQUIRY 



703 



rlor malversations — ancTfhe invaluable means 
of denunciation and autl >ritative and irresis- 
tible investigation whicl. we possess in our 
representative legislature, /uts it in the power 
of any man of prudence, patience, and re- 
spectability in that House, to bring to light the 
most secret, and to shame the most arrogant 
delinquent, and to call down the steady ven- 
geance of public execration, and the sure 
light of public intelligence, for the repression 
and redress of all public injustice. 

The charm is in the little word Publicity! 
— And it is cheering to think how many won- 
ders have already been wrought by that pre- 
cious Talisman. If the House of Commons 
was of no other use but as an organ for pro- 
claiming and inquiring into all alleged abuses, 
and making public the results, under the 
sanction of names and numbers which no man 
dares to suspect of unfairness or inattention, 
it would be enough to place the country in 
which it existed far above all terms of com- 
parison with any other, ancient or modern, in 
which no such institution had been devised. 
Though the great work is done, however, by 
that House and its committees — though it is 
there only that the mischief can be denounced 
with a voice that teaches to the utmost bor- 
ders of the land — and there only that the seal 
of unquestioned and unquestionable authority 
can be set to the statements which it authen- 
ticates and gives out to the world ; — there is 
still room, and need too, for the humbler min- 
istry of inferior agents, to circulate and en- 
force, to repeat and expound, the momentous 
facts that have been thus collected, and upon 
which the public must ultimately decide. It 
is this unambitious, but useful function that 
we now propose to perform, in laying before 
our readers a short view of the very interest- 
ing facts which are detailed in the valuable 
work of which the title is prefixed, and in the 
parliamentary papers to which it refers. 

Prisons are employed for the confinement 
and security of at least three different descrip- 
tions of persons: — first, of those who are ac- 
cused of crimes and offences, but have not yet 
been brought to trial ; 2d, of those who have 
been convicted, and are imprisoned prepara- 
tory to, or as a part of, their punishment ; and 
3d, of debtors, who are neither convicted nor 
accused of any crime whatsoever. In both 
the first classes, and even in that least enti- 
tled to favour, there is room for an infinity of 
distinctions — from the case of the boy arraign- 
ed or convicted for a slight assault or a breach 
of the peace, up to that of the bloody murderer 
or hardened depredator, or veteran leader of 
the house-breaking gang. All these persons 
must indeed be imprisoned — for so the law 
has declared ; but, under that sentence, we 
humbly conceive there is no warrant to inflict 
on them any other punishment — any thing 
more than a restraint on their personal free- 
dom. This, we think, is strictly true of all 
the three classes we have mentioned ; but it 
will scarcely be disputed, at all events, that 
it is true of the first and the last. A man may 
avoid the penalties of Crime, by avoiding all 
criminality : But no man can be secure against 



False accusation ; and to condemn him who 
is only suspected, is to commence his punish- 
ment while his crime is uncertain. Nay, it is 
not only uncertain, as to all who are untried, 
but it is the fixed presumption of the law that 
the suspicion is unfounded, and that a trial 
will establish his innocence. We suppose 
there are not less than ten or fifteen thousand 
persons taken up yearly in Great Britain and 
Ireland on suspicion of crimes, of whom cer- 
tainly there are not two-thirds convicted ; so 
that, in all likelihood, there are not fewer than 
seven or eight thousand innocent persons placed 
annually in this painful predicament — whose 
very imprisonment, though an unavoidable, is 
beyond all dispute a very lamentable evil 5 
and to which no unnecessary addition can be 
made without the most tremendous injustice. 

The debtor, again, seems entitled to at 
least as much indulgence. "He ma)-," says 
Mr. Buxton, " have been reduced to his ina- 
bility to satisfy his creditor by the visitation 
of God, — by disease, by personal accidents, 
by the failure of reasonable projects, by the 
largeness or the helplessness of his family. 
His substance, and the substance of his credi- 
tor, may have perished together in the flames, 
or in the waters. Human foresight cannot 
always avert, and human industry cannot al- 
ways repair, the calamities to which our na- 
ture is subjected : — surely, then, some debtors 
are entitled to compassion. '2 — (p. 4.) Of the 
number of debtors at any one time in confine- 
ment in these kingdoms, we have no means 
of forming a conjecture ; but beyond all doubt 
they amount to many thousands, of. whom 
probably one half have been reduced to that 
state by venial errors, or innocent misfortune. 

Even with regard to the convicted, we 
humbly conceive it to be clear, that where no 
special severity is enjoined by the law, any 
additional infliction beyond that of mere co- 
ercion, is illegal. If the greater delinquents 
alone were subjected to such severities, there 
might be a colour of equity in the practice ; 
but, in point of fact, they are inflicted ac- 
cording to the state of the prison, the usage 
of the place, or the temper of the jailor; — 
and, in all cases, they are inflicted indiscrimi- 
nately on the whole inmates of each unhappy 
mansion. Even if it were otherwise, " Who/* 5 
says Mr. B., "is to apportion this variety of 
wretchedness ? The Judge, who knows noth- 
ing of the interior of the jail; or the jailor, 
who knows nothing of the transactions of the 
Court 1 The law can easily suit its penalties 
to the circumstances of the case. It can ad 
judge to one offender imprisonment for one 
day ; to another for twenty years : But what 
ingenuity would be sufficient to devise, and 
w£at discretion could be trusted tc inflict, 
modes of imprisonment with similai varia- 
tions'?"— p. 8. 

But the truth is, that all inflictions beyond 
that of mere detention, are clearly illegal.- - 
Take the common case of fetters — from 
Bracton down to Blackstone, all our lawyers 
declare the use of them to be contrary to law. 
The last says, in so many words, that u the 
law will not justify jailors in fettering a pri- 



704 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



soner, unless where he is unruly or has at- 
tempted an escape j" and, even in that case, 
the practice seems to be questionable — if we 
can trust to the memorable reply of Lord 
Chief Justice King to certain magistrates, 
who urged their necessit)' for safe custody — 
' l let them build their walls higher." Yet 
has this matter been left, all over the king- 
dom, as a thing altogether indifferent, to the 
pleasure of the jailor or local magistrates; 
and the practice accordingly has been the 
most capricious and irregular that can well be 
imagined. 

"In Chelmsford, for example, and in Newgate, 
all atcused or convicted of felony are ironed. — At 
Bury, and at Norwich, all are without irons. — At 
Abingdon the untried are not ironed. — At Derby, 
none but the untried are ironed ! — At Cold-bath- 
fields, none but the untried, and those sent for re- 
examination, are ironed. — At Winchester, all before 
trial are ironed ; and those sentenced to transporta- 
tion after trial. — At Chester, those alone of bad 
character are ironed, whether tried or untried." 

pp. 68, 69. 

But these are trifles. The truth of the case 
is forcibly and briefly stated in the following 
short sentences : — 

" You have no right to deprive a man sentenced 
to mere imprisonment of pure air, wholesome and 
sufficient food, and opportunities of exercise. You 
have no right to debar him from the craft on which 
his family depends, if it can be exercised in prison. 
You have no right to subject him to suffering from 
cold, by want of bed-clothing by night, or firing by 
day. And the reason is plain, — you have taken him 
from his home, and have deprived him of the means 
of providing himself with the necessaries or com- 
forts of life ; and therefore you are bound to furnish 
him with moderate indeed, but suitable accommo- 
dation. 

"You have, for the same reason, no right to 
ruin his habits, by compelling him to be idle, his 
morals, by compelling him to mix with a pro- 
miscuous assemblage of hardened and convicted 
criminals, or his health by forcing him at night into 
a damp unventilated cell, with such crowds of com- 
panions, as very speedily render the air foul and 
putrid, or to make him sleep in close contact with 
the victims of contagious and loathsome disease, or 
amidst the noxious effluvia of dirt and corruption. 
In short, no Judge ever condemned a man to be 
half starved with cold by day, or half suffocated 
with heat by night. Who ever heard of a criminal 
being sentenced to Rheumatism, or Typhus fever ? 
Corruption of morals and contamination of mind 
are not the remedies which the law in its wisdom 
has thought proper to adopt."* 

The abuses in Newgate, that great recepta- 
cle of guilt and misery, constructed to hold 
about four hundred and eighty prisoners, but 
generally containing, of late years, from eight 
hundred to twelve hundred, are eloquently 
set forth in the publication before us, though 
we have no longer left ourselves room to spe- 
cify them. It may be sufficient, however, to 
observe, that the state of the Women's wards 
was universally allowed to be by far the 
worst ; and that even Alderman Atkins ad- 



* I do not now reprint the detailed statements 
which formed the bulk of this paper, as originally 
published ; and retain only the account of the mar- 
vellous reformation effected in Newgate, by the 
heroic labours of Mrs. Fry and her sisters of charity 
— of which I think it a duty to omit nothmg that 
mav help to perpetuate the remembrance. 



mitted, that in that Quarter seme alteration 
might be desirable, though, in his apprehen- 
sion, it was altogether impracticable. Thougn 
by no means inclined to adopt the whole of 
the worthy Alderman's opinions, we may 
safely say, that we should have been much 
disposed to agree with him in thinking the 
subjects of those observations pretty nearly 
incorrigible : and certainly should not have 
hesitated to pronounce the change which has 
actually been made upon them altogether im- 
possible. Mrs. Fry, however, knew better of 
what both she and they were capable j and. 
strong in the spirit of compassionate love, and 
of that charity that hopeth all things, and be- 
lieveth all things, set herself earnestly and 
humbly to that arduous and revolting task, in 
which her endeavours have been so singularly 
blessed and effectual. This heroic and affec- 
tionate woman is the wife, we understand, of 
a respectable banker in London ; and both 
she and her husband belong to the Society of 
Friends — that exemplary sect, which is the 
first to begin and the last to abandon every 
scheme for the practical amendment of their 
fellow-creatures — and who have carried into 
all their schemes of reformation a spirit of 
practical wisdom, of magnanimous patience, 
and merciful indulgence, which puts to shame 
the rashness, harshness, and precipitation of 
sapient ministers, and presumptuous politi- 
cians. We should like to lay the whole ac- 
count of her splendid campaign before our 
readers; but our limits w T ill no longer admit of 
it. However, we shall do what we can ; and, 
at all events, no longer withhold them from a 
part at least of this heart-stirring narrative. 

" About four years ago, Mrs. Fry was induced 
to visit Newgate, by the representations of irs state 
made by some persons of the Society of Friends. 

" She found the female side in a situation which 
no language can describe. Nearly three hundred 
women, sent there for every gradation of crime, 
some untried, and some under sentence of death, 
were crowded together in the two wards and two 
cells, which are row appropriated to the untried, 
and which are found quite inadequate to contain 
even this diminished number with any tolerable 
convenience. Here they saw their friends, and kept 
their multitudes of children ; and they had no other 
place for cooking, washing, eating, and sleeping. 

" They all slept on the floor ; at times one hun- 
dred and twenty in one ward, without so much as 
a mat for bedding ; and many of them were very 
nearly naked. She saw them openly drinking 
spirits; and her ears were offended by the mosA 
terrible imprecations. Every thing was filthv to 
excess, and the smell was quite disgusting. Every 
one, even the Governor, was reluctant to go 
amongst them. He persuaded her to leave her 
watch in the office, telling her that his presence 
would not prevent its being torti from her ! She 
saw enough to convince her that every thing bad 
was going on. ^In short, in giving me this account, 
she repeatedly said — ' All I tell thee is a faint pic- 
ture of the reality ; the filth, the closeness of the 
rooms, the ferocious manners and expressions of 
the women towards each other, and the abandoned 
wickedness which every thing bespoke, are quite 
indescribable.' "—pp. 117—119. 

Her design, at this time, was confined to 
the instruction of about seventy children, who 
were wandering about in this scene of horror 
and for whom even the most abandoned o. 



BUXTON'S INQUIRY. 



705 



llieii wretched mothers thanked her with 
tears of gratitude for her benevolent inten- 
tions! while several of the younger women 
flocked about her, and entreated, with the 
most pathetic eagerness, to be admitted to 
her intended school. She now applied to the 
Governor, and had an interview with the two 
Sheriffs and the Ordinary, who received her 
with the most cordial approbation ; but fairly 
intimated to her " their persuasion that her 
efforts would be utterly fruitless." After some 
investigation, it was officially reported, that 
there was no vacant spot in which the school 
could be established; and an ordinary philan- 
thropist would probably have retired disheart- 
ened from the undertaking. Mrs. Fry, how- 
ever, mildly requested to be admitted once 
more alone among the women, that she might 
conduct the search for herself. Difficulties 
always disappear before the energy of real 
zeal and benevolence: an empty cell was im- 
mediately discovered, and the school was to 
be opened the very day after. 

*' The next day she commenced the school, in 
company with a young lady, who then visited a 
prison for the first time, and who since gave me a 
very interesting description of her feelings upon that 
occasion. The railing was crowded with half naked 
women, struggling together for the front situa- 
tions with the most hoisterous violence, and begging 
with the utmost vociferation. She felt as if she was 
going into a den of wild beasts ; and she well recol- 
lects quite shuddering when the door closed upon 
her, and she was locked in, with such a herd of 
novel and desperate companions. This day, how- 
ever, the school surpassed their utmost expectations-: 
their only pain arose from the numerous and press- 
ing applications made by young women, who longed 
to be taught and employed. The narrowness of the 
room rendered it then impossible to yield to these 
requests : But they tempted these ladies to project 
a school for the employment of the tried women, 
for teaching them to read and to work." 

" When this intention was mentioned to the 
friends of these ladies, it appeared at first so vision- 
ary and unpromising, that it met with very slender 
encouragement: they were told that the certain 
consequence of introducing work would be, that it 
would be stolen ; that though such an experiment 
might be reasonable enough, if made in the country, 
among women who had been accustomed to hard 
labour, it was quite hopeless, when tried upon those 
who had been so long habituated to vice and idle- 
ness. In short, it was predicted, and by many too, 
whose wisdom and benevolence added weight to 
their opinions, that those who had set at defiance 
the law of the land, with all its terrors, would very 
Bpeedily revolt from an authority which had nothing 
to enforce it : and nothing more to recommend it 
than its simplicity and gentleness. But the noble 
zeal of these unassuming women was not to be so 
repressed ; and feeling that their design was in- 
tended for the good and the happiness of others. 
they trusted that it would receive the guidance and 
protection of Him who often is pleased to accom- 
plish the iiighest purposes by the most feeble instru- 
ments. 

" With these impressions, they had the boldness 
to declare, that if a committee could be found who 
would share the labour, and a matron who would 
engage never to leave the prison, day or night, they 
would undertake to try the experiment, that is, 
they would themselves find employme?it for the 
women, procure the necessary money, till the city 
could be induced to relieve them, and he answer- 
able for the safety of the property committed into 
the hands of the prisoners. 

The committee immediately presetited itself; it 
89 



consisted of the wife of a clergyman, and eleven 
(female) members of the Society of Friends. They 
professed their willingness to suspend every other 
engagement and avocation, and to devote them- 
selves to Newgate; and in truth, they have per- 
formed their promise. With no interval of relaxa- 
tion, and with but few intermissions from the call 
of other and more imperious duties, they have since 
lived amongst the prisoners." 

Even this astonishing progress could not 
correct the incredulity of men of benevolence 
and knowledge of the world. The Reverend 
Ordinary, though filled with admiration for 
the exertions of this intrepid and devoted 
band, fairly told Mrs. F. that her designs, like 
many others for the improvement of that 
wretched mansion, " would inevitably fail. 11 
The Governor encouraged her to go on — but 
confessed to his friends, that "he could not 
see even the possibility of her success." But 
the wisdom of this world is foolishness, and 
its fears but snares to entangle our feet in the 
career of our duty. Mrs. F. saw with other 
eyes, and felt with another heart. She went 
again to the Sheriffs and the Governor; — near 
one hundred of the women were brought be- 
fore them, and, with much solemnity and ear- 
nestness, engaged to give the strictest obedi- 
ence to all the regulations of their heroic bene- 
factress. A set of rules was accordingly 
promulgated, which we have not room here to 
transcribe ; but they imported the sacrifice of 
all their darling and much cherished vices; — 
drinking, gaming, card-playing, novel reading, 
were entirely prohibited — and regular appli- 
cation to work engaged for in every quarter. 
For the space of one month these benevolent 
women laboured in private in the midst of 
their unhappy flock ; at the end of that short 
time they invited the Corporation of London 
to satisfy themselves, by inspection, of the 
effect of their pious exertions. 

"In compliance with this appointment, the Lord 
Mayor, the Sheriffs, and several of the Aldermen, 
attended. The prisoners were assembled together ; 
and it being requested that no alteration in their 
usual practice might take place, one of the ladies 
read a chapter in the Bible, and then the females 
proceeded to their various avocations. Their atten- 
tion during the time of reading, their orderly and 
sober deportment, their decent dress, the absence 
of every thing like tumult, noise, or contention, the 
obedience, and the respect shown by them, and the 
cheerfulness visible in their countenances and man- 
ners, conspired to excite the astonishment and ad- 
miration of their visitors. 

"Many of these knew Newgate ; had visited it 
a few months before, and had not forgotten the 
painful impressions made by a scene, exhibiting, 
perhaps, the very utmost limits of misery and guilt. 
— They now saw, what, without exaggeration, may 
be called a transformation. Riot, licentiousness, 
and filth, exchanged for order, sobriety, and com- 
parative neatness in the chamber, the apparel, and 
the persons of the prisoners. They saw no more 
an assemblage of abandoned and shameless crea 
tures, half-naked and half-drunk, rather demanding, 
than requesting charity. The prison no more re- 
sounded with obscenity, and imprecations, and li- 
centious songs ; and to use the coarse, but the just, 
expression of one who knew the prison well, ' this 
hell upon earth,' already exhibited the appearance 
of an industrious manufactory, or a well regulated 
family. 

"The magistrates, to evince their sense of the 



706 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



importance of the alterations which had been ef- 
fected, immediately adopted the whole plan as a part 
of the system of Newgate ; empowered the ladies 
to punish the refractory by short confinement, un- 
dertook part of the expense of the matron, and 
loaded the ladies with thanks and benedictions." 

pp. 130, 131. 

We can add nothing to this touching and 
elevating statement. The story of a glorious 
victory gives us a less powerful or proud 
emotion — and thanks and benedictions appear 
to us never to have been so richly deserved. 

" A year, says Mr. Buxton, has now elapsed 
since the operations in Newgate began ; and those 
most competent to judge, the late Lord Mayor and 
the present, the late Sheriffs and the present, the 
late Governor and the present, various Grand 
Juries, the Chairman of the Police Committee, the 
Ordinary, and the officers of the prison, have all 
declared their satisfaction, mixed with astonish- 
ment, at the alteration which has taken place in the 
conduct of the females. 

" It is true, and the Ladies' Committee are anx- 
ious that it should not be concealed, that some of 
the rules have been occasionally broken. Spirits, 
they fear, have more than once been introduced ; 
and it was discovered at one period, when many of 
the ladies were absent, that card-playing had been 
resumed. But, though truth compels them to ac- 
knowledge these deviations, they have been of a 
very limited extent. I could find but one lady who 
heard an oath, and there had not been above half a 
dozen instances of intoxication ; and the ladies fieel 
justified in stating, that the rules have generally 
been observed. The ladies themselves have been 
treated with uniform respect and gratitude." 

pp. 132, 133. 

At the close of a Session, many of the re- 
formed prisoners were dismissed, and many 
new ones were received — and, under their 
auspices, card-playing was again introduced. 
One of the ladies, however, went among them 
alone, and earnestly and affectionately ex- 
plained to them the pernicious consequences 
of this practice; and represented to them 
how much she would be gratified, if, even 
from regard to her, they would agree to re- 
nounce it. 

" Soon after she retired to the ladies' room, one 
of the prisoners came to her, and expressed, in a 
manner which indicated real feeling, her sorrow for 
having broken the rules of so kind a friend, and 
pave her a pack of cards : four others did the same. 
Having burnt the cards in their presence, she felt 
bound to remunerate them for their value, and to 
mark her sense of their ready obedience by some 
•mall present. A few days afterwards, she called 
the first to her, and telling her intention, produced 
a neat muslin handkerchief. To her surprise, the 
girl looked disappointed ; and, on being asked the 
reason, confessed she had hoped that Mrs 



would have given her a Bible with her own name 
written in it ! which she should value beyond any 
thing else, and always keep and read. Such a 
request, made in such a manner, could not be re- 
fused ; and the lady assures me that she never gave 



a Bible in her life, which was received witn so much 
interest and satisfaction, or one, which she thinks 
more likely to do good. It is remarkable, that this 
girl, from her conduct in her preceding prison, and 
in court, came to Newgate with the worst of char- 
acters." — p. 134. 

The change, indeed, pervaded every de- 
partment of the female division. Those who 
were marched off for transportation, instead 
of breaking the windows and furniture, and 
going off, according to immemorial usage, with 
drunken songs and intolerable disorder, took 
a serious and tender leave of their compan- 
ions, and expressed the utmost gratitude to 
their benefactors, from whom they parted 
with tears. Stealing has also been entirely 
suppressed ; and, while upwards of twenty 
thousand articles of dress have been manu- 
factured, not one has been lost or purloined 
within the precincts of the prison ! 

We have nothing more to say; and would 
not willingly weaken the effect of this im- 
pressive statement by any observations of 
ours. Let us hear no more of the difficulty 
of regulating provincial prisons, when the 
prostitute felons of London have been thus 
easily reformed and converted. Let us never 
again be told of the impossibility of repress- 
ing drunkenness and profligacy, or introducing 
habits of industry in small establishments, 
when this great crater of vice and corruption 
has been thus stilled and purified. And, above 
all. let there be an end of the pitiful apology 
of the want of funds, or means, or agents, to 
effect those easier improvements, when wo- 
men from the middle ranks of life— when 
quiet unassuming matrons, unaccustomed to 
business, or to any but domestic exertions, 
have, without funds, without agents, without 
aid or encouragement of any description, 
trusted themselves within the very centre of 
infection and despair ; and. by opening theii 
hearts only, and not their purses, have effect 
ed, by the mere force of kindness, gentleness, 
and compassion, a labour, the like to which 
does not remain to be performed, and which 
has smoothed the way and insured success 
to all similar labours. We cannot Envy the 
happiness which Mrs. Fry must enjoy from 
the consciousness of her own great achieve- 
ments ; — but there is no happiness or honour 
of which we should be so proud to be par- 
takers: And we seem to relieve our own 
hearts of their share of national gratitude, in 
thus placing on her simple and modest brow, 
that truly Civic Crown, which far outshines 
the laurels of conquest, or the coronals of 
pow T er — andean only be outshone itself, by 
those wreaths of imperishable glory which 
await the champions of Faith and Charity in 
a higher state of existence. 



MEMOIRS OF CUMBERLAND. 



707 



(ftpril, 1806.) 



Mtmoirs of Richard Cumberland: written by himself. Containing an Account of his Life 
and Writings, interspersed with Anecdotes and Characters of the most distinguished Persons 
of his Time with tvhom he had Intercourse or Connection. 4to. pp. 



v uizLinguiziicu j. ei suns 

533. London: 1806* 



We certainly have no wish for the death 
of Mr. Cumberland ; on the contrary, we hope 
he will live long enough to make a large sup- 
plement to these memoirs : But he has em- 
barrassed us a little by publishing this volume 
in his lifetime. We are extremely unwilling 
to say any thing that may hurt the feelings 
of a man of distinguished talents, who is draw- 
ing to the end of his career, and imagines that 
he has hitherto been ill used by the world : 
but he has shown, in this publication, such an 
appetite for praise, and such a jealousy of 
censure, that we are afraid we cannot do our 
duty conscientiously, without giving him of- 
fence. The truth is, that the book has rather 
disappointed us. We expected it to be ex- 
tremely amusing ; and it is not. There is too 
much of the first part of the title in it, and too 
little of the last. Of the life and writings of 
Richard Cumberland, we hear more than 
enough ; but of the distinguished persons with 
whom he lived, we have many fewer charac- 
ters and anecdotes than we could have wish- 
ed. We are the more inclined to regret this, 
both because the general style of Mr. Cum- 
berland's compositions has convinced us, that 
no one could have exhibited characters and 
anecdotes in a more engaging manner, and 
because, from what he has put into this book, 
we actually see that he had excellent oppor- 
tunities for collecting, and still better talents 
for relating them. The anecdotes and charac- 
ters which we have, are given in a very pleas- 
ing and animated manner, and form the chief 
merit of the publication : But they do not oc- 
cupy one tenth part of it ; and the rest is filled 
with details that do not often interest, and ob- 
servations that do not always amuse. 

Authors, we think, should not, generally, 
be encouraged to write their own lives. The 
genius of Rousseau, his enthusiasm, and the 
novelty of his plan, have rendered the Con- 
fessions, in some respects, the most interest- 
ing of books. But a writer, who is jn full 
possession of his senses, who has lived in the 
world like the men and women who compose 
it, and whose vanity aims only at the praise 
of great talents and accomplishments, must 
not hope to write a book like the Confessions : 
and is scarcely to be trusted with the delinea- 
tion of his«o\vn character or the narrative of 
his own adventures. We have no objection. 



* I reprint part of this paper — for the sake chiefly 
of the anecdotes of Bemley, Bubb Dodington, 
Soame Jenyns, and a few others, which I think 
remarkable — and very much, also, for the lively 
and graphic account of the impression of Gar rick's 
new style of acting, as compared with that of Quin 
and the old schools — which is as good and as cu- 
rious ^s Colley Cibber's admirable sketches of 
Betterton and Booth. 



however, to let authors tell their own story, 
as an apology for telling that of all their ac- 
quaintances ; and can easily forgive them for 
grouping and assorting their anecdotes of their 
contemporaries, according to the chronology, 
and incidents of their own lives. This is but 
indulging the painter of a great gallery of 
worthies with a panel for his own portrait ; 
and though it will probably be the least like 
of the whole collection, it would be hard to 
grudge him this little gratification. 

Life has often been compared to a journey; 
and the simile seems to hold better in nothing 
than in the identity of the rules by which 
those who write their travels, and those who 
write their lives, should be governed. When 
a man returns from visiting any celebrated 
region, we expect to hear much more of the 
remarkable things and persons he has seen, 
than of his own personal transactions; and 
are naturally disappointed if, after saying that 
he lived much with illustrious statesmen or 
heroes, he chooses rather to tell us of his own 
travelling equipage, or of his cookery and ser- 
vants, than to give us any account of the 
character and conversation of those distin- 
guished persons. In the same manner, when 
at the close of a long life, spent in circles of 
literary and political celebrity, an author sits 
down to give the world an account of his re- 
trospections, it is reasonable to stipulate that 
he should talk less of himself than of his as- 
sociates; and natural to. complain, if he tells 
long stories of his schoolmasters and grand- 
mothers, while he passes over some of the 
most illustrious of his companions with a bare 
mention of their names. 

Mr. Cumberland has offended a little in this 
way. He- has also composed these memoirs, 
we think, in too diffuse, rambling, and care- 
less a style. There is evidently no selection 
or method in his narrative : and unweighed 
remarks, and fatiguing apologies and protes- 
tations, are tediously interwoven with it, in 
the genuine style of good-natured but irrepres- 
sible loquacity. The whole composition, in- 
deed, has not only too much the air of con- 
versation : It has sometimes an unfortunate 
resemblance to the conversation of a professed 
talker; and we meet with many passages in 
which the author appears to work himself up 
to an artificial vivacity, and to give a certain 
air of smartness to his expression, by the in- 
troduction of cant phrases, odd metaphors, and 
i a sort of practised and theatrical originality. 
The work, however, is well worth looking 
over, and contains many more amusing pas- 
sages than we can afford to extract on the 
present occasion. 

Mr. Cumberland was born in 1732 ; and he 
has a very natural pride in l 'ating that his 



708 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



paternal great-grandfather was the learned 
and most exemplary Bishop Cumberland, au- 
thor of the treatise De Legibus Naturce ; and 
that his maternal grandfather was the cele- 
brated Dr. Richard Bentley. Of the last of 
these distinguished persons he has given, from 
the distinct recollection of his childhood, a 
much more amiable and engaging represen- 
tation than has hitherto been made public. 
Instead of the haughty and morose critic and 
controversialist, we here learn, with pleasure, 
that he was as remarkable for mildness and 
kind affections in private life, as for profound 
erudition and sagacity as an author. Mr. 
Cumberland has collected a number of little 
anecdotes that seem to be quite conclusive 
upon this head • but we rather insert the fol- 
lowing general testimony : — 

" I had a sister somewhat older than myself. 
Had tiiere been any of that sternness in my grand- 
father, which is so falsely imputed to him, it may 
well be supposed we should have been awed into 
silence in his presence, to which we were admitted 
every day. Nothing can be further from the truth ; 
he was the unwearied patron and promoter of all 
our childish sports and sallies ; at all times ready to 
detach himself from any topic of conversation to 
take an interest and bear his part in our amuse- 
ments. The eager curiosity natural to our age, and 
the questions it gave birth to, so teasing to many 
parents, he, on the contrary, attended to and en- 
couraged, as the claims of infant reason, never to 
be evaded or abused ; strongly recommending, that 
to all such inquiries answers should be given ac- 
cording to the strictest truth, and information dealt 
to us in the clearest terms, as a sacred duty never 
to be departed from. I have broken in upon him 
many a time in his hours of study, when he would 
put his book aside, ring his hand-bell for his ser- 
vant, and be led to his shelves to take down a pic- 
ture-book for my amusement ! I do not say that 
his good-nature always gained its object, as the 
pictures which his books generally supplied me with 
were anatomical drawings of dissected bodies, very 
little calculated to communicate delight ; but he 
had nothing better to produce ; and surely such an 
effort on his part, however unsuccessful, was no 
feature of a cynic ; a cynic ' should be made of 
sterner stuff.' 

11 Once, and only once, I recollect his giving me 
a gentle rebuke for making a most outrageous noise 
in the room over his library, and disturbing him in 
his studies : I had no apprehension of anger from 
him, and confidently answered that I could not help 
it. as I had been at battledore and shuttlecock with 
Master Gooch, the Bishop of Ely's son. ' And I 
have been at this sport with his father,' he replied ; 
4 But thine has been the more amusing game ; so 
there's no harm done.' " 

He also mentions, that when his adversary 
Collins had fallen into poverty in his latter 
days. Bentley, apprehending that he was in 
some measure responsible for his loss of repu- 
tion, contrived to administer to his necessities 
in a way not less creditable to his delicacy 
than to his liberality. 

The youngest daughter of this illustrious 
scholar, the Phcebe of Byron's pastoral, and 
herself a woman of extraordinary accomplish- 
ments, was the mother of Mr. Cumberland. 
His father, who appears also to have been a 
man of the most blameless and amiable dis- 
positions, and to have united, in a very exem- 
plary way, the characters of a clergyman and 
a gentlemen, was Rector of Stanwick in North- 



amptonshire at the birth of his son. He w 3nt 
to school, first at Bury St. Edmunds, and af ,-?r 
wards at Westminster. But the most valuable 
part of his early education was that for which 
he was indebted to the taste and intelligence 
of his mother. We* insert with pleasure the 
following amiable paragraph : — 

" It was in these intervals from school that my 
mother began to form both my taste and my ear 
for poetry, by employing me every evening to read 
to her, of which art she was a very able mistress. 
Our readings were, with very few exceptions, con- 
fined to the chosen plays of Shakespeare, whom 
she both admired and understood in the irue spirit 
and sense of the author. With all her lather's 
critical acumen, she could trace, and teach me to 
unravel, all the meanders of his metaphor, and 
point out where it illuminated, or where it only 
loaded and obscured the meaning. These were 
happy hours and interesting lectures to me ; whilst 
my beloved father, ever placid and compracent, 
sate beside us, and took part in our amusement; 
his voice was never heard but in the tone of appro- 
bation ; his countenance never marked but with 
the natural traces of his indelible and hereditary 
benevolence." 

The effect of these readings was, that the 
young author, at twelve years of age, pro- 
duced a sort of drama, called ' : Shakespeare 
in the Shades," composed almost entirely of 
passages from that great writer, strung to- 
gether and assorted with no despicable in- 
genuity. But it is more to the purpose to 
observe that, at this early period of his life, he 
first saw Garrick. in the character of Lothario; 
and has left this animated account of the im- 
pression which the scene made upon hia 
mind : — 

" I have the spectacle even now, as it were* be- 
fore my eyes. Quin presented himself, upon the 
rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat, em- 
broidered down the seams, an enormous full-bot- 
tomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high heeled 
square-toed shoes: With very little variation of 
cadence, and in deep full tone, accompanied by a 
sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate 
than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics 
with an air of dignified indifference, that seemed to 
disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. 
Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet with- 
al, sung, or rather recitatived, Rowe's harmonious 
strains, something in the manner of the Improvi- 
satori: It was so extremely wanting in contrast, 
that, though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it : 
when she had once recited two or three speeches, I 
could anticipate the manner of every succeeding 
one. It was like a long old legendary ballad of in- 
numerable stanzas, every one of which is sung to 
the same tune, eternally chiming in the ear without 
variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an actress 
of a different cast, had more nature, and of course 
more change of tone, and variety both of action 
and expression. In my opinion, the comparison 
was decidedly in her favour. But when, after long 
and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, 
then young and light, and alive in every muscle 
and in every feature, come bounding on the stage, 
and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy- 
paced Horatio — heavens, what a transition! — it 
seemed as if a whole century had been stepped 
over in the transition of a single scene ! Old things 
were done away ; and a new order at once brought 
forward, bright and luminous, and clearly destined 
to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless 
age, too long attached to the prejudices of custom, 
and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of im- 
posing declamation. This heaven-born actor waa 



MEMOIRS OF CUMBERLAND. 



709 



tnen straggling to emancipate his audience from the 
slavery they were resigned to ; and though at times 
he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of uew- 
horn light upon them, yet in general they seemed 
to love darkness better than light; and in the dia- 
logue of altercation, between Horatio and Lothario, 
bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the 
master of the old school than upon the founder of 
the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those 
moments led me right ; they were those of nature, 
and therefore could not err." 

Some years after this, Mr. Cumberland's 
fattier exchanged his living of Stanwick for 
that of Fulham, in order that his son might 
have the benefit of his society, while obliged 
to reside in the vicinity of the metropolis. 
The celebrated Bubb Dodington resided at 
this time in the neighbouring parish of Ham- 
mersmith; and Mr. Cumberland, who soon 
became a frequent guest at his table, has pre- 
sented his readers w r ith the following spirited 
full length portrait of that very remarkable 
and preposterous personage. 

" Our splendid host was excelled by no man in 
doing the honours of his house and table ; to the 
ladies he had all the courtly and profound devotion 
of a Spaniard, with the ease and gaiety of a French- 
man towards the men. His mansion was magnifi- 
cent ; massy, and stretching out to a great extent 
of front, with an enormous ponico of Doric columns, 
ascended by a stately flight of steps. There were 
turrets, and wings too, that went I know not whi- 
ther, though now levelled with the ground, or gone 
to more ignoble uses : Vanbrugh, who constructed 
this superb edifice, seemed to have had the plan of 
Blenheim in his thoughts, and the interior was as 
proud and splendid as the exterior was bold and 
imposing. All this was exactly in unison with the 
taste of its magnificent owner; who had gilt and 
furnished the apartments with a profusion of finery, 
that kept no terms with simplicity, and not always 
with elegance or harmony of style. Whatever Mr. 
Dodington's revenue then was, he had the happy 
art of managing it with such economy, that I be- 
lieve he made more display at less cost than any 
man in the kingdom but himself could have done. 
His town-house in Pall-Mall, and this villa at Ham- 
mersmith, were such establishments as few. nobles 
in the nation were possessed of. In either of these 
he was not to be approached but through a suit of 
apartments, and rarely seated but under painted 
ceilings and gilt entablatures. In his villa you were 
conducted through two rows of antique marble 
statues, ranged in a gallery floored with the rarest 
marbles, and enriched with columns of granite and 
lapis lazuli ; his saloon was hung with the finest 
Gobelin tapestry, and he slept in a bed encanopied 
with peacock's feathers in the style of Mrs. Mon- 
tague. When he passed from Pall-Mall to La 
Trappe it was always in a coach, which I could not 
but suspect had been his ambassadorial equipage at 
Madrid, drawn by six fat unwieldy black horses, 
short-docked, and of colossal dignity. Neither was 
he less characteristic in apparel than in equipage; 
•he had a wardrobe loaded with rich and flaring suits, 
each in itself a load to the wearer, and of these I 
have no doubt but many were coeval with his em- 
bassy above mentioned, and every birth-day had 
added to the stock. In doing this he so contrived 
as never to put his old dresses out of countenance, 
by any variations in the fashion of the new ; in the 
mean time, his bulk and corpulency gave full dis- 
play to avast expanse and profusion of brocade and 
embroidery, and this, when set off with an enor- 
mous tie-periwig and deep-laced ruffles, gave the 
picture of an ancient courtier in his gala habit, or 
Q,uin in his stage dress. Nevertheless, it must be 
confessed this style, though out of date, was not out 
of character, but harmonised so well with the per- 



son of the wearer, that I remember when he made 
his first speech in the House of Peers as Lord Mel- 
combe, all the flashes of his wit, all the studied 
phrases and well-turned periods of his rhetoric 
lost their effect, simply because the orator had 
laid aside his magisterial tie, and put on a mo- 
dern bag- wig, which was as much out of costume 
upon the broad expanse of his shoulders, as a cue 
would have been upon the robes of the Lord Chief- 
Justice." 

The following, with all our former impres- 
sions of his hero's absurdity, rather surpassed 
our expectations. 

" Of pictures he seemed to take his estimate only 
by their cost; in fact, he was not possessed of any. 
But I recollect his saying to me one day in his great 
saloon at Eastbury, that if he had half a score pic- 
tures of a thousand pounds a-piece, he would gladly 
decorate his walls with them ; in place of which I 
am sorry to say he had stuck up immense patches of 
gilt leather, shaped into bugle horns, upon hangings 
of rich crimson velvet ! atid round his state bed he 
displayed a carpeting of gold and silver embroidery, 
which too glaringly betrayed its derivation from 
coat, waistcoat, and breeches, by the testimony of 
pockets, buttonholes, and loops, with other equally 
incontrovertible witnesses, subpoenaed from the 
tailor's shopboard ! When he paid his court at St. 
James' to the present queen upon her nuptials, he 
approached to kiss her hand, decked in an em- 
broidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat, and 
breeches, the latter of which, in the act of kneeling 
down, forgot their duty and broke loose from their 
moorings in a very indecorous and uncourtly 
manner." 

"During my stay at Eastbury, we were visited 
by the late Mr. Henry Fox and Mr. Alderman 
Beckford ; the solid good sense of the former, and 
the dashing loquacity of the latter, formed a striking 
contrast between the characters of these gentlemen. 
To Mr. Fox our host paid all that courtly homage, 
which he so well knew how to time, and where to 
apply; to Beckford he did not observe the same 
attentions, but in the happiest flow of his raillery 
and wit combated this intrepid talker with admira- 
ble effect. It was an interlude truly comic and 
amusing. — Beckford loud, voluble, self-sufficient, 
and galled by hits which he could not parry, and 
probably did not expect, laid himself more and 
more open in the vehemence of his argument ; 
Dodington lolling in his chair in perfect apathy and 
self-command, dozing, and even snoring at intervals, 
in his lethargic way, broke out every now and then 
into such gleams and flashes of wit and irony, as 
by the contrast of his phlegm with the other's im- 
petuosity, made his humour irresistible, and set the 
table in a roar. He was here upon his very strong- 
est ground." 

" He wrote small poems with great pains, and 
elaborate letters with much terseness of style, and 
some quaintness of expression : I have seen him 
refer to a volume of his own verses in manuscript, 
but he was very shy, and I never had the perusal 
of it. I was rather better acquainted with his Diary, 
which since his death has been published ; and I 
well remember the temporary disgust he seemed 
to take, when upon his asking what I would do 
with it should he bequeath it to my discretion, I 
instantly replied, that I would destroy it. There 
was a third, which I more coveted a sight of than 
of either of the above, as it contained a miscella- 
neous collection of anecdotes, repartees, good say- 
ings, and humorous incidents, of which he was part 
author and part compiler, and out of which he was 
in the habit of refreshing his memory, when he 
prepared himself to expect certain men of wit and 
pleasantry, either at his own house or elsewhere. 
Upon this practice, which he did not affect to con- 
ceal, he observed to me one day, that it was a com 
pliment he paid to society, when he submitted- :o 
3K 



710 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



steal weapons out of his own armoury for their en- 
tertainment." 

"I had taken leave of Lord Melcombe the day 
preceding the coronation, and found him before a 
looking-glass in his new robes, — practising atti- 
tudes, and debating within himself upon the most 
graceful mode of carrying his coronet in the pro- 
cession. He was in high glee with his fresh and 
blooming honours; and I left him in the act of 
dictating a billet to Lady Hervey, apprising her that 
a young Iprd was coming to throw himself at her 
feel."— p. 159. 

Mr. Cumberland went to Ireland with. Lord 
Halifax in 1761 ; and the celebrated Single- 
Speech Hamilton went as chief secretary. — 
His character is well drawn in the following 
sentences. 

" He spoke well, but not often, in the Irish 
House of Commons. He had a striking counte- 
nance, a graceful carriage, great self-possession and 
personal courage : He was not easily put out of his 
way by any of those unaccommodating repugnances 
that men of weaker nerves, or more tender con- 
sciences, might have stumbled at, or been checked 
by : he could mask the passions that were natural 
to hirn, and assume those that did not belong to 
him : he was indefatigable, meditative, mysterious: 
his opinions were the result of long labour and 
much reflection, but he had the art of setting them 
forth as if they were the starts of ready genius 
and a quick perception : He had as much seeming 
steadiness as a partisan could stand in need of, and 
all the real flexibility that could suit his purpose, or 
advance his interest. He would fain have retained 
his connection with Edmund Burke, and associated 
him to his politics, for he well knew the value of his 
talents ; but in that object he was soon disap- 
pointed: the genius of Burke was of too high a 
caste to endure debasement." — pp. 169, 170. 

In Dublin Mr. Cumberland was introduced 
to a new and a more miscellaneous society 
than he had hitherto been used to ; and has 
presented his readers with striking sketches 
of Dr. Pococke and Primate Stone. We are 
more amused, however, with the following 
picture of George Faulkner. 

" Description must fall short in the attempt to con- 
vey any sketch of that eccentric being to those who 
have not read him in the notes of Jephson, or seen 
him in the mimickry of Foote, who, in his portraits 
of Faulkner, found the only sitter whom his ex- 
travagant pencil could not caricature ; for he had a 
solemn intrepidity of egotism, and a daring con- 
tempt of absurdity, that fairly outfaced imitation, 
and, like Garrick's Ode on Shakespeare, which 
Johnson said " defied criticism," so did George, in 
the original spirit of his own perfect buffoonery, 
defy caricature. He never deigned to join in the 
laugh he had raised, nor seemed to have a feeling 
of the ridicule he had provoked. At the same lime 
that he was preeminently, and by preference, the 
butt and buffoon of the company, he could find 
openings and opportunities for hits of retaliation, 
which were such left-handed thrusts as few could 
parry : nobody could foresee where they would 
fall ; nobody, of course, was fore-armed : and as 
there was, in his calculation, but one supereminent 
character in the kingdom of Ireland, and he the 
printer of the Dublin Journal, rank was no shield 
against George's arrows, which flew where he 
listed, and hit or missed as chance directed, — he 
cared not about consequences. He gave good meat 
and excellent claret in abundance. I sat at his table 
once from dinner till two in the morning, whilst 
George swallowed immense potations, with one 
solitary sodden strawberry at the bottom of the 
glass, — which he said was recommended to him by 
nis doctor for its cooling properties ! He never lost 



his recollection or equilibrium the whole time, and 
was in excellent foolery. It was a singular coinci- 
dence, that there was a person in company who had 
received his reprieve at the gallows, and the very 
judge who had passed sentence of death upon him 
But this did not in the least disturb the harmony 
of the society, nor embarrass any human creature 
present." — pp. 174, 175, 

At this period of his story he introduces 
several sketches and characters of his literary 
friends; which are executed, for the mosi 
part, with great force and vivacity. Of Gar- 
rick he says — 

" Nature had done so much for him, that he 
could not help being an actor ; she gave him a 
frame of so manageable a proportion, and from its 
flexibility so perfectly under command, that, by its 
aptitude and elasticity, he could draw it out to fit 
'any sizes of character that tragedy could offer to 
him, and contract it to any scale of ridiculous di- 
minution, that his Abel Drugger, Scrubb, or Frib- 
ble, could require of him to sink it to. His eye, in 
the meantime, was so penetrating, so speaking; 
his brow so movable, and all his features so plas- 
tic, and so accommodating, that wherever his mind 
impelled them, they would go ; and before his 
tongue could give the text, his countenance would 
express the spirit and the passion of the part he wa3 
encharged with." — pp. 245, 246. 

The following picture of Soame Jenyns is 
excellent. 

" He was the man who bore his part in all so- 
cieties with the most even temper and undisturbed 
hilarity of all the good companions whom I ever 
knew. He came into your house at the very mo- 
ment you had put upon your card ; he dressed him- 
self to do your party honour in all the colours of 
the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its 
lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut 
since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured 
velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram 
shirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould 
of an ill made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so 
close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted 
if he did not wear them. Because he had a pro- 
tuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig 
that did not cover above half his head. His eyes 
were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who 
wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there 
was room between one of these and his nose for 
another wen, that added nothing to his beauty ; yet 
1 heard this good man very innocently remark, 
when Gibbon published his history, that he won- 
dered any body so ugly could write a book. 

" Such was the exterior of a man, who was the 
charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every com- 
pany he came into: His pleasantry was of a sort 
peculiar to himself; it harmonised with everything ; 
it was like the bread to your dinner; you did not 
perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of 
your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome 
auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told 
you no long stories, engrossed not much of your 
attention, and was not angry with those that did. 
His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a 
very whimsical affinity to paradox in them : He 
wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon tho 
origin of evil ; yet he was a very indifferent meta- 
physician, and a worse dancer: ill-nature and per- 
sonality, with the single exception of his lines upon 
Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips: Tbosa 
lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the 
first person to whom he recited them ; they were 
very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridi- 
culed his metaphysics, and some of us had jusf 
then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each 
other. Though his wit was harmless, yet the gene 
ral cast of it was ironical ; there was a terseness bft 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 



711 



his repartees, that had a play of words as well as 
of thought ; as, when speaking of the difference 
between laying out money upon land, or purchasing 
into the funds, he said ' One was principal without 
interest, and the other interest without principal.' 
Certain it is he had a brevity of expression, that 
never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in 
the very moment that he made the push." 

pp. 217—249. 

Of Goldsmith he says, 

" That Jie was fantastically and whimsically vain, 
all the world knows ; but there was no malice in 
his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous ex- 
treme of certain pretensions that did not, and by 
nature could not, belong to him, and at the same 
time he was inexcusably careless of the fame which 
he had powers to command. What foibles he had 
he took no pains to conceal ;.and the good qualities 
of his heart were too frequently obscured by the 
carelessness of his conduct, and the frivolity of his 
manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very yood to 
him, and would have drilled him into better trim 
and order for society, if he would have been amen- 
able ; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had 
good sense, great propriety, with all the social at- 
tributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to 
any man. 

" Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings 
neither congenial with his studies nor worthy of his 
talents. I remember him, when in his chambers 
in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his 
Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as 
genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from 
its bent to drudge for bread, end talk of birds and 
beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's show- 
man would have done as well. Poor fellow, he 
hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey 
from a goose, but when he saw it on the table." 

pp. 257—259. 

" I have heard Dr. Johnson relate with infinite 
humour the circumstance of his rescuing Goldsmith 
.from a ridiculous dilemma, by the purchase-money 
of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he sold on his 
behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, for the sum of 
ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his 
landlady, for board and lodging, of some few 
pounds, and was at his wits end how to wipe off 
the score, and keep a roof over his head, except by 
dosing with a very staggering proposal on her part, 
and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were 
very far from alluring, whilst her demands were 
extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate he was 



found by Johnson, in the act of meditating on ihn 
melancholy alternative before him. Hh showed 
Johnson his manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
but seemed to be without any plan, or even hope, 
of raising money upon the disposal of il ; when 
Johnson cast hi3 eye upon it, he discovered some- 
thing that gave him hope, and immediately took it 
to Dodsley, who paid down the price above-men- 
tioned in ready money, and added an eventual con- 
dition upon its future sale. Johnson described the 
precautions he took in concealing the amount of the 
sum he had in hand, which he prudently adminis- 
tered to him by a guinea at a time. In the event 
he paid off the landlady's score, and redeemed the 
pers'on of his friend from her embraces." — p. 273. 

We will pronounce no general judgment on 
the literary merits of Mr. Cumberland; but 
our opinion of them certainly has not been 
raised by the perusal of these memoirs. There 
is no depth of thought, nor dignity of senti- 
ment about him ; — he is too frisky for an old 
man, and too gossipping for an historian. His 
style is too negligent even for the most fami- 
liar composition ; and though he has proved 
himself, upon other occasions, to be a great 
master of good English, he has admitted a 
j number of phrases into this work, which, we 
are inclined to think, would scarcely pass 
current even in conversation. " I declare to 
truth" — " with the greatest pleasure in life" 
" she would lead off in her best manner," &c. 
are expressions which we should not expect 
to hear in the society to which Mr. Cumber- 
land belongs: — "laid," for lay, is still more 
insufferable from the antagonist of Lowth and 
the descendant of Bentley ; — " querulential" 
strikes our ear as exotic; — "locate, location, 
and locality," for situation simply, seem alsa 
to be bad; and "intuition" for observation 
sounds very pedantic, to say the least of it. 
Upon the whole, however, this volume is not 
the work of an ordinary writer ; and we should 
probably have been more indulgent to its 
faults, if the excellence of some of the au> 
thor's former productions had not sent us to 
its perusal with expectations perhaps some- 
what extravagant. 



(Ittlg, 1803.) 

The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Worthy Montagu. Including her Correspond- 
ence, Poems, and Essays. Published by permission, from her Original Papers. 5 vols. 
8vo. London: 1803. 



These volumes are so very entertaining that 
we ran them all through immediately upon 
their coming into our possession ; and at the 
game time contain so little that is either diffi- 
cult or profound, that we may venture to give 
some account of them to our readers without 
farther deliberation. 

The only thing that disappointed us was the 
memoir of the writer's life, prefixed by the 
editor to her correspondence. In point of com- 
position it is very tame and inelegant; and 
rather excites than gratifies the curiosity of 
*.he reader, by the imperfect manner in which 



I the facts are narrated. As the letters them- 
selves, however, are arranged in a chronologi- 

, cal order, and commonly contain very distinct 
notices of the writer's situation at their dates, 
we shall be enabled, by our extracts from 
them, to give a pretty clear idea of her Lady- 
ship's life and adventures, with very little as- 
sistance from the meagre narrative of Mi. 
Dal J away. 

Lady Mary Pierrepoint, eldest daughter of 
the Duke of Kingston, was born in 1690; and 
gave, in her early youth, such indications of a 
studious disposition, that she was initiated iiitc 



712 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



the rudiments of the learned languages along 
with her brother. Her first years appear to 
have been spent in retirement; and yet the 
very first series of letters with which we are 
presented; indicates a great deal of that talent 
for ridicule, and power of observation, by 
which she afterwards became so famous, and 
so formidable. These letters (about a dozen 
in number) are addressed to Mrs. Wortley, the 
mother of her future husband; and, along with 
a good deal of girlish flattery and affectation, 
display such a degree of easy humour and 
sound penetration, as is not often to be met 
with in a damsel of nineteen, even in this age 
of precocity. The following letter, in 1709, 
is written upon the misbehaviour of one of her 
female favourites. 

" My knighterrantry is at an end ; and I believe I 
shall henceforward think freeing of galley-slaves 
and knocking down windmills, more laudable un- 
dertakings than the defence of any woman's repu- 
tation whatever. To say truth, I have never had 
any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex ; 
and my only consolation for being of that gender, 
has been the assurance it gave me of never being 
married to any one among them ! But I own, at 
present, I am so much out of humour with the ac- 
tions of Lady H * * *, that I never was so heartily 
ashamed of my petticoats before. My only refuge 
is, the sincere hope that she is out of her senses; 
and taking herself for the Queen of Sheba, and Mr. 
Mildmay for King Solomon, I do not think it quite 
so ridiculous : But the men, you may well imagine, 
are not so charitable ; and they agree in the kind 
reflection, that nothing hinders women from playing 
the fool, but not having it in their power." 

Vol. i.pp. 180, 181. 

In the course of this correspondence w r ith 
the mother, Lady Mary appears to have con- 
ceived a very favourable opinion of the son ; 
and the next series of letters contains her an- 
tenuptial correspondence with that gentleman, 
from 1710 to 1712. Though this correspond- 
ence has interested and entertained us as 
much at least as any thing in the book, we are 
afraid that it will afford but little gratification 
to the common admirers of love letters. Her 
Ladyship, though endowed with a very lively 
imagination, seems not to have been very sus- 
ceptible of violent or tender emotions, and to 
have imbibed a very decided contempt for 
sentimental and romantic nonsense, at an age 
which is commonly more indulgent. There 
are no raptures nor ecstasies, therefore, in 
these letters; no flights of fondness, nor vows 
of constancy, nor upbraidings of capricious af- 
fection. To say the truth, her Ladyship acts 
a part in the correspondence that is not often 
allotted to a female performer. Mr. Wortley, 
though captivated by her beauty and her vi- 
vacity, seems evidently to have been a little 
alarmed at her love of distinction, her propen- 
sity to satire, and the apparent inconstancy of 
her attachments. Such a woman, he was 
afraid, and not very unreasonably, would make 
rather an uneasy and extravagant companion 
to a man of plain understanding and moderate 
fortune ; and he had sense enough to foresee, 
and generosity enough to explain to her, the 
risk to which their mutual happiness might 
be exposed by a rash and indissoluble union. 
I^adv Mary, who probably saw her own char- 



acter in a different light, and was at any rate 
biassed by her inclinations, appears to have 
addressed a great number of letters to him 
upon this occasion ; and to have been at con- 
siderable pains to relieve him of his scruples, 
and restore his confidence in the substantial 
excellences of her character. These letters, 
which are written with a great deal of female 
spirit and masculine sense, impress us with a 
very favourable notion of the talents and dis- 
positions of the writer; and as they exhibit 
her in a point of view altogether different from 
any in which she has hitherto been presented 
to the public, we shall venture upon a pretty 
long extract. 

" I will state the case to you as plainly as I can, 
and then ask yourself if you use me well. I have 
showed, in every action of my life, an esteem for 
you, that at least challenges a grateful regard. I 
have even trusted my reputation in your hands ; for 
I have made no scruple of giving you, under my 
own hand, an assurance of my friendship. After 
all this, I exact nothing from you : If you find it in- 
convenient for your affairs to take so small a fortune, 
I desire you to sacrifice nothing to me: I pretend 
no tie upon your honour ; but. in recompense for so 
clear and so disinterested a proceeding, must I ever 
receive injuries and ill usage ? 

" Perhaps I have been indiscreet : I came young 
into the hurry of the world ; a great innocence, and 
an undesigning gaiety, may possibly have been con- 
strued coquetry, and a desire of being followed, 
though never meant by me. I cannot answer for 
the observations that may be made on me. All who 
are malicious attack the careless and defenceless : I 
own myself to be both. I know not any thing I can 
say more to show my perfect desire of pleasing you, 
and making you easy, than to proffer to be confined 
with you in what manner you please. Would any 
woman but me renounce all the world for one ? or 
would any man but you be insensible of such a 
proof of sincerity ?" — Vol. i. pp. 208— 2] 0. 

" One part of my character is not so good, nor 
t' other so bad, as you fancy it. Should we ever live 
together, you would be disappointed both ways; 
you would find an easy equality of temper you do 
not expect, and a thousand faults you do not ima- 
gine. You think, if you married me, I should be 
passionately fond of you one month, and of some- 
body else the next. Neither would happen. I can 
esteem, I can be a friend ; but I don't know whe- 
ther 1 can love. Expect all that is complaisant and 
easy, but never what is fond, in me. 

,; If you can resolve to live with a companion that 
will have all the deference due to your superiority 
of good sense, and that your proposals can be 
agreeable to those on whom I depend, I have no- 
thing to say against them. 

" As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great 
pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your 
account ; but a retirement in the country is not so 
disagreeable to me, as I know a few months would 
make it tiresome to you. Where people are tied 
for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary 
of one another. If I had the personal charms that 
I want, a face is too slight a foundation for happi- 
ness. You would be soon tired with seeing every 
day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, 
you would have leisure to remark all the defects; 
which would increase in proportion as the novelty 
lessened, which is always a great charm. I should 
have the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, 
though I could not reasonably blame you for, being 
involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy ; ana 
the more, because I know a love may be revived, 
which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity, has 
extinguished : But there is no returning from a de- 
gout given by satiety." — Vol. i. pp. 212 — 214. 

" I begin to be tired of my humility ; I have car 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 



713 



ried my complaisances to you farther than I ought. 
You make new scruples: you have a great deal of 
fancy! and your distrusts, being all of your own 
making, are more immovable than if there were 
some real ground for them. Our aunts and grand- 
mothers always tell us, that men are a sort of ani- 
mals, that if ever they are constant, 'tis only where 
they are ill-used. 'Twas a kind of paradox I could 
never believe ; but experience has taught me the 
truth of it. You are the first I ever had a corres- 
pondence wiih ; and I thank God, I have done with 
it for all my life. You needed not to have told me 
you are not what you have been; one must be 
stupid not to find a difference in your letters. You 
seem, in one part of your last, to excuse yourself 
from having done me any injury in point of fortune. 
Do I accuse you of any ? 

"I have not spirits to dispute any longer with 
you. You say you are not yet determined. Let 
me determine lor you, and save you the trouble of 
writing again. Adieu for ever ; make no answer. 
I wish, among the variety of acquaintance, you may 
find some one to please you : and can't help the 
vanity of thinking, should you try them all, you 
wont find one that will be so sincere in their treat- 
ment, though a thousand more deserving, and every 
one happier." — Vol. i. pp. 219—221. 

These are certainly very uncommon pro- 
ductions for a young lady of twenty ; and in- 
dicate a strength and elevation of character, 
that does not always appear in her gayer and 
more ostentatious performances. Mr. Wort- 
ley was convinced and re-assured by them ; 
and they were married in 1712. The con- 
cluding part of the first volume contains her 
letters to him for the two following years. 
There is not much tenderness in these letters ; 
nor very much interest indeed of any kind. 
Mr. Wortley appears to have been rather in- 
dolent and unambitious; and Lady Mary 
takes it upon her, with all delicacy and ju- 
dicious management however, to stir him 
up to some degree of activity and exertion. 
There is a good deal of election-news and 
small politics in these epistles. The best of 
them, we think, is the following exhortation 
to impudence. 

" I am glad you think of serving your friends. I 
hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. I 
need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; 
every thing we see, and every thing we hear, puts 
us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to re- 
store liberty to your country, or limit the encroach- 
ments of the prerogative, by reducing yourself to a 
garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a 
poverty with you: But as the world is, and will 
be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in 
one's power to do good ; riches being another word 
for power ; towards the obtaining of which, the first 
necessary qualification is Impudence, and (as De- 
mosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the 
second is impudence, and the third, still, impu- 
dence! No modest man ever did, or ever will 
make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. 
Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of 
quick advancement, have been remarkably impu- 
dent. The ministry, in short, is like a play at 
court: There's a little door to get in, and a great 
crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be 
foremost ; people whoknock others with their el- 
bows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still 
thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. 
Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, is 
shoved about by every body, his clothes torn, almost 
squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before 
him, that don't make so good a figure as himself. 

" If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon 
90 



an opinion of your merit, which, if it ia a mistake, 
I would not be undeceived. It is my interest to 
believe (as I do) that you deserve every thing, and 
are capable of every thing ; but nobody else will 
believe it, if they see you get nothing." — Vol. i. 
pp. 250 — 252. 

The second volume, and a part of the third, 
are occupied with those charming letters, 
written during Mr. Wortley's embassy te 
Constantinople, upon which the literary repu- 
tation of Lady Mary has hitherto been exclu- 
sively founded. It would not become us to 
say any thing of productions which have so 
long engaged the admiration 'of the public. 
The grace and vivacity, the ease and concise- 
ness, of the narrative and the description which 
they contain, still remain unrivalled, we think, 
by any epistolary compositions in our lan- 
guage ; and are but slightly shaded by a 
sprinkling of obsolete tittle-tattle, or woman- 
ish vanity and affectation. The authenticity 
of these letters, though at one time disputed, 
has not lately been called in question ; but 
the secret history of their first publication has 
never, we believe, been laid before the public. 
The editor of this collection, from the original 
papers, gives the following account of it. 

"In the later periods of Lady Mary's life, she 
employed her leisure in collecting copies of the let- 
ters she had written during Mr. Wortley's embassy, 
and had transcribed them herself, in two small 
volumes in quarto. They were, without doubt, 
sometimes shown to her literary friends. Upon her 
return to England for the last time, in 1761, she 
gave these books to a Mr. Snowden, a clergyman 
of Rotterdam, and wrote the subjoined memoran- 
dum on the cover of them : ' These two volumes 
are given to the Reverend Benjamin Snowden, 
minister at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he 
thinks proper. This is the will and design of M. 
Wortley Montagu, December 11, 1761.' 

" After her death, the late Earl of Bute commis- 
sioned a gentleman to procure them, and. to offer 
Mr. Snowden a considerable remuneration, which 
he accepted. Much to the surprise of that noble- 
man and Lady Bute, the manuscripts were scarcely 
safe in England, when three volumes of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu's Letters were published by 
Beckett ; and it has since appeared, that a Mr. Cle- 
land was the editor. The same gentleman, who 
had negotiated before, was again despatched to 
Holland; and could gain no further intelligence 
from Mr. Snowden, than that a short time before 
he parted with the MSS. two English gentlemen 
called on him to see the Letters, and obtained their 
request. They had previously contrived that Mr. 
Snowden should be called away during their pe- 
rusal ; and he found on his return that they had dis- 
appeared with the books. Their residence was 
unknown to him ; but on the next day they brought 
back the precious deposit, with many apologies. It 
may be fairly presumed, that the intervening night 
was consumed in copying these letters by several 
amanuenses." — Vol. i. pp. 29 — 32. 

A fourth volume of Lady Mary's Letters, 
published in the same form in 1767, appears 
now to have been a fabrication of Cleland's; 
as no corresponding MSS. have been found 
among her Ladyship's papers, or in the hands 
of her correspondents. 

To the accuracy of her local descriptions, 
and the justness of her representations of ori- 
ental manners, Mr. Dallaway, who followed 
her footsteps at the distance of eighty years, 
and resided for several months in the very 
3k2 



714 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



palace which she had occupied at Pera, bears 
a decided and respectable testimony; and, in 
vindication of her veracity in describing the 
interior of the seraglio, into which no Christian 
is now permitted to enter, he observes, that 
the reigning Sultan of the day, Achmed the 
Third, was notoriously very regardless of the 
injunctions of the Koran, and that her Lady- 
ship's visits were paid while the court was in 
a retirement that enabled him to dispense 
with many ceremonies. We do not observe 
any difference between these letters in the 
present edition, and in the common copies, 
except that the names of Lady Mary's corres- 
pondents are now given at full length, and 
short notices of their families subjoined, upon 
their first introduction. At page eighty-nine 
of the third volume, there are also two short 
letters, or rather notes, from the Countess of 
Pembroke, that have not hitherto been made 
public ] and Mr. Pope's letter, describing the 
death of the two rural lovers by lightning, is 
here given at full length ; while the former 
editions only contained her Ladyship's an- 
swer. — in which we have always thought that 
her desire to be smart and w r itty. has intruded 
itself a little ungracefully into the place of a 
more amiable feeling. 

The next series of letters consists of those 
written to her sister the Countess of Mar, from 
1723 to 1727. These letters have at least as 
much vivacity, wdt, and sarcasm, as any that 
have been already published ; and though they 
contain little but the anecdotes and scandal 
of the time, will long continue to be read and 
admired for the brillianc}^ and facility of the 
composition. Though Lady Mary is exces- 
sively entertaining in this correspondence, we 
cannot say, however, that she is either very 
amiable, or very interesting. There is rather 
a negation of good affection, we think, through- 
out ; and a certain cold-hearted levity, that 
borders sometimes upon misanthropy, and 
sometimes on indecency. The style of the 
following extracts, however, we are afraid, 
has been for some time a dead language. 

"I made a sort of resolution, at the beginning 
of my letter, not to trouble you with the mention 
of what passes here, since you receive it with so 
much coldness. But I find it is impossible to forbear 
telling you the metamorphoses of some of your ac- 
quaintance, which appear as wondrous to me as 
any in Ovid. Would any one believe that Lady 
H*****ss is a beauty, and in love ? and that Mrs. 
Anastasia Robinson is at the same time a prude and 
a kept mistress? The first of these ladies is ten- 
derly attached to the polite Mr. M***, and sunk in 
all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding she. 
wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism, 
and he has an arm that he cannot move. I wish I 
could tell you the particulars of this amour; which 
seems to me as curious as that between two oysters, 
and as well worth the serious attention of naturalists. 
The second heroine has engaged half the town in 
arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not 
able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the 
opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord 
Peterborough for her champion, who has signalized 
both his love and courage upon this occasion in as 
many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Dul- 
cinea. Innumerable have been the disorders be- 
tween the two sexes on so great an account, besides 
half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By 
th<; Providence of Heaven, and the wise care of his 



Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, things 
are now tolerably accommodated ; and the fair lady 
rides thrrough the town in the shining berlin of her 
hero, not to reckon the more solid advantages of 
1007. a month, which 'tis said, he allows her. I 
will send you a letter by the Count Caylus, whom, 
if you do not know already, you will thank me for 
introducing to you. He is a Frenchman, and no 
fop ; which, besides the curiosity of it, is one of the 
prettiest things in the world. "-Vol. iii. pp. 120 — 122. 

*' I write to you at this time piping-hot from the 
birth-night ; my brain warmed with all the agreeable 
ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, brisk tunes, 
and lively dances can raise there. It is ro be hoped 
that my letter will entertain you ; at least you will 
certainly have the freshest account of all passages 
on that glorious day. First, you must know that I 
led up the ball, which you'll stare at ; but what is 
more, I believe in my conscience I made one of 
the best figures there: For, to say truth, people are 
grown so extravagantly ugly, that we old beauties 
are forced to come out on show-days, tojceep the 
court in countenance. I saw Mrs. Murray there, 
through whose hands this epistle will be conveyed; 
I do liot know whether she will make the same 
compliment to you that I do. Mrs. West was with 
her, who is a great prude, having but two lovers at 
a time ; I think those are Lord Haddington and Mr. 
Lindsay ; the one for use, the other for show. 

" The world improves in one virtue to a violent 
degree — I mean plain dealing. Hypocrisy being, 
as the Scripture declares, a damnable sin, I hope 
our publicans and sinners will be saved by the open 
profession of the contrary virtue. I was told by a 
very good author, who is' deep in the secret, that at 
this very minute there is a bill cooking up at a hunt- 
ing seat at Norfolk, to have not taken out of the 
commandments, and clapped into the creed, the 
ensuing session of Parliament. To speak plainly, 
I am very sorry for the forlorn state of matrimony ; 
which is now as much ridiculed by our young ladies 
as it used to be by young fellows: In short, both 
sexes have found the inconveniences of it ; and the 
appellation of rake is as genteel in a woman as a 

man of quality : It is no scandal to say Miss ■ , 

the maid of honour, looks very well now she is out 
again; and poor Biddy Noel has never been quite 
well since her last confinement. You may imagine 
we married women look very silly : We have no- 
thing to excuse ourselves, but that it was done a 
great while ago, and we were very young when we 
did it." — Vof. iii. pp. 142 — 145. 

" Sixpenny worth of common sense, divided 
among a whole nation, would make our lives roll 
away glibly enough: But then we make laws, 
and we follow customs. By the first we cut of^ 
our own pleasures, and by the second we are an- 
swerable for the faults and extravagances of others. 
All these things, and five hundred more, convince 
me that I have been one of the condemned ever 
since I was born ; and in submission to the Divine 
Justice, I have no doubt but I deserved it, in some 
pre-existent state. I will still hope, however, that 
I am only in purgatory ; and that after whining and 
pining a certain number of years, I shall be trans- 
lated to some more happy sphere, where virtue will 
be natural, and custom reasonable ; that is, in short, 
where common sense will reign. I grow very 
devout, as you see, and place all my hopes in the 
next life— being totally persuaded of the nothing- 
ness of this. Don't you remember how miserable 
we were in the little parlour, at Thoresby ? we then 
thought marrying would put us at once into posses- 
sion of all we wanted. Then came though, after 

all, I am still of opinion, that it is extremely silly 
to submit to ill-fortune. One should pluck up a 
spirit, and live upon cordials ; when one can have 
no other nourishment. These are my present en- 
deavours; and I run abott, though I have five 
thousand pins and needles in my heart. I try to 
console myself with a small damsel, who is at pre- 
sent every thing I like — but, alas ! she is yet in a 



LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 



715 



while frock. At fourteen she may run away with 
me butler."— Vol. iii. pp. 178— ISO. 

" I cannot deny but thai I was very well diverted 
on the coronation-day. I saw the procession much 
at my ease, in arouse which I filled wiih my own 
company ; and then got into Westminster-hall 
without trouble, where it was very entertaining to 
observe the variety of airs that all meant the same 
thing. The business of every walker there was to 
conceal vanity and gain admiration. For these pur- 
poses some languished and others strutted; but a 
visible satisfaction was diffused over every counte- 
nance, as soon as the coronet was clapped on the 
head. But she that drew the greatest number of 
eyes was indisputably Lady Orkney. She exposed 
behind, a mixture of fat and wrinkles ; and before, 
a considerable protuberance, which preceded her. 
Add to this, the inimitable roll of her eyes, and her 
grey hairs, which by good fortune stood directly 
upright, and 'tis impossible to imagine a more de- 
lightful spectacle She had embellished all this with 
considerable magnificence, which made her look as 
big again as usual ; and I should have thought her 
one of the largest things of God's making, if my 
Lady St. J***n had not displayed all her charms in 
honour of the day. The poor Duchess of M***se 
crept along with a dozen of black snakes playing 
round her lace ; and my Lady P**nd (who has fallen 
away since her dismission from Court) represented 
very finely an Egyptian mummy embroidered over 
with hieroglyphics. In general, I could not per- 
ceive but that the old were as well pleased as the 
young: and I who dread growing wise more than 
any thing in the world, was overjoyed to find that 
one can never outlive one's vanity. I have never 
received the long letter you talk of, and am afraid 
that you have only fancied that you wrote it." 

Vol. iii. pp. 181—183, 

In spite of all this gaiety, Lady Mary does 
net appear to have been happy. Her discreet 
biographer is silent upon the subject of her 
connubial felicity ; and we have no desire to 
revive forgotten scandals; but it is a fact, 
which cannot be omitted, that her Ladyship 
went abroad, without her husband, on account 
of bad health, in 1739, and did not return to 
England till she heard of his death in 1761. 
Whatever was the cause of their separation, 
however, there was no open rupture ; and she 
seems to have corresponded with him very 
regularly for the first ten years of her absence. 
These letters, which occupy the latter part of 
the third volume, and the beginning of the 
fourth, are by no means so captivating as most 
of the preceding. They contain but little wit, 
and no confidential or striking reflections. — 
They are filled up with accounts of her health 
and her journeys; with short and general no- 
tices of any extraordinary customs she meets 
with, and little scraps of stale politics, picked 
up in the petty courts of Italy. They are 
cold, in short, without, being formal ; and are 
gloomy and constrained, when compared with 
those which were spontaneously written to 
show her wit, or her affection to her corres- 
pondents. She seems extremely anxious to 
impress her husband with an exalted idea of 
the honours and distinction with which she 
was everywhere received ; and really seems 
more elated and surprised than we should 
have expected the daughter of an English 
Duke to be, with the attentions that were 
shown her by the noblesse of Venice, in par- 
ticular. From this correspondence we are 
not tempted to make any extract. 



The last series of letters, which extends tu the 
middle of the fifth volume, and comes down 
to the year 1761, consists of those that were 
addressed by Lady Mary, during her resi- 
dence abroad, to her daughter the Countess 
of Bute. These letters, though somewhat 
less brilliant than those to the Countess of 
Mar, have more heart and affection in them 
than any other of her Ladyship's productions ; 
and abound in lively and judicious reflections. 
They indicate, at the same time, a very great 
share of vanity; and that kind of contempt 
and indifference for the world, into which the 
veterans of fashion are most apt to sink. — 
With the exception of her daughter and her 
children, Lady Mary seems by this time to 
have, indeed, attained to the happy state of 
really caring nothing for any human being; 
and rather to have beguiled the days of her 
declining life with every sort of amusement, 
than to have soothed them with affection or 
friendship. After boasting of the intimacy 
in which she lived with all the considerable 
people in her neighbourhood, she adds, in one 
of her letters, " The people I see here make 
no more impression on my mind than the 
figures on the tapestry, while they are before 
my eyes. I know one is clothed in blue, and 
another in red: but out of sight they are so 
entirel)- out of memory, that I hardly remem- 
ber whether they are tall or short." 

The following reflections upon an Italian 
story, exactly like that of Pamela, are very 
much in character. 

" In my opinion, all these adventures proceed 
from artifice on one side, and weakness on the other. 
An honest, tender heart, is often betrayed to ruin 
by the charms that make the fortune of a designing 
head ; which, when joined with a beautiful face, 
can never fail of advancement — except barred by a 
wise mother, who locks up her daughters from view 
till nobody cares to look on them. My poor friend 
the Duchess of Bolton was educated in solitude, 
with some choice of books, by a saint -like gover- 
ness : Crammed with virtue and good qualities, 
she thought it impossible not to find gratitude, 
though she failed to give passion : and upon this 
plan threw away her estate, was despised by hei 
husband, and laughed at by the public. Polly, bred 
in an alehouse, and produced on the stage, has ob- 
tained wealth and title, aud even found the way to 
be esteemed !"— Vol. iv. p. 119, 120. 

There is some acrimony, and some powei 
of reviling, in the following extract : 

" I have only had time to read Lord Orrery's 
work, which has extremely entertained, and not at 
all surprised me, having the honour of being ac- 
quainted with him, and knowing him for one of 
ihose danglers after wit, who, like those after 
beauty, spend their whole time in humbly admiring. 
Dean Swift, by his Lordship's own account, was 
so intoxicated with the love of flattery, that he 
sought it amongst the lowest of people, and the 
silliest of women; and was never so well pleased 
with any companions as those that worshipped him, 
while he insulted them. His character seems to 
me a parallel with that of Caligula ; and had he 
had the same power, he would have made the same 
use of it. That Emperor erected a temple to him- 
self, where he was his own high-priest, preferred 
his horse to the highest honours in the state, pro- 
fessed enmity to the human race, and at last lo3t 
his life by a nasty jest on one of his inferiors, 
which I dare swear Swift would have made in his 



716 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



place. There can be no worse picture made of the 
Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the 
letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, 
ungrateful to the memory of his patron, making a 
servile court where he had any interested views, 
and meanly abusive when they were disappointed ; 
and, as he says (in his own phrase), flying in the face 
of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope. It 
is pleasant to consider, that had it not been for the 
good nature of these very mortals they contemn, 
these two superior beings were entitled, by their 
birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of 
link-boys. I am of opinion, however, that their 
friendship would have continued, though they had 
remained in the same kingdom. It had a very 
strong foundation — the love of flattery on one side, 
and the love of money on the other. Pope courted 
with the utmost assiduity all the old men from 
whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord 
.Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. Congreve, Lord 
Harcourt, &c, and I do not doubt projected to 
sweep the Dean's whole inheritance, if he could 
have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and 
come to die in his house ; and his general preach- 
ing against money was meant to induce people to 
throw it away, that he might pick it up." 

Vol. iv. pp. 142—147. 

Some of the following reflections will ap- 
pear prophetic to some people ; and we really 
did not expect to find them under the date of 
1753. 

"The confounding of all ranks, and making a 
jest of order, has long been growing in England ; 
and I perceive, by the books you sent me, has made 
a very considerable progress. The heroes and 
heroines of the age, are cobblers and kitchen- 
wenches. Perhaps you will say I should not take 
my ideas of the manners of the times from such 
trifling authors ; but it is more truly to be found 
among them, than from any historian : as they write 
merely to get money, they always fall into the no- 
tions that are most acceptable to the present taste. 
It has long been the endeavour of our English 
writers, to represent people of quality as the vilest 
and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very 
low-born themselves. I am not surprised at their 
propagating this doctrine ; but I am much mistaken 
if this levelling principle does not, one day or other, 
break out in fatal consequences to the public, as it 
has already done in many private families." 

Vol. iv. pp. 223, 224. 

She is not quite so fortunate in her remarks 
on Dr. Johnson, though the conclusion of the 
extract is very judicious. 

" The Rambler is certainly a strong misnomer: 
he always plods in the beaten road of his predeces- 
sors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a 
pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is 
proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, 
perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying 
a great deal in their favour. There are numbers 
of both sexes who never read any thing but such 
productions ; and cannot spare time, from doing 
nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Such 
gentle readers may be improved by a moral hint, 
which, though repeated over and over, from gener- 
ation to generation, they never heard in their lives. 
I should be glad to know the name of this laborious 
author. H. Fielding has given a true picture of 
himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. 
and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own 
figure excepted; and I am persuaded, several of 
the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. 
I wonder, however, that he does not perceive Tom 
Jones and Mr. Booth to be both sorry scoundrels. 
All this sort of books have the same fault, which 
1 cannot easily oardon, being very mischievous. 



They place a merit in extravagant passions ; and 
encourage young people to hope for impossible 
events, to draw them out of the misery they choose 
to plunge themselves into; expecting legacies from 
unknown relations, and generou^ benefactors to 
distressed virtue, — as much out of nature as fairy 
treasures." — Vol. iv. pp. 259, 260. 

The idea of the following image, we be- 
lieve, is not quite new; but it is expressed in 
a very lively and striking manner. 

" The world is past its infancy, and will no longer 
be contented with spoon-meat. A collective body 
of men make a gradual progress in understanding, 
like a single individual. When I reflect on the vast 
increase of useful as well as speculative knowledge, 
the last three hundred years has produced, and that 
the peasants of this age have more conveniences 
than the first emperors of Rome had any notion of, 
I imagine we may now be arrived at that period 
which answers to fifteen. I cannot think we are 
older ; when I recollect the many palpable follies 
which are still (almost) universally persisted in. 
Among these I place that of War — as senseless as 
the boxing of school-boys ; and whenever we come 
to man's estate (perhaps a thousand years hence), I 
do not doubt it will appear as ridiculous as the 
pranks of unlucky lads. Several discoveries will 
then be made, and several truths made clear, of 
which we have now no more idea than the ancients 
had of the circulation of the blood, or the optics of 
Sir Isaac Newton." — Vol. v. pp. 15, 16. 

After observing, that in a preceding letter, 
her Ladyship declares, that "it is eleven years 
since she saw herself in a glass, being so little 
pleased with the figure site was then begin- 
ning to make in it," we shall close these ex- 
tracts with the following more favourable ac- 
count of her philosophy. 

"I no more expect to arrive at the age of the 
Duchess of Marlborough, than to that of Methusa- 
lem ; neither do I desire it. I have long thought 
myself useless to the world. I have seen one gene- 
ration pass away, and it is gone ; for I think there 
are very few of those left that flourished in my 
youth. You will perhaps call these melancholy 
reflections ; but they are not so. There is a quiet 
after the abandoning of pursuits, something like the 
rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you this 
for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying view 
to me, that I should one day be an old woman. 1 
now find that nature has provided pleasures for 
every state. Those only are unhappy who will 
not be contented with what she gives, but strive to 
break through her laws, by affecting a perpetuity 
of youth, — which appears to me as little desirable 
at present as the babies do to you, that were the 
delight of your infancy. I am at the end of my 
paper, which shortens the sermon." 

Vol. iv. pp.314, 315. 

Upon the death of Mr. Wort ley in 1761, 
Lady Mary returned to England, and died 
there in October 1762, in the 73d year of her 
age. From the large extracts which we have 
been tempted to make from her correspond- 
ence, our readers will easily be enabled to 
judge of. the character and genius of this ex- 
traordinary woman. A little spoiled by flat- 
tery, and not altogether "undebauched by 
the world," she seems to have possessed a 
masculine solidity of understanding, great 
liveliness of fancy, and such powers of ob- 
servation and discrimination of character, as 
to give her opinions great authority on all the 
ordinary subjects of practical manners and 
conduct. After her marriage, she seen.,3 to 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



717 



)ave abandoned all idea of laborious or regu- 
lar study, and to have been raised to the sta- 
tion of a literary character merely by her 
vivacity and her love of amusement and anec- 
dote. The great charm of her letters is cer- 
tainly the extreme ease and facility with 
which every thing is expressed, the brevity 
and rapidity of her representations, and the 
elegant simplicity of her diction. While they 
unite almost all the qualities of a good style, 
there is nothing of the professed author in 
them : nothing that seems to have been com- 
posed, or to have engaged the admiration of 
the writer. She appears to be quite uncon- 
scious either of merit or of exertion in what 
she is doing ; and never stops to bring out a 
thought, or to turn an expression, with the 
cunning of a practised rhetorician. The let- 
ters from Turkey will probably continue to be 
more universally read than any of those that 
are now given for the first time to the public ; 
because the subject commands a wider and 
more permanent interest, than the personali- 
ties and unconnected remarks with which the 
rest of the correspondence is filled. At the 
same time, the love of scandal and of private 
history is so great, that these letters will be 
highly relished, as long as the names they 
contain are remembered; — and then they 
will become curious and interesting, as ex- 
hibiting a truer picture of the manners and 
fashions of the time, than is to be found in 
most other publications. 

The Fifth Volume contains also her Lady- 
ship's poems, and two or three trifling papers 
that are entitled her Essays. Poetry, at least 



the polite and witty sort of poetry which Lady 
Mary has attempted, is much more of an art 
than prose-writing. We are trained to the 
latter, by the conversation of good society; 
but the former seems always to require a good 
deal of patient labour and application. This 
her Ladyship appears to have disdained ; and 
accordingly, her poetry, though abounding in 
lively conceptions, is already consigned to 
that oblivion in which mediocrity is destined, 
by an irrevocable sentence, to slumber till 
the end of the world. The Essays are ex* 
tremely insignificant, and have no other merit, 
that we can discover, but that they are very 
few and very short. 

Of Lady Mary's friendship and subsequent 
rupture with Pope, we have not thought it 
necessary to say any thing; both because we 
are of opinion that no new lights are thrown 
upon it by this publication, and because we 
have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals 
by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubt- 
edly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly suffi- 
ciently irritable and vindictive ; but whether 
his rancour was stimulated, upon this occa- 
sion, by any thing but caprice or jealousy, 
and whether he was the inventor or the echo 
of the imputations to which he has given no- 
toriety, we do not pretend to determine. Lady 
Mary's character was certainly deficient in 
that cautious delicacy which is the best guar- 
dian of female reputation ; and there seems to 
have been in her conduct something of that 
intrepidity which naturally gives rise to mis- 
construction, by setting at defiance the maxims 
of ordinary discretion. 



(JHa 2 , 1820.) 

The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. 
By his Son, William Henry Curr an, Barrister-at-law. 8vo. 2 vols, pp.970. London: 1819. 

existed under any other conditions. The dis- 
tracting periods of Irish story are stilt almost 
too recent to be fairly delineated — and no 
Irishman, old enough to have taken a part in 
the transactions of 1780 or 1798, could wel? 
be trusted as their historian — while no one 
but a native, and of the blood of some of the 
chief actors, could be sufficiently acquainted 
with their motives and characters, to commu- 
nicate that life and interest to the details 
which shine out in so many passages of the 
volumes before us. The incidental light which 
they throw upon the national character and 
state of society in Ireland, and the continual 
illustrations they afford of their diversity from 
our own, is perhaps of more value than the 
particular facts from which it results; and 
stamp upon the work the same peculiar at- 
traction which we formerly ascribed to Mr. 
Hardy's life of Lord Charlemont. 

To qualify this extraordinary praise, we 
must add, that the limits of the private and 
the public story are not very well observed 



This is really a very good book; and not 
less instructive in its moral, and general scope, 
than curious and interesting in its details. It 
is a mixture of Biography and History — and 
avoids the besetting sins of both species of 
composition — neither exalting the hero of the 
biography into an idol, nor deforming the his- 
tory of a most agitated period with any spirit 
of violence or exaggeration. It is written, on 
the contrary, as it appears to us, with singular 
impartiality and temper — and the style is not 
less remarkable than the sentiments: For 
though it is generally elegant and spirited, it 
is without any of those peculiarities which the 
age, the parentage, and the country of the au- 
thor, would lead us to expect : — And we may- 
say, indeed, of the whole work, looking both 
to the matter and the manner, that it has no 
defects from which it could be gathered that 
it was written either by a Young man — or an 
Irishman — or by the Son of the person whose 
history it professes to record — though it has 
attractions which probably could not have 



718 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



nor the scale of the work very correctly regu- 
lated as to either; so that we have alternately 
too much and too little of both : — that the 
style is rather wordy and diffuse, and the ex- 
tracts and citations too copious ; so that, on the 
whole, the book, like some others, would be 
improved by being reduced to little more than 
half its present size — a circumstance which 
makes it only the more necessary that we 
should endeavour to make a manageable ab- 
stract of it, for the use of less patient readers. 

Mr. Curran's parentage and early life are 
now of no great consequence. He was born, 
however, of respectable parents, and received 
a careful and regular education. He was a 
little wild at college ; but left it with the char- 
acter of an excellent scholar, and was univer- 
sally popular among his associates, not less 
for his amiable temper than his inexhaustible 
vivacity. He wrote baddish verses at this 
time, and exercised himself in theological dis- 
courses: for his first destination was for the 
Church ; and he afterwards took to the Law, 
very much to his mother's disappointment and 
mortification — who was never reconciled to 
the change — and used, even in the meridian 
of his fame, to lament what a mighty preacher 
had been lost to the world, — and to exclaim, 
that, but for his versatility, she might have 
died the mother of a Bishop ! It was better 
as it was. Unquestionably he might have 
been a very great preacher; but we doubt 
whether he would have been a good parish 
priest, or even an exemplary bishop. 

Irish lawyers are obliged to keep their 
terms in London ; and, for the poorer part of 
them, it seems to be but a dull and melan- 
choly noviciate. Some of his early letters, 
with which we are here presented, give rather 
an amiable and interesting picture of young 
Curran's feelings in this situation — separated 
at once from all his youthful friends and ad- 
mirers, and left without money or recommend- 
ation in the busy crowds of a colder and more 
venal people. During the three years he 
passed in the metropolis, he seems to have 
entered into no society, and never to have 
come in contact with a single distinguished 
individual. He saw Garrick on the stage, and 
Lord Mansfield on the bench; and this ex- 
hausts his list of illustrious men in London. 
His only associates seem to have been a few 
of his countiymen, as poor and forlorn as him- 
self. Yet the life th^y lived seems to have 
been virtuous and honourable. They con- 
tracted no debts, and committed no excesses. 

Curran himself rose early, and read dili- 
gently till dinner; and, in the evening, he 
usually went, as much for improvement as 
relaxation, to a sixpenny debating club. For 
a long time, however, he was too nervous and 
timid to act any other part than that of an au- 
ditor, and did not find even the germ of that 
singular talent which was afterwards improved 
to such a height, till it was struck out as it 
were by an accidental collision in this obscure 
arena. There is a long account of this in the 
Dook before us, as it is said to have been re- 
peatedly given by Mr. C. himself — but in a 
style which we cannot conscientiously ap- 



plaud. We suspect, indeed, from various 
passages in these volumes, that the Irish 
standard of good conversation is radically dif- 
ferent from the English; and that a tone of 
exhibition and effect is still tolerated in that 
country, which could not be long endured in 
good society in this. A great proportion of 
the colloquial anecdotes in this work, confirm 
us in this belief — and nothing more than the 
encomium bestowed on Mr. Curran's own con- 
versation, as abounding in " those magical 
transitions from the most comic turns of 
thought to the deepest pathos, and for ever 
bringing a tear into the eye before the emile 
was off the lip." In this more frigid and fas- 
tidious country, we really have no idea of a 
man talking pathetically in good company. — 
and still less of good company sitting and cry- 
ing to him. Nay. it is not even very conso- 
nant with our notions, that a gentleman should 
be "most comical." 

As to the taste and character of Mr. Cur- 
ran's oratory, we may have occasion to say a 
word or two hereafter. — At present, it is only 
necessary to remark, that besides the public 
exercitations now alluded to, .he appears to 
have gone through the most persevering and 
laborious processes of private study, with a 
view to its improvement — not only accustom- 
ing himself to debate imaginary cases alone, 
with the most anxious attention, but "reciting 
perpetually before a mirror." to acquire a 
graceful gesticulation ! and studiously imita- 
ting the tone and manner of the most cele- 
brated speakers. The authors from whom he 
chiefly borrowed the matter of these solitary 
declamations were Junius and Lord Bolii g- 
broke — and the poet he most passionately 
admired was Thomson. He also used to 
declaim occasionally from Milton — tut, in his 
maturer age, came to think less highly of that 
great poet. One of his favourite e.xeiclses 
was the funeral oration of Antony over the 
body of Caesar, as it is given by Shakespeare; 
the frequent recitation of which he used to 
recommend to his young friends at the Bar, to 
the latest period of his life. 

He was called to the Bar in 1775. in his 
twenty-fifth year — having rather jmpiudently 
married two years before — and very scon at- 
tained to independence and distinction. There 
is a very clever little disquisition introduced 
here by the author, on the very different, and 
almost opposite taste in eloquence which has 
prevailed at the Bar of England and Ireland 
respectively ;— the one being in general cold 
and correct, unimpassioned and technical : the 
other discursive, rhetorical, and embellished 
or encumbered, with flights of fancy and ap- 
peals to the passions. These peculiarities the 
author imputes chiefly to the difference in the 
national character and general temperament 
of the two races, and to the unsubdued and 
unrectified prevalence of all that is character- 
istic of their country in those classes out of 
which the Juries of Ireland are usually se- 
lected. He ascribes them also, in part, to the 
circumstance of almost all the barristers of 
distinction having been introduced, very early 
in life, to the fierce and tumultuary arena of 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



719 



the Irish House of Commons — the Government 
being naturally desirous of recruiting their 
ranks with as many efficient combatants as 
possible from persons residing in the metropo- 
lis — and Opposition looking, of course, to the 
same great seminary for the antagonists with 
whom these were to be confronted. 

We cannot say that either of these solutions 
is to us very satisfactory. There was heat 
enough certainly, and to spare, in the Irish 
Parliament ; but the barristers who came there 
had generally kindled with their own fire, 
before repairing to that fountain. They had 
formed their manner, in short, and distin- 
guished themselves by their ardour, before 
they were invited to display it in that assem- 
bly ; — and it would be quite as plausible to 
refer the intemperate warmth of the Parlia- 
mentary debates to the infusion of hot-headed 
gladiators from the Bar, as to ascribe the gen- 
eral over-zeal of the profession to the fever 
some of them might have caught in the 
Senate. In England, we believe, this effect 
has never been observed— and in Ireland it 
has outlived its supposed causes — the Bar of 
that country being still (we understand) as rhe- 
torical and impassioned as ever, though its leg- 
islature has long ceased to have an existence. 

As to the effects of temperament and 
national character, we confess we are still 
more sceptical — at least when considered as 
the main causes of the phenomenon in ques- 
tion. Professional peculiarities, in short, we 
are persuaded, are to be referred much more 
to the circumstances of the profession, than 
to the national character of those who exer- 
cise it; and the more redundant eloquence of 
the Irish bar, is better explained, probably, by 
the smaller quantity of business in their courts, 
than by the greater vivacity of their fancy, or 
the warmth of their hearts. We in Scotland 
have also a forensic eloquence of our own — 
more speculative, discursive, and ambitious 
than that of England — but less poetical and 
passionate than that of Ireland ; and the pe- 
culiarity might be plausibly ascribed, here 
also, to the imputed character of the nation, 
as distinguished for logical acuteness and in- 
trepid questioning of authority, rather than for 
richness of imagination, or promptitude of 
feeling. 

We do not mean, however, altogether to 
deny the existence or the operation of these 
causes — but we think the effect is produced 
chiefly by others of a more vulgar description. 
The small number of Courts and Judges in 
England — compared to its great wealth, popu- 
lation, and business — has made brevity and 
despatch not only important but indispensable 
qualifications in an advocate in great practice, 
— since it would be physically impossible 
either for him or for the Courts to get through 
their business without them. All mere orna- 
mental speaking, therefore, is not only severely 
discountenanced, but absolutely debarred ; 
and the most technical, direct, and authorita- 
tive views of the case alone can be listened to. 
But judicial time, to use the language of Ben- 
tham is not of the same high value, either in 
Ireland or in Scotland ; and the pleaders of those 



countries have consequently given way to that 
universal love of long-speaking, which, we 
verily believe, never can.be repressed by any 
thing but the absolute impossibility of indulg- 
ing it : — while their prolixity has taken a dif- 
ferent character, not so much from the tem- 
perament of the speakers, as from the difference 
of the audiences they have generally had to 
address. In Ireland, the greater part of their 
tediousness is bestowed on Juries — and their 
vein consequently has been more popular. 
With us in Scotland the advocate has to speak 
chiefly to the Judges — and naturally endeav- 
ours, therefore, to make that impression by 
subtlety, or compass of reasoning, which he 
would in vain attempt, either by pathos, po- 
etry, or jocularity. — Professional speakers, in 
short, we are persuaded, will always speak 
as long as they can be listened to. — The quan- 
tity of their eloquence, therefore, will depend" 
on the time that can be afforded for its display 
— and its quality, on the nature of the audience 
to which it is addressed. 

But though we cannot admit that the causes 
assigned by this author are the main or fun- 
damental causes of the peculiarity of Irish 
oratory, we are far from denying that there is 
much in it of a national character, and indi- 
cating something extraordinary either in the 
temper of the people, or in the state of society 
among them. There is, in particular, a much 
greater Irascibility; with its usual concomi- 
tants of coarseness and personality, — and a 
much more Theatrical tone, or a taste for 
forced and exaggerated sentiments, than would 
be tolerated on this side of the Channel. Of 
the former attribute, the continual, and, we 
must say, most indecent altercations that are 
recorded in these volumes between the Bench 
and the Bar. are certainly the most flagrant 
and offensive examples. In some cases the 
Judges were perhaps the aggressors — but the 
violence and indecorum is almost wholly on 
the side of the Counsel; and the excess and 
intemperance of their replies generally goes 
far beyond any thing for which an apology 
can be found in the provocation that had been 
given. A very striking instance occurs in an 
early part of Mr. Curran's history, where he 
is said to have observed, upon an opinion de- 
livered by Judge Robinson, "that he had 
never met with the law r as laid down by his 
Lordship in any book in his library;' 7 and, 
upon his Lordship rejoining, somewhat scorn- 
fully, "that he suspected his library was very 
small/' the offended barrister, in allusion to 
the known fact of the Judge having recent- 
ly published some anonymous pamphlets, 
thought fit to reply, that "his library might 
be small, but he thanked Heaven that, among 
his books, there were none of the wretched 
productions of the frantic pamphleteers of the 
day. I find it more instructive, my lord, to 
study good works than to compose bad ones ! 
My books may be few, but the title-pages 
give me the writers' names — my shelf is not 
disgraced by any of such rank absurdity that 
their very authdrs are ashamed to own them." 
(p. 122.) On another occasion, when he was 
proceeding in an argument with his charac- 



720 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



teristic impetuosity, the presiding Judge hav- 
ing called to the Sheriff to be ready to take 
into custody any one who should disturb the 
decorum of the Court, the sensitive counsellor 
at once applying the notice to himself, is re- 
ported to have broken out into the following 
incredible apostrophe — " Do, Mr. Sheriff," re- 
plied Mr. Curran, Ci go and get ready my dun- 
geon! Prepare a bed of straw for me; and 
upon that bed I shall to-night repose with more 
tranquillity than I should enjoy were I sitting 
upon that bench, with a consciousness that I 
disgraced it !" — Even his reply to Lord Clare, 
when interrupted by him in an argument be- 
fore the Privy Council, seems to us much more 
petulant than severe. His Lordship, it seems, 
had admonished him that he was wandering 
from the question ; and Mr. C. after some 
general observations, replied, '• I am aware, 
my lords, that truth is to be sought only by 
slow and painful progress : I know also that 
error is in its nature flippant and compendious; 
it hops with airy and fastidious levity over 
proofs and arguments, and perches upon as- 
sertion, which it calls conclusion." — To Lord 
Clare, however, Mr. C. had every possible 
temptation to be intractable and impertinent. 
But even to his best friends, when placed on 
the seat of judgment, he could not always 
forbear a similar petulance. Lord Avonmore 
was always most kind and indulgent to him — 
but he too was sometimes in the habit, it 
seems, of checking his wanderings, and some- 
times of too impatiently anticipating his con- 
clusions. Upon one of these occasions, and 
in the middle of a solemn argument, we are 
called on to admire the following piece' of 
vulgar and farcical stupidity, as a specimen 
of Mr. C's most judicious pleasantry : — 

" ' Perhaps, my lord, I am straying; but you 
must impute if to the extreme agitation of my mind. 
I have just witnessed so dreadful a circumstance, 
that my imagination has not yet recovered from the 
shock.' — His lordship was now all attention. — ' On 
my way to court, my lord, as I passed by one of 
the markets, I observed a butcher proceeding to 
slaughter a calf. Juit as his hand was raised, a 
lovely little child approached him unperceived, and, 
terrible to relate — I still see the life-blood gushing 
out — the poor child's bosom was under his hand, 

when he plunged his knife into — into' ' Into the 

bosom of the child !' cried out the judge, with much 
emotion — ' into the neck of the caff, my lord; but 
your lordship sometimes anticipates!' " 

But this is not quite fair. — There is no more 
such nonsense in the book — nor any other 
Iricism so discreditable to the taste either of 
its hero or its author. There are plenty of 
traits, however, that make one blush for the 
degradation, and shudder at the government 
of that magnificent country. — One of the most 
striking is supplied by an event in the early 
part of Mr. C's professional history, and one 
to which he is here said to have been indebted 
for his first celebrity. A nobleman of great 
weight and influence in the country — Ave 
gladly suppress his name, though it is given 
in the book — had a mistress, whose brother 
being a Catholic, had, for some offence, been 
sentenced to ecclesiastical penance — and the 
yotng woman solicited her keeper to use his 



influence Avith the priest to obtain a remission 
His Lordship went accordingly to the cabin 
of the aged pastor, who came bareheaded to 
the door with his missal in his hand ; and af- 
ter hearing the application, respectfully an- 
swered, that the sentence having been imposed 
by the Bishop, could only be relaxed by the 
same authority — and that he had no right or 
power to interfere with it. The noble medi- 
ator, on this struck the old man ! and drove 
him with repeated blows from his presence. 
The priest then brought his action of damages 
— but for a long time could find no advocate 
hardy enough to undertake his cause! — and 
when young Curran at last made offer of his 
services, he was blamed and pitied by all his 
prudent friends for his romantic and Quixotic 
rashness. 

These facts speak volumes as to the utter 
perversion of moral feeling that is produced 
by unjust laws, and the habits to which they 
give rise. No nation is so brave or so generous 
as the Irish, — and yet an Irish nobleman could 
be guilty of the brutality of striking an aged 
Ecclesiastic without derogating from his dig- 
nity or honour. — No body of men could be 
more intrepid and gallant than the leaders of 
the Irish bar; and yet it was thought too 
daring and presumptuous for any of them to 
assist the sufferer in obtaining redress for an 
outrage like this. In England, those things 
are inconceivable : But the readers of Irish 
history are aware, that where the question 
was between Peer and Peasant — and still more 
when it was between Protestant and Catholic 
— the barristers had cause for apprehension. 
It was but about forty years before, that upon 
a Catholic bringing an action for the recovery 
of his confiscated estates, the Irish House of 
Commons publicly voted a resolution, - k that 
all barristers, solicitors, attorneys, and proctors 
who should be concerned for him, should be 
considered as public enemies !" This was in 
1735. In 1780, however, Mr. C. found the 
service not quite so dangerous ; and by great 
eloquence and exertion extorted a reluctant 
verdict, and thirty guineas of damages, from 
a Protestant Jury. The sequel of the affair 
was not less characteristic. In the first place, 
it involved the advocate in a duel with a wit- 
ness whom he had rather outrageously abused 
— and, in the next place, it was thought suffi- 
cient to justify a public notification to him, on 
the part of the noble defendant, that his au- 
dacity should be punished by excluding him 
from all professional employment wherever 
his influence could extend. The insolence 
of such a communication might well have 
warranted a warlike reply : But Mr. C. ex 
pressed his contempt in a gayer, and not less 
effectual manner. Pretending to misunder- 
stand the tenor of the message, he answered 
aloud, in the hearing of his friends, " My good 
sir, you may tell his lordship, that it is in vain 
for him to be proposing terms of accommoda- 
tion ; for after what has happened, I protest I 
think, while I live, I never can hold a brief 
for him or one of his family." The threat, 
indeed, proved as impotent as it was pitiful ; 
for the spirit and talent which the young 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



721 



counsellor had displayed through the whole 
scene, not only brought him into unbounded 
popularity with the lower orders, but instantly 
raised him to a distinguished place in the 
ranks of his profession.* 

We turn gladly, and at once, from this 
dreadful catastrophe. t Never certainly was 
short-lived tranquillity — or rather permanent 
danger so dearly bought. The vengeance of 
the law followed the havoc of the sword — 
and here again we meet Mr. C. in his strength 
and his glory. But we pass gladly over these 
melancholy trials; in which we are far from 
insinuating, that there was any reprehensible 
severity on the part of the Government. When 
matters had come that length, they had but 
one duty before them — and they seem to have 
discharged it (if we except one or two pos- 
thumous attainders) with mercy as well as 
fairness : for after a certain number of victims 
had been selected, an arrangement was made 
with the rest of the state prisoners, under 
which they were allowed to expatriate them- 
selves for life. It would be improper, how- 
ever. 1o leave the subject, without offering 
our tribute of respect and admiration to the 
singular courage, fidelity, and humanity, with 
which Mr. C. persisted, throughout these ago- 
nising scenes, in doing his duty to the unfor- 
tunate prisoners, and watching over the ad- 
ministration of that law, from the spectacle of 
whose vengeance there was so many tempta- 
tions to withdraw. This painful and heroic 
task he undertook — and never blenched from 
its fulfilment, in spite of the toil and disgust, 
and the obloquy and personal hazard, to which 
it continually exposed him. In that inflamed 
state of the public mind, it is easy to under- 
stand that the advocate was frequently con- 
founded with the client : and that, besides the 
murderous vengeance of the profligate inform- 
ers he had so often to denounce, he had to 
encounter the passions and prejudices of all 
those who chose to look on the defender of 
traitors as their associate. Instead of being 
cheered, therefore, as formerly, by the ap- 
plauses of h'-s auditors, he Avas often obliged to 
submit to their angry interruptions; and was 
actually menanced more than once, in the 
open court, by the clashing arms and indig- 
nant menaces of the military spectators. He 
had excessive numbers of soldiers, too, billet- 
ted on him, and was in many other ways ex- 
posed to loss and vexation : But he bore it all, 
with the courage of his country, and the dig- 
nity due to his profession — and consoled him- 

* The greater part of what follows in the original 
pappr is now omhfed ; as touching on points in the 
modern history of Ireland which has been sufficient- 
ly discussed under preceding titles. I retain only 
what relates to Mr. Curran personally ; or to those 
peculiarities in his eloquence which refer rather to 
his country than to the individual : though, for the 
sake chiefly of connection, I have made one allusion 
to the snd and most touching Judicial Tragedv 
which fo'lowed nn 'he deplorable Field scenes of 
the rebellion of 1798. 

t Thp extinction of the rebellion — bv the s'augh- 
ter of fifty thousand of the insurgents, and upwnrds 
of twenty thousand of the soldiery and their adhe- 
rents ! 

9f 



self for the vulgar calumnies of an infuriated 
faction, in the friendship and society of such 
men as Lords Moira, Charlemont, andKilwar- 
den — Grattan, Ponsonby, and Flood. 

The incorporating union of 1800 is said to 
have filled Mr. C. with incurable despondency 
as to the fate of his country. We have great 
indulgence for this feeling — but we cannot 
sympathise with it. The Irish parliament 
was a nuisance that deserved to be abated — 
and the British legislature, with all its parti- 
alities, and its still more blamable neglects, 
may be presumed, we think, to be more ac- 
cessible to reason, to justice, and to shame, 
than the body which it superseded. Mr. C. 
was not in Parliament when that great mea- 
sure was adopted. But. in the course of that 
year, he delivered a very able argument in 
the case of Napper Tandy, of which the only 
published report is to be found in the volumes 
before us. In 1802, he made his famous 
speech in Hevey's case, against Mr. Sirr, the 
town-major of Dublin ; which affords a strong 
picture of the revolting and atrocious barbari- 
ties which are necessarily perpetrated, when 
the solemn tribunals are silenced, and inferior 
agents intrusted with arbitrary power. The 
speech, in this view of it, is one of the most 
striking and instructive in the published vo- 
lume, which we noticed in our thirteenth vo- 
lume. During the peace of Amiens, Mr. C. 
made a short excursion to France, and was by 
no means delighted with what he saw there. 
In a letter to his son from Paris, in October 
1802, he says, — 

"I am glad I have come here. I entertained 
many ideas of it. which I have entirely given up, or 
very much indeed altered. Never was there a scene 
that could furnish more to the weeping or the grin- 
ning philosopher ; they well might agree that hu- 
man afTiirs were a sad joke. I see it every where, 
and in every thing. The wheel has run a complete 
round ; only changed some spokes and a few ' fel- 
lows,' very" little for the better, but the axle cer-' 
tainly has not rusted ; nor do I see any likelihood 
of its rusting. At present all is quiet, except the 
tongue, — thanks to those invaluable protectors of 
peace, the army ! '.'' — Vol. ii. pp. 206, 207. 

The public life of Mr. C. was now drawing 
to a close. He distinguished himself in 1804 
in the Marquis of Headfort's case, and in that 
of Judge Johnson in 1805 : But, on the acces- 
sion of the Whigs to office in 1806, he was 
appointed to the situation of Master of the 
Rolls, and never afterwards made any public 
appearance. He was not satisfied with this 
appointment ; and took no pains to conceal his 
dissatisfaction. His temper, perhaps, was by 
this time somewhat soured by ill health; and 
his notion of his own importance exaggerated 
by the flattery of which he had long been the 
daily object. Perhaps, too, the sudden with- 
drawing of those tasks and excitements, to 
which he had been so long accustomed, co- 
operating with the languor of declining age, 
may have affected his views of his own situa- 
tion : But it certainly appears that he was 
never very gay or good-humoured after his 
promotion — and passed but a dull and peevish 
time of it during the remainder of his life. In 
1810, he went, for the first time, to Scotland: 
3 1. 



722 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



and we cannot deny our nationality the plea- 
sure of his honest testimony. He writes thus 
to a friend soon after his arrival on our shore : — 

"lam greatly delighted with this country. You 
see no trace here of the devil working against the 
wisdom and beneficence of God, and torturing and 
degrading his creatures. It may seem the romanc- 
ing of travelling ; but I am satisfied of the fact, that 
the poorest man here has his children taught to read 
and write, and that in every house is found a Bible, 
and in almost every house a clock : And the fruits 
of this are manifest in the intelligence and manners 
of all ranks. In Scotland, what a work have the 
four-and-twenty letters to show for themselves ! — 
the natural enemies of vice, and folly, and slavery ; 
the great sowers, but the still greater weeders, of 
the human soil. Nowhere can you see here the 
cringing hypocrisy of dissembled detestation, so in- 
separable from oppression : and as little do you 
meet the hard, and dull, and right-lined angles of 
the southern visage; you find the notion exact and 
the phrase direct, with the natural tone of the Scot- 
tish muse. 

" The first night, at Ballintray, the landlord at- 
tended us at supper ; he would do so, though we 
begged him not. We talked to him of the cultiva- 
tion of potatoes. I said, I wondered at his taking 
them in place of his naiive food, oatmeal, so much 
more substantial. His answer struck me as very 
characteristic of the genius of Scotland — frugal, 
tender, and picturesque. 'Sir,' said he, 'we are 
not so much i' the wrong as you think; the tilth is 
easy, they are swift i' the cooking, they take little 
fuel ; and then it is pleasant to see the gude wife 
wi' a' her bairns aboot the pot, and each wi' a po- 
tatoe in its hand.' " — Vol. ii. pp. 254—256. 

There are various other interesting letters 
in these volumes, and in particular a long one 
to the Duke of Sussex, in favour of Catholic- 
Emancipation ; but we can no longer afford 
room for extracts, and must indeed hurry 
through our abstract of what remains to be 
noticed of his life. He canvassed the burgh 
of Newry unsuccessfully in 1812. His health 
failed very much in 1813 ; and the year after, 
( he resigned his situation, and came over to 
London in his way to France. He seems at 
]0 time to have had much relish for English 
society. In one of his early letters, he com- 
plains of " the proud awkward sulk" of Lon- 
don company, and now he characterises it 
with still greater severity : — 

" I question if it is much better in Paris. Here 
. the parade is gross, and cold, and vulgar ; there it 
is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more 
graceful; but in either place is not Society equally 
a tyrant and a slave ? The judgment despises it, 
and the heart renounces it. We seek it because 
we are idle ; we are idle because we are silly ; and 
the naiural remedy is some social intercourse, of 
which a few drops would restore ; but we swallow 
the whole vial, and are sicker of the remedy than 
we were of the disease." — Vol. ii. pp. 337, 338. 

And again, a little after, — 

" England is not a place for society. It is too 
cold, too vain, — without pride enough to be hum- 
ble, drowned in dull fantastical formality, vulgarized 
by rank without talent, and talent foolishly recom- 
mending itself by weight rather than by fashion— 
a perpetual war between the disappointed preten- 
sion of talent and the stupid overweening of affect- 
ed patronage ; means without enjoyment, pursuits 
v-ithout an object, and society without conversation 
or intercourse : Perhaps they manage this better in 
France — a few days, I think, will enable me to 
decide."— Vol. ii. pp. 345, 346. 



In France, nowever, he was not much bet- 
ter off — and returned, complaining of a con- 
stitutional dejection, " for which he could find 
no remedy in water or in wine." He rejoice* 
in the downfall of Bonaparte ; and is of opinion 
that the Revolution had thrown that country 
a century DacK. in spring 1817, he began to 
sink rapidly ; and had a slight paralytic attack 
in one of his hands. He proposed to try 
another visit to France ; and still complained 
of the depression of his spirits: — "he had a 
mountain of lead (he said) on his heart." 
Early in October, he had a very severe shock 
of apoplexy, and lingered till the 14th, when 
he expiredin his 68th year. 

There is a very able and eloquent chapter 
on the character of Mr. Curran's eloquence — 
encomiastic of course, but written with great 
temper, talent, and discrimination. Its charm 
and its defects, the learned author refers to 
the state of genuine passion and vehement 
emotion in which all his best performances 
were delivered; and speaks of its effects on 
his auditors of all descriptions, in terms which 
can leave no doubt of its substantial excel- 
lence. We cannot now enter into these rhetori- 
cal disquisitions — though they are full of in- 
terest and instruction to the lovers of oratory. 
It is more within our province to notice, that 
he is here said to have spoken extempore at 
his first coming to the Bar; but when his rising- 
reputation made him more chary of his fame, 
he tried for some time to write down, and com- 
mit to memory, the more important parts of 
his pleadings. The result, however, was not at 
all encouraging : and he soon laid aside his pen 
so entirety, as scarcely even to make any notes 
in preparation. He meditated his subjects, 
however, when strolling in his garden, or more 
frequently while idling over his violin ; and 
often prepared, in this way, those splendid 
passages and groups of images with which he 
was afterwards to dazzle and enchant his ad- 
mirers. The only notes he made were often 
of the metaphors he proposed to employ — and 
these of the utmost brevity. For the grand 
peroration, for example, in H. Rowan's case, 
his notes were as follows: — "Character of 
Mr. R. — Furnace — Rebellion — smothered — 
Stalks — Redeeming Spirit." From such slight 
hints he spoke fearlessly — and without cause 
for fear. With the help of such a scanty 
chart, he plunged boldly into the unbuoyed 
channel of his cause; and trusted himself to 
the torrent of his own eloquence, with no 
better guidance than such landmarks as these. 
It almost invariably happened, however, that 
the experiment succeeded; "that his own 
expectations were far exceeded ; and that, 
when his mind came to be more intensely 
heated by his subject, and by that inspiring 
confidence which a public audience seldom 
fails to infuse into all who are sufficiently 
gifted to receive it, a multitude of new ideas, 
adding vigour or ornament, were given ofr ; 
and it also happened, that, in the same pro 
lific moments, and as their almost inevitable 
consequence, some crude and fantastic notions 
escaped; which, if they impeach their au- 
thor's taste, at least leave him the merit of a 



LIFE OF CURRAN. 



728 



splendid fault, which none but men c: genius 
can commit." (pp. 403, 404.) The best ex- 
planation of his success, and the best apology 
for his defects as a speaker, is to be found, we 
believe, in the following candid passage : — 

" The Juries amon? whom he was thrown, and 
for whom he originally formed his style, were not 
fastidious critics; they were more usually men 
abounding in rude unpolished sympathies, and who 
were ready to surrender the treasure, of which 
they scarcely knew the value, to him that offered 
them the most alluring toys. Whatever might have 
been his own better taste, as an advocate he soon 
discovered, that the surest way to persurde was to 
conciliate by amusing them. With them he found 
that his imagination might revel unrestrained ; that, 
when once the work of intoxication was begun, 
every wayward fancy and wild expression was as 
acceptable and effectual as the most refined wit ; 
and that the favour which they would have refused 
to the unattractive reasoner, or to the too distant 
and formal orator, they had not the firmness to 
withhold, when solicited with the gay persuasive 
familiarity of a companion. These careless or li- 
centious habits, encouraged by early applause and 
victory, were never thrown aside ; and we can ob- 
serve, in almost ail his productions, no matter how 
august the audience, or how solemn the occasion, 
that his mind is perpetually relapsing into its primi- 
tive indulgences." — pp. 412, 413. 

The learned author closes this very able 
and eloquent dissertation with some remarks 
upon what he says is now denominated the 
Insh school of eloquence ; and seems inclined 
to deny that its profusion of imagery implies 
any deficiency, or even neglect of argument. 
As we had some share, we believe, in impo- 
sing this denomination, we may be pardoned 
for feeling some little anxiety that it should 
be rightly understood ; and beg leave there- 
fore to say, that we are as far as possible from 
holding, that the greatest richness of imagery 
necessarily excludes close or accurate reason- 
ing: holding, on the contrary, that it is fre- 
quently its most appropriate vehicle and na- 
tural exponent — as in Lord Bacon, Lord 
Chatham, and Jeremy Taylor. But the elo- 
quence we wished to characterise, is that 
where the figures and ornaments of speech 
do interfere with its substantial object — where 
fancy is not ministrant but predominant — 
where the imagination is not merely awak- 
ened, but intoxicated — and either overlays 
and obscures the sense, or frolics and gambols 
around it, to the disturbance of its march, 
and the weakening of its array for the con- 
test : — And of this kind, we still humbly think, 
was the eloquence of Mr. Curran. 

His biographer says, indeed, that it is amis- 
take to call it Irish, because Swift and Gold- 
smith had none of it — and Milton and Bacon 
and Chatham had much; and moreover, that 
Burke and Grattan and Curran had each a 
distinctive style of eloquence, and ought not 
to be classed together. How old the style 
may be in Ireland, we cannot undertake to 
say — though we think there are traces of it 
in Ossian. We would observe too, that, though 
born in Ireland, neither Swift nor Goldsmith 
were trained in the Irish school, or worked 
for the Irish market; and we have already 
said, that it is totally to mistake our concep- 
tion of the style in question, to ascribe any 



tincture of it to such writers as Milton, Bacon, 
or Taylor. There is fancy and figure enough 
certainly in their compositions: But there is 
no intoxication of the fancy, and no rioting 
and revelling among figures — no ungoverned 
and ungovernable impulse — no fond dalliance 
with metaphors — no mad and headlong pur- 
suit of brilliant images and passionate ex- 
pressions — no lingering among tropes and 
melodies — no giddy bandying of antitheses 
and allusions — no craving, in short, for per- 
petual glitter, and panting after effect, till 
both speaker and nearer are lost in the 
splendid confusion, and the argument evapo- 
rates in the heat which was meant to enforce 
it. This is perhaps too strongly put; but 
there are large portions of Mr. C.'s Speeches 
to which we think the substance of the de- 
scription will apply. Take, for instance, a 
passage, very much praised in the work be- 
fore us, in his argument in Judge Johnson's 
case, — an argument, it will be remembered, 
on a point of law, and addressed not to a Jury, 
but to a Judge. 

"lam not ignorant that this extraordinary con- 
struction has received the sanction of another Court, 
nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote 
upon the general heart of the Bar. I am aware that 
I may have the mortification of being told, in an- 
other country, of that unhappy decision ; and I 
foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my 
head when I am told of it. But I cherish, too, the 
consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them, 
that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would 
put above all the sweepings of their Hall (no great 
compliment, we should think), who was of a differ- 
ent opinion — who had derived his ideas of civil 
liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of 
Rome — who had fed the youthful vigour of his 
studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their 
wisest philosophers and statesmen — and who had 
refined that theory into the quick and exquisite 
sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the 
practice of their most illustrious examples — by 
dwelling on the sioeet-souled piety of Cimon — on 
the anticipated Christianity of Socrates — on the 
gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas — 
on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move 
from his integrity would have been more difficult 
than to have pushed the sun from his course ! I 
would add, that .if he had seemed to hesitate, it 
was but for a moment — that his hesitation was like 
the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, 
and hides it from the view, and does so for a mo- 
ment hide it, by involving the spectator without even 
approaching the face of the luminary. — And this 
soothing hope 1 draw from the dearest and tenderest 
recollections of my life — from the remembrance of 
those attic nights, and those refections of the gods, 
which we have spent with those admired, and re- 
spected, and beloved companions, who have gone 
before us ; over whose ashes the most precious 
tears of Ireland have been shed. [Here Lord 
Avonmore could not refrain from bursting intc 
tears.] Yes, my good Lord. I see you do not for- 
get them. I see their sacred forms passing in sad 
review before your memory. I see your pained ana 
softenedfancyTecz\\\x\g\\\ose happy meetings, where 
the innocent enjoyment of social mirth became ex 
panded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and 
the horizon of the board became enlarged into the 
horizon of man — where the swelling heart conceived 
and communicated the pure and generous purpose- 
where my slenderer and younger taper imbibed its 
borrowed light from the more matured and redun- 
dant fountain of yours" — Vol. i. pp. 139—148. 

Now, we must candidly confess, that we 



724 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



do not remember ever to have read any thing 
much more absurd than this — and that the 
puerility and folly of the classical intrusions 
is even less offensive, than the heap of incon- 
gruous metaphors by which the meaning is 
obscured. Does the learned author really 
mean to contend, that the metaphors here 
add either force or beauty to the sentiment 1 
or that Bacon or Milton ever wrote any thing- 
like this upon such a topic? In his happier 
moments, and more vehement adjurations, 
Mr. C. is often beyond all question a great 
and commanding orator; and we have no 
doubt was, to those who had the happiness 
of hearing him, a much greater orator than 
the mere readers of his speeches have any 
means of conceiving : — But we really cannot 
help repeating our protest against a style of 
composition which could betray its great mas- 
ter, and that very frequently, into such pas- 
sages as those we have just extracted. The 
mischief is not to the master — whose genius 
could efface all such stains, and whose splen- 
did successes would sink his failures in obli- 
vion — but to the pupils, and to the public, 
whose taste that very genius is thus instru- 
mental in corrupting. If young lawyers are 
taught to Consider this as the style which 
should be aimed at and encouraged, to ren- 
der Judges benevolent, — by comparing them 
to " the sweet-souled Cimon," and the " gal- 
lant Epaminondas ;" or to talk about their 
own " young and slender tapers," and " the 
clouds and the morning sun," — with what 

Erecious stuff will the Courts and the country 
e infested ! It is not difficult to imitate the 
defects of such a style — and of all defects 
they are the most nauseous in imitation. 
Even in the hands of men of genius, the risk 
is, that the longer such a style is cultivated, 
the more extravagant it will grow, — just as 
those who deal in other means of intoxica- 
tion, are tempted to strengthen the mixture 
as they proceed. The learned and candid 
author before us, testifies this to have been 
the progress of Mr. C. himself — and it is still 
more strikingly illustrated by the history of his 
models and imitators. Mr. Burke had much 
less of this extravagance than Mr. Grattan — 
^Mr. Grattan much less than Mr. Curran — and 
[Mr. Curran much less than Mr. Phillips. — It 
is really of some importance that the climax 
should be closed, somewhere. 

There is a concluding chapter, in which 
Mr. C.'s skill in cross-examination, and his 
conversational brilliancy, are commemorated; 
as well as the general simplicity.and affability 
of his manners, and his personal habits and 
peculiarities. He was not a profound lawyer, 
nor much of a general scholar, though reason- 
ably well acquainted with all the branches of 
polite literature, and an eager reader of novels 



— being often caught sobuing o^ier the pathot 
of Richardson, or laughing at the humour of 
Cervantes, with an unrestrained vehemence 
which reminds us of that of Voltaire. He 
spoke very slow, both in public and private, 
and was remarkably scrupulous in his choice 
of words : He slept very little, and, like John- 
son, was always averse to retire at night- 
lingering Jong after he arose to depart — and, in 
his own house, often following one of his guests 
to his chamber, and renewing the conversation 
for an hour. He was habitually abstinent and 
temperate ; and, from his youth up, in spite of 
all his vivacity, the victim of a constitutional 
melancholy. His wit is said to have been ready 
and brilliant, and altogether without gall. 
But the credit of this testimony is somew hat 
weakened by a Lttle selection of his bons 
mots, with which we are furnished in a note. 
The greater part, we own. appear to us to be 
rather vulgar and ordinary; as, when a man 
of the name of Halfpenny was desired by the 
Judge to sit down, Mr. C. said, "I thank your 
Lordship for having at last nailed that rap to 
the counter ;" or, when observing upon the 
singular pace of a Judge who was lame, he 
said, "Don't you see that one leg goes before, 
like a tipstaff, to make room for the other V } 
— or, when vindicating his countrymen from 
the charge of being naturally vicious, he said, 
•'He had never yet heard of an Irishman being 
born drunk?'' The following, however, is 
good — "I can't tell you, Curran," observed 
an Irish nobleman, who had voted for tha 
Union, " how frightful our old House of Com- 
mons appears to me." "Ah! my Lord," re- 
plied the other, "it is only natural for Mur- 
derers to be afraid of Ghosts;" — and this is 
at least grotesque. "Being asked what an 
Irish gentleman, just arrived in England, could 
mean by perpetually putting out his tongue 1 
Answer — '•! suppose he J s trying to catch the 
English accent? " In his last illness, his physi- 
cian observing in the morning that he seemed 
to cough with more difficulty, he answered, 
" that is rather surprising, as I have been 
practising all night." 

But these things are of little consequence. 
Mr. Curran was something much better than 
a sayer of smart sayings. He was a lover of 
his country — and its fearless, its devoted, and 
indefatigable servant. To his energy and tal- 
ents she was perhaps indebted for some miti- 
gation of her sufferings in the days of her ex- 
tremity — and to these, at all events, the public 
has been indebted, in a great degree, for the 
knowledge they now have of her wrongs; and 
for the feeling which that knowledge has 
exci.ed, of the necessity of granting them re- 
dress. It is in this character that he must 
ha\ e most wished to be remembered, and in 
which he has most deserved it. 



SIMOND'S SWITZERLAND. 



72* 



(3To*«mb*r, 1822.) 

Hwitzetlandj or a Journal of a Tour and Residence in that Country in the Years 1817, 1818, 
and 1819. Followed by an Historical Sketch of the Manners and Customs of Ancient and 
Modern Helvetia, in which the Events of our own time are fully detailed; together with the 
Causes to which they may be referred. By L. Simond. Author of Journal of a Tour and Resi- 
dence in Great Britain during the Years 1810 and 1811. In 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1822.* 



M. Simond is already well known in this 
country as the author of one of the best ac- 
counts of it that has ever been given to the 
world, either by native or foreigner — the full- 
est certainly, and the most unprejudiced — 
and containing the most faithful descriptions 
both of the aspect of our country, and the pe- 
culiarities of our manners and character, that 
has yet come under our observation. There 
are some mistakes, and some rash judgments ; 
but nothing can* exceed the candour of the 
estimate, or the fairness and independence of 
spirit with which it is made; while the whole 
is pervaded by a vein of original thought, 
always sagacious, and not unfrequently pro- 
found. The main fault of that book, as a 
work of permanent interest and instruction, 
which it might otherwise have been, is the 
too great space which is alloted to the tran- 
sient occurrences and discussions of the time 
lo which it refers — most of which have already 
lost their interest, and not only read like old 
news and stale politics, but have extended 
Iheir own atmosphere of repulsion to many 
admirable remarks and valuable suggestions, 
of which they happen to be the vehicles. 

The work before us is marked by the same 
excellences, and is nearly free from the faults 
to which we have just alluded. In spite of 
Ihis, however — perhaps even in consequence 
of it — we suspect it will not generally be 
thought so entertaining; the scene being nec- 
essarily so much narrower, and the persons 
of the drama fewer and less diversified. The 
work, however, is full of admirable description 
ind original remark: — nor do we know an y 
book of travels, ancient or modern, which 
contains, in the same compass, so many 
graphic and animated delineations of. exter- 
nal objects, or so many just and vigorous ob- 
servations on the moral phenomena it records. 
The most remarkable thing about it, however 
— and it occurs equally in the author's former 
publication — is the singular combination of 
enthusiasm and austerity that appears both in 
the descriptive, and the reasoning or ethical 
parts of the performance — the perpetual strug- 
gle that seems to exist between the feelings 
and fancy of the .author, and the sterner in- 
timations of his understanding. There is, 



* I reprint a part of this paper : — partly out of love 
lo the memory of the author, who was my connec- 
tion and particular friend : — but chiefly for the sake 
sf his remarks on our English manners, and my 
judgment on these remarks — which I would ven- 
ture to submit to the sensitive patriots of America, 
as a specimen of the temperance with which the pa- 
triots of other countries can deal with the censors of 
their national habits and pretensions to fine breeding. 



accordingly, in all his moral and political ob- 
servations at least, a constant alternation of 
romantic philanthropy and bitter sarcasm — of 
the most captivating views of apparent hap- 
piness and virtue, and the most relentless dis- 
closures of actual guilt and misery — of the 
sweetest and most plausible illusions, and the 
most withering and chilling truths. He ex- 
patiates, for example, through many pages, 
on the heroic valour and devoted patriotism 
of the old Helvetic worthies, with the memo- 
rials of which the face of their country is 
covered — and then proceeds to dissect their 
character and manners with the most cruel 
particularity, and makes them out to have 
been most barbarous, venal, and unjust. In 
the same way, he bewitches his readers with 
seducing pictures of the peace, simplicity, in- 
dependence, and honesty of the mountain 
villagers; and by and by takes occasion to 
tell us, that they are not only more stupid, 
but more corrupt than the inhabitants of cities. 
He eulogises the solid learning and domestic 
habits that prevail at Zurich and Geneva; and 
then makes it known to us that they are in- 
fested with faction and ennui. He draws a 
delightful picture of the white cottages and 
smiling pastures in which the cheerful peas- 
ants of the Engadine have their romantic 
habitations — and then casts us down from 
our elevation without the least pity, by in- 
forming us, that the best of them are those 
who have returned from hawking stucco par- 
rots, sixpenny looking-glasses, and coloured 
sweetmeats through all the towns of Europe. 
He is always strong for liberty, and indignant 
at oppression — but cannot settle very well in 
what liberty consists ; and seems to suspect, 
at last, that political rights are oftener a source 
of disorder than of comfort ; and that if per- 
son and property are tolerably secure, it is 
mere quixotism to look further. 

So strong a contrast of warm feelings and 
cold reasonings, such animating and such de- 
spairing views of the nature and destiny of 
mankind, are not often to be found in the same 
mind — and still less frequently in the same 
book : And yet they amount but to an extreme 
case, or strong example, of the inconsistencies 
through which all men of generous tempers 
and vigorous understandings are perpetually 
passing, as the one or the other part of their 
constitution assumes the ascendant. There 
are many of our good feelings, we suspect, 
and some even of our good principles, thai 
rest upon a sort of illusion ; or cannot submil 
at least to be questioned by frigid reason, 
without being for the lime a good deal dis- 
countenanced and impaired — and this we taicc 
~S l 2 



72€ 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



to be very clearly the case with M. Simond. 
His temperament is plainly enthusiastic, and 
his fancy powerful : But his reason is active 
and exacting, and his love of truth paramount 
to all other considerations. His natural sym- 
pathies are with all fine and all lofty qualities 
— but it is his honest conviction, that happi- 
ness is most securely built of more vulgar 
materials — and that there is even something 
ridiculous in investing our humble human na- 
ture with these magnificent attributes. At 
all events it is impossible to doubt of his sin- 
cerity in both parts of the representation ) — 
for there is not the least appearance of a love 
of paradox, or a desire to produce effect ; and 
nothing can be so striking as the air of candour 
and impartiality that prevails through the 
whole work. If any traces of prejudice may 
still be detected, they have manifestly sur- 
vived the most strenuous efforts to efface 
them. The strongest, we think, are against 
French character and English manners — with 
some, perhaps, against the French Revolution, 
and its late Imperial consummator. He is 
very prone to admire Nature — but not easily 
satisfied with Man ; — and, though most in- 
tolerant of intolerance, and most indulgent to 
those defects of which adventitious advantages 
make men most impatient, he is evidently of 
opinion that scarcely any thing is exactly as 
it should be in the present state of society — 
and that little more can be said for most 
existing habits and institutions, than that 
they have been, and might have been, still 
worse. 

He sets out for the most picturesque country 
of Europe, from that which is certainly the 
least so : — and gives the first indications of his 
sensitiveness on these topics, by a passing 
critique on the ancient chaleaus of France, 
and their former inhabitants. We may as 
well introduce him to our readers with this 
passage as with any other. 

" A few comfortable residences, scattered about 
the country, have lately put us in mind how very 
rare they are in general : Instead of them, you meet, 
not unfrequently, some ten or twenty miserable 
hovels, crowded together round what was formerly, 
the stronghold of the lord of the manor ; a narrow, 
dark, prison-like building, with small grated win- 
dows, embattled walls, and turrets peeping over 
thatched roofs. The lonely cluster seems uncon- 
nected with the rest of the country, and may be said 
to represent the feudal system, as plants in a hortus 
siccus do the vegetable. Long before the Revolu- 
tion, these chateaux had been mostly forsaken by 
their seigneurs, for the nearest country town ; where 
Monsieur le Compte, or Monsieur le Marquis, deco- 
rated with the cross of St. Louis, made shift to live 
on his paltry seigniorial dues, and rents ill paid by 
a starving peasantry ; spending his time in reminis- 
cences of gallantry with the old dowagers of the 
place, who rouged and wore patches, dressed in 
hoops and high- heeled shoes, full four inches, and 
long pointed elbow- ruffles, balanced with lead. Not 
one individual of this good company knew any thing 
of what was passing in the world, or suspected that 
anv change had taken place since the days of Louis 
XIV. No book found its way there ; no one read, 
not even a newspaper. When the Revolution 
burst upon this inferior nobility of the provinces, it 
appeared to them like Attila and the Huns to the 
people of the fifth century — the Scourge of God, 
coming nobody knew whence, for the mere purpose 



of destruction — a savage enemy, speaking an uft 
known language, with whom no compromise could 
be made." 

The first view of the country, though no 
longer new to most readers, is given with a 
truth, and a freshness of feeling which we 
are tempted to preserve in an extract. 

" Soon after passing the frontiers of the two 
countries, the view, heretofore bounded by near ob- 
jects, woods and pastures, rocks and snows, opened 
all at once upon the Canton de Vaud, and upon half 
Switzerland ! a vast extent of undulating coumry, 
tufted woods and fields, and silvery streams and 
lakes; villages and towns, with their antique tow- 
ers, and their church-steeples shining in the sun. 

'• The lake of Neuchatel, far below on the left, 
and those of Morat and of Vienne, like mirrors set 
in deep frames, contrasted by the tranquility of 
their lurid surfaces, with the dark shades and broken 
grounds and ridges of the various landscape. Be- 
yond this vast extent of country, its villages and 
towns, woods, lakes, and mountains: beyond all 
terrestrial objects — beyond the horizon itself, rose a 
long range of aerial forms, of the softest pale pink 
hue: These were the high Alps, the rampart of 
Italy — from Mont Blanc in Savoy, to the glaciers 
of the Overland, and even further. Their angle 
of elevation seen from this distance is very small 
indeed. Faithfully represented in a drawing, the 
effect would be insignificant ; but the aerial per- 
spective amply restored the proportions lost in the 
mathematical perspective. 

" The human mind thirsts after immensity and 
immutability, and duration without bounds; but it 
needs some tangible object from which to take its 
flight, — something present to lead to futurity, some- 
thing bounded from whence to rise to the infinite. 
This vault of the heavens over our head, sinking 
all terrestrial objects into absolute nothingness, 
might seem best fitted to awaken this sense of ex- 
pansion in the mind : But mere space is not a per- 
ceptible object to which we can readily apply a 
scale, while the Alps, seen at a glance between 
heaven and earth — met as it were on the confines 
of the regions of fancy and of sober reality, are 
there like written characters, traced by a divine 
hand, and suggesting thoughts such as human lan- 
guage never reached. 

" Coming down the Jura, along descent brought 
us to what appeared a plain, but which proved a 
varied country with hills and dales, divided into neat 
enclosures of hawthorn in full bloorn, and large 
hedge-row trees, mostly walnut, oak, and ash. It 
had altogether very much the appearance of the 
most beautiful parts of England, although the en- 
closures were on a smaller scale, and ihe cottasres 
less neat and ornamented. They differed entirely 
from France, where the dwellings are always col- 
lected in villages, the fields all open, and without 
trees. Numerous streams of the clearest water 
crossed the road, and watered very fine meadows. 
The houses, built of stone, low, broad, and massy, 
either thatched or covered with heavy wooden shin* 
gles, and shaded with magnificent walnut trees, 
might all have furnished studies to an artist." 

Vol. i. pp. 25—27. 

The following, however, is more character- 
istic of the author's vigorous and familiar, but 
somewhat quaint and abrupt, style of de- 
scription. 

" Leaving our equipages at Ballaisne, we pro- 
ceeded to the falls of the Orbe, through a hanging 
wood of fine old oaks, and came, after a long de- 
scent, to a place where the Orbe breaks through a 
great mass of ruins, which, at some very remote 
period, have fallen from the mountain, ar.d entirely 
ohs'ructed its channel. All the earth, and all tho 
smaller fragments, having long since disappeared 
and the water now works its way, with great nois* 



SIMOND'S SWITZERLAND. 



727 



and fury, among the larger fragments, and falls 
above the height of eiglny feet, in the very best 
Biyle. The blocks, many of them as large as a 
good-sized three-story house, are heaped up most 
strangely, jammed in by their angles — in equilibrium 
on a point, or lorming perilous bridges, over which 
you may, with proper precaution, pick your way 
to the other side. The quarry from which the ma- 
terials of the bridge came is just above your head, 
and the miners are still at work — air, water, frost, 
weight, and time ! The strata of limestone are 
evidently breaking down ; their deep rents are 
widening, and enormous masses, already loosened 
from the mountain, and suspended on their preca- 
rious baues, seem only waiting for the last effort, of 
the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, 
and bury under some hundred feel of new chaotic 
ruins, the trees, the verdant lawn — and yourself, 
who are looking on and foretelling the catastrophe ! 
We left this scene at last reluctantly, and proceed- 
ed towards the dent-de-vaulion, at the base of which 
we arrived in two hours, and in two hours more 
reached the summit, which is four thousand four 
hundred and seventy-six feet above the sea, and 
three thousand three hundred and forty-two feet 
above the lake of Geneva. Our path lay over 
smooth turf, sufficiently steep to make it difficult 
to climb. At the top we found a narrow ridge, not 
more than one hundred yards wide. The south 
view, a most magnificent one, was unfortunately 
too like that at our entrance into Switzerland to 
bear a second description; the other side of the 
ridge can scarcely be approached without terror, 
being almost perpendicular. Crawling, therefore, 
on our hands and knees, we ventured, in this modest 
attitude, to look out of the window at the hundred 
and fiftieth story (at least two thousand feet), and 
see what was doing in the street. Herds of cattle 
in the infi.nim.ent -petit were grazing on the verdant 
lawn of a narrow vale ; on the other side of which, 
a mountain, overgrown with dark pines, marked the 
boundary of France. Towards the west, we saw 
a piece of water, which appeared like a mere fish- 
pond. It was the lake of Joux, two leagues in 
length, and half a league in breadth. We were to 
look for our night's lodgings in the village on its 
banks."— Vol. i. pp. 33—36. 

" Bienne struck us as more Swiss than any thing 
we had yet seen, or rather as if we were entering 
Switzerland for the first time ; every thing looked 
and sounded so foreign : And yet to see the curiosity 
we excited the moment we landed and entered the 
streets, we might have supposed it was ourselves 
who looked rather outlandish. The women wore 
their hair plaited down to their heels, while the full 
petticoat did not descend near so far. Several 
groups of them, sitting at their doors, sung in parts, 
with an accuracy of ear and taste innate among the 
Germans. Gateways fortified with towers inter- 
sect the streets, which are composed of strange- 
looking houses built on arcades, like those of 
bridges, and variously painted, blue with yellow 
borders, red with white, or purple and grey ; pro- 
jecting iron balconies, highly worked and of a 
glossy black, with bright green window frames. 
The luxury of fountains and of running water is 
still greater here than at Neuehatel ; and you might 
be tempted to quench your thirst in the kennel, it 
runs so clear and pure. Morning and evening, 
goats, in immense droves, conducted to or from the 
mountain, traverse the streets, and stop of them- 
selves, each at its own door. In the interior of the 
houses, most articles of furniture are quaintly shaped 
and ornamented ; old-looking, but rubbed bright, 
and in good preservation ; from the nut-cracker, 
curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet, pour- 
ing oil and vinegar out of the same bottle. The 
accommodations at the inn are homely, but not un- 
comfortable ; substantially good, though not ele- 
gant." — Vol. i. pp. 65, 66. 

We may add the followirg, which is in the 
«ame style. 



"It rained all day yesterday, and we remainet 
shut up in our room at a German inn in Wald.-hut. 
enjoying a day's rest with our books, and observing 
men and manners in Germany, through the small 
round panes of our casements. The projecting 
roofs of houses afford so much shelter on both sidea 
of the streets, that the beau sex of Waldshut were 
out all day long in their Sunday clothes, as if it had 
been fine weather ; their long yellow hair in a sin- 
gle plait hung down to their heels, along a back 
made very strait by the habit of carrying pails of 
milk and water on the head ; their snow-white shift- 
sleeves, rolled up to the shoulder, exposed to view 
a sinewy, sun-burnt arm ; the dark red stays were 
laced with black in front, and a petticoat scarcely 
longer than the Scotch kilt, hid nothing of the lower 
limb, nor of a perfectly neat stocking, well stretched 
by redgarters full in sight. The aged among them, 
generally frightful, looked like withered little old 
men in disguise." — Vol. i. pp. 87, 88. 

Of all the Swiss cities, he seems to have 
been most struck with Berne ; and the im- 
pression made by its majestic exterior, has 
even made him a little too partial, we think, 
to its aristocratic constitution. His description 
of its appearance is given with equal spirit 
and precision. 

" These fine woods extend almost to the very 
gates of Berne, where you arrive under an avenue 
of limes, which, in this season, perfume the air. 
There are seats by the side of the road, for the con- 
venience of foot-passengers, especially women going 
to market, with a shelf above, at the height of a 
person standing, for the purpose of receiving their 
baskets while they rest themselves on the bench : 
you meet also with fountains at regular distances. 
The whole country has the appearance of English 
pleasure-grounds. The town itself stands on the 
elevated banks of a rapid river, the Aar, to which 
the Rhine is indebted for one half of its waters. A 
sudden bend of the stream encloses, on all sides 
but one, the promontory on which the town is 
built; the magnificent slope is in some places cover- 
ed with turf, supported in others by lofty terraces 
planted with trees, and commanding wonderful 
views over the surrounding rich country, and the 
high Alps beyond it. 

" It is not an easy matter to account for the first 
impression you receive upon entering Berne. You 
certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and a 
great city : Yet, before the eleventh century, it had 
not a name, and its present population does not ex- 
ceed twelve thousand souls. It is a republic ; ye; 
it looks kingly. Something of Roman majesty ap- 
pears in its lofty terraces ; in those massy arches 
on each side of the streets ; in the abundance of 
water flowing night and day into gigantic basins • 
in the magnificent avenues of trees. The very 
silence, ann absence of bustle, a certain stateliness 
and reserved demeanour in the inhabitants, by 
showing it to be not a money-making town, implies 
that its wealth springs from more solid and per- 
manent sources than trade can afford, and that 
another spirit animates its inhabitants. In short, 
of all the first-sight impressions and guesses about 
Berne, that of its being a Roman town would be 
nearer right than any other. Circumstances, in 
some respects similar, have produced like results 
in the Alps, and on the plains of Latium, at the in- 
terval of twenty centuries. Luxury at Berne seems 
wholly directed to objects of public utility. By the 
side of those gigantic terraces, of those fine foun- 
tains, and noble shades, you see none but simple 
and solid dwellings, yet scarcely any beggarly 
ones; not an equipage to be seen, but many a 
country wagon, coming to market, with a capital 
team of horses, or oxen, well appointed every way. 

" Aristocratic pride is said to be excessive at 
Berne ; and the antique simplicityof its magistrates, 
the plain and easy manners thev uniformly prt 



728 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



serve in their intercourse with the people, are not 
by any means at variance with the asseition ; for 
that external simplicity and affability to inferiors is 
one of the characteristics of the aristocratic govern- 
ment ; all assumption of superiority being carefully 
avoided when real authority is not in question. 
Zurich suggests the idea of a municipal aristocracy ; 
Berne of a warlike one : there, we think we see 
citizens of a town transformed into nobility; here 
nobles who have made themselves citizens." 

Vol. i. pp. 213—217.* 

But we must now hasten from the Physical 
wonders of this country to some of the author's 
Moral observations ; and Ave are tempted to 
give the first place to his unsparing but dis- 
passionate remarks on the character of modern 
English travellers. At Geneva, he observes, 

"English travellers swarm here, las everywhere 
else; but they do not mix with the society of the 
country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to 
like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the 
other hand, say, ' Their former friends, the English, 
are so changed they scarcely know them again. 
They used to be a plain«downright race, in whom a 
certain degree of sauvagerie (oddity and shyness) 
only served to set off the advantages of a highly 
cultivated understanding, ,of a liberal mind f D and 
generous temper, which characterised them in gen- 
eral. Their young men were often rather wild, but 
soon reformed, and became like their fathers. In- 
stead of this, we now see (they say) a mixed assem- 
blage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those 
qualities we were wont to admire in their predeces- 
sors. Their former shyness and reserve is changed 
to disdain and rudeness. If you seek these modern 
English, they keep aloof, do not mix in conversa- 
tion, and seem to laugh at you. Their conduct, 
still more strange and unaccountable in regard to 
each other, is indicative- of contempt or suspicion. 
Studiously avoiding to exchange a word with their 
countrymen, one would suppose they expected to 
find a sharper in every individual of their own na- 
tion, not particularly introduced, — or at best a per- 
son beneath them. Accordingly you cannot vex or 
displease them more than by inviting other English 
travellers to meet them, whom they may be com- 
pelled afterwards to acknowledge. If they do not 
find a crowd, they are tired. If you speak of the 
old English you formerly knew, that was before the 
Flood ! If you talk of books, it is pedantry, and 
they yawn ; of politics, they run wild about Bona- 
parte ! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to 
please them. At the sound of the fiddle, the think- 
ing nation starts up at once. Their young people 
are adepts in the art ; and take pains to become so, 
spending half their time with the dancing master 
You may know the houses where they live by the 
scraping of the fiddle, and shaking: of the floor, 
which disturbs their neighbours. Few bring letters; 
and yet they complain they are neglected by the 

f;ood company, and cheated by innkeepers. The 
atter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former 
times, or at least having heard of them, think they 
may charge accordingly ; but only find des Anglais 
pour rire, who bargain at the door, before they ven- 
ture to come in, for the leg of mutton and bottle of 
wine, on which they mean to dine !' 

" Placed as I am between the two parties, I hear 
young Englishmen repeat, what they have heard in 
France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and in- 
terested, and their women des precieuses ridicules, 
the very milliners and mantua-makers giving them- 
selves airs of modesty and deep reading ! that there 
is no opera, nor theatre des varietes; in short, that 
Geneva is the dullest place in the world. Some 
say it is but a bad copy of England, a sham republic ; 
and a scientific, no less than a political, counterfeit. 

* Many travelling details, and particular de- 
scriptions, are here omitted. 



In short, the friends of Geneva, among o; r modem 
English travellers, are not nimerous — though they 
are select. These last distinguished themselves 
during the late hard winter by their bounty to the 
poor — not the poor of Geneva, who were sufficiently 
assisted by their richer countrymen, but those of 
Savoy, who were literally starving. If English 
travellers no longer appear in the same light as for- 
merly, it is because it is not the same class of peo- 
ple who go abroad, but all classes, — and not the best 
of all classes, either. They know this too, and say 
it themselves; they feel the ridicule of their enor- 
mous numbers, and of the absurd conduct of many 
of them. They are ashamed and provoked ; describe 
it with the most pointed irony, and tell many a hu- 
morous story against themselves. Formerly, the 
travelling class was composed of young men of 
good family and fortune, just coming of age, who, 
after leaving the University, went the tour of the 
Continent under the guidance of a learned tutor, 
often a very distinguished man, or of men of the 
same class, at a more advanced age, with their 
families, who, after many years spent in professional 
duties at home, came to visit again the countries 
they had seen in their youth, and the friends they 
had known there. In those better times, when no 
Englishman left his country either to seek his for- 
tune, to save money, or to hide himself; when 
travellers of that nation were all very rich or very 
learned; of high birth, yet liberal principles: un- 
bounded in their generosity, and with means equal 
to the inclination, their high standing in the world 
might well be accounted for; and it is a great pity 
they should have lost it. Were I an Englishman, 
I would not set out on my travels until the new- 
fashion were over." — Vol. i. pp. 356 — 359. 

At Schaffhausen, again, he observes, 

"There were other admirers here besides our- 
selves ; some English, and more Germans, who 
furnished us with an opportunity of comparing the 
difference of national manners. The former, divided 
into groups, carefully avoiding any communication 
with each other still more than with the foreigners, 
never exchanged a word, and scarcely a look, with 
any but the legitimate interlocutors of their own set ; 
women adhpring more particularly to the rule— from 
native reserve and timidity, full as much as from 
pride or from extreme good breeding. Some of the 
ladies here might be Scotch ; at least they wore the 
national colours, and we overheard them drawing 
comparisons between what we had under our eyes 
and Coralyn ; giving justly enough, the preference 
to the Clyde ; but, at any rate, they behaved h 
V Anglaise. The German ladies, on the contrary, 
contrived to Her conversation in indifferent French. 
With genuine simplicity, wholly unconscious of for- 
wardness, although it might undoubtedly have been 
so qualified in England, they begged of my friend 
to let them hear a few words in English, just to 
know the sound, to which they were strangers. If 
we are to judge of the respective merits of these 
opposite manners, by the impression they leave, I 
think the question is already decided by the English 
against themselves. Yet, at the same time that "they 
blame and deride their own proud reserve, and 
would depart from it if they well knew how, but a 
few have the courage to venture : — and I reaily be- 
lieve they are the best bred, who thus allow them- 
selves to be good-humoured and vulgar." 

Vol. i. pp. 94, 95. 

We have not much to say in defence of 
our countrymen — but what maybe said truly, 
ought not to be suppressed. That our travel- 
lers are nt»w generally of a lower rank than 
formerly/ and that not very many of them are 
fitted, either by their wealth or breeding;, to 
upholdJne character of the noble and honour- 
able -persons who once almost monopolised 
the advantages of foreign travel, is of course 



SIMOND'S SWITZERLAND. 



729 



implied in the fact of their having become 
vastly more numerous, — without supposing 
any actual degeneracy in the nation itself. 
At a very popular point of M. Simond's jour- 
ney, it appeared from a register which he 
consulted, that the proportion of travellers 
from different countries, was twenty-eight 
English to four Prussians, two Dutch, five 
French, one Italian, and three Americans. — 
That some of this great crowd of emigrants 
might not be suitable associates for some 
others, may easily be conjectured — and that 
the better sort may not have been very wil- 
ling to fraternise with those who did least 
honour to their common country, could scarce- 
ly be imputed to them as a fault. But these 
considerations, we fear, will go but a little way 
to explain the phenomenon ; or to account for 
the " Morgue Aristocratique," as Bonaparte 
called it, of the English gentry — the sort of 
sulky and contemptuous reserve with which, 
both at home and abroad, almost all who have 
any pretensions to bon ton seem to think it 
necessary to defend those pretensions. The 
thing has undoubtedly been carried, of late 
years, to an excess that is both ludicrous and 
offensive — and is, in its own nature, unques- 
tionably a blemish and a misfortune : But it 
does not arise, we are persuaded, from any 
thing intrinsically haughty or dull in our tem- 
perament — but is a natural consequence, and, 
it must be admitted, a considerable drawback 
from two very proud peculiarities in our con- 
dition — the freedom of our constitution, and 
the rapid progress of wealth and intelligence 
in the body of the nation. 

In most of the other countries of Europe, 
if a man was not born in high and polished 
society, he had scarcely any other means of 
gaining admission to it — and honour and dig- 
nity, it was supposed, belonged, by inheri- 
tance, to a very limited class of the people. 
Within that circle, therefore, there could be no 
derogation — and, from without it, there could 
be no intrusion. But, in this country, persons 
of every condition have been long entitled to 
aspire to every situation — and, from the nature 
of our political constitution, any one who had 
individual influence, by talent, wealth, or ac- 
tivity, became at once of consequence in the 
community, and was classed as the open rival 
or necessary auxiliary of those who had the 
strongest hereditary claims to importance. 
But though the circle of Society was in this 
way at all times larger than in the Conti- 
nental nations, and embraced more persons 
of dissimilar training and habits,, it does not 
appear to have given a tone of repulsion to 
the manners of those who affected the supe- 
riority, till a period comparatively remote. 
In the days of the Tudors and Stuarts there 
was a wide pale of separation between the 
landed Aristocracy and the rest of the popu- 
lation ; and accordingly, down at least to the 
end of Charles the Second's reign, there 
seems to have been none of this dull and 
frozen arrogance in the habits of good com- 
pany. The true reason of this, however, was. 
that though the competition was constitution- 
ally open, good education was, in fact, till 



after this period, confined to the children of 
the gentry ; and a certain parade m equipage 
and dress, wh.ch co jld not be easily assumed 
but by the opulent, nor naturally carried but 
by those who had been long accustomed to 
it, threw additional difficulties in the way 
of those who wished to push themselves for- 
ward in society, and rendered 'any other bul- 
warks unnecessary for the protection of the 
sanctuary of fashion. 

From the time of Sir Robert Walpole, how- 
ever, the communication between the higher 
and the lower orders became far more open 
arid easy. Commercial wealth and enterprise 
were prodigiously extended — literature and 
intelligence spread with unprecedented ra- 
pidity among the body of the people ; and 
the increased intercourse between the differ- 
ent parts of the country, naturally produced 
a greater mixture of the different classes of 
the people. This was followed by a general 
relaxation in those costly external observances, 
by which persons of condition had till then 
been distinguished. Ladies laid aside their 
hoops, trains, and elaborate head-dresses ; and 
gentlemen their swords, periwigs, and em- 
broidery ; — and at the same time that it thus 
became quite practicable for an attorney's 
clerk or a mercer's apprentice to assume the 
exterior of a nobleman, it happened also, both 
that many persons of that condition had the 
education that fitted them for a higher rank — 
and that several had actually won their way 
to it by talents and activity, which had not 
formerly been looked for in that quarter. — 
Their success was well merited undoubtedly, 
and honourable both to themselves and their 
country; but its occasional occurrence, even 
more than the discontinuance of aristocrat! cal 
forms or the popular spirit of the Government, 
tended strongly to encourage the pretensions 
of others, who had little qualification for suc- 
cess, beyond an eager desire to obtain it. — 
So many persons now raised themselves by 
their own exertions, that every one thought 
himself entitled to rise ; and very few pro- 
portionally were contented to remain in the 
rank to which they were born ) and as vanity 
is a still more active principle than ambition, 
the effects of this aspiring spirit were more 
conspicuously seen in the invasion which it 
prompted on the prerogatives of polite society, 
than in its more serious occupations : and a 
herd of uncomfortable and unsuitable com- 
panions beset all the approaches to gcr>d com- 
pany, and seemed determined to force all its 
barriers. 

We think we have now stated the true 
causes of this phenomenon — but. at all events, 
the fact we believe to be incontrovertible, that 
within the last fifty years there has been an 
incredible increase of forwardness and solid 
impudence among the half-bred and half- 
educated classes of this country — and that 
there was consequently some apology for the 
assumption of more distant and forbidding 
manners towards strangers, on the part of' 
those who were already satisfied with the ex- 
tent of their society. It was evidently easiei 
and more prudent to reject the overtures of 



730 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



unknown acquaintances, than to shake them 
off after they had been once allowed to fasten 
themselves — to repress, in short, the first at- 
tempts at familiarity, and repel, by a chilling 
and somewhat disdainful air, the advances of 
all, of whom it might any way be suspected 
that they might turn out discreditable or un- 
fit associates. • 

This, we have no doubt, is the true history 
of that awful tone, of gloomy indifference 
and stupid arrogance, which has unfortunately 
become so striking a characteristic of English 
manners. At its best, and when most justified 
by the circumstance of the parties, it has, v\e 
must allow, but an ungracious and disoblig- 
ing air: But the extravagant height to which 
it is now frequently carried, and the extraor- 
dinary occasions on which it is sometimes dis- 
played, deserve all the ridicule and reproba- 
tion they meet with. We should not quarrel 
much with a man of family and breeding 
being a little distant and cold to the many 
very affable people he may meet with, either 
in his travels, or in places of public resort at 
home. But the provoking thing is, to see the 
same frigid and unsociable manner adopted 
in private society, and towards persons of the 
highest character, if they happen not to be- 
long to the same set, or to be occupied with 
the same pursuits with those fastidious mor- 
tals — who, while their dignity forbids them to 
be affable to men of another club, or women 
of another assembly, yet admit to the fami- 
liarity of their most private hours, a whole 
gang of led captains, or led parsons, fiddlers, 
boxers, or parasitical buffoons. But the most 
remarkable extravagance in the modern prac- 
tice of this repulsive system, is, that the most 
outrageous examples of it are to be met with 
among those who have the least occasion for 
its protection, — persons whose society nobody 
would think of courting, and who yet receive 
the slightest and most ordinary civilities, — 
being all that the most courteous would ever 
dream of offering them. — with airs of as 
vehement disdain as if they were really in 
danger of having their intimacy taken by 
6torm ! Such manners, in such people, are 
no doubt in the very extreme of absurdity. — 
But it is the mischief of all cheap fashions, 
that they are immediately pirated by the vul- 
gar; and certainly there is none that can be 
assumed with so little cost, either of industry 
or understanding as this. As the whole of it 
consists in being silent, stupid, and sulky, it 
is quite level to the meanest capacity — and, 
we have no doubt, has enabled many to pass 
for persons of some consideration, who could 
never have done so on any other terms ; or 
has permitted them at least to think that they 
were shunning the society of many by whom 
they would certainly have been shunned. 

We trust, therefore, that this fashion of 
mock stateliness and sullen reserve will soon 
pass away. The extreme facility with which, 
it maybe copied by the lowest and dullest of 
mankind, — the caricatures which are daily 
exhibited of it in every disgusting variety, — 
and the restraints it must impose upon the 
good nature and sociality which, after all, do 



really form a part of our national character, 
must concur, we think, with the alienation it 
produces in others, speedily to consign tt to 
the tomb of other forgotten affectations. The 
duties that we owe to strangers that come 
casually into our society, certainly are not 
very weighty — and a man is no doubt entitled 
to consult his own ease, and even his indo- 
lence, at the hazard of being unpopular among 
such persons. But, after all, affability and 
complaisance are still a kind of duties, in their 
degree ; and of all duties, we should really 
think are those that are repaid, not only with 
the largest share of gratitude, but with the 
greatest internal satisfaction. All we ask is, 
that they, and the pleasure which naturally 
accompanies their exercise, should not be sa- 
crificed to a vain notion of dignity, which the 
person assuming it knows all the while to be 
false and hollow — or to a still vainer assump- 
tion of fashion, which does not impose upon 
one in a thousand ; and subjects its unhappy 
victim to the ridicule of his very competitors 
in the practice. All studied manners are as- 
sumed, of course, for the sake of the effect 
they are to produce on the beholders: And if 
a man have a particularly favourable opinion 
of the wisdom and dignity of his physiogno- 
my, and, at the same time, a perfect con- 
sciousness of the folly and vulgarity of his 
discourse, there is no denying that such a 
man, when he is fortunate enough to be \\ here 
he is not known, will do well to keep his own 
secret, and sit as silent, and look as repulsive 
among strangers as possible. But, under any 
other circumstances, we really cannot admit 
it to be a reasonable, any more than an amia- 
ble demeanour. To return, however, to M. 
Simond. 

If he is somewhat severe upon our national 
character, it must be confessed that he deals 
still harder measure to his own countrymen. 
There is one passage in which he distinctly 
states that no man in France now pretends to 
any principle, either personal or political. 
What follows is less atrocious, — and probably 
nearer the truth. It is the sequel of an enco- 
mium on the domestic and studious occupa- 
tions of the well-informed society of Zurich. 

" Probably a mode of life so entirely domestic 
would tempt few strangers, and in France particu- 
larly, it would appear quite intolerable. Yet I doubt 
whether these contemners of domestic dulness are 
not generally the dtdlest of the two. Walking oc- 
casionally the whole length of the interior Boule- 
vards of Paris, on a summer evening, I have gene- 
rally observed on my return, at the interval of 
several hours, the very same figures sining just 
where I had left them ; mostly isolated middle-aged 
men, established for the evening on three chairs, 
one for the elbow, another for the extended leg, a 
third for the centre of gravity; with vacant looks 
and a muddy complexion, appearing discontented 
with themselves and others, and profoundly tired. 
A fauteuil in a salon, for the passive hearer of tho 
talk of others, is still worse. I take it, than the three 
chairs on the Boulevard. The theatre, seen again 
and again, can have no great charm ; nor is it every 
one who has money to spare for the one, or free ac- 
cess to the other; therefore, an immense number 
of people are driven to the Boulevard as a last re- 
source. As to home, it is no resource at all. No 
one thinks of the possibility of employing his time, 



SIMOND'S SWITZERLAND. 



"31 



tbero, either by himself or with his family. And 
the result, upon the whole, is, that I do not believe 
there is a country in the world where you see so 
many long faces, care-worn and cross, as among 
the very people who are deemed, and believe them- 
selves, the merriest in the world. A man of rank 
and talent, who has spent many years in the Cri- 
mea, who employed himself diligently and usefully 
when there, and who naturally loves a country 
where, he has done much good, praising it to a 
friend, has been heard to remark, as the main ob- 
jection to a residence otherwise delightful — ' Mais 
on est oblige de s'aller coucher tons lessoirs a sept 
heures, — parcequ'en Crimee on ne sait pas ou aller 
passer la soiree !' This remark excites no surprise 
at Paris. Every one there feels that there can be 
no alternative, — some place, not home, to spend 
your evenings in, ortobed at seven o'clock ! It puts 
one in mind of the gentleman who hesitated about 
marrying a lady whose company he liked very 
much, 'for,' as he observed, 'where could I then 
go to pass my evenings?' " — Vol. i. pp. 404, 405. 

The following, though not a cordial, is at 
least a candid testimony to the substantial 
benefits of the Revolution : — 

" The clamorous, restless, and bustling manners 
of the common people of Aix their antiquated and 
ragged dress, their diminutive stature and ill-favour- 
ed countenances, strongly recalled to my mind the 
population of France, such as I remembered it 
formerly ; for a considerable changp has certainly 
taken place, in all such respects, between the years 
1789 and 1815. The people of France are'Hecidedly 
less noisy, and graver ; better dressed, and cleaner. 
All this may be accounted for : but handsomer is 
not so readily understood, a priori. It seems as if 
the hardships of war, having successively carried 
off all the weakly, those who survived have regen- 
erated the species. The people have undoubtedly 
gained much by the Revolution on the score of 
property, and a little as to political institutions. 
They certainly seem conscious of some advantage 
attained, and to be proud of it — not properly civil 
liberty, which is little understood, and not properly 
estimated, but a certain coarse equality, asserted in 
small things, although not thought of in the essen- 
tials of society. This new-born equality is very 
touchy, as if it felt yet insecure ; and thence a de- 
gree of rudeness in the common intercourse with 
the lower class, and. more or less, all classes, very 
different from the old proverbial French politeness. 
This, though in i'self not agreeable, is. however, a 
good sign. Pride is a step in moral improvement, 
from a very low s'a'e. These opinions, I am well 
aware, will not pass in France without animadver- 
sion, as it is not to be expected the same judgment 
will be formed of things under different circum- 
stances. If my critics, however, will only go three 
or four thousand miles off, and stay away a quarter 
of a century, I dare say we shall agree better when 
we compare notes on their return." 

Vol. i. pp. 333, 334. 

The way in which M. Simond speaks of 
Rousseau, affords a striking example of that 
struggle between enthusiasm and severity — 
romance and cool reason, which we noticed 
in the beginning as characteristic of the whole 
work. He talks, on the whole, with contempt, 
and even bitterness, of his character: But he 
follows his footsteps, and the vestiges and 
memorials even of his fictitious personages, 
with a spirit of devout observance — visits 
Clareus, and pauses at Meillerie — rows in a 
burning day to his island in the lake of Bien- 
ne — expatiates on the beauty of his retreat at 
the Charmette? — and even stops to explore 
his temporary abode at Moitier Travers. The 
following passages are remarkable : — 



" Rousseau, from his garret, governed an em- 
pire — that of the mind ; the founder of a new reli- 
gion in politics, and to his enthusiastic followers a 
prophet — tie said, and they believed ! 1 he disci- 
ples of Voltaire might be more numerous, but they 
were bound to him by far weaker ties. Those of 
Rousseau made the French Revolution, and per- 
ished for it; while Voltaire's, miscalculating its 
chances, perished by it. Both, perhaps, deserved 
their fate; but the former certainly acted the nobler 
part, and went to battle with the best weapons too, 
— for in the deadly encounter of all the passions, of 
the most opposite principles and irreconcilable pre- 
judices, cold-hearted wit is of little avail. Heroes 
and martyrs do not care for epigrams ; and he must 
have enthusiasm who pretends to lead the enthu- 
siastic or cope with them. Uneintime persuasion, 
Rousseau has somewhere said, ra'a toujours te?iu 
lieu d' eloquence ! And well it might ; for the first 
requisite to command belief is to believe yourself. 
Nor is it easy to impose on mankind in this respect. 
There is no eloquence, no ascendancy over the 
minds of others, without this intimate persuasion in 
yourself. Rousseau's might only be a sort of poet- 
ical persuasion, lasting but as long as the occasion ; 
yet it was thus powerful, only because it was true, 
though but for a quarter of an hour perhaps, in the 
heart of this inspired writer. 

" Mr. M , son of the friend of Rousseau, to 

whom he left his manuscripts, and especially his 
Confessions, to be published after his death, had 
the goodness to show them to me. I observed a 
fair copy written by himself, in a small hand like 
print, very neat and correct; not a blot or an era- 
sure to be seen. The most curious of these papers, 
however, were several sketch-books, or memoranda 
half filled, where the same hand is no longer dis- 
cernible ; but the same genius, and the same way- 
ward temper and perverse intellect, in every fugi- 
tive thought which is there put down. Rousseau's 
composition, like Montesquieu's, was laborious and 
slow ; his ideas flowed rapidly, but were not readily 
brought into proper order ; they did not appear to 
have come in consequence of a previous plan ; but 
the plan itself, formed afterwards, came in aid of 
the ideas, and served as a sort of frame for them, 
instead of being a system to which they were sub- 
servient. Very possibly some of the fundamental 
opinions he defended so earnestly, and for which 
his disciples would willingly have suffered martyr- 
dom, were originally adopted because a bright 
thought, caught as it flew, was entered in his com- 
monplace book. 

" These loose notes of Rousseau afford a curious 
insight info his taste in composition. You find 
him perpetually retrenching epithets — reducing his 
thoughts to their simplest expression — giving words 
a peculiar energy, by the new application of their 
original meaning — going back to the naivete of old 
language ; and, in the artificial process of simplici- 
ty, carefully effacing the trace of each laborious 
footstep as he advanced ; each idea, each image, 
coming out, at last, as if cast entire at a single 
throw, original, energetic, and clear. Although 

Mr. M -had promised to Rousseau that he would 

publish his Confessions as they were, yet he took 
upon himself to suppress a passage explaining cer- 
tain circumstances of his abjurations at Anneci, af- 
fording a curious, but frightfully disgusting, picture 
of monkish manners at that time. It is a pity that 

Mr. M did not break his word in regard to some 

few more passages of that most admirable and most 
vile of all the productions of genius." 

Vol. i. pp 564—566. 

The following notices of Madame de Stael 
are emphatic and original : — 

" I had seen Madame de Stael a child ; and I saw 
her again on her deathbed The intermediate years 
were spent in another hemisphere, as far as possible 
from the scenes in which she lived. Mixing again, 
not many months since, with a world in which I am 



732 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



a stranger, and feel that I must remain so, T just saw 
this celebrated woman; and heard, as it were, her 
last words, as I had read her works before, uninflu- 
enced by any local bias. Perhaps, the impressions 
of a man ihus dropped from another world into this 
miy be deemed something like those of posterity. 
" Madame de Stael lived for conversation : She 
was not happy out of a large circle, and a French 
circle, where she could be heard in her own lan- 
guage to the best advantage. Her extravagant ad- 
miration of the society of Paris was neither more 
nor less than genuine admiration of herself. It 
was the best mirror she could get — and that was 
all. Ambitious of all sorts of notoriety, she would 
have given the world to have been born noble and 
a beauty. Yet there was in this excessive vanity 
so much honesty and frankness, it was so entirely 



void of affectation and trick, she made so fair and so 
irresistible an appeal to your own sense of her worth, 
that what would have been laughable in any one 
else, was almost respectable in her. That ambi- 
tion of eloquence, so conspicuous in her writings 
was much less observable -in her conversation ; 
there was more abandon in what she said than in 
what she wrote ; while speaking, the spontaneous 
inspiration was no labour, but all pleasure. Con- 
scious of extraordinary powers, she gave herself up 
to the present enjoyment of the good things, and 
the deep things, flowing in a full Hream from her 
well-stored mind and luxuriant fancy. The inspi- 
ration was pleasure — the pleasure was inspiration ; 
and without precisely intending it, she was, every 
evening of her life, in a circle ot company, the very 
Corinne she had depicted. "—Vol. i. pp.' 283—286. 



(JToutmbtr, 1812.) 

Rejected Addresses; or ihe New Theatrum Poetar urn. 12mo. pp. 126. London: 18 12.^ 



After all the learning, wrangling and 
solemn exhortation of our preceding pages, 
we think we may venture to treat our readers 
with a little morsel of town-made gaiety, 
without any great derogation from our estab- 
lished character for seriousness and contempt 
of trifles. We are aware, indeed, that there 
is no way by which we could so certainly in- 
gratiate ourselves with our provincial readers, 
as by dealing largely in such articles; and 
we can assure them, that if we have not 
hitherto indulged them very often in this 
manner, it is only because we have not often 
met with any thing nearly so good as the 
little volume before us. We have seen no- 
thing comparable to it indeed since the pub- 
lication of the poetry of the Antijacobin ; and 
though it wants the high seasoning of politics 
and personality, which no doubt contributed 
much to the currency of that celebrated col- 
lection, we are not sure that it does not ex- 
hibit, on the whole, a still more exquisite 
talent of imitation, with powers of poetical 
composition that are scarcely inferior. 

We must not forget, however, to inform our 
country readers, that these "Rejected Ad- 
dresses" are merely a series of Imitations of 
the style and manner of the most celebrated 
living writers — who are here supposed to have 



* I have been so much struck, on lately looking 
back to this paper, with the very extraordinary 
merit and felicity of the Imitations on which it is 
employed, that I cannot resist the temptation of 
giving them a chance of delighting a new genera- 
tion of admirers, by including some part of them in 
this publication. I take them, indeed, to be the 
rery best imitations) and often of difficult originals) 
that ever were, made: and, considering their great 
extent and variety, to indicate a talent to which I 
do not know where to look for a parallel. Some 
few of them descend to the level of parodies : But 
by far the greater part are of a much higher de- 
scription. They ought, I suppose, to have come 
under the head of Poetry, — but " Miscellaneous" 
is broad enough to cover any thing. — Some of the 
less striking citations are now omitted. The au- 
thors, I believe, have been long known to have 
been the late Messrs. Smith. 



tried their hands at an address to be spokeu 
at the opening of the New Theatre in Drury 
Lane — in the hope, we presume, of obtaining 
the twenty-pound prize which the munificent 
managers are said to have held out to the suc- 
cessful candidate. The names of the imagi- 
nary competitors, whose works are now offered 
to the public, are only indicated by their ini- 
tials; and there are one or two which we 
really do not know how to fill up. By far the 
greater part, however, are such as cannot pos- 
sibly be mistaken; and no reader of Scott, 
Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, Lewis. Moore, 
or Spencer, could require the aid, even of their 
initials, to recognise them in their portraits. 
Coleridge, Coleman, and Lord Byron, are not 
quite such striking likenesses. Of Dr. Busby's 
and Mr. Fitzgerald's, we do not hold ourselves 
qualified to judge — not professing to be deeply 
read in the works of these originals. 

There is no talent so universally entertain- 
ing as that of mimicry — even when it is con- 
fined to the lively imitation of the air and 
manner — the voice, gait, and external deport- 
ment of ordinary individuals. Nor is this to 
be ascribed entirely to our wicked love of 
ridicule ; for, though we must not assign a 
very high intellectual rank to an art which is 
said to have attained to perfection among the 
savages of New Holland, some admiration is 
undoubtedly due to the capacity of nice ob- 
servation which it implies; and some gratifi- 
cation may be innocently derived from the 
sudden perception which it excites of pecu- 
liarities previously unobserved. It rises in 
interest, however, and in dignity, when it 
succeeds in expressing, not merely the visible 
and external characteristics of its objects, but 
those also of their taste, their genius, and 
temper. A vulgar mimic repeats a man's 
cant-phrases and known stories, with an exact 
imitation of his voice, look, and gestures : But 
he is an artist of a far higher description, who 
can make stories or reasonings in his manner; 
and represent the features and- movements of 
his mind, as well as the accidents of his body. 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



733 



The same distinction applies to the mimicry, 
if it may be so called, of an author's style and 
manner of writing. To copy his peculiar 
phrases or turns of expression — to borrow the 
grammatical structure of his sentences, or the 
metrical balance of his lines — or to crowd and 
string togeiher all the pedantic or affected 
words which he has become remarkable for 
using — applying, or misapplying all these 
without the least regard to the character of 
his genius, or the spirit of his compositions, is 
to imitate an author only as a monkey might 
imitate a man — or, at best, to support a mas- 
querade character on the strength of the Dress 
only ; and at all events, requires as little talent, 
and deserves as little praise, as the mimetic 
exhibitions in the neighbourhood of Port-Syd- 
ney. It is another matter, however, to be able 
to borrow the diction and manner of a cele- 
brated writer to express sentiments like his 
own — to write as he would have written on 
the subject proposed to his imitator — to think 
his thoughts, in short, as well as to use his 
words — and to make the revival of his style 
appear but a consequence of the strong con- 
ception of his peculiar ideas. To do this in all 
the perfection of which it is capable, requires 
talents, perhaps, not inferior to those of the 
original on whom they are employed — to- 
gether with a faculty of observation, and a 
dexterity of application, which that original 
might not always possess ; and should not only 
afford nearly as great pleasure to the reader, 
as a piece of composition, — but may teach him 
some lessons, or open up to him some views, 
which could not have been otherwise disclosed. 
The exact imitation of a good thing, it must 
be admitted, promises fair to be a pretty good 
thing in itself; but if the resemblance be very 
striking, it commonly has the additional ad- 
vantage of letting us more completely into the 
secret of the original author, and enabling us 
to understand far more clearly in what the 
peculiarity of his manner consists, than most 
of us should ever have done without this as- 
sistance. The resemblance, it is obvious, can 
only be rendered striking by exaggerating a 
little, ?dld bringing more conspicuously for- 
ward, all that is peculiar and characteristic in 
the model : And the marking features, which 
were somewhat shaded and confused in their 
natural presentment, being thus magnified and 
disengaged in the copy, are more easily ob- 
served and comprehended, and their effect 
traced with infinitely more ease and assu- 
rance ; — just as the course of a river, or a range 
of mountains, is more distinctly understood 
when laid down on a map or plan, than when 
studied in their natural proportions. Thus, in 
Burke's imitation of Bolingbroke (the most 
perfect specimen, perhaps, which ever will 
exist of the art of which we are speaking), w r e 
have all the qualities which distinguish the 
style, or we may indeed say the genius, of 
that noble writer, as it were, concentrated and 
brought at once before us; so that an ordinary 
reader, who, in perusing his genuine works, 
merely felt himself dazzled and disappointed 
— delighted and wearied he could not tell 
why, is now enabled to form a definite and 



precise conception of the causes of those op- 
posite sensations, — and to trace to the noble- 
ness of the diction and the inaccuracy of the 
reasoning — the boldness of the propositions 
and the rashness of the inductions — the mag- 
nificence of the pretensions and the feebleness 
of the performance, those contradictory judg- 
ments, with the confused result of -which he 
had been perplexed in the study of the original. 
The same thing may be said of the imitation 
of Darwin, contained in the Loves of the Tri- 
angles, though confessedly of a satirical or 
ludicrous character. All the peculiarities of 
the original poet are there brought together, 
and crowded into a little space ; where they 
can be compared and estimated with ease. 
His essence in short, is extracted, and sepa- 
rated in a good degree from what is common 
to him with the rest of his species; — and 
while he is recognised at once as the original 
from whom all these characteristic traits have 
been borrowed, that original itself is far better 
understood — because the copy presents no 
traits but such as are characteristic. 

This highest species of imitation, therefore, 
we conceive to be of no slight value in fixing 
the taste and judgment of the public, even 
with regard to the great standard and original 
authors who naturally become its subjects. 
The pieces before us, indeed, do not fall cor- 
rectly under this denomination : — the subject 
to which they are confined, and the occasion 
on which they are supposed to have been pro- 
duced, having necessarily given them a cer- 
tain ludicrous and light air, not quite suitable 
to the gravity of some of the originals, and 
imparted to some of them a sort of mongrel 
character in which we may discern the fea- 
tures both of burlesque and of imitation. 
There is enough, however, of the latter to an- 
swer the purposes we have indicated above; 
while the tone of levity and ridicule may 
answer the farther purpose of admonishing the 
authors who are personated in this exhibition, 
in what directions they trespass on the borders 
of absurdity, and from what peculiarities they 
are in danger of becoming ridiculous. A mere 
parody or travestie, indeed, is commonly made, 
with the greatest success, upon the tenderest 
and most sublime passages in poetry — the 
whole secret of such performances consisting 
in the substitution of a mean, ludicrous, or 
disgusting subject, for a touching or noble one. 
But where this is not the case, and where the 
passages imitated are conversant with objects 
nearly as familiar, and names and actions 
almost as undignified, as those in the imita- 
tion, the author may be assured, that what a 
moderate degree of exaggeration has thus 
made eminently laughable, could never have 
been worthy of a place in serious and lofty 
poetry. — But we are falling, we perceive, into 
our old trick of dissertation, and forgetting our 
benevolent intention to dedicate this article to 
the amusement of our readers. — We break 
off therefore, abruptly, and turn without far- 
ther preamble to the book. 

The first piece, under the name of the loyal 
Mr. Fitzgerald, though as good, we suppose, 
as the original, is not very interesting. Whether 
SM 



734 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



it be very like Mr. Fitzgerald or not, however, 
it must be allowed that th.3 vulgarity, ser- 
vility, and gioss absurdity of the newspaper 
scribblers is well rendered in the following 
lines : — 

" Gallia's stern despot shall in vain advance 

From Paris, the metropolis of France ; 

By ihis day month the monster shall not gain 

A foot of land in Portugal or Spain. 

See Wellington in Salamanca's field 

Forces his favourite General to yield, [Marmont 

Breaks through his lines, and leaves his boasted 

Expiring on the plain without an arm on: 

Madrid he enters at the cannon's mouth, 

And then the villages still further south! 

Base Bonaparte, filled with deadly ire, 

Sets one by one our playhouses on fire : 

Some years ago he pounced with deadly glee on 

The Opera House — then burnt down the Pantheon : 

Nay, still unsated, in a coat of flames, 

Next at Millbank he cross'd the river Thames. 

Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise? 

Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies? 

Who thought in flames St. James's court to pinch ? 

Who burnt the wardrobe of poor Lady Finch ? 

Why he, who, forging for this Isle a yoke, 

Reminds me of a line I lately spoke, 

1 The tree of Freedom is the British oak.' " 

The next, in the name of Mr. W. Words- 
worth, is entitled "The Baby's Debut;" and 
is characteristically announced as intended to 
have been "spoken in the character of Nancy 
Lake, a girl eight years of age, who is drawn 
upon the stage in a child's chaise, by Samuel 
Hughes, her uncle's porter." The author does 
not, in this instance, attempt to copy any of 
the higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth's 
poetry : But has succeeded perfectly in the 
imitation of his mawkish affectations of child- 
ish simplicity and nursery stammering. We 
hope it will make him ashamed of his Alice 
Fell, and the greater part of his last volumes 
— of which it is by no means a parody, but a 
very fair, and indeed we think a flattering 
imitation. We give a stanza or two as a 
gpecimen : — 

"My brother Jack was nine in May, 
And I was eight on New Year's Day ; 

So in Kane Wilson's shop 
Papa (he's my papa and Jack's) 
Bought me last week a doll of wax, 

And brother Jack, a top. 

" Jack's in the pouts — and this it is, 
He thinks mine came to more than his, 

So to my drawer he goes, 
Takes out the doll, and, oh, my stars! 
He pokes her head between the bars, 

And melts off half her nose!" — pp. 5, 6. 

Mr. Moore's Address is entitled "The Liv- 
ing Lustres," and appears to us a very fair 
imitation of the fantastic verses which that 
ingenious person indites when he is merely 
gallant ; and, resisting the lures of voluptuous- 
ness, is not enough in earnest to be tender. It 
begins : — 

"'0 why should our dull retrospective addresses 

Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane fire ? 
Away with blue devils, away with distresses, 

And give the gay spirit to sparkling desire ! 
Let artists decide on the beauties of Drury, 

The richest to me is when woman is there ; 
The question of Houses 1 leave to the jury ; 

The fairest to me is the house of the fair." — p. 25. 



The main drift of the piece, however, as 
well as its title, is explained in the following 
stanzas : — 

" How well would our artists attend to their duties, 

Our house save in oil, and our authors in wit, 
In lieu of yon lamps if a row of young beauties 
Glanc'd light from their eyes between us and 
the pit. [is on 

Attun'd to the scene, when the pale yellow moon 

Tower and tree, they'd look sober and sage ; 
And when they all wink'd their dear peepers in 
unison. 
Night, pitchy night would envelope the stage. 
Ah ! could I some girl from yon box for her youth 
pick, 
I'd love her — as long as she blossom'd in youth ' 
Oh ! white is the ivory case of the toothpick, 
But when beauty smiles how much whiter tho 
tooth!" ' pp. 26, 27. 

The next, entitled "The Rebuilding," is in 
name of Mr. Sou they ; and is one of \he best 
in the collection. It is in the style of the 
Kehama of that multifarious author; and is 
supposed to be spoken in the character of one 
of his Glendoveers. The imitation of the 
diction and measure, we think, is nearly per- 
fect ; and the descriptions quite as good as the 
original. It opens with an account of the 
burning of the old theatre, formed upon the 
pattern of the Funeral of Arvalan. 

" Midnight, yet not a nose 
From Tower-hill to Piccadilly snored ! 

Midnight, yet not a nose 
From India drew the essence of repose ! 
See with what crimson fury, 
By Indra fann'd, the god of fire ascends the walls 
of Drury ! 
The tops of houses, blue with lead, 
Bend beneath the landlord's tread; 
Master and 'prentice, serving-man and lord, 
Nailor and tailor, 
Grazier and brazier, 
Thro' streets and alleys pour'd, 
All, all abroad to gaze, 
And wonder at the blaze." — pp. 29, 30. 

There is then a great deal of indescribable 
intriguing between V T eeshnoo, who wishes to 
rebuild the house through the instrumentality 
of Mr. Whitbread, and Yamen who wishes to 
prevent it. The Power of Restoration, how- 
ever, brings all the parties concerned to an 
amicable meeting; the effect of which, on 
the Power of Destruction, is thus finely repre- 
sented : — 

" Yamen beheld, and wither'd at the sight ; 
Long had he aim'd the sun-beam to control, 

For light was hateful to his soul : 
Go on, cried the hellish one, yellow with spile ; 
Go on, cried the hellish one, yellow with spleen ; 
Thy toils of the morning, like Ithaca's queen, 
I'll toil to undo every night. 

The lawvers are met at the Crown and Anchor, 

And Yamen's visage grows blanker and blanker 
The lawyers are met at the Anchor and Crown, 
And Yamen's cheek is a russety brown. 
Veeshnoo, now thy work proceeds ! 
The solicitor reads, 
And, merit of merit ! 
Red wax and green ferret 
Are fix'd at the loot of the deeds !" 

pp. 35, 36. 

" Drury's Dirge," by Laura Matilda, is not 
of the first quality. The verses, to be sure, 



REJECTED ADDRESSES. 



735 



lire very smooth, and very nonsensical — as 
was intended : Bat they are not so good as 
Swift's celebrated Song by a Person of Qua,- 
Aty, aud are so exactly in the same mea- 
sure, and on the same plan, that it is impos- 
sible to avoid making the comparison. The 
reader may take these three stanzas as a 
sample : — 

" Lurid smoke and frank suspicion, 
Hand in hand reluctant dance ; 
While the god fulfils his mission, 
Chivalry resigns his lance. 

" Hark ! the engines blandly thunder, 
Fleecy clouds dishevell'd lie ; 
And the firemen, mute with wonder, 
On the son of Saturn cry. 

" See the bird of Ammon sailing, 
Perches on the engine's peak, 
And the Eagle fireman hailing, 

Soothes them with its bickering beak." 

"A Tale of Drury," by Walter Scott, is, 
upon the whole, admirably executed ; though 
the introduction is rather tame. The burning 
is described with the mighty Minstrel's char- 
acteristic love of localities : — 

" Then London's sons in nightcap woke ! 

In bedgown woke her dames ; 
For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, 
And twice ten hundred voices spoke, 

4 The Playhouse is in flames !' 
And lo ! where Catherine Street extends, 
A fiery tail its lustre lends 

To every window pane : 
Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, 
And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, 
And Covent Garden kennels sport, 

A bright ensanguin'd drain ; 
Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, 
Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height 

Where patent shot they sell : 
The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, 
Partakes the ray with Surgeons' Hall, 
The ticket porters' house of call. 
Old Bedlam, close by London wall, 
Wright's shrimp and oyster shop withal, 

And Richardson's Hotel." — pp. 46, 47. 

The mustering of the firemen is not less 
meritorious : — 

" The summon'd firemen woke at call 
And hied them to their stations all. 
Starting from short and broken snoose, 
Each sought his pond'rous hobnail' d shoes ; 
But first his worsted hosen plied, 
Plush breeches next in crimson dyed, 

His nether bulk embrac'd ; 
Then jacket thick, of red or blue, 
Whose massv shoulder gave to view 
The badge of each respective crew, 

In tin or copper traced. 
The engines thunder'd thro' the street, 
Fire-hook, pipe, bucket, all complete, 
And torches glared, and clattering feet 

Along the pavement paced." — p. 48. 

The procession of the engines, with the 
badges of their different companies, and the 
horrible names of their leaders, is also admi- 
rable — but we cannot make room for it. The 
account of the death of Muggins and Higgin- 
bottom, however, must find a place. These 
are the two principal firemen who suffered on 
this occasion : and the catastrophe is describ- 
ed with a spirit, not unworthy of the name so 



venturously assumed by the describer. After 
the roof falls in, there is silence and great con 
sternation : — 

" When lo ! amid the wreck uprear'd 
Gradual a moving head appear'd, 

And Eagle firemen knew 
'Twas Joseph Muggins, name rever'd, 

The foreman of their crew. 
Loud shouted all in sign of woe, 
' A Muggins to the rescue, ho !' 

And pour'd the hissing tide: 
Meanwhile the Muggins fought amain, 
And strove and struggl'd all in vain, 
For rallying but to fall again, 

He tottor'd, sunk, and died! 
Did none attempt, before he fell, 
To succour one they lov'd so well? 
Yes, Higginboltom did aspire, • 

(His fireman's soul was all on fire) 

His brother chief to save ; 
But ah ! his reckless generous ire 

Serv'd but to share his grave ! 
Mid blazing beams and scalding streams, 
Thro' fire and smoke he dauntless broke, 

Where Muggins broke before. 
But sulphury stench and boiling drench, 
Destroying sight, o'erwhelm'd him quite; 

He sunk to rise no more ! 
Still o'er his head, while Fate he brav'd, 
His whizzing water-pipe he wav'd ; 
1 Whitford and Mitford, ply your pumps ! 
1 You, Clutterbuck, come stir your stumps, 
' Why are you in such doleful dumps ? 
1 A fireman, and afraid of bumps ! 
' What are they fear'd on. fools ? 'od rot 'em !' 
Were the last words of Higginbottom." 

pp. 50—52. 

The rebuilding is recorded in strains as 
characteristic, and as aptly applied : — 

Didst mark, how toil'd the busy train 
From morn to eve, till Drury Lane 
Leap'd like a roebuck from the plain ? 
Ropes rose and sunk, and rose again, 

And nimble workmen trod. 
To realize hold Wyatt's plan 
Rush'd many a howling Irishman, 
Loud clatter'd many a porter can, 
And many a rasramuffin clan, 

With trowel and with hod." — pp. 52, 53. 

"The Beautiful Incendiary," by the Hon- 
ourable W. Spencer, is also an imitation of 
great merit. The flashy, fashionable, artifi- 
cial style of this writer, with his confident 
and extravagant compliments, can scarcely 
be said to be parodied in such lines as the 
following : — 

" Sobriety cease to be sober, 

Cease labour to dig and to delve ! 
All hail to this tenth of October, 

One thousand eight hundred and twelve! 
Hah ! whom do my peepers remark ? 

'Tis Hebe with Jupiter's jug ! 
Oh, no! 'tis the pride of the Park, 

Fair Lady Elizabeth Mu£rg ! 
But ah ! why awaken the blaze 

Those bright burning-glasses contain, 
Whose lens, with concentrated rays, 

Proved fatal to old Drury Lane! 
'Twas all accidental, ihey cry : 

Away with the flimsy humbug ! 
'Twas fir'd by a flash from the eye 

Of Lady Elizabeth Mngg ! 

"Fire and Ale," by M. G. Lewis, is not 
less fortunate ; and exhibits not only a faith- 
ful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing 
versification of that singular author, but a very 



736 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



just representation of that mixture of extrava- 
gance and jocularity which has impressed 
most of his writings with the character of a 
sort of farcical horror. For example : — 

" The fire king one day rather amorous felt ; 

He mounted his hot copper filly ; 
His breeches and boots were of tin ; and the belt 
Was made of cast iron,, for fear it should melt 

With the heat of the copper colt's belly. 
Sure never was skin half so scalding as his ! 

When an infant, 'twas equally horrid, 
For the water when he was baptiz'd gave a fizz, 
And bubbl'd and simmer'd and started off, whizz ! 

As soon as it sprinkl'd his forehead. 
Oh then there was glitter and fire in each eye, 

For two living: coals were the symbols ; 
His teeth were calcin'd, and his tongue was so dry 
^t rattled against ihem as though you should try 

To play the piano in thimbles." — pp. 68, 69. 

The drift of the story is, that this formida- 
ble personage falls in love with Miss Drury 
the elder, who is consumed in his ardent em- 
brace ! when Mr. Whitbread, in the character 
of the Ale King, fairly bullies him from a 
similar attempt on her younger sister, who 
has just come out under his protection. 

We have next "Playhouse Musings," by 
Mr. Coleridge — a piece which is unquestion- 
ably Lakish — though we cannot say that we 
recognise in it any of the peculiar traits of 
that powerful and misdirected genius whose 
name it has borrowed. We rather think, 
however, that the tuneful Brotherhood will 
consider it as a respectable eclogue. This is 
the introduction : — 

" My pensive PufTlc ! wherefore. look you sad? 
I had a grandmother ; she kept a donkey 
To carry to the mart her crockery ware, 
And when that donkey look'd me in the face, 
His face was sad ! and you are sad, my Public ! 

Joy should be yours : this tenth day of October 
Again assembles us in Drury Lane. 
Long wept my eye to see the timber planks 
That hid our ruins : many a day I cried 
Ah me ! I fear th« j y never will rebuild it! 
Till on one eve. one joyful Monday eve, 
As along Charles Sireet I prepar'd to walk, 
Just at the corner, by the pastry cook's, 
I heard a trowel tick against a brick ! 
1 look'd me up, and strait a parapet 
Uprose, at least seven inches o'er the planks. 
Joy to ihee, Drury ! to myself I said. 
He of Black friars Road who hymn'd thy downfal 
In loud Hosannahs, and who prophesied 
That flames like those from prostrate Solyma 
Would scorch the hand thatvenfur'd torebuild thee, 
Has prov'd a lying prophet. From that hour, 
As leisure otfer'd, close to Mr. Spring's 
Box-office door, I've stood and eyed the builders." 

pp. 73, 74. 

Of "Architectural Atoms," translated by 
Dr. Busby, we can say very little more than 
that they appear to us to be far more capable 
of combining into good poetry than the few 
lines we were able to read of the learned 
Doctor's genuine address in the newspapers. 
They might pass, indeed, for a very tolerable 
imitation of Darwin ; — as for instance : — 

" I sing how casual bricks, in airy climb 
Encounter'd casual horse hair, casual lime ; 
How rafters borne through wond'rins: clouds elate, 
Kiss'd in their slope blue elemental slate ! 
Clasp'd solid beams, in chance-directed fury, 
And gave to birth our renovated Drury." 

pp. 82, 83. 



And again : — 

" Thus with the flames that from old Drury rise 
Its elements primaeval sought the skies, 
There pendulous to wait the happy hour, 
When new attractions should restore their power 
Here embryo sounds in sether lie conceal'd 
Like words in northern atmosphere congeal'd. 
Here many an embryo laugh, and half encore, 
Clings to the roof, or creeps along the floor. 
By puffs concipient some in aether flit, 
And soar in bravos from the thund'ring pit ; 
While some this mortal life abortive miss, 
Crush'd by a groan, or murder' d by a hiss." — p. 87. 

"The Theatre," by the Rev. G. Crabbe, 
we rather think is the best piece in the col- 
lection. It is an exquisite and most masterly 
imitation, not only of the peculiar style, but 
of the taste, temper, and manner of descrip- 
tion of that most original author; and can 
hardly be said to be in any respect a carica- 
ture of that style or manner — except in the 
excessive profusion of puns and verbal jingles 
— which, though undoubtedly to be ranked 
among his characteristics, are never so thick- 
sown in his original works as in this admira- 
ble imitation. It does not aim, of course, at 
any shadow of his pathos or moral sublimity ; 
but seems to us to be a singularly faithful 
copy of his passages of mere description. It 
begins as follows : — 

" 'Tis sweet to view from half-past five to six, 
Our long wax candles, with short cotton wicks, 
Touch'd by the lamplighter's Promethean art, 
Start into light, and make the lighter start ! 
To see red Phoebus through the gallery pane 
Tinge with his beam the beams of Drury Lane, 
While gradual parties fill our widen'd pit, 
And gape, and gaze, and wonder, ere they sit. 

" At first, while vacant seats give choice and ease, 
Distant or near, they settle where they please; 
But when the multitude contracts the span, 
And seats are rare, they settle where they can. 

" Now the full benches, to late comers, doom 
No room for standing, mi-call'd standing room. 

" Hark ! the check-taker moody silence breaks, 
And bawling ' Pit full,' gives the check he takes." 

pp. 116, 117. 

The tuning of the orchestra is given with 
the same spirit and fidelity; but we rather 
choose to insert the following descent of a 
playbill from the upper boxes : — 

" Perchance, while pit and gallery cry, ' hats off,' 
And aw'd consumption checks his chided cough, 
Some giggling daughter of the queen of love 
Drops, rtft of pin, her play-bill from above ; 
Like Icarus, while laughing galleries clap, 
Soars, ducks, and dives in air, the printed scrap: 
But, wiser far than he, combustion fears, 
And, as it flies, eludes the chandeliers ; 
Till sinking gradual, with repeated twirl, 
It settles, curling, on a fiddler's curl ; 
Who from his powder'd pate the intruder strikes, 
And, for mere malice,, sticks it on the spikes." 

p. 118. 

The quaintness and minuteness of the fol- 
lowing catalogue, are also in the very spirit 
of the original author — bating always the un- 
due allowance of puns and concetti to which 
w T e have already alluded : — 

" What various swains our motley walls contain ! 
Fashion from Moorfields. honour from Chick Lane ; 
Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, 
Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court; 



MADAME DE STAEL. 



737 



The lottery cormorant, the auction shark, 
The full-price master, and the half-price clerk ; 
Boya who long linger at the gallery door, 
With pence twice five, — they want but twopence 
Till some Samaritan the twopence spares, [more, 
And sends them jumping up the gallery stairs. 
Critics we boast who ne'er their malice baulk, 
But talk their minds, — we wish they'd mind their 
Big-worded bullies, who by quarrels live, [talk ! 
Who give the lie, and tell the lie they give ; 
And bucks with pockets empty as their pate, 
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait." 

pp. 118, 119. 

We shall conclude with the episode on the 
loss and recovery of Pat Jennings' hat — which, 
if Mr. Crabbe had thought at all of describing, 
we are persuaded he would have described 
precisely as follows : — • 

" Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat, 
But, leaning forward, Jennings lost his hat ; 
Down from the gallery the beaver flew, 
And spurn'd the one to settle in the two. 
How shall he act ? Pay at the gallery door 
Two shillings for what cost when new but four? 
Now, while his fears anticipate a thief, 
John Mullins whispers, take my handkerchief. 
Thank you, cries Pat, but one won't make a line ; 
Take mine, cried Wilson, and cried Stokes take 
A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, [mine. 

Where Spitalfields with real India vies; 
Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted hue 
Starr'd, strip'd, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue. 
Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. 
George Greene below, with palpitating hand, 
Loops the last kerchief to the beaver's band: 
Upsoars the prize ; the youth with joy unfeign'd, 
Regain'd the felt, and felt what he regain'd ; 
While to the applauding galleries grateful Pat 
Made a low bow, and touch'd the ransom'd hat." 

The Ghost of Samuel Johnson is not very 
good as a whole : though some passages are 
singularly happy. The measure and solemnity 
of his sentences, in. all the limited variety of 
their structure, is imitated with skill; — but 
the diction is caricatured in a vulgar and un- 
pleasing degree. To make Johnson call a 
door " a ligneous barricado," and its knocker 
and bell its " frappant and tintinabulant ap- 
pendages," is neither just nor humorous; 
and we are surprised that a writer who has 
given such extraordinary proofs of his talent 
for finer ridicule and fairer imitation, should 
have stooped to a vein of pleasantry so low, and 
so long ago exhausted ; especially as, in other 
passages of the same piece, he has shown 
how well qualified he was both to catch and 
to render the true characteristics of his original. 
The beginning, for example, we think excel- 
lent :— 



" That which was organised by the moral ability 
of one, has heen executed by the physical effort of 
many; and Druky Lane Theatre is now com 
plete. Of that part behind the curtain, which has 
not yet been destined to glow beneath the brush of 
the vamisher, or vibrate to the hammer of the car- 
penter, little is thought by the public, and little 
need be said by the committee. Truth, however, 
is not to be sacrificed for the accommodation of 
either ; and he who should pronounce that our edi- 
fice has received its final embellishment, would be 
disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, 
and risking the disgrace of detection without partici- 
pating the advantage of success. 

"Let it not, however, be conjectured, that be- 
cause we are unassuming, we are imbecile ; that 
forbearance is any indication of despondency, or 
humility of demerit. He that is the most assured 
of success will make the fewest appeals to favour ; 
aud where nothing is claimed that is undue, nothing 
that is due will be withheld. A swelling opening 
is too often succeeded by an insignificant conclu- 
sion. Parturient mountains have ere now produced 
muscipular abortions ; and the auditor who com- 
pares incipient grandeur with final vulgarity, is re- 
minded of the pious hawkers of Constantinople, 
who solemnly perambulate her streets, exclaiming, 
' In the name of the prophet — figs !' " — pp. 54, 55. 

It ends with a solemn eulogium on Mr. 
Whitbread, which is thus wound up : — 

" To his never-slumbering talents you are in- 
debted for whatever pleasure this haunt of the 
Muses is calculated to afford. If, in defiance of 
chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of the temple 
of Diana yet survives in the name of Herostratus, 
surely we may confidently predict, that the rebuilder 
of the temple of Apollo will stand recorded to dis- 
tant posterity, in that of — Samuel Whitbread." 

pp. 59, 60. 

Our readers will now have a pretty good 
idea of the contents of this amusing little 
volume. We have no conjectures to offer as 
to its anonymous author. He who is such a 
master of disguises, may easily be supposed 
to have been successful in concealing him- 
self; — and with the power of assuming so 
many styles, is not likely to be detected by 
his own. We should guess, however, that he 
had not written a great deal in his own char- 
acter — that his natural style was neither very 
lofty nor very grave — and that he rather in- 
dulges a partiality for puns and verbal plea- 
santries. We marvel why he has shut out 
Campbell and Rogers from his theatre of liv- 
ing poets; — and confidently expect to have 
our curiosity in this and in all other particu- 
lars very speedily gratified, when the ap- 
plause of the country shall induce him to take 
off his mask. 



(Wtttmbtx, 1S2S.) 



(Euvres Inedites de Madame la Baronne de Stael, publiees par son Fils ; p) ecedees aVune Notice 
sur le Caractere et les Ecrils de M. de Stael. Par Madame Necker Sacssure. Trois tomea 
8vo. London, Treuttel and Wurtz : 1820. 



We are very much indebted to Madame 
Necker Saussure for this copious, elegant, and 
affectionate account of her friend and cousin. 
93 



It is, to be sure, rather in the nature of a Pane- 
gyric than of an impartial biography — and, 
with the sagacity, morality, and skill in com 
3m2 



738 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



position which seem to be endemic in the 
society of Geneva, has also perhaps some- 
thing of the formality, mannerism, and di- 
dactic ambition of that very intellectual so- 
ciety. For a personal memoir of one so much 
distinguished in society, it is not sufficiently 
individual or familiar — and a great deal too 
little feminine, for a woman's account of a 
woman, who never forgot her sex. or allowed 
it to be forgotten. The only things that indi- 
cate a female author in the work before us, 
are the decorous purity of her morality — the 
feebleness of her political speculations — and 
her never telling the age of her friend. 

The world probably knows as much already 
of M. and Madame Necker as it will care 
ever to know : Yet we are by no means of 
opinion that too much is said of them here. 
They were both very good people — neither 
of the most perfect bon ton, nor of the very 
highest rank of understanding, — but far above 
the vulgar level certainly, in relation to either. 
The likenesses of them with which we are 
here presented are undoubtedly very favour- 
able, and even flattering; but still, we have 
no doubt that they are likenesses, and even 
very cleverly executed. We hear a great deal 
about the strong understanding and lofty prin- 
ciples of Madame Necker, and of the air of 
purity that reigned in her physiognomy : But 
we are candidly told also, that, with her tall 
and stiff figure, and formal manners, " il y 
avoit de la gene en elle, et aupres d'elle;" 
and are also permitted to learn, that after 
having acquired various branches of know- 
ledge by profound study, she unluckily be- 
came persuaded that all virtues and accom- 
plishments might be learned in the same 
manner ; and accordingly set herself, with 
might and main, "to study the arts of conver- 
sation and of housekeeping — together with 
the characters of individuals, and the manage- 
ment of societj- — to reduce all these things 
to system, and to deduce from this system 
precise rules for the regulation of her con- 
duct." Of M. Necker, again, it is recorded, 
in very emphatic and affectionate terms, 
that he was extraordinarily eloquent and ob- 
serving, and equally full of benevolence and 
practical wisdom : But it is candidly admit- 
ted that his eloquence was more sonorous 
than substantial, and consisted rather of well- 
rounded periods than impressive thoughts ; 
that he was reserved and silent in general 
society, took pleasure in thwarting his wife 
in the education of their daughter, and actu- 
ally treated the studious propensity of his 
ingenious consort with so little respect, as to 
prohibit her from devoting any time to com- 
position, and even from having a table to 
write at ! — for no better reason than that he 
might not be annoyed with the fear of dis- 
turbing her when he came into her apart- 
ment ! He was a great joker, too, in an inno- 
cent paternal way. in his own family; but we 
cannot find that his witticisms ever had much 
success in other places. The worship of M. 
Necker, in short, is a part of the established 
religion, we perceive, at Geneva; but we 
euspect that the Priest has made the God, 



here as in other instances; and rather think 
the worthy financier must be contented to bo 
known to posterity chiefly as the father of 
Madame de Srael. 

But however that maybe, the education of 
their only child does not seem to have been 
gone about very prudently, by these sage 
personages; and if Mad. de Stael had not 
been a very extraordinary creature, both as 
to talent and temper, from the very beginning, 
she could scarcely have escaped being pretty 
well spoiled between them. Her mother had 
a notion, that the best thing that could be 
done for a child was to cram it with all kinds 
of knowledge, without caring very much whe- 
ther it understood or digested any part of it ; 
— and so the poor little girl was overtasked 
and overeducated, in a very pitiless way, for 
several years; till her health became seri- 
ously impaired, and they were obliged to let 
her run idle in the woods for some years 
longer — where she composed pastorals and 
tragedies, and became exceedingly romantic. 
She was then taken up again ; and set to her 
studies with greater moderation. All this 
time, too, her father was counteracting the 
lessons of patient application inculcated by 
her mother, by the half-playful disputations 
in which he loved to engage her, and the dis- 
play which he could not resist making of her 
lively talents in society. Fortunately, this 
last species of training fell most in with her 
disposition; and she escaped being solemn 
and pedantic, at some little risk of becoming 
forward and petulant. Still more fortunately, 
the strength of her understanding was such 
as to exempt her almost entirely from this 
smaller disadvantage. 

Nothing, however, could exempt her from 
the danger and disadvantage of being a youth- 
ful Prodigy; and there never perhaps was an 
instance of one so early celebrated, whose 
celebrity went on increasing to the last period 
of her existence. We have a very lively pic- 
ture of her, at eleven years of age, in the 
work before us ; where she is represented as 
then a stout brown girl, with fine eyes, and 
an open and affectionate manner, full of eager 
curiosity, kindness, and vivacity. In the draw- 
ing-room, she took her place on a little stool 
beside her mother's chair, where she was 
forced to sit very upright, and to look as de- 
mure as possible : But by and by, two or 
three wise-looking oldish gentlemen, with 
round wigs, came up to her, and entered into 
animated and sensible conversation with her, 
as with a wit of full age; and those were 
Raynal, Marmontel, Thomas, and Grimm. At 
table she listened with delighted attention to 
all that fell from those distinguished guests; 
and learned incredibly soon to discuss all sub- 
jects with them, without embarrassment or 
affectation. Her biographer says, indeed, that 
she was "'always young, and never a child ;" 
but it does seem to us a trait of mere child- 
ishness, though here cited as a proof of her 
filial devotion, that, in order to insure for her 
parents the gratification of Mr. Gibbon's so- 
ciety, she proposed, about the same time, that 
she should marry him ! and combated, with 



MADAME DE STAEL. 



739 



g*eat earnestness, all the objections that were 
atated to this extraordinary union. 

He/ temper appears from the very first to 
have been delightful, and her heart full of 
generosity and kindness. Her love for her 
father rose almost to idolatry 5 and though her 
taste for talk and distinction carried her at 
last tt good deal away from him, this earliest 
passion seems never to have been superseded, 
or even interrupted, by any other. Up to the 
age of twenty, she employed herself chiefly 
with poems and plays ; — but took after that to 
prose. We do not mean here to say any thing 
of her different works, the history and ana- 
lysis of which occupies two-thirds of the No- 
tice before us. Her fertility of thought, and 
warmth of character, appeared first in her 
Letters on Rousseau ; but her own character is 
best portrayed inDelphine — Corinne showing 
rather what she would have chosen to be. 
During her Bufferings from the Revolution, she 
wrote her works on Literature and the Pas- 
sions, and her more ambitious book on Ger- 
many. After that, with more subdued feel- 
ings — more confirmed principles — and more 
practical wisdom, she gave to the world her 
admirable Considerations on the French Revo- 
lution ; having, for many years, addicted her- 
self almost exclusively to politics, under the 
conviction which, in the present condition of 
the world-, can scarcely be considered as erro- 
neous, that under " politics were comprehend- 
ed morality, religion, and literature." 

She was, from a very early period, a lover 
of cities, of distinction, and of brilliant and 
varied discussion — cared little in general for 
the beauties of nature or art — and languished 
and pined, in spite of herself, when confined 
to a narrow society. These are common 
enough traits in famous authors, and people 
of fashion and notoriety of all other descrip- 
tions : But they were united in her with a 
warmth of affection, a temperament of enthu- 
siasm, and a sweetness of temper, with which 
we do not know that they were ever combined 
in any other individual. So far from resem- 
bling the poor, jaded, artificial creatures who 
live upon stimulants, and are with difficulty 
kept alive by the constant excitements of 
novelty, flattery, and emulation, her great 
characteristic was an excessive movement of 
the soul — a heart overcharged with sensibility, 
a frame over-informed with spirit and vitality. 
All her affections, says Madame Necker, — her 
friendship, her filial, her maternal attachment, 
partook of the nature of Love — were accom- 
panied by its emotion, almost its passion — 
and very frequently by the violent agitations 
which belong to its fears and anxieties. With 
all this animation, however, and with a good 
deal of vanity — a vanity which delighted in 
recounting her successes in society, and made 
her speak without reserve of her own great 
talents, influence, and celebrity — she seems 
to have had no particle of envy or malice in 
her composition. She was not in the least 
degree vindictive, jealous, or scornful ; but 
uniformly kind, indulgent, compassionate, and 
forgiving — or rather forgetful of injuries. In 
these respects she is very justly and advan- 



tageously contrasted with Rousseau; who, 
with the same warmth of imagination, and 
still greater professions of philanthropy in his 
writings, uniformly indicated in his individual 
character the most irritable, suspicious, and 
selfish dispositions; and plainly showed that 
his affection for mankind was entirely theo- 
retical, and had no living objects in this world. 

Madame de StaePs devotion to her father 
is sufficiently proved by her writings; — but 
it meets us under a new aspect in the Memoir 
now before us. The only injuries which she 
could not forgive were those offered to him. 
She could not bear to think that he was ev«r 
to grow old ; and, being herself blinded to his 
progressive decay by her love and sanguine 
temper, she resented, almost with fury, every 
insinuation or casual hint as to his age or de- 
clining health. After his death, this passion 
took another turn. Every old man now re- 
called the image of her father ! and she 
watched over the comforts of all such per- 
sons, and wept over their sufferings, with a 
painful intenseness of sympathy. The same 
deep feeling mingled with her devotions, and 
even tinged her strong intellect with a shade 
of superstition. She believed that her soul 
communicated with his in prayer ; and that it 
was to his intercession that she owed all the 
good that afterwards befell her. Whenever 
she met with any piece of good fortune, she 
used to say, "It is my father that has obtain- 
ed this for me I"' 

In her happier days, this ruling passion took 
occasionally a more whimsical aspect : and 
expressed itself with a vivacity of which we 
have no idea in this phlegmatic country, and 
which more resembles the childish irritability 
of Voltaire, than the lofty enthusiasm of the 
person actually concerned. We give, as a 
specimen, the following anecdote from the 
work before us. Madame Saussure had come to 
Coppet from Geneva in M. Necker's carriage ; 
and had been overturned in the way, but with- 
out receiving any injury. On mentioning the 
accident to Madame de Stael on her arrival, 
she asked with great vehemence who had 
driven ; and on being told that it was Richel, 
her fathers ordinary coachman, she exclaim- 
ed in an agony, "My God, he may one day 
overturn my father !" and rung instantly with 
violence for his appearance. While he was 
coming, she paced about the room in the 
greatest possible agitation, crying out, at every 
turn, "My father, my poor father ! he might 
have been overturned !" — and turning to he 
friend, "At your age, and with your sligh 
person, the danger is nothing — but with hi' 
age and bulk ! I cannot bear to think of it.' 
The coachman now came in ; and this lady 
so mild and indulgent and reasonable with all 
her attendants, turned to him in a sort of 
frenzy, and with a voice of solemnity, but 
choked with emotion, said, "Richel, do you 
know that I am a woman of genius'?'' — The 
poor man stood in astonishment — and she 
went on, louder, " Have you not heard, I say, 
that I am a woman of genius V 7 Coachy was 
still mute. " Well then ! I tell you that I am 
a woman of genius — of great genius — of oro- 



740 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



digious genius! — and I tell you more — that 
all the genius I have shall be exerted to se- 
cure your rotting out your days in a dungeon, 
if ever you overturn my father 1" Even after 



ginning again — and said " And what had I to 
conjure with but my poor genius?" 

Her insensibility to natural beauty is rather 
unaccountable, in a mind constituted like hers, 
and in a native of Switzerland. But, though 
bom in the midst of the most magnificent 
scenery, she seems to have thought, like Dr. 
Johnson, that there was no scene equal to the 
high tide of human existence in the heart of 
a populous city. "Give me the Rue de Bae/ 7 
said she, when her guests were in ecstasies 
with the Lake of Geneva and its enchanted 
shores — " I would prefer living in Paris, in a 
fourth story, with an hundred Louis a year." 
These were her habitual sentiments ; — But 
she is said to have had one glimpse of the 
glories of the universe, when she went first 
to Italy, after her father's death, and was en- 
gaged with Corinne. And in that work, it is 
certainly true that the indications of a deep 
and sincere sympathy with nature are far 
more conspicuous than in any of her other 
writings. For this enjoyment and late-de- 
veloped sensibility, she always said she was 
indebted to her father's intercession. 

The world is pretty generally aware of the 
brilliancy of her conversation in mixed com- 
pany ; but we w r ere not aware that it was 
generally of so polemic a character, or that 
she herself was so very zealous a disputant, 
— such a determined intellectual gladiator as 
her cousin here represents her. Her great 
delight, it is said, was in eager and even vio- 
lent contention ; and her drawing-room at 
Coppet is compared to the Hall of Odin, where 
the bravest warriors were invited every day 
to enjoy the tumult of the fight, and, after 
having cut each other in pieces, revived to 
renew the combat in the morning. In this 
trait, also, she seems to have resembled our 
Johnson, — though, according to all accounts, 
she was rather more courteous to her oppo- 
nents. These fierce controversies embraced 
all sorts of subjects — politics, morals, litera- 
ture, casuistry, metaphysics, and history. In 
the early part of her life, they turned oftener 
upon themes of pathos and passion — love and 
death, and heroical devotion; but she was 
cured of this lofty vein by the affectations of 
her imitators. "I tramp in the mire with 
wooden shoes," she said, "whenever they 
would force me to go with them among the 
clouds." In the same way, though suffici- 
ently given to indulge, and to talk of her 
emotions, she was easily disgusted by the 
parade of sensibility which is sometimes made 
by persons of real feeling; observing, with 
admirable force and simplicity, "'Que tous 
les sentiments naturels ont leur pudeur." 

She had at all times a deep sense of religion. 
Educated in the strict principles of Calvinism, 
she was never seduced into any admiration 
of the splendid apparatus and high pretensions 
•f Popery; although she did not altogether 



escape the seductions of a mo r e sublime su- 
perstition. In theology, as well as in every 
thing else, however, she was less dogmatic 
than persuasive ; and, while speaking from 
the inward conviction of her own heart, poured 
out its whole warmth, as well as its convic- 
tions, into those of others ; and never seemed 
to feel any thing for the errors of her com- 
panions but a generous compassion, and an 
affectionate desire for their removal. She 
rather testified in favour of religion, in shoit, 
than reasoned systematically in its support; 
and, in the present condition of the world, 
this was perhaps the best service that could 
be rendered. Placed in many respects in the 
most elevated condition to which humanity 
could aspire — possessed unquestionably of the 
highest powers of reasoning — emancipated, in 
a singular degree, from prejudices, and enter- 
ing with the keenest relish into all the feelings 
that seemed to suffice for the happiness and 
occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers 
— she has still testified, that without religion 
there is nothing stable, sublime, or satisfying ! 
and that it alone completes and consummates 
all to which reason or affection can aspire. — 
A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her 
biographer has well remarked, the only Mis- 
sionary that can work any permanent efiect on 
the upper classes of society in modern times ; — 
upon the vain, the learned, the scornful, and ar- 
gumentative, — they " who stone the Prophets 
while they affect to offer incense to the Muses." 

Both her marriages have been censured ; — 
the first, as a violation of her principles — the 
second, of dignity and decorum. In that with 
M. de Stael, she was probably merely passive. 
It was respectable, and not absolutely un- 
happy ; but unquestionably not such as suited 
her. Of that with M. Bocca, it will not per- 
haps be so easy to make the apology. We 
have no objection to a love-match at fifty : — 
But where the age and the rank and fortune 
are all on the lady's side, and the bridegroom 
seems to have little other recommendation 
than a handsome person, and a great deal of 
admiration, it is difficult to escape ridicule, — 
or something more severe than ridicule. Mad. 
N. S. seems to us to give a very candid and 
interesting account of it; and undoubtedly 
goes far to take off what is most revolting on 
the first view 7 , by letting us know that it origi- 
nated in a romantic attachment on the part 
of M. Bocca ; and that he was an ardent suitor 
to her, before the idea of loving him had en- 
tered into her imagination. The broken state 
of his health, too — the short period she sur- 
vived their union — and the rapidity with which 
he followed her to the grave — all tend not only 
to extinguish any tendency to ridicule, but to 
disarm all severity of censure ; and lead us 
rather to dwell on the story as a part only of the 
tragical close of a life full of lofty emotions. 

Like most other energetic spirits, she des- 
pised and neglected too much the accommoda- 
tion of her body — cared little about exercise, 
and gave herself no great trouble about health. 
With the sanguine spirit which belonged to 
her character, she affected to triumph ovei 
infirmity; and used to say — "I might have 



MADAME DE STAfiL. 



741 



been sickly, like any body else, had I not re- 
solved to vanquish all physical weaknesses." 
But Nature would not be defied! — and she 
died, while contemplating still greater under- 
takings than any she had achieved. On her 
sick-bed, none of her great or good qualities 
abandoned her. To the last she was kind, 
patient, devout, and intellectual. Among other 
things, she said — " J'ai toujours ete la raerae 
— vive el triste. — J'ai aime Dieu, mon pere, 
et la liberie !" She left life with regret— but 
felt no weak terrors at the approach of death 
— and died at last in the utmost composure 
and tranquillity. 

We would rather not make any summary 
at present of the true character and probable 
effects of her writings. But we must say, 
we are not quite satisfied with that of her 
biographer. It is too flattering, and too elo- 
quent and ingenious. She is quite right in 
extolling the great fertility of thought which 
characterises the writings of her friends ; — 
and. with relation to some of these writings, 
she is not perhaps very far wrong in saying 
that, if you take any three pages in them at 
random, the chance is, that you meet with 
more new and striking thoughts than in an 
equal space in any other author. But we 
cannot at all agree with her, when, in a very 
imposing passage, she endeavours to show that 
she ought to be considered as the foundress 
of a new school of literature and philosophy 
— or at least as the first who clearly revealed 
to the world that a new and a grander era was 
now opening to their gaze. 

In so far as regards France, and those coun- 
tries which derive their literature from her 
fountains, there may be some foundation for 
this remark ; but we cannot admit it as at all 
Applicable to the other parts of Europe ; which 
have always drawn their wisdom, wit, and 
fancy, from native sources. The truth is, that 
previous to her Revolution, there was no civil- 
ised country where there had been so little 
originality for fifty years as in France. In 
literature, their standards had been fixed 
nearly a century before : and to alter, or even 
to advance them, was reckoned equally im- 
pious and impossible. In politics,- they were 
restrained, by the state of their government, 
from any free or bold speculations; and in 
metaphysics, and all the branches of the 
higher philosophy that depend on it, they had 
done nothing since the days of Pascal and 
Descartes. In England, however, and in 
Germany, the national intellect had not been 
thus stagnated and subdued — and a great deal 
of what startled the Parisians by its novelty, 
in the writings of Madame de Stael, had long 
been familiar to the thinkers of these two 
countries. Some of it she confessedly borrowed 
from those neighbouring sources; and some 
she undoubtedly invented over again for her- 
self. In both departments, however, it would 
be erroneous, we think, to ascribe the greater 
part of this improvement to the talents of this 
extraordinary woman. The Revolution had 
thrown down, among other things, the barriers 
by which literary enterprise had been so long 
restrained in France — and broken, among 



other trammels, those which had circumscrib- 
ed the liberty of thinking in that great coun- 
try. The genius of Madame de Stael co-ope- 
rated, no doubt, with the spirit of the times, 
and assisted its effects — but it was also acted 
upon, and in part created, by that spirit — and 
her works are rather, perhaps, to be consider- 
ed as the first fruits of a new order of things, 
that had already struck root in Europe, than 
as the harbinger of changes that still remain 
to be effected.* 

In looking back to what she has said, with 
so much emphasis, of the injustice she had to 
suffer from Napoleon, it is impossible net to 
be struck with the aggravation which that in- 
justice is made to receive from the quality 
of the victim, and the degree in which those 
sufferings are exaggerated, because they were 
her own. We think the hostility of that great 
commander towards a person of her sex, char- 
acter, and talents, was in the highest degree 
paltry, and unworthy even of a high-minded 
tyrant. But we really cannot say that it seems 
to have had any thing very savage or ferocious 
in the manner of it. He did not touch, nor 
even menace her life, nor her liberty, nor her 
fortune. No daggers, nor chains, nor dungeons. 
nor confiscations, are among the instruments 
of torture of this worse than Russian despot. 
He banished her, indeed, first from Paris, and 
then from France ; suppressed her publica- 
tions ; separated her from some of her friends ; 
and obstructed her passage into England ; — 
very vexatious treatment certainly. — but not 
quite of the sort which we should have guessed 
at, from the tone either of her complaints or 
lamentations. Her main grief undoubtedly 
was the loss of the society and brilliant talk 
of Paris ; and if that had been spared to her, 
we cannot help thinking that she would have 
felt less horror and detestation at the inroads 
of Bonaparte on the liberty and independence 
of mankind. She avows this indeed pretty 
honestly, where she says, that, if she had been 
aware of the privations of this sort which a 
certain liberal speech of M. Constant was 
ultimately to bring upon herself, she would 
have taken care that it should not have been 
spoken ! The truth is, that, like many other 
celebrated persons of her country, she could 
not live happily without the excitements and 
novelties that Paris alone could supply; and 
that, when these were withdrawn, all the vi- 
vacity of her genius, and all the warmth of 
her heart, proved insufficient to protect her 
from the benumbing influence of ennui. Here 
are her own confessions on the record : — 

" J'etois vulnerable par mon gout pour la societe 
Montaigne a dit jadis : Je suis Fravfois par Paris, 
et s'il pensoit ainsi, il y a trois siecles, que seroif-c* 
depuis que Ton a vu reunies tant de personnes 
d'esprit dans Line nieme ville, et tant de personnes 
aceoutumees a se servirde ccA esDrit pour les plai.-irs 
de la conversation ? Le fantome de V ennui m'a 
toujours poursuivie ! C'est pai*la terreur qu'il me 

* A great deal of citation and remark, relating 
chiefly 'to the character and conduct of Bonaparte, 
and especially to his persecution of the fair author, 
is here omitted — the object of this reprint being 
solely to illustrate her Personal character. 



742 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



cause que j'aurois ete capable de plier devant la 
tyrannie — si l'exemple de mon pere, el son sang qui 
coule dans mes veines, ne remportoient pas sur 
cette foiblesse." — Vol. iii. p. 8. 

We think this rather a curious trait, and not 
very easily explained. We can quite well 
understand how the feeble and passive spirits 
who have been accustomed to the stir and 
variety of a town life, and have had their in- 
anity supplied by the superabundant intellect 
and gaiety that overflows in these great re- 
positories, should feel helpless and wretched 
when these extrinsic supports are withdrawn : 
But why the active and energetic members 
of those vast assemblages, who draw their 
resources from within, and enliven not only 
themselves, but the inert mass around them, 
by the radiation of their genius, should suffer 
in a similar way, it certainly is not so easy to 
comprehend. In France, however, the people 
of the most wit and vivacity seem to have 
always been the most subject to ennui. The 
letters of Mad. du DefTand, we remember, are 
full of complaints of it ; and those of De Bussy 
also. It is but a humiliating view of our frail 
human nature, if the most exquisite arrange- 
ments for social enjoyment should be found 
thus inevitably to generate a distaste for what 
is ordinarily within our reach; and the habit 
of a little elegant amusement, not coming very 
close either to our hearts or understandings, 
should render all the other parts of life, with 
its duties, affections, and achievements, dis- 
tasteful and burdensome. We are inclined, 
however, we confess, both to question the 
perfection of the arrangements and the system 
of amusement that led to such results ; and 
also to doubt of the permanency of the dis- 
comfort that may arise on its first disturbance. 
We are persuaded, in short, that at least as 
much enjoyment may be obtained, with less 
of the extreme variety, and less of the over- 
excitement which belongs to the life of Paris, 
and is the immediate cause of the depression 
that follows their cessation ; and also, that, in 
minds of any considerable strength and re- 
source, this depression will be of no long dura- 



tion ; and that nothing but a little persevei-ance 
is required to restore the plastic frame of our 
nature, to its -natural appetite and relish for 
the new pleasures and occupations that may 
yet await it, beyond the precincts of Paris or 
London. 'We remember a signal testimony 
to this effect, in one of the later publications, 
we think of Volney, the celebrated traveller ; 
— who describes, in a very amusing way. the 
misery he suffered when he first changed the 
society of Paris for that of Syria and Egypt ; 
and the recurrence of the same misery when, 
after years of absence, he was again restored 
to the importunate bustle and idle chatter of 
Paris, from the tranquil taciturnity of his war- 
like Mussulmans ! — his second access of home 
sickness, when he left Paris for the United 
States of America, — and the discomfort he 
experienced, for the fourth time, when, after 
being reconciled to the free and substantial 
talk of these stout republicans, he finally re- 
turned to the amiable trifling of his own fa- 
mous metropolis. 

It is an affliction, certainly, to be at the end 
of the works of such a writer — and to think 
that she was cut off at a period when her en- 
larged experience and matured talents were 
likely to be exerted with the greatest utility, 
and the state of the world was such as to hold 
out the fairest prospect of their not being ex- 
erted in vain. It is a consolation, however, 
that she has done so much ; — And her works 
will remain not only as a brilliant memorial 
of her own unrivalled genius, but as a proof 
that sound and comprehensive views were 
entertained, kind affections cultivated, and 
elegant pursuits followed out, through a period 
which posterity may be apt to regard as one 
of universal delirium and crime; — that the 
principles of genuine freedom, taste, and mo- 
rality, were not altogether extinct, even under 
the reign of terror and violence — and that one 
who lived through the whole of that agitating 
scene, was the first luminously to explain, and 
temperately and powerfully to impress, the 
great moral and political Lessons, which it 
should have taught to mankind. 



(©ttobtr, 1835.) 

Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by his Son, 
Robert James Mackintosh, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1835.* 



There cannot be, we think, a more delight- 
ful book than this : whether we consider the 

* This was my last considerable contribution to 
the Edinburgh Review; and, indeed, (with the ex- 
ception of a slight notice of Mr. Wilberforce's Me- 
moirs,) the only thing I wrote for it, after my ad- 
vancement to the place I now hold. If there was 
any impropriety in my so contributing at all, some 
palliation I hope may be found in the nature of the 
feelings by which I was led to it, and the tenor of 
what these feelings prompted me to say. I wrote 
it solely out of affection to the memory of the friend 
I had lost ; and I think I said nothing which was 
no* dictated by a desire to vindicate and to honour 



attraction of the Character it brings so pleas- 
ingly before us — or the infinite variety of ori- 

that memory. At all events, if it was an impro- 
priety, it was one for which I cannot now submit to 
seek the shelter of concealment: And therefore I 
here reprint the greater part of it : and think I can- 
not better conclude the present collection, than with 
this tribute to the merits of one of the most distin- 
guished of my Associates in the work out of which 
it has been gathered. 

A considerable part of the original is omitted in 
this publication ; but consisting almost entirely in 
citations from the book reviewed, and incidental »e- 
marks on these citations. 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



743 



ginai thoughts and fine observations with 
which it abounds. As a mere narrative there 
is not so much to be said for it. There are 
but few incidents ; and the account which we 
have of them is neither very luminous nor 
very complete. If it be true, therefore, that 
the only legitimate business of biography is 
with incidents and narrative, it will not be 
easy to deny that there is something amiss, 
either in the title or the substance of this 
work. But we are humbly of opinion that there 
is no good ground for so severe a limitation. 

Biographies, it appears to us, are naturally 
of three kinds — and please or instruct us in at 
least as many different ways. One sort seeks 
to interest us by an account of what the indi- 
vidual in question actually did or suffered in 
his own person : another by an account of 
what he saw done or suffered by others ; and 
a third by an account of what he himself 
thought, judged, or imagined — for these too, 
we apprehend, are acts of a rational being — 
and acts frequently quite as memorable, and 
as fruitful of consequences, as any others he 
can either witness or perform. 

Different readers will put a different value 
on each of these sorts of biography. But at 
all events they will be in no danger of con- 
founding them. The character and position 
of the individual will generally settle, with 
sufficient precision, to which class his me- 
moirs should be referred ; and no man of com- 
mon sense will expect to meet in one w r ith the 
kind of interest which properly belongs to 
another. To complain that the life of a war- 
rior is but barren in literary speculations, or 
that of a man of letters in surprising personal 
adventures, is about as reasonable as it would 
be to complain that a song is not a sermon, or 
that there is but little pathos is a treatise on 
geometry. 

The first class, in its higher or public de- 
partment, should deal chiefly with the lives of 
leaders in great and momentous transactions 
— men who, by their force of character, or the 
advantage of their position, have been enabled 
to leave their mark on the age and country to 
which they belonged, and to impress more 
than one generation with the traces of their 
transitory existence. Of this kind are many 
of the lives in Plutarch ; and of this kind, still 
more eminently, should be the lives of such 
men as Mahomet, Alfred, Washington, Napo- 
leon. There is an inferior and more private 
department under this head, in which the in- 
terest, though less elevated, is often quite as 
intense, and rests on the same general basis, 
of sympathy with personal feats and endow- 
ments — we mean the history of individuals 
whom the ardour of their temperament, or the 
caprices of fortune, have involved in strange 
adventures, or conducted through a series of 
extraordinary and complicated perils. The 
memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, or Lord Her- 
bert of Cherbnry, are good examples of this 
romantic sort of biography; and many more 
might be added, from the chronicles of an- 
cient paladins, or the confessions of modern 
malefactors. 

The second class is chiefly for the compilers 



of Diaries and journals — autobiographers who, 
without having themselves done any thing 
memorable, have yet had the good luck to live 
through long .and interesting periods; and 
who, in chronicling the events of their own 
unimportant lives, have incidentally preserv- 
ed invaluable memorials of contemporary 
manners and events. The Memoirs of Eve- 
lyn and Pepys are the most obvious instances 
of works which derive their chief value from 
this source ; and which are read, not for any 
great interest we take in the fortunes of the 
writers, but for the sake of the anecdotes and 
notices of far more important personages and 
transactions with which they so lavishly pre- 
sent us ; and there are many others, written 
with far inferior talent, and where the design 
is more palpably egotistical, which are perused 
with an eager curiosity, on the strength of the 
same recommendation. 

The last class is for Philosophers and men 
of Genius and speculation — men, in short, who 
were, or ought to have been, Authors; and 
whose biographies are truly to be regarded 
either as supplements to the works they have 
given to the world, or substitutes for those 
which they might have given. These are 
histories, not of men, but of Minds; and their 
value must of course depend on the reach and 
capacity of the mind they serve to develope, 
and in the relative magnitude of their contri- 
butions to its history. When the individual 
has already poured himself out in a long series 
of publications, on which all the moods and 
aspects of his mind have been engraven (as in 
the cases of Voltaire or Sir Walter Scott), there 
may be less occasion for such a biographical 
supplement. But when an author (as in the 
case of Gray) has been more chary in his com- 
munications with the public, and it is yet pos- 
sible to recover the precious, though imma- 
ture, fruits of his genius or his studies, — 
thoughts, and speculations, which no intelli- 
gent posterity would willingly let d ; ?, — it is 
due both to his fame and to the best interests 
of mankind, that they should be preserved, 
and reverently presented to after times, in 
such a posthumous portraiture as it is the bu- 
siness of biography to supply. 

The best and most satisfactory memorials 
of this sort are those which are substantially 
made up of private letters, journals, or writ- 
ten fragments of any kind, by the party him- 
self ; as these, however scanty or imperfect, 
are at all events genuine Relics of the indivi- 
dual, and generally bearing, even more au- 
thentically than his publications, the stamp of 
his intellectual and personal character. We 
cannot refer to better examples than the lives 
of Gray and of Cowper, as these have been 
finally completed. Next to these, if not upon 
the same level, we should place such admira- 
ble records of particular conversations, and 
memorable sayings gathered from the lips of 
the wise, as we find in the inimitable pages 
of Boswell, — a w r ork which, by the genera! 
consent of this generation, has not only made 
us a thousand times better acquainted with 
Johnson than all his publications put together 
but has raised the standard of his intellectual 



I" 

44 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



character, and actually made discovery of 
large provinces in his understanding, of which 
scarcely an indication was to be found in his 
writings. In the last and lowest place — in so 
far, at least, as relates to the proper business 
of this branch of biography, the enlargement 
of our knowledge of the genius and character 
of individuals — we must reckon that most 
common form of the memoirs of literary men, 
which consists of little more than the biogra- 
pher's own (generally most partial) descrip- 
tion and estimate of his author's merits, or of 
elucidations and critical summaries of his 
most remarkable productions. In this divi- 
-sion, though in other respects of great value, 
must be ranked those admirable dissertations 
which Mr. Stewart has given to the world un- 
der the title of the Lives of Reid, Smith, and 
Robertson, — the real interest of which con- 
sists almost entirely in the luminous exposi- 
tion we there meet with of the leading specu- 
lations of those eminent writers, and in the 
candid and acute investigation of their origi- 
nality or truth. 

We know it has been said, that after a man 
has himself given to the public all that he 
thought worthy of its acceptance, it is not fair 
for a posthumous biographer to endanger his 
reputation by bringing forward what he had 
withheld as unworthy, — either by exhibiting 
the mere dregs and refuse of his lucubrations, 
or by exposing to the general gaze those crude 
conceptions, or rash and careless opinions, 
which he may have noted down in the pri- 
vacy of his study, or thrown out in the confi- 
dence of private conversation. And no doubt 
there may be (as there have been) cases of 
such abuse. Confidence is in no case to be 
violated ; nor are mere trifles, which bear no 
mark of the writer's intellect, to be recorded 
to his prejudice. But wherever there is power 
and native genius, we cannot but grudge the 
suppression of the least of its revelations; and 
are persuaded, that with those who can judge 
of such intellects, they will never lose any 
thing by the most lavish and indiscriminate 
disclosures. Which of Swift's most elaborate 
productions is at this day half so interesting 
as that most confidential Journal to Stella 1 ? Or 
which of them, with all its utter carelessness 
of expression, its manifold contradictions, its 
infantine fondness, and all its quick-shifting 
moods, of kindness, selfishness, anger, and 
ambition, gives us half so strong an impres- 
sion either of his amiableness or his vigour ? 
How much, in like manner, is Johnson raised 
in our estimation, not only as to intellect but 
personal character, by the industrious eaves- 
droppings of Boswell, setting down, day by 
day, in his note-book, the fragments of his 
most loose and unweighed conversations ? Or 
what, in fact, is there so precious in the works, 
or the histories, of eminent men. from Cicero 
to Horace Walpole, as collections of their pri- 
vate and familiar letters'? What would we 
not give for such a journal — such notes of 
conversations, or such letters, of Shakespeare, 
Chaucer, or Spenser? The mere drudges or 
coxcombs of literature may indeed suffer by 
■ucn disclosures— as made-up beauties might 



do by being caught in undress : but all who 
are really worth knowing about, will, on the 
whole, be gainers; and we should be well 
content to have no biographies but of those 
who would profit, as well as their readers, by 
being shown in new or in nearer lights. 

The value of the insight which may thus 
be obtained into the mind and the meaning 
of truly great authors, can scarcely be over- 
rated by any one who knows how to tarn 
such communications to account ; and we do 
not think we exaggerate when we say, that 
in many cases more light may be gained from 
the private letters, notes, or recorded talk of 
such persons, than from the mosi finished of 
their publications; and not only upon the 
many new topics which are sure to be started 
in such memorials, but as to the true charac- 
ter, and the merits and defects, of such pub- 
lications themselves. It is from such sourcei 
alone that we can learn with certainty by 
what road the author arrived at the conclu- 
sions which we see established in his works; 
against what perplexities he had to struggle, 
and after w r hat failures he was at last enabled 
to succeed. It is thus only that we are often 
enabled to detect the prejudice or hostility 
which may be skilfully and mischievously 
disguised in the published book — to find out 
the doubts ultimately entertained by the au- 
thor himself, of what may appear to most 
readers to be triumphantly established, — or 
to gain glimpses of those grand ulterior specu- 
lations, to which what seemed to common 
eyes a complete and finished system, was, in 
truth, intended by the author to serve only as 
a vestibule or introduction. Where such 
documents are in abundance, and the mind 
which has produced them is truly of the high- 
est order, we do not hesitate to say, that more 
will generally be found in them, in the way 
at least of hints to kindred minds, and as 
scattering the seeds of grand and original 
conceptions, than in any finished works which 
the indolence, the modesty, or the avocations 
of such persons will have generally permitted 
them to give to the world. So far, therefore, 
from thinking the biography of men of genius 
barren or unprofitable, because presenting few 
events or personal adventures, we cannot but 
regard it, when constructed in substance of 
such materials as we have now r mentioned, 
as the most instructive and interesting of all 
writing — embodying truth and wisdom in the 
vivid distinctness of a personal presentment, 
— enabling us to look on genius in its first 
elementary stirrings, and in its weakness as 
well as its strength,— and teaching us at the 
same time great moral lessons, both as to the 
value of labour and industry, and the neces- 
sity of virtues, as well as intellectual endow- 
ments, for the attainment of lasting excellence. 

In these general remarks our readers will 
easily perceive that we mean to' shadow forth 
our conceptions of the character and peculiar 
merits of the work before us. It is the history 
not of a man of action, but of a student, a 
philosopher, and a statesman ; and its value 
consists not in the slight and imperfect ac- 
count of what was done by, or happened to^ 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



745 



the jndivi.lv al, but in the vestiges it has 
fortunately preserved of the thoughts, senti- 
ments, and opinions of one of the most power- 
ful thinkers, most conscientious inquirers, and 
most learned reasoners, that the world has 
ever seen. It is almost entirely made up of 
journals and letters of the author himself; 
and impresses us quite as strongly as any of 
his publications with a sense of the richness 
of his knowledge and the fineness of his un- 
derstanding — and with a far stronger sense 
of his promptitude, versatility, and vigour.* 

His intellectual character, generally, can- 
not be unknown to any one acquainted with 
his works, or who has even read many pages 
of the Memoirs now before us; and it is need- 
less, therefore, to speak here of his great 
knowledge, the singular union of ingenuity 
and soundness in his speculations — his per- 
fect candour and temper in discussion — the 
pure and lofty morality to which he strove to 
elevate the minds of others, and in his own 
conduct to conform, or the wise and humane 
allowance which he was ready, in every case 
but his own, to make for the infirmities which 
must always draw down so many from the 
higher paths of their duty. 

These merits, we believe, will no longer be 
denied by any who have heard of his name, 
or looked at his writings. But there were 
other traits of his intellect which could only 
be known to those who were of his acquaint- 
ance, and which it is still desirable that the 
readers of these Memoirs should bear in 
mind. One of these was, that ready and pro- 
digious Memory, by which all that he learned 
seemed to be at once engraved on the proper 
compartment of his mind, and to present 
itself at the moment it was required ; another, 
still more remarkable, was the singular Ma- 
turity and completeness of all his views and 
opinions, even upon the most abstruse and 
complicated questions, though raised, without 
design or preparation, in the casual course of 
conversation. In this way it happened that 
the sentiments he delivered had generally 
the air of recollections — and that few of those 
with whom he most associated in mature life, 
could recollect of ever catching him in the 
act of making up his mind, in the course of 
the discussions in which it was his delight to 
engage them. His conclusions, and the grounds 
of them, seemed always to have been pre- 
viously considered and digested ; and though 
he willingly developed his reasons, to secure 
the assent of his hearers, he uniformly seemed 
to have been perfectly ready, before the cause 
was called on, to have delivered the opinion 
of the court, with a full summary of the argu- 
ments and evidence on both sides. In the 
work before us, we have more peeps into the 
preparatory deliberations of his great intellect 
— that scrupulous estimate of the grounds of 
decision, and that jealous questioning of first 
impressions, which necessarily precede the 
formation of all firm and wise opinions. — than 
could probably be collected from the recol- 

* A short account of Sir James' parentage, edu- 
cation, and personal history is here omitted. 
94 



lections of all who -had most familiar access to 
him in society. It was owing perhaps to this 
vigour and rapidity of intellectual digestion, 
that, though all his life a great talker, there 
never was a man that talked half so much 
who said so little that was either foolish 01 
frivolous ; nor any one perhaps who knew 
so well how to give as much liveliness and 
poignancy just and even profound observa- 
tions, as others could ever impart to startling 
extravagance, and ludicrous exaggeration. The 
vast extent of his information, and the natural 
gaiety of his temper, made him independent 
of such devices for producing effect ; and, 
joined to the inherent kindness and gentle- 
ness of his disposition, made his conversation 
at once the most instructive and* the most 
generally pleasing that could be imagined. 

Of his intellectual endowments we shall 
say no more. But we must add, that the 
Tenderness of his domestic affections, and 
the deep Humility of his character, were as 
inadequately known, even among his friends, 
till the publication of those private records: 
For his manners, though gentle, were cold ; 
and, though uniformly courteous and candid 
in society, it was natural to suppose that he 
was not unconscious of his superiority. It is ; 
therefore, but justice to bring into view some 
of the proofs that are now before us of both 
these endearing traits of character. The 
beautiful letter which he addressed to Dr. 
Parr on the death of his first wife, in 1797, 
breathes the full spirit of both. We regret 
that we can only afford room for a part of it. . 

"Allow me, in justice to her memory, to tell 
you what she was, and what I owed her. I was 
guided in my choice only by the blind affection of 
my youth. I found an intelligent companion, and 
a tender friend ; a prudent monitress, the most 
faithful of wives, and a mother as tender as children 
ever had the misforiune to lose. 1 found a woman 
who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, 
gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. 
She became prudent from affection ; and though of 
the most generous nature, she was taught economy 
and frugality by her love for me. During the most 
critical period of my life, she preserved order in my 
affairs, from the care of which she relieved me. She 
gently reclaimed me from dissipation ; she propped 
my weak and irresolute nature ; she urged my in- 
dolence to all the exertions that have been useful 
or creditable to me, and she was perpetually at hand 
to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. 
To her I owe whatever I am ; to her whatever I 
shall be. Such was she whom I have lost ! And 
I have lost her after eight years of struggle and dis- 
tress had bound us fast together, and moulded our 
tempers to each other, — when a knowledge of her 
worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, 
and before age had deprived it of much of its origi- 
nal ardour, — I lost her, alas! (the choice of my 
youth, and the partner of my misfortunes) at a mo- 
ment when I had the prospect of her sharing my 
better days ! 

" The philosophy which I have learnt only teaches 
me that virtue and friendship are the greatest of 
human blessings, and that their loss is irreparable. 
It aggravates my calamity, instead of consoling me 
under it. But my wounded heart seeks another 
consolation. Governed by those feelings, which 
have in every age and region of the world actuated 
the human mind, I seek relief, and I find it, in 
the soothing hope and consolatory opinion, that a 
Benevolent Wisdom inflicts the chastisement, as 
3N 



746 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



well as bestows the enjoyments of human life ; that 
Superintending Goodness will one day enlighten 
the darkness which surrounds our nature, and hangs 
over our prospects ; that this dreary and wretched 
life is not the whole of man ; that an animal so 
sagacious and provident, and c pable of such pro- 
ficiency in science and virtue, is not like the beasts 
that perish ; that, there is a dwelling-place prepared 
for the spirits of the just, and that the ways of God 
will yet be vindicated to man." 

We may add part of a very kind letter, 
Trfitten from India, in 1808, in a more cheer- 
ful mood, to his son-in-law Mr. Rich, then on 
a mission to Babylon, — and whose early death 
so soon blasted the hopes, not only of his afflict- 
ed family, but of the whole literary world. 

" And now, my dear Rich, allow me, with the 
liberty of warm affection, earnestly to exhort you 
to exert every power of your mind in the duties of 
your station. There is something in the serious- 
ness, both of business and of science, of which your 
vivacity is impatient. The brilliant variety of your 
attainments and accomplishments do, 1 fear, flatter 
you into the conceit that you may ' indulge your 
genius,^ and pass your life in amusement ; while 
you smile at those who think, and at those who act. 
Rut this would be weak and ignoble. The success 
of your past studies ought to show you how much 
you may yet do, instead of soothing you with the 
reflection how much you have done. 

" Habits of seriousness of thought and action are 
necessary to the duties, to the importance, and to 
the dignity of human life. What is amiable gaiety 
at twenty-four might run the risk, if it was unac- 
companied by other things, of being thought frivo- 
lous and puerile at forty -four. I am so near forty- 
four, that I can give you pretty exact news of that 
dull country ; which yet ought to interest you, as 
you are travelling towards it, and must, I hope, 
pass through it. 

" I hope you will profit by my errors. I was 
once ambitious to have made you a much improved 
edition of myself. If you had stayed here, I should 
have laboured to do so, in spite of your impatience ; 
as it is, I heartily pray that you may make your- 
self something much better. 

" You came here so early as to have made few 
sacrifices of friendship and society at home. You 
can afford a good many years for making a hand- 
some fortune, and still return home young. You 
do not feel the force of that word quite so much as 
I could wish : But for the present let me hope that 
the prospect of coming to one who has such an 
affection for you as I have, will giye your country 
some of the attractions of home. If you can be 
allured to it by the generous hope of increasing the 
enjoyments of my old age, you will soon discover 
la it sufficient excellences to love and admire ; and 
it. will become to you, in the full force of the term, 
a home." 

We are not sure whether the frequent as- 
pirations which we find in his private letters, 
after the quiet and repose of an Academical 
situation, ought to be taken as proofs of his 
humility, though they are generally expressed 
in language bearing that character. But there 
are other indications enough, and of the most 
unequivocal description — for example, this 
entry in 1818:— 

has, I think, a distaste for me. I think 



the worse of nobody for such a feeling. Indeed I 
often feel a distaste for myself; and I am sure I 
should not esteem my own character in another 
person. It is more likely that I should have dis- 
respectable or disagreeable qualities, than that ■■ 
should have an unreasonable antipathy. 

Vol. ii.»p. 344. 



In the same sad but gentle spirit, we have 
this entry in 1822: — 

*' Walked a little up the quiet valley, which on 
this cheerful morning looked pretty. While silting 
on the stone under the tree, my mind was soothed 

by reading some passages of in the Quarterly 

Review. With no painful humility I felt that an 
enemy of mine is a man of genius and viriue ; and 
that all who think slightingly of me may be right." 

But the strongest and most painful expres- 
sion of this profound humility is to be found 
in a note to his Dissertation on Ethical Philo- 
sophy ■ in which, after a beautiful eulogium 
on his deceased friends, Mr. George Wilson 
and Mr. Serjeant Lens, he adds — 

" The present writer hopes that the good-natured 
reader will excuse him for having thus, perhaps 
unseasonably, bestowed heartfelt commendation 
on those who were above the pursuit of praise, and 
the remembrance of whose good opinion and good- 
will helps to support him, under a deep sense of 
faults and vices." 

The reader now knows enough of Sir 
James' personal character to enter readily 
into the spirit of any extracts we may lay be- 
fore him. The most valuable of these are 
supplied by his letters, journals, and occa- 
sional writings, while enjoying the compara- 
tive leisure of his Indian residence, or the 
complete leisure of his voyage to and from 
that country: and, with all due deference to 
opposite opinions, this is exactly what we 
should have expected. Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, it is well known, had a great relish for 
Society ; and had not constitutional vigour 
(after his return from India) to go through 
much Business without exhaustion and fatigue. 
In London and in Parliament, therefore, his 
powerful intellect was at once too much dis- 
sipated, and too much oppressed ) and the 
traces it has left of its exertions on those 
scenes are comparatively few and inadequate. 
In conversation, no doubt, much that was de- 
lightful and instructive was thrown out; and, 
for want of a Boswell, has perished ! But, 
though it may be true that we have thus lost 
the light and graceful flowers of anecdote and 
conversation, we would fain console ourselves 
with the belief that we have secured the more 
precious and mature fruits of studies and 
meditations, which can only be pursued to 
advantage, when the cessation of more impor- 
tunate calls has "left us leisure to be wise." 

With reference to these views, nothing has 
struck us more than the singular vigour and 
alertness of his understanding during the dull 
progress of his home voyage. Shut up in a 
small cabin, in a tropical climate, in a state 
of languid health, and subject to every sort 
of annoyance, he not only reads with an in- 
dustry which would not disgrace an ardent 
Academic studying for honours, but plunges 
eagerly into original speculations, and finishes 
off some of the most beautiful compositions 
in the language, in a shorter time than would 
be allowed, for such subjects, to a contractor 
for leading paragraphs to a daily paper. In 
less than a fortnight, during this voyage, he 
seems to have thrown off nearly twenty elabo 
rate characters of eminent authors or slates 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



men in English story— conceived with a just- 
ness, and "executed with a delicacy, which 
would seem unattainable without long medi- 
tation and patient revisal. We cannot now 
venture, however, to present our readers with 
more than a part of one of them ; and we take 
oui extract from that of Samuel Johnson. 

" In early youth he had resisted the most severe 
»ests of probity. Neither the extreme poverty nor 
the uncertain income to which the virtue of so many 
.men of letters has yielded, even in the slightest de- 
gree weakened his integrity, or lowered the dignity 
of his independence. His moral principles (if the 
language may be allowed) partook of the vigour of 
his understanding. He was conscientious, sincere, 
determined ; ana his pride was no more than a 
steady consciousness of superiority in the most valu- 
able qualities of human nature. His friendships 
were not only firm, but generous and tender, be- 
sieaih a rugged exterior. He wounded none of those 
feelings which the habits of his life enabled him to 
estimate ; but he had become too hardened by se- 
rious distress not to contract some disregard for 
ihose minor delicacies which become so keenly sen- 
sible, in a calm and prosperous fortune. He was a 
Tory, not without some propensities towards Jacob- 
ltism; and a High Churchman, with more attachment 
to ecclesiastical authority and a splendid worship, 
than is quite consistent with the spirit of Protestant- 
ism. On these subjects he neither permitted himself 
to doubt, nor tolerated difference of opinion in others. 
But the vigour of his understanding is no more to 
be estimated by his opinions on subjects where it 
was bound by his prejudices, than the strength of a 
man's body by the efforts of a limb in fetters. His 
conversation, which was one of the most powerful 
instruments of his extensive influence, was artificial, 
dogmatical, sententious, and poignant ; adapted, 
with the most admirable versatility, to every sub- 
ject as it arose, and distinguished by an almost un- 
paralleled power of serious repartee. He seems to 
have considered himself as a sort of colloquial mag- 
istrate, who inflicted severe punishment from just 
policy. His course of life led him to treat those 
sensibilities, which such severity wounds, as fantas- 
tic and effeminate ; and he entered society too late 
to acquire those habits of politeness which are a sub- 
stitute for natural delicacy. 

" In the progress of English style, three periods 
may be easily distinguished. The first period ex- 
tended from Sir Thomas More to Lord Clarendon. 
During great part of this period, the style partook 
of the rudeness and fluctuation of an unformed lan- 
guage, in which use had not yet determined the 
words that were to be English. Writers had not 
yet discovered the combination of words which best 
suits the original structure and immutable constitu- 
tion of our language. While the terms were Eng- 
lish, the arrangement was Latin — the exclusive lan- 
guage of learning, and that in which every truth in 
science, and every model of elegance, was then 
contemplated by youth. For a century and a half, 
ineffectual attempts were made to bend our vulgar 
tongue to the genius of the language supposed to be 
superior; and the whole of this period, though not 
without a capricious mixture of coarse idiom, may 
be called the Latin, or pedantic age, of our style. 

" In the second period, which extended from the 
Restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century, a 
series of writers appeared, of less genius indeed than 
their predecessors, but more successful in their expe- 
riments to discover the mode of writing most adapted 
to the genius of the language. About the same pe- 
riod that a similar change was effected in France 
by Pascal, they began to banish from style, learned 
as well as vulgar phraseology ; and to confine them- 
selves to the part of the language naturally used in 
general conversation by well-educated men. That 
middle region which lies between vulgarity and 
pedantry, remains commonly unchanged, while 



both extremes are condemned to perpetual revolu- 
tion. Those who select words from that permanent 
part of a language, and who arrange them according 
to its natural order, have discovered the true secret 
of rendering their writings permanent ; and of pre- 
serving that rank among the classical writers of 
their country, which men of greater intellectual 
power have failed to attain. Of these writers, whose 
language has not yet been at all superannuated, 
Cowley was probably the earliest, as Dryden and 
Addison were assuredly the greatest. 

" The third period may be called the Rhetorical, 
and is distinguished by the prevalence of a school 
of writers, of which Johnson was the founder. The 
fundamental character of this style is, that it em- 
ploys undisguised art, where classical writers appear 
only to obey the impulse of a cultivated and adorned 
nature, &c. 

" As the mind of Johnson was robust, but neither 
nimble nor graceful, so his style, though sometimes 
significant, nervous, and even majestic, was void 
of all grace and ease; and being the most unlike 
of all styles to the natural effusion of a cultivated 
mind, had the least pretensions .to the praise of elo- 
quence. During the period, now near a close, in 
which he was a favourite model, a stiff symmetry 
and tedious monotony succeeded to that various 
music with which the taste of Addison diversified 
his periods, and to that natural imagery which his 
beautiful genius seemed with graceful negligence to 
scatter over his composition." 

We stop here to remark, that, though con- 
curring in the substance of this masterly clas- 
sification of our writers, we should yet be dis-. 
posed to except to that part of it which 
represents the first introduction of soft, grace- 
ful, and idiomatic English as not earlier than 
the period of the Restoration. In our opinion 
it is at least as old as Chaucer. The English 
Bible is full of it; and it is among the most 
common, as well as the most beautiful, of the 
many languages spoken by Shakespeare. 
Laying his verse aside, there are in his longer 
passages of prose — and in the serious as well 
as the humorous parts — in Hamlet, and Bru- 
tus, and Shylock, and Henry V., as well as in 
FalstafT. and Touchstone, Rosalind, and Bene- 
dick, a staple of sweet, mellow, and natural 
English, altogether as free and elegant as that 
of Addison, and for the most part more vigor- 
ous and more richly coloured. The same may 
be said, with some exceptions, of the other 
dramatists of that age. Sir James is right 
perhaps as to the grave and authoritative wri- 
ters of prose ; but few of the wits of Queen 
Anne's time were of that description. We 
shall only add that part of the sequel which 
contains the author's general account of the 
Lives of the Poets. 

" Whenever understanding alone is sufficient for 
poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are 
generally right. But the beauties of poetry must 
befell before their causes are investigated. Thero 
is a poetical sensibility, which in the progress of the 
mind becomes as distinct a power as a musical ear 
or a picturesque eye. Without a considerable de- 
gree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a man of the 
greatest understanding to speak of the higher beau- 
ties of poetry, as it is for a blind man to speak of 
colours. But to cultivate such a talent was wholly 
foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewd- 
ness of Johnson. As in his judgment of life and 
character, so in his criticism on poetry, he wa3 a 
sort of free-thinker. He suspected the refined of 
affectation ; he rejected the enthusiactic as absurd , 
and he Look it for granted that the mysterious was 



748 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



unintelligible. He came info the world when the 
school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English 
poetry. In that school he had himself learned to 
be a lofty and vigorous declaimer in harmonious 
verse; beyond that school his unforced admiration 
perhaps scarcely soared ; and his highest effort of 
criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on 
Dryden. His criticism owed its popularity as much 
to its defects as to its excellences. It was on a level 
with the majority of readers — persons of good sense 
and information, but of no exquisite sensibility ; and 
to their minds it derived a false appearance of so- 
lidity, from that very narrowness, which excluded 
those grander efforts of imagination to which Aris- 
totle and Bacon have confined the name of poetry." 

The admirable and original delineation, 
of which this is but a small part, appears to 
have been the task of one disturbed and 
sickly day. We have in these volumes char- 
acters of Hume, Swift, Lord Mansfield, Wilkes, 
Goldsmith, Gray, Franklin, Sheridan, Fletcher 
of Saltoun, Louis* XIV., and some others, all 
finished with the same exquisite taste, and 
conceived in the same vigorous and candid 
spirit; besides which, it appears from the 
Journal, that in the same incredibly short 
period of fourteen or fifteen days, he had 
made similar delineations of Lord North, 
Paley, George Grenville, C. Townshend, Tur- 
got, Malesherbes, Young, Thomson, Aiken- 
side, Lord Bolingbroke, and Lord Oxford ; 
though (we know not from what cause) none 
of these last mentioned appear in the present 
publication. 

During the same voyage, the perusal of 
Madame de Sevigne's Letters engages him 
(at intervals) for about a fortnight ; in the 
course of which he has noted down in his 
Journal more just and delicate remarks on her 
character, and that of her age, than we think 
are any where else to be met with. But we 
cannot now venture on any extract; and must 
confine ourselves to the following admirable 
remarks on the true tone of polite conversa- 
tion and familiar letters, — suggested by the 
same fascinating collection : — 

" When a woman of feeling, fancy, and accom- 
plishment has learned to converse with ease and 
grace, from long intercourse with the most polished 
society, and when she writes as she speaks, she 
must write letters as they ought to be written ; if 
she has acquired just as much habitual correctness 
as is reconcilable with the air of negligence. A 
moment of enthusiasm, a burst of feeling, a flash of 
eloquence may be allowed ; but the intercourse of 
society, either in conversation or in letters, allows 
no more. Though interdicted from the long-con- 
tinued use of elevated language, they are not with- 
out a resource. There is a part of language which 
is disdained by the pedant or the declaimer, and 
which both, if they knew its difficulty, would ap- 
proach with dread ; it is formed of the most familiar 
phrases and turns in daily use by the generality of 
men, and is full of energy and vivacity, bearing 
upon it the mark of those keen feelings and strong 
passions from which it springs. It is the employ- 
ment of such phrases which produces what may be 
called colloquial eloquence. Conversation and let- 
ters may be thus raised to any degree of animation, 
without departing from their character. Any thing 
may be said, if it be spoken in the tone of society. 
The highest guests are welcome if they come in 
the easy undress of the club ; the strongest meta- 
phor appears without violence, if it is familiarly ex- 
pressed ; and we the more easily catch the warm- 
est feeling, if we perceive that it is intentionally 



lowered in expression, out of condescension to our 
calmer temper. It is thus that harangues and dec- 
lamations, the last proof of bad taste and bad man 
ners in conversation, are avoided, while the fancy 
and the heart find the means of pouring forth all 
their stores. To meet this despised part of language 
in a polished dress, and producing all the effects of 
wit and eloquence, is a constant source of agreeable 
surprise. This is increased, when a few bolder 
and higher words are happily wrought into the tex- 
ture of this familiar eloquence. To find what seems*, 
so unlike author-craft in a book, raises the pleasing 
astonishment to its highest degree. I once thought 
of illustrating my notions by numerous examples 
from • La Sevigne.' And I must, some day or 
other, do so; though I think it the resource of a 
bungler, who is not enough master of language to 
convey his conceptions into the minds ot others. 
The style of Madame de Sevigne is evidently copied, 
not only by her worshipper, Walpole, but even by 
Gray ; who, notwithstanding the extraordinary mer- 
its of his matter, has the double stiffness of an imi- 
tator, and of a college recluse." 

How many debatable points are fairly set- 
tled by the following short and vigorous re- 
marks, in the Journal for 1811 : — 

"Finished George Rose's 'Observations on 
Fox's History,' which are tedious and inefficient. 
That James was more influenced by a passion for 
arbitrary power than by Popish bigotry, is an idle 
refinement in Fox : He liked both Popery and 
tyranny; and I «m persuaded he did not himself 
know which he liked best. But I take it to be cer- 
tain that the English people, at the Revolution, 
dreaded his love of Popery more than his love of 
tyranny. This was in them Protestant bigotry, 
not reason : But the instinct of their bigotry pointed 
right. Popery was then the name for the faction 
which supported civil and religious tyranny in 
Europe : To be a Papist was to be a partisan of the 
ambition of Louis XIV." 

There is in the Bombay Journal of the same 
year, a beautiful essay on Novels, and the 
moral effect of fiction in general, the whole 
of which we should like to extract ; but it is 
far too long. It proceeds on the assumption, 
that as all fiction must seek to interest by 
representing admired qualities in an exagge- 
rated form, and in striking aspects, it must 
tend to raise the standard, and increase the 
admiration of excellence. In answer to an 
obvious objection, he proceeds — 

"A man who should feel all the various senti- 
ments of morality, in the proportions in which they 
are inspired by the Iliad, would certainly be far 
from a perfectly good man. But it does not follow 
that the Iliad did not produce great moral benefit. 
To determine that point, we must ascertain whether 
a man, formed by the Iliad, would be better than 
the ordinary man of the country, at the time in 
which it appeared. It is true that it too much in- 
spires an admiration for ferocious courage. That 
admiration was then prevalent, and every circum 
stance served to strengthen it. But the Iliad 
breathes many other sentiments, less prevalent, 
less favoured by the state of society, and calculated 
gradually to mitigate the predominant passion. The 
friendship and sorrow of Achilles for Patroclus, the 
patriotic valour of Hector, the paternal affliction of 
Priam, would slowly introduce more humane affec- 
tions. If they had not been combined with the ad 
miration of barbarous courage, they would not have 
been popular; and consequently they would have 
found no entry into those savage hearts which they 
were destined (I do not say intended) to soften. It 
is therefore clear, from the very nature of poetry, 
that the poet must inspire somewhat better morals 
than those around him ; though, to be effectual and 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



749 



useful, his morals must not be totally unlike those 
of his contemporaries. If the Iliad should, in a long 
course of ages, have inflamed the ambition and fe- 
rocity of a few individuals, even that evil, great as 
it is, will be far from balancing all the generous 
sentiments, which, for three thousand years, it has 
been pouring into the hearts of youth ; and which 
it now continues to infuse, aided by the dignity of 
antiquity, and by all the fire and splendour of poetry. 
Every succeeding generation, as it refines, requires 
the standard to be proportionably raised. 

" Apply these remarks, with the necessary modi- 
fications, to those fictions copied from common life 
called Novels, which are not above a century old, 
and of which the multiplication and the importance, 
as well literary as moral, are characteristic features 
of England. There may be persons now alive who 
recollect the publication of ' Tom Jones,' at least, 
if not of ' Clarissa.' Since that time, probably 
twelve novels have appeared of the first rank — a 
prodigious number, of such a kind, in any depart- 
ment of literature (by the help of Sir Walter Scott 
and Miss Edgeworth we may now at least double 
the number) — and the whole class of novels must 
have had more influence on the public, than all 
other sorts of books combined. Nothing popular 
can be frivolous. Whatever influences multitudes, 
must be of proportionable importance. Bacon and 
Turgot would have contemplated with inquisitive 
admiration this literary revolution." 

And soon after, while admitting that Tom 
Jones (for example) is so far from being a 
moral book as to be deserving of the severest 
reprobation, he adds — 

11 Yet even in this extreme case, I must observe 
that the same book inspires the greatest abhorrence of 
the duplicity of Blifil, of the hypocrisy of Thwackum 
and Square ; that Jones himself is interesting by 
his frankness, spirit, kindness, and fidelity — all vir- 
tues of the first class. The objection is the same 
in its principle with that to the Iliad. The ancient 
epic exclusively presents war — the modern novel 
love ; the one what was most interesting in public 
life, and the other what is most brilliant in private 
— and both with an unfortunate disregard of moral 
restraint." 

The entry under 6th March, 1817, has to 
the writer of this article, a melancholy inter- 
est, even at this distance of time. It refers 
to the motion recently made in the House of 
Commons for a new writ, on the death of Mr. 
Horner. The reflections with which it closes 
must, we think, be interesting always. 

" March 6th. — The only event which now ap- 
pears interesting to me, is the scene in the House 
of Commons on Monday. Lord Morpeth opened 
it in a speech so perfect, that it might have been 
well placed as a passage in the most elegant Eng- 
lish writer ; it was full of feeling ; every topic was 
skilfully presented, and contained, by a sort of pru- 
dence which is a part of taste, within safe limits ; 
he slid over the thinnest ice without cracking it. — 
Canning filled well what would have been the va- 
cant place of a calm observer of Horner's public 
life and talents. Manners Sutton's most affecting 
speech was a tribute of affection from a private friend 
become a political enemy ; Lord Lascelles, at the 
head of the country gentleman of England, closing 
this affecting, improving, and most memorable 
scene by declaring, ' that if the sense of the House 
could have been taken on this occasion, it would 
have been unanimous.' I may say without exagge- 
ration, that never were so many words uttered with- 
out the least suspicion of exaggeration ; and that 
never was so much honour paid in any age or nation 
to intrinsic claims alone. A Howard introduced, 
and an English House of Commons adopted, the 
proposition, of thus honouring the memory of a 



man of thirty-eight, the son of a shopkeeper, who 
never filled an office, or had the power of obliging 
a living creature, and whose grand title to this dis- 
tinction was the belief of his virtue. How honour- 
able to the age and to the House ! A country where 
such sentiments prevail is not ripe for destruction." 

Sir James could not but feel, in the narrow 
circles of Bombay, the great superiority of 
London society; and he has thus recorded 
his sense of it : — 

" In great capitals, men of different provinces, 
professions, and pursuits are brought together in so* 
ciety, and are obliged to acquire a habit, a matter, 
and manner mutually perspicuous and agreeable. 
Hence they are raised above frivolity, and are di- 
vested of pedantry. In small societies this habit is 
not imposed by necessity ; ihey have lower, but 
more urgent subjects, which are interesting to all, 
level to all capacities, and require no eflbrt or prepa- 
ration of mind." 

He might have added, that in a great capi- 
tal the best of all sorts is to be met with; and 
that the adherents even of the most extreme 
or fantastic opinions are there so numerous, 
and generally so respectably headed, as to 
command a deference and regard that would 
scarcely be shown to them when appearing 
as insulated individuals ; and thus it happens 
that real toleration, and true modesty, as well 
as their polite simulars, are rarely to be met 
with out of great cities. This, however, is 
true only of those who mix largely in the 
general society of -such places. For bigots 
and exclusives of all sorts, they are hot-beds 
and seats of corruption ; since, however ab- 
surd or revolting their tenets may be, such 
persons are sure to meet enough of their fel- 
lows to encourage each other. In the provin- 
ces, a believer in animal magnetism or Ger- 
man metaphysics has few listeners, and no 
encouragement; but in a place like London 
they make a little coterie ; who herd together, 
exchange flatteries, and take themselves foi 
the apostles of a new gospel. 

The editor has incorporated with his work 
some letters addressed to him by friends of 
his father, containing either anecdotes of his 
earlier life, or observations on his character 
and merits. It was natural for a person whose 
age precluded him from speaking on his own 
authority of any but recent transactions, to 
seek for this assistance ; and the information 
contributed by Lord Abinger and Mr. Basil 
Montagu (the former especially) is very inter- 
esting. The other letters present us with little 
more than the opinion of the writers as to his 
character. If these should be thought too 
laudatory, there is another character which 
has lately fallen under our eye, which cer- 
tainly is not liable to that objection. In the 
" Table-Talk » of the late Mr. Coleridge, we 
find these words: — "I doubt if Mackintosh 
ever heartily appreciated an eminently origi- 
nal man. After all his fluency and brilliant 
erudition, you can rarely carry off any thing 
worth preserving. You might not improperly 
write upon his forehead, 'Warehouse to let ! 3 " 

We wish to speak tenderly of a man of ge- 
nius, and we believe of amiable dispositions, 
who has been so recently removed from his 
friends and admirers. But so portentous a 

»v2 



750 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



misiudgment as this, and coming from such a 
quarter, cannot be passed without notice. If 
Sir James Mackintosh had any talent more 
conspicuous and indisputable than another, it 
was that of appreciating the merits of eminent 
and original men. His great learning and 
singular soundness of judgment enabled him 
to do this truly; while his kindness of na- 
ture, his zeal for human happiness, and his 
perfect freedom from prejudice or vanity, 
prompted him, above most other men, to do 
it heartily. And then, as to his being a person 
from whose conversation little could be car- 
ried away, why the most characteristic and 
remarkable thing about it, was that the whole 
of it might be carried away — it was so lucid, 
precise, and brilliantly perspicuous ! The joke 
of the "warehouse to let " is not, we confess, 
quite level to our capacities. It can scarcely 
mean (though that is the most obvious sense) 
that the head was empty — as that is incon- 
sistent with the rest even of this splenetic 
delineation. If it was intended to insinuate 
that it was ready for the indiscriminate re- 
ception of any thing which any one might 
choose to put into it, there could not be a more 
gross misconception ; as we have no doubt 
Mr. Coleridge must often have sufficiently 
experienced. And by whom is this dis- 
covery, that Mackintosh's conversation pre- 
sented nothing that could be carried away, 
thus confidently announced? Why, by the 
very individual against whose own oracular 
and interminable talk the same complaint has 
been made, by friends and by foes, and with 
an unanimity unprecedented, for the last forty 
years. The admiring, or rather idolizing ne- 
phew, who has lately put forth this hopeful 
specimen of his relics, has recorded in the 
preface, that "his conversation at all times 
required attention ; and that the demand on 
the intellect of the hearer was often very 
« great: and that, when he got into his 'huge 
circuit ' and large illustrations, most people 
had lost him, and naturally enough supposed 
that he had lost himself." Nay, speaking to 
this very point, of the ease or difficulty of 
" carrying away " any definite notions from 
what he said, the partial kinsman is pleased 
to inform us, that, with all his familiarity with 
the inspired style of his relative, he himself 
has often gone away, after listening to him 
for several delightful hours, with divers masses 
of reasoning in his head, but without being 
able to perceive what connection they had 
with each other. " In such cases," he adds, 
"I have mused, sometimes even for days after- 
wards, upon the words, till at length, spon- 
taneously as it were, the fire would kindle," 
&c. &c. And this is the person who is pleased 
to denounce Sir James Mackintosh as an ordi- 
nary man; and especially to object to his con- 
versation, that, though brilliant and fluent, 
there was rarely any thing in it which could 
be carried away ! 

An attack so unjust and so arrogant leads 
naturally to comparisons, which it could be 
easy to follow out to the signal discomfiture 
of the party attacking. But without going 
beyond what is thus forced upon our notice, 



we shall only say, that nothing could possibly 
set the work before us in so favourable a 
point, of view, as a comparison between it 
and the volumes of "Table Talk," to which 
we have already made reference— -unless, 
perhaps, it were the contrast of the two minds 
which are respectively portrayed in these 
publications. 

In these memorials of Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, we trace throughout the workings of a 
powerful and unclouded intellect, nourished 
by wholesome learning, raised and instructed 
by fearless though reverent questionings of 
the sages of other times (which is the per-, 
mitted Necromancy of the wise), exercised 
by free discussion with the most distinguished 
among the living, and made acquainted with 
its own strength and weakness, not only by 
a constant intercourse with other powerful 
minds, but by mixing, with energy and de- 
liberation, in practical business and affairs' 
and here pouring itself out in a delightful 
miscellany of elegant criticism, original spe- 
culation, and profound practical suggestions 
on politics, religion, history, and all th&greater 
and the lesser duties, the arts and the ele- 
gances of life — all expressed with a beautiful 
clearness and tempered dignity — breathing 
the purest spirit of good-will to mankind — 
and brightened not merely by an ardent hope, 
but an assured faith in their constant advance- 
ment in freedom, intelligence, and virtue. 

On all these points, the "table Talk" of 
his poetical contemporary appears to us to 
present a most mortifying contrast; and to 
render back merely the image of a moody 
mind, incapable of mastering its own imagin- 
ings, and constantly seduced by them, or by 
a misdirected ambition, to attempt impracti- 
cable things: — naturally attracted by dim 
paradoxes rather than lucid truths, and pre- 
ferring, for the most part, the obscure and ne- 
glected parts of learning to those that are 
useful and clear — marching, in short, at all 
times, under the exclusive guidance of the 
Pillar of Smoke — and, like the body of its 
original followers, wandering all his day6 in 
the desert, without ever coming in sight of 
the promised land. 

Consulting little at any time with any thing 
but his own prejudices and fancies, he seems, 
in his latter days, to have withdrawn alto- 
gether from the correction of equal minds; 
and to have nourished the assurance of his 
own infallibility, by delivering mystical ora- 
cles from his cloudy shrine, all day long, to a 
small set of disciples, to whom neither ques- 
tion nor interruption was allowed. The result 
of this necessarily was, an excaerbation of all 
the morbid tendencies of the mind ; a daily 
increasing ignorance of the course of opinions 
and affairs in the world, and a proportional 
confidence in. his own dogmas and dreams^ 
which might have been shaken, at least, it 
not entirely subverted, by a closer contact 
with the general mass of intelligence. Un- 
fortunately this unhealthful training (pecu- 
liarly nnhealthful for such a constitution) pro- 
duced not merely a great eruption of ridicu- 
lous blunders and pitiable prejudices, but 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



751 



seems at last to have brought on a confirmed 
and thoroughly diseased habit of uncharitable- 
ness, and misanthropic anticipations of cor- 
ruption and misery throughout the civilised 
world. The indiscreet revelations of the work 
to which we have alluded have now brought 
to light instances, not only of intemperate 
abuse of men of the highest intellect and 
most unquestioned purity, but such predic- 
tions of evil from what the rest of the world 
has been contented to receive as improve- 
ments, and such suggestions of intolerant and 
Tyrannical Remedies, as no man would be- 
lieve could proceed from a cultivated intel- 
lect of the present age — if the early history 
of this particular intellect had not indicated 
an inherent aptitude for all extreme opinions, 
— and prepared us for the usual conversion of 
one extreme into another. 

And it is worth while to mark here also, 
and in respect merely of consistency and 
ultimate authority with mankind, the advan- 
tage which a sober and well-regulated under- 
standing will always have over one which 
claims to be above ordinances: and trusting 
either to an erroneous opinion of its own 
strength, or even to a true sense of it, gives 
itself up to its first strong impression, and sets 
at defiance all other reason and authority. 
Sir James Mackintosh had, in his youth, as 
much ambition and as much consciousness of 
power as Mr. Coleridge could have : But the 
utmost extent of his early aberrations (in his 
Vindicice Gallica) was an over estimate of the 
probabilities of good from a revolution of 
violence; and a much greater under-estimate 
of the mischiefs with which such experiments 
are sure to be attended, and the value of set- 
tled institutions and long familiar forms. Yet, 
though in his philanthropic enthusiasm he did 
miscalculate the relative value of these op- 
posite forces (and speedily admitted and rec- 
tified the error), he never for an instant dis- 
puted the existence of both elements in the 
equation, or affected to throw a doubt upon 
any of the great principles on which civil so- 
ciety reposes. On the contrary, in his earliest 
as well as his latest writings, he pointed 
steadily to the great institutions of Property 
and Marriage, and to the necessary authority 
of Law and Religion, as essential to the being 
of a state, and the well-being of any human 
society. It followed, therefore, that when 
disappointed in his too sanguine expectations 
from the French Revolution, he had nothing 
to retract in the substance and scope of his 
opinions; and merely tempering their an- 
nouncement, with the gravity and caution of 
maturer years, he gave them out again in his 
later days to the world, with the accumulated 
authority of a whole life of consistency and 
study. At no period of that life, did he fail 
to assert the right of the people to political 
and religious freedom ; and to the protection 
of just and equal laws, enacted by representa- 
tives truly chosen by themselves: And he 
never uttered a syllable that could be con- 
strued into an approval, or even an acquies- 
cence in persecution and intolerance; or in 
tne maintenance of authority for any other 



purpose than to give effect to the enlightened 
and deliberate will of the "community. To 
enforce these doctrines his whole life was 
devoted ; and though not permitted to com- 
plete either of the great works he had pro- 
jected, he was enabled to finish detached 
portions of each, sufficient not only fully to 
develope his principles, but to give a clear 
view T of the whole design, and to put it in the 
power of any succeeding artist to proceed 
with the execution. Look now upon the other 
side of the parallel. 

Mr. Coleridge, too, was an early and most 
ardent admirer of the French Revolution ; but 
the fruits of that admiration in him were, not 
a reasoned and statesmanlike apology for 
some of its faults alid excesses, but a resolu- 
tion to advance the regeneration of mankind 
at a still quicker rate, by setting before their 
eyes the pattern of a yet more exquisite form 
of society ! And accordingly, when a full- 
grown man, he actually gave into, if he did 
not originate, the scheme of what he and his 
friends called a Pantisocracy — a form of so- 
ciety in, which there was to be neither law 
nor government, neither priest, judge, nor 
magistrate — in which all property was to be 
in common, and every man left to act upon 
his own sense of duty and affection ! 

This fact is enough : — And whether he af- 
terwards passed through the stages of a Jaco- 
bin, which he seems to deny — or a hotheaded 
Moravian, which he seems to admit, — is really 
of no consequence. The character of his un- 
derstanding is settled with all reasonable men : 
As well as the authority that is due to the 
anti-reform and anti-toleration maxims which 
he seems to have spent his latter years in 
venting. Till we saw- this posthumous publi- 
cation, we had, to be sure, no conception of 
the extent to which these compensating max- 
ims were carried ; and we now think that few 
of the Conservatives (who were not originally 
Pantisocratists) will venture to adopt them. 
Not only is the Reform Bill denounced as the 
spawn of mere wickedness, injustice, and 
ignorance ; and the reformed House of Com- 
mons as li low, vulgar, meddling, and Sneering 
at every thing noble and refined," but the 
wise and the good, we are assured, will, in 
every country, "speedily become disgusted 
w r ith the Representative form of government, 
brutalized as it is by the predominance of de- 
mocracy, in England, France, and Belgium !" 
And then the remedy is, that they will recur 
to a new, though, we confess, not very com- 
prehensible form, of " Pure Monarchy, in 
which the reason of the people shall become 
efficient in the apparent Will of the King!" 
Moreover, he is for a total dissolution of the 
union with Ireland, and its erection into a sepa- 
rate and independent kingdom . He is against 
Negro emancipation — sees no use in reducing 
taxation — and designates Malthus' demon- 
tration of a mere matter of fact by a redundant 
accumulation of evidence, by the polite and 
appropriate appellation of "a lie;" and repre- 
sents it as more disgraceful and abominable 
than any thing that the w t-akness and wick- 
edness of man have ever before given birth to. 



MrSCELLANEOUS. 



Such as his temperance and candour are in 
politics, they are also in religion ; and recom- 
mended and excused by the same flagrant 
contradiction to his early tenets. Whether he 
ever was a proper Moravian or not we care 
not to inquire. It is admitted, and even stated 
somewhat boastingly in this book, that he was 
a bold Dissenter from the church. He thanks 
heaven, indeed, that he "had gone much 
farther than the Unitarians !" And to make 
his boldness still more engaging, he had gone 
these lengths, not only against the authority 
of our Doctors, but against the clear and ad- 
mitted doctrine and teaching of the Apostles 
themselves ! " { What care I,' I said, ' for the 
Pla tonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul ? 
My conscience revolts V — That was the ground 
of my Unitarlanism." And by and by, this 
infallible and oracular person does not hesitate 
to declare, that others, indeed, may do as they 
choose, but he, for his part, can never allow 
that Unitarians are Christians ! and, giving no 
credit for "revolting consciences" to any one 
but himself, charges all Dissenters in the 
lump with haling the Church much more 
than they love religion — is furious against the 
repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and 
Catholic Emancipation, — and at last actually, 
and in good set terms, denies that any Dis- 
senter has a right to toleration! and, in per- 
fect consistency, maintains that it is the duty 
of the magistrate to stop heresy and schism 
by persecution — if he only has reason to think 
that in this way the evil may be arrested ; 
adding, by way of example, that he would be 
ready " to ship off — any where," any mission- 
aries who might attempt to disturb the un- 
doubting Lutheranism of certain exemplary 
Norwegians, whom he takes under his special 
protection. 

We are tempted to say more. But we de- 
sist; and shall pursue this parallel no farther. 
Perhaps we have already been betrayed into 
feelings and expressions that may be objected 
to. We should be sorry if this could be done 
justly. But w T e do not question Mr. Cole- 
ridge's sincerity. We admit, too, that he was 
a man of much poetical sensibility, and had 
visions of intellectual sublimity, and glimpses 
of comprehensive truths, which he could 
neither reduce into order nor combine into 
system. But out of poetry and metaphysics, 
we think he was nothing; and eminently dis- 
qualified, not only by the defects, but by the 
best parts of his genius, as well as by his 
temper and habits, for forming any sound 
judgment on the business and affairs of our 
actual world. And yet it is for his preposter- 
ous judgments on such subjects that his memory 
is now held in affected reverence by those 
who laughed at him, all through his life, for 
what gave him his only true claim to admira- 
tion ! and who now magnify his genius, for no 
other purpose but to give them an opportunity 
to quote, as of grave authority, his mere deli- 
rations, on reform, dissent, and toleration — his 
cheering predictions of the approaching mil- 
lennium of pure monarchy — or his demonstra- 
tions of the absolute harmlessness of taxation. 
nnd the sacred duty of all sorts of efficient per- 



secution. We are sure we treat Mr*. Coleridge 
with all possible respect when we say, that 
his name can lend no more plausibility to ab- 
surdities like these, than the far greater names 
of Bacon or Hobbes could do to the belief in 
sympathetic medicines, or in churchyard ap- 
paritions. 

We fear we have already transgressed our 
just limits. But before concluding, we wish 
to say a word on a notion which we find pretty 
generally entertained, that Sir James Mackin- 
tosh did not sufficiently turn to profit the 
talent which was committed to him ; and did 
much less than, with his gifts and opportuni- 
ties, he ought to have done. He himself 
seems, no doubt, to have been occasionally 
of that opinion ; and yet we cannot but think 
it in a great degree erroneous. If he had not, 
in early life, conceived the ambitious design 
of executing two great works, — one on the 
principles of Morals and Legislation, and one 
on English History ; or had not let it be under- 
stood, for many years before his death, that 
he was actually employed on the latter, we 
do not imagine that, with all the knowledge 
his friends had (and all the world now has) 
of his qualifications, any one would have 
thought of visiting his memory with such a 
reproach. 

We know of no code of morality which 
makes it imperative on every man of extra- 
ordinary talent or learning to write a large 
book : — and could readily point to instances 
where such persons have gone with unques- 
tioned honour to their graves, without leaving 
any such memorial — and been judged to have 
acted up to the last article of their duty, 
merely by enlightening society by their lives 
and conversation, and discharging with ability 
and integrity the offices of magistracy or legis- 
lation, to which they may have been called. 
But looking even to the sort of debt which 
may be thought to have been contracted by 
the announcement of these works, we cannot 
but think that the public has received a very 
respectable dividend — and, being at the^.best 
but a gratuitous creditor — ought not now to 
withhold a thankful discharge and acquittance. 
The discourse on Ethical Philosophy is full 
payment, we conceive, of one moiety of the 
first engagement, — and we are persuaded will 
be so received by all who can judge of its 
value ; and though the other moiety, which 
relates to Legislation, has not yet been ten- 
dered in form, there is reason to believe that 
there 'are assets in the hands of the executors, 
from which this- also may soon be liquidated. 
That great subject was certainly fully treated 
of in the Lectures of 1799 — and as it appears 
from some citations in these Memoirs, that, 
though for the most part delivered extempore, 
various notes and manuscripts relating to them 
have been preserved, we think it not unlikely 
that, with due diligence, the outline at least 
and main features of that interesting disquisi- 
tion may still be recovered. On the bill for 
History, too, it cannot be denied that a large 
payment has been made to account — and as 
it was only due for the period of the Revolu- 
tion, any shortcoming that may appear upon 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



753 



tiat score, may be fairly held as compensated 
Dy the voluntary advances of value to a much 
greater extent, though referring to an earlier 
period. 

But, in truth, there never -was any such 
debt or engagement on the part of Sir James : 
And the public was, and continues, the only 
debtor on the transaction, for whatever it may 
have received of service or instruction at his 
hand. We have expressed elsewhere our 
estimate of the greatness of this debt ; and of 
the value especially of the Histories he has 
Vft behind him. We have, to be sure, since 
«een some sneering remarks on the dulness 
and uselessness of these works ; and an at- 
tempt made to hold them up to ridicule, under 
the appellation of Philosophical histories. We 
are not aware that such a name was ever ap- 
plied to them by their author or their admirers. 
But if they really deserve it, we are at a loss 
to conceive how it should be taken for a name 
of reproach; and it will scarcely be pretended 
that their execution is such as to justify its 
application in the way of derision. We do 
not perceive, indeed, that this is pretended ; 
and, strange as it may appear, the objection 
seems really to be, rather to the kind of wri- 
ting in general, than to the defects of its exe- 
cution in this particular instance — the objector 
having a singular notion that history should 
consist of narrative only ; and that nothing 
can be so tiresome and useless as any addition 
of explanation or remark. 

We have no longer room to expose, as it 
deserves, the strange misconceptions of the 
objects and uses of history, which we humbly 
conceive to be implied in such an opinion ; 
and shall therefore content ourselves with 
asking, whether any man really imagines that 
the modern history of any considerable State, 
with its complicated system of foreign rela- 
tions, and the play of its domestic parties, 
could be written in the manner of Herodotus'? 
— or be made intelligible (much less instruct- 
ive) by the naked recital of transactions and 
occurrences'? These, in fact, are but the crude 
materials from which history should be con- 
structed; the mere alphabet out of which its 
lessons are afterwards to be spelled. If every 
reader had indeed the talents of an accom- 
plished Historian, — that knowledge of human 
nature, that large acquaintance with all col- 
lateral facts, and that force of understanding 
which are implied in such a name — and, at 
the same time, that leisure and love for the 
subject which would be necessary for this 
particular application of such gifts, the mere 
detail of facts, if full and impartial, might be 
sufficient for his purposes. But to every other 
class of readers, we will venture to say, that 
one half of such a history would be an in- 
soluble enigma ; and the other half the source 
of the most gross misconceptions. 

Without some explanation of the views and 
motives of the prime agents in great transac- 
tions — of the origin and state of opposite inte- 
rests and opinions in large bodies of the people 
— and of tneir tendencies respectively to as- 
cendency or decline — what intelligible account 
could be given of any thing worth knowing 



in the history of the world for the last two 
hundred years? above all, what useful lessorm 
could be learned, for people or for rulers, from 
a mere series of events presented in detail, 
without any other information as to their 
causes or consequences, than might be in- 
ferred from the sequence in which they ap- 
peared ? To us it appears that a mere record 
of the different places of the stars, and their 
successive changes of position, would be as 
good a system of Astronomy, as such a set oi 
annals would be of History; and that it would 
be about as reasonable to sneer at Newton 
and La Place for seeking to supersede the 
honest old star-gazers, by their philosophical 
histories of the heavens, as to speak in the 
same tone, of what Voltaire and Montesquieu 
and Mackintosh have attempted to do for our 
lower world. We have named these three, 
as having attended more peculiarly, and more 
impartially, than any others, at least in modern 
times, to this highest part of their duty. But, 
in truth, all eminent historians have attended 
to it — from the time of Thucydides down- 
wards; — the ancients putting the necessary 
explanations more frequently into the shape 
of imaginary orations — and the moderns into 
that of remark and dissertation. The very 
first, perhaps, of Hume's many excellences 
consists in these philosophical summaries of 
the reasons and considerations by which he 
supposes parties to have been actuated in 
great political movements; which are more 
completely abstracted from the mere story, 
and very frequently less careful and complete, 
than the parallel explanations of Sir James 
Mackintosh. For, with all his unrivalled sa- 
gacity, it is true, as Sir James has himself 
somewhere remarked, that Hume was too 
little of an antiquary to be always able to 
estimate the effect of motives in distant ages : 
and by referring too confidently to the princi- 
ples of human nature as developed in our oavh 
times, has often represented our ancestors as 
more reasonable, and much more argumenta- 
tive, than they really were. 

That there may be, and have often been, 
abuses of this best part of history, is a reason 
only for valuing more highly what is exempt 
from such abuses; and those who feel most 
veneration and gratitude for the lights afforded 
by a truly philosophical historian, will be sure 
to look with most aversion on a counterfeit. 
No one, we suppose, will stand up for the in- 
troduction of ignorant conjecture, shallow dog- 
matism, mawkish morality, or factious injustice 
into the pages of history — or deny that the 
shortest and simplest annals are greatly prefer- 
able to such a perversion. As to political 
partiality, however, it is a great mistake to 
suppose that it could be in any degree ex- 
cluded by confining history to a mere chroni- 
cle of facts — the truth being, that it is chiefly 
in the statement of facts that this partiality 
displays itself; and that it is more frequently 
exposed to detection than assisted, by the ar- 
guments and explanations, which are supposed 
to be its best resources. We shall not resume 
what we have b aid in another place as to the 
merit of th? Hi? + ories which are- now in ques- 



754 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



tion ; but we fear not to put this on record, as 
our deliberate, and we think impartial, judg- 
ment — that they are the most candid, the 
most judicious, and the most pregnant with 
thought, and moral and political wisdom, of 
any in which our domestic story has ever yet 
been recorded. 

But even if we should discount his Histo- 
ries, and his Ethical Dissertation, we should 
still be of opinion, that Sir James Mackintosh 
had not died indebted to his country for the 
use he had made of his talents. In the vol- 
umes before us, he seems to us to have left 
them a rich legacy, and given abundant proofs 
of the industry with which he sought to the 
last to qualify himself for their instruction, — 
and the honourable place which his name 
must ever hold, as the associate and successor 
of Romilly in the great and humane work of 
ameliorating our criminal law, might alone 
suffice to protect him from the imputation of 
having done less than was required of him, in 
the course of his unsettled life. But, without 
dwelling upon the part he took in Parliament, 
on these and many other important questions 
both of domestic and foreign policy, we must 
be permitted to say, that they judge ill of the 
relative value of men's contributions to the 
cause of general improvement, who make 
small account of the influence which one of 
high reputation for judgment and honesty may 
exercise, by his mere presence aad conversa- 
tion, in the higher classes of society, —and still 
more by such occasional publications as he 
may find leisure to make, in Journals of wide 
circulation, — like this on which the reader is 
now looking — we trust with his accustomed 
indulgence. 

It is now admitted, that the mature and en- 
lightened opinion of the public must ultimately 
rule the country; and we really know no other 
way in which this opinion can be so effectu- 
ally matured and enlightened. It is not by 
every man studying elaborate treatises and 
systems for himself, that the face of the world 
is changed, with the change of opinion, and 
the progress of conviction in those who must 
ultimately lead it. It is by the mastery which 
strong minds have over weak, in the daily in- 
tercourse of society; and by the gradual and 
almost imperceptible infusion which such 
minds are constantly effecting, of the practical 
results and manageable summaries of their 
preceding studies, into the minds immediately 
below them, that this great process is carried 
on. The first discovery of a great truth, or 
practical principle, may often require much 
labour; but when once discovered, it is gene- 
rally easy not only to convince others of its 
importance, but to enable them to defend and 
maintain it, by plain and irrefragable argu- 
ments; and this conviction, and this practical 
knowledge, it will generally be most easy to 
communicate, when men's minds are excited 
to inquiry, by the pursuit of some immediate 
interest, to which such general truths may 
appear to be subservient. It is at such times 
that important principles are familiarly started 
in conversation; and disquisitions eagerly pur- 
rued, in societies, where, in more tranquil 



periods, they would be listened to with impa 
tience. ' It is at such times, too, that the in- 
telligent part of the lower and middling 
classes look anxiously through such publica- 
tions as treat intelligibly of the subjects to 
which their attention is directed ; and are thus 
led, while seeking only for reasons to justify 
their previous inclinings, to imbibe principles 
and digest arguments which are impressed on 
their understandings for ever, and may fruc- 
tify in the end to far more important conclu- 
sions. It is, no doubt, true, that in this way, 
the full exposition of the truth will often be 
sacrificed for the sake of its temporary appli- 
cation; and it will not unfrequently happen 
that, in order to favour that application, the 
exposition will not be made with absolute 
fairness. But still the principle is brought 
into view; the criterion of true judgment is 
laid before the public; and the disputes of 
adverse parties will speedily settle the correct 
or debatable rule of its application. 

For our own parts we have long been of 
opinion, that a man of powerful understand- 
ing and popular talents, who should, at such 
a season, devote himself to the task of an- 
nouncing such principles, and rendering such 
discussions familiar, in the way and by the 
means we have mentioned, would probably 
do more to direct and accelerate the rectifica- 
tion of public opinion upon all practical ques- 
tions, than by any other use he could possibly 
make of his faculties. His name, indeed, 
might not go down to a remote posterity in 
connection with any work of celebrity ; and 
the greater part even of his contemporaries 
might be ignorant of the very existence of 
their benefactor. But the benefits conferred 
would not be the less real ; nor the conscious- 
ness of conferring them less delightful ; nor 
the gratitude of the judicious less ardent and 
sincere. So far, then, from regretting that 
Sir James Mackintosh did not forego all other 
occupations, and devote himself exclusively 
to the compilation of the two great works he 
had projected, or from thinking that his coun- 
try has been deprived of any services it might 
otherwise have received from him, by the 
course which he actually pursued, we firmly 
believe that, by constantly maintaining hu- 
mane and generous opinions, in the most en- 
gaging manner and with the greatest possible 
ability, in the highest and most influencing 
circles of society, — by acting as the respected 
adviser of many youths of great promise and 
ambition, and as the bosom counsellor of many 
practical statesmen, as well as by the timely 
publication of many admirable papers, in this 
and in other Journals, on such branches of 
politics, history, or philosophy as the course 
of events had rendered peculiarly interesting 
or important, — he did far more to enlighten 
the public mind in his own day, and to insure 
its farther improvement in the days that are 
to follow, than could possibly have been ef- 
fected by the most successful completion of 
the works he had undertaken. 

Such great works acquire for their authors 
a deserved reputation with the studious few; 
and are the treasuries and armories from 



LIFE OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 



755 



which the actual and future apostles of the 
truth derive the means of propagating and de- 
fending it. But, in order to be so effective, 
the arms and the treasures must be taken forth 
from their well-ordered repositories, and dis- 
seminated and applied where the)- are needed 
and required. It is by the tongue, at last, and 
not by the pen, that multitudes, or the indi- 
viduals composing multitudes, are ever really 
persuaded or converted, — by conversation and 
not by harangues — or by such short and oc- 
casional writings as come in aid of conversa- 
tion, and require little more study or continued 
attention than men capable of conversation 
are generally willing to bestow. If a man, 
therefore, who is capable of writing such a 
book, is also eminently qualified to dissemi- 
nate and render popular its most important 
doctrines, by conversation and by such lighter 
publications, is he to be blamed if, when the 
times are urgent, he intermits the severer 
study, and applies himself, with caution and 
candour, to give an earlier popularity to that 
which can never be useful till it is truly 
popular ? To us it appears, that he fulfils the 
higher duty ; and that to act otherwise would 
be to act like a general who should starve his 
troops on the eve of battle, in order to replen- 
ish his magazines for a future campaign — or 
like 1 a farmer who should cut off the rills from 
his paxching crops, that he may have a fuller 
reservoir against tne possible drought of an- 
other year. 

But we must cut this short. If we are at 
all right in the views we have now taken, Sir 
James Mackintosh must have been wrong in 
the regret and self-reproach with which he 
certainly seems to have looked back "on the 
unaccomplished projects of his earlier years : 
— And we humbly' think that he was wrong. 
He had failed, no" doubt, to perform all that 
he had once intended, and had been drawn 
aside from the task he had set himself, by 
other pursuits. But he had performed things 
as important, which were not originally in- 
tended; and been drawn aside by pursuits 
not less worthy than those to which he had 
tasked himself. In blaming himself- — not for 
this idleness, but for this change of occupa- 
tion — we think he was misled, in part at 
least, by one very common error — we mean 
that of thinking, that, because the use he ac- 
tually made of his intellect was more agree- 
able than that which he had intended to make, 
it was therefore less meritorious. We need 
not say, that there cannot be a worse criterion 
of merit : But tender consciences are apt to 
fall into such illusions. Another cause of 
regret may have been a little, though we really 
think but a little, more substantial. By the 
course he followed, he probably felt, that his 
name would be less illustrious, and nis repu- 
tation less enduring, than if he had fairly taken 



his place as the author of some finished work 
of great interest and importance. If he got 
over the first illusion, however, and took the 
view we have done of the real utility of his 
exertions, we cannot believe that this would 
have weighed very heavily on a mind like 
Sir James Mackintosh's; and while we can- 
not but regret that his declining years should 
have been occasionally darkened by these 
shadows of a self-reproach for which we think 
there was no real foundation, we trust that he 
is not to be added to the many instances of 
men who have embittered their existence by 
a mistaken sense of the obligation of some 
rash vow made in early life, for the perform- 
ance of some laborious and perhaps impracti- 
cable task. 

Cases of this kind we believe to be more 
common than is generally imagined. An am- 
bitious young man is dazzled with the notion 
of filling up some blank in the literature of 
his country, by the execution of a great and 
important work — reads with a view to it, and 
allows himself to be referred to as engaged in 
its preparation. By degrees he finds it more 
irksome than he had expected ; and is tempt- 
ed by other studies, altogether as suitable and 
less charged with responsibility, into long fits 
of intermission. Then the very expectation 
that has been excited by this protracted incu- 
bation makes him more ashamed of having 
done so little, and more dissatisfied with the 
little he has done ! And so his life is passed, 
in a melancholy alternation of distasteful, and 
of course unsuccessful attempts ; and long fits 
of bitter, but really groundless, self-reproach, 
for not having made those attempts with more 
energy and perseverance : and at last he dies, 
— not only without doing what he could not 
attempt without pain and mortification, but 
prevented by this imaginary engagement from 
doing many other things which he could have 
done with success and alacrity — some one of 
which it is probable, and all of which it is 
nearly certain, would have done him more 
credit, and been of more service to the world, 
than any constrained and distressful comple- 
tion he could in any case have given to the 
other. For our own parts we have already 
said that we do not think that any man, what- 
ever his gifts and attainments may be, is really 
boundin duty to leave an excellent Book to 
posterity ; or is liable to any reproach for ijot. 
having chosen to be an aueior. But, at all 
events, we are quite confident that he can be 
under no obligation to make himself unhappy 
in trying to make such a book : And that as 
soon as he finds the endeavour painful and 
depressing, he will do well, both for himself 
and for others, to give up the undertaking, 
and let his talents and sense of duty take a 
course more likely to promote, both his own 
enjoyment and their ultimate reputation. 



The following brief notices, of three lamented and honoured Friends, certainly were not 
contributed to the Edinburgh Keview : But, as I am not likely ever to appear again as an 
author, I have been tempted to include them in this publication — chiefly, I fear, from a fond 
desire, to associate my humble name with those of persons so amiable and distinguished : — 
But partly also, from an opinion, which has been frequently confirmed to me by those most 
competent to judge — that, imperfect as these sketches are, they give a truer and more graphic 
view of the manners, dispositions, and personal characters of the eminent individuals con- 
cerned — than is yet to be found — or now likely to be furnished, from any other quarter. 



THE HONOURABLE HENRY ERSKINE.< 



Died, atfus seat of Ammondell, Linlith- 
gowshire, on the 8th instant, in the seventy- 
first year of his age, the Honourable Henry 
Erskine, second son of the late Henry David, 
Earl of Buchan. 

Mr. Erskine was called to the Scottish Bar, 
of which he was long the brightest ornament, 
in the year 1768, and was for several years 
Dean of the Faculty of Advocates : He was 
twice appointed Lord Advocate, — in 1782 and 
in 1806, under the Rockingham and the Gren- 
ville administrations. During the years 1806 
and 1807 he sat in Parliament for the Dunbar 
and Dumfries district of boroughs. 

In his long and splendid career at the bar, 
Mr. Erskine was distinguished not only by the 
peculiar brilliancy of his wit, and the grp- 
fulness, ease, and vivacity of his elon" 
but by the still rarer power of kee- ' 
seducing qualities in perfect sr 1 
his judgment. By their as r * 
not only make the m r 
agreeable, but the 



intelligible. In v ' 


. nis 


wit -.vas argu" 


rightful 


illustratio- 


*a reasoning. 


dc. To hi- 


A always as if 
rather for their use 


0P tb- 


1 


.id unquestionably they 



iO state a fine argument, or 

..on, not only in a more striking 

.ig way, but actually with greater 

jq. than could have been attained by 

, severer forms of reasoning. 

In this extraordinary talent, as well as in the 

charming facility of his eloquence, and the 

constant radiance of good humour and gaiety 

which encircled his manner of debate, he had 

no rival in his own times, and as yet has had 



* From the " Endinburgh Courant' 
rfthe 16th of October, 1817. 
756 



Newspaper 



no successor. That part of eloquence is r^ow 
mute — that honour in abeyance. 

As a politician, he was eminently 7 distin- 
guished for the two great virtues of .inflexible 
steadiness to his principles, and invariable 
gentleness and urbanity in his mannf of as- 
serting them. Such indeed was '♦' >itual 
sweetness of his temper, an' 1 Son 
of his manners, that, tb^ & 
rank and talents in tb' 

Leader of opposi' : ,,iiti- 

cal animosity ..eiitable 

height, no ' a , was ever 

known . nim with any 

th'" .onal hostility. In 

.. ith equal correctness, 
. in some of his pursuits, 
aandsomely disappointed of 
> Honours to which his claim was 
-iy admitted, he never allowed the 
.est shade of discontent to rest upon his 
wnd, nor the least drop of bitterness to min- 
gle with his blood. He was so utterly inca- 
pable of rancour, that even the rancorous felt 
that he ought not to be made its victim. 

He possessed, in an eminent degree, that 
deep sense of revealed religion, and that zeal- 
ous attachment to the Presbyterian establish- 
ment, which had long been hereditary in his 
family. His habits were always strictly moral 
and temperate, and in the latter part of his 
life even abstemious. Though the life and 
ornament of every society into which he en- 
tered, he was always most happy and most 
delightful at home ; where the buoyancy of 
his spirit and the kindness of his heart found 
all that they required of exercise or enjoy- 
ment; and though without taste for expensive 
pleasures in his own person, he was ever most 
indulgent and munificent to his children, and 
a liberal benefactor to all who depended on his 
bounty* 



PROFESSOR PLAYFAIR. 



757 



He finally retired from the exercise of that 
profession, the highest honours of which he 
had at least deserved, about the year 1812, 
and spent the remainder of his days in do- 
mestic retirement, at that beautiful villa which 
had been formed by his own taste, and in the 
improvement and adornment of which he 
found his latest occupation. Passing thus at 
once from all the bustle and excitement of a 
public life to a scene of comparative inactivity, 
ne never felt one moment of ennui or dejec- 



tion ; but retained unimpaired, till within a 
day or two of his death, not only all his intel- 
lectual activity and social affections, but, when 
not under the immediate affliction of a painful 
and incurable disease, all that gaiety of spirit, 
and all that playful and kindly sympathy with 
innocent enjoyment, which made him the idol 
of the young, and the object of cordial attach- 
ment and unenvying admiration to his friends 
of all ages. 



NOTICE AND CHARACTER 



PROFESSOR PLAYFAIR* 



Of Mr. Playfair's scientific attainments, — 
of his proficiency in those studies to which he 
~as peculiarly devoted, w r e are but slenderly 
'iried to judge : But, we believe we hazard 
' in saying that he was one of the most 
Mathematicians of his age, and among 
ot the very first, who introduced 
i discoveries of the later conti- 
jmeters to the knowledge of his 
*>n ; and gave their just value and 
the scheme of European know- 
important improvements by 
^'t of the abstract sciences 
^ "" the days of our il- 

lustno. 'id_ not signalise 

himself t>, nal invention, 

he must, at L " e be f en a 

most generous a*; "" ^ e 

achievements of otht. 
eloquent expounder of iha 
cent system of knowledge . 
gradually evolved by the succe. x 
of so many gifted individuals. He \ 
indeed, in the highest degree, all the'^. 
teristics both of a fine and a powerful urf& . 
standing, — at once penetrating and vigilant, — ■ 
but more distinguished, perhaps, for the cau- 
tion and sureness of its march, than for the 
brilliancy or rapidity of its movements, — and 
guided and adorned through all its progress, 
by the most genuine enthusiasm for all that 
is grand, and the justest taste for all that is 
beautiful in the Truth or the Intellectual Ener- 
gy with which he was habitually conversant. 
To what account these rare qualities might 
have been turned, and what more brilliant or 
lasting fruits they might have produced, if his 
whole life had been dedicated to the solitary 
cultivation of science, it is not for us to con- 
jecture; but it cannot be doubted that they 
added incalculably to his eminence and utility 
as a Teacher ; both by enabling him to direct 
his pupils to the most simple and luminous 



* Originally prinled in an Edinburgh newspaper 
of August, 1819. A few introductory seniences are 
now omitted. 



methods of inquiry, and to imbue their minds, 
from the very commencement of the study, 
with that fine relish for the truths it disclosed, 
and that high sense of the majesty with which 
they were invested, that predominated in his 
own bosom. While he left nSthing unex- 
plained or unreduced to its proper place in the 
system, he took care that they should never 
be perplexed by petty difficulties, or bewil- 
dered in useless details; and formed them 
betimes to those clear, masculine, and direct 
methods of investigation, by which, with the 
least labour, the greatest advances might be 
accomplished. 

Mr. Playfair, however, was not merely a 
teacher; and has fortunately left behind him 
a variety of works, from which other genera- 
tions may be enabled to judge of some of those 
qualifications which so powerfully recom- 
mended and endeared him to his contempo- 
'°s. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that so 
- f his time, and so large a proportion of 
*ions, should have been devoted to 
" 1 he Indian Astronomy, and the 
yf the Earth: And though 
v too highly of the in- 
n-en u. ■ eloquence of those 
publicau n that a juster 
estimate ot » r picture of 
his genius and u. N " found 
in his other writings , bi°- 
graphical and scientific, 
enriched the Transactions u 
ty ; his account of Laplace, anv. 
which he contributed to the Ecu. 
view, — the Outlines of his Lectures u. 
ral Philosophy, — and above all, his Intro 
tory Discourse to the Supplement to In 
Encyclopaedia Brittannica, with the final cor- 
rection of which he was occupied up to the 
last moments that the progress of his disease 
allowed him to dedicate to any intellectual 
exertion. 

With reference to these works, we do not 

think we are influenced by any national, or 

other partiality, when we say that he was 

1 certainly one of the best writers of his age : 

30 



7M 



PROFESSOR PLAYFAIR. 



and even that we do not now recollect any 
one of his contemporaries who was so great a 
master of composition. There is a certain 
mellowness and richness about his style, 
which adorns, without disguising the weight 
and nervousness which is its other great char- 
acteristic, — a sedate gracefulness and manly 
simplicity in the more level passages, — and a 
mild majesty and considerate enthusiasm 
where he rises above them, of which we 
scarcely know where to find any other exam- 
ple. There is great equability, too, and sus- 
tained force in every part of his writings. He 
never exhausts himself in flashes and epi- 
grams, nor languishes into tameness or in- 
sipidity: At first sight you would say that 
plainness and good sense were the predomi- 
nating qualities; but by and bye, this sim- 
plicity is enriched with the delicate and vivid 
colours of a fine imagination, — the free and 
forcible touches of a most powerful intellect, 
— and the lights and shades of an unerring and 
harmonising taste. In comparing it with the 
styles of his most celebrated contemporaries, 
we would say that it was more purely and 
peculiarly a written style, — and, therefore, re- 
jected those ornaments that more properly 
belong to oratory. It had no impetuosity, 
hurry, or vehemence, — no bursts or sudden 
turns or abruptions, like that of Burke; and 
though eminently smooth and melodious, it 
was not modulated to an uniform system of 
solemn declamation, like that of Johnson, nor 
spread out in the richer- and more voluminous 
elocution of Stewart; nor, still less, broken 
into that patchwork of scholastic pedantry and 
conversational smartness which has found its 
admirers in Gibbon. It is a style, in short, of 
great freedom, force, and beauty; but the de- 
liberate style of a man of thought and of 
learning; and neither that of a wit throwing 
out his extempores with an affectation of care- 
less grace, — nor of a rhetorician thinking more 
of his manner than his matter, and deter- 
mined to be admired for his expression, what- 
ever may be fate of his sentiments. 

His habits of composition were not perhaps 
exactly what might have been expected from 
their results. He wrote rather slowly, — and 
his first sketches were often vervj?]^' an( j 
imperfect,— like the rude erring fo?a mas- 
terly picture. His chie/ effort and greatest 
pleasure was in thqy- revisal and correction ; 
and there wereno limits to the improvement 
which recited from this application. It was 
not thr style merely, nor indeed chiefly, that 
JKttied by it : The whole reasoning, and sen- 
timent, and illustration, were enlarged and 
new modelled in the course of it ; and a naked 
outline became gradually informed with life, 
colour, and expression. It was not at all like 
the common finishing and polishing to which 
careful authors generally subject the first 
draughts of their compositions, — nor even 
like the fastidious and tentative alterations 
with which some more anxious writers assay 
their choicer passages. It was, in fact, the 
great filling in of the picture,— the working up 
of ihe figured rveft, on the naked and meagre 
woof that had been stretched to receive it ; 



and the singular thing in his case was, not 
only that he left this most material part of his 
work to be performed after the whole outline 
had been finished, but that he could proceed 
with it to an indefinite extent, and enrich and 
improve as long as he thought fit, without any 
risk either of destroying the proportions of 
that outline, or injuring the harmony and unity 
of the original design. He was perfectly 
aware, too, of the possession of this extraor- 
dinary power ; and it was partly, we presume, 
in consequence of it that he was not only at 
all times ready to go on with any work in 
which he was engaged, without waiting for 
favourable moments or hours of greater alac- 
rity, but that he never felt any of those doubts 
and misgivings as to his being able to get cre- 
ditably through with his undertaking, to which 
we believe most an thors are occasionally liable . 
As he never wrote upon any subject of which 
he was not perfectly master, he was secure 
against all blunders in the substance of what 
he had to say; and felt quite assured, that if 
he was only allowed time enough, he should 
finally come to say it in the very best way of 
which he was capable. He had no anxiety, 
therefore, either in undertaking or proceeding 
with his tasks; and intermitted and resumed 
them at his convenience, with the comfortably 
certainty, that all the time he bestowed on 
them was turned to account, and that^.^ 
was left imperfect at one sitting rrj~v* ^ c 
finished with equal ease and adv£ nt {J ge a t 
another. Being thus perfectly su both r 
his end and his means, he experie ncec [ j_ ^ 
course of his compositions none of ^ liu]e 
fever of the spirits with which that opera tion 
is so apt to be accompany H e had no 
capricious visitmgs of far which u WM 
necessary to fix on the spe t '\ ]oge for 
-no casual inspirations^ invoke amUo wai J 
for,-no transitory an d evanesC ent lights to 
catch before they & ded AH that wa | in his 
mind was suW t0 his control and amena _ 
ble to his call ;i ' hoilgh h ra i g ht not obey at the 
moment; a^j wn ile his taste was so sure, 
mat ne £ as m n0 ({ ail g er f over- working any 
tnma^'hat he had designed, all his thoughts 
Sad sentiments had that unity and congruity, 
that they fell almost spontaneously into har- 
mony and order; and the last added, incor- 
porated, and assimilated with the first, as if 
they had sprung simultaneously from the same 
happy conception. 

But we need dwell no longer on qualities . 
that may be gathered hereafter from the works 
he has left behind him. They who lived with 
him mourn the most for those which will be 
traced in no such memorial ! And prize far 
above those talents which gained him his high 
name in philosophy, that Personal Character 
which endeared him to his friends, and shed 
a grace and a dignity over all the society in 
which he moved. The same admirable taste 
which is conspicuous in his writings, or rather 
the higher principles from which that taste 
was but an emanation, spread a similar charm" 
over his whole life and conversation ; and gave - 
to the most learned Philosopher of his day 
the manners and deportment of the most per 



I'ROFESSOR PLAYFAIK 



759 



feet Gentleman. Nor was this in him the 
lesult merely of good sense and good temper, 
assisted by an early familiarity with good 
company, and a consequent knowledge of his 
own place and that of all around him. His 
pood breeding was of a higher descent ; and 
his powers of pleasing rested on something 
better than mere companionable qualities. — 
With the greatest kindness and generosity of 
nature, he united the most manly firmness, 
and the highest principles of honour, — and 
the most cheerful and social dispositions, with 
the gentlest and steadiest affections. 

Towards Women he had always the most 
chivalrous feelings of regard and attention, 
and was, beyond almost all men, acceptable 
and agreeable in their society, — though with- 
out the least levity or pretension unbecoming 
his age or condition : And such, indeed, was 
the fascination of the perfect simplicity and 
mildness of his manners, that the same tone 
and deportment seemed equally appropriate 
in all societies, and enabled him to delight the 
young and the gay with the same sort of con- 
versation which instructed the learned and 
the grave. There never, indeed, was a man 
of learning and talent who appeared in society 
so perfectly free from all sorts of pretension 
or notion of his own importance, or so little 
solicitous to distinguish himself, or so sincerely 
willing to give place to everyone else. Even 
upon subjects which he had thoroughly studied, 
he was never in the least impatient to speak, 
and spoke at all times without any tone of 
authority; while, so far from wishing to set 
off what he had to say by any brilliancy or 
emphasis of expression, it seemed generally 
as if he had studied to disguise the weight 
and originality of his thoughts under the 
plainest forms of speech and the most quiet 
and indifferent manner : so that the profound- 
est remarks and subtlest observations were 
often dropped, not only without any solicitude 
that their value should be observed, but with- 
out any apparent consciousness that they 
possessed any. 

Though the most social of human beings, 
and the most disposed to encourage and sym- 
pathise w r ith the gaiety and even joviality of 
others, his own spirits were in general rather 
cheerful than gay, or at least never rose to 
any turbulence or tumult of merriment ; and 
while he would listen with the kindest indul- 
gence to the more extravagant sallies of his 
younger friends, and prompt them by the 
heartiest approbation, nis own satisfaction 
might generally be traced in a slow and tem- 
perate smile, gradually mantling over his 
benevolent and intelligent features, and light- 
ing up the countenance of the Sage with'the 
expression of the mildest and most genuine 
philanthropy. It was wonderful, indeed, con- 
sidering the measure of his own intellect, and 
the rigid and undeviating propriety of his own 
conduct, how tolerant he was of the defects 
and errors of other men. He was too indul- 
gent, in truth, and favourable to his friends ! 
— and made a kind and liberal allowance for 
the faults of all mankind — except only faults 
of Baseness or of Cruelty. — against which he 



never failed to manifest the most open scorn 
and detestation. Independent, in short, of his 
high attainments, Mr. Playfair was one of the 
most amiable and estimable of men : Delight- 
ful in his manners, inflexible in his principles, 
and generous in his affections, he had all that 
could charm in society or attach in private; 
and while his friends enjoyed the free and 
unstudied conversation of an easy and intel- 
ligent associate, they had at all times the 
proud and inward assurance that he was a 
Being upon whose perfect honour and gene- 
rosity they might rely with the most implicit 
confidence, in life and in death, — and of whom 
it was equally impossible, that, under any cir- 
cumstances, ne should ever perform a mean, 
a selfish, or a questionable action, as that his 
body should cease to gravitate or his soul to 
live ! 

If we do not greatly deceive ourselves, there 
is nothing here of exaggeration or partial feel- 
ing, — and nothing w r ith which 'an indifferent 
and honest chronicler would not heartily con- 
cur. Nor is it altogether idle to have dwelt 
so long on the personal character of this dis- 
tinguished individual : For we are ourselves 
persuaded, that this personal character has 
done almost as much for the cause of science 
and philosophy among us, as the great talents 
and attainments with which it was combined, 
— and has contributed in a very eminent de- 
gree to give to the better society of this our 
city that tone of intelligence aiuf liberality by 
which it is so honourably distinguished. It is 
not a little advantageous to philosophy that it 
is in fashion, — and it is still more advanta- 
geous, perhaps, to the society which is led to 
confer on it this apparently trivial distinction. 
It is a great thing for the country at large, — 
for its happiness, its prosperity, and its re- 
nown, — that the upper and influencing classes 
of its population should be made familiar, 
even in their untasked and social hours, with 
sound and liberal information, and be taught 
to know and respect those who have distin- 
guished themselves for great intellectual at- 
tainments. Nor is it, after all, a slight or 
despicable reward for a man of genius, to be 
received with honour m the highest and most 
elegant society around him, and to receive in 
his living person that homage and applause 
which is too often reserved for his memory. 
Now, those desirable ends can never be ef- 
fectually accomplished, unless the manners 
of our leading philosophers are agreeable, 
and their personal habits and dispositions en- 
gaging and amiable. From the time of Hume 
and Robertson, we have been fortunate, in 
Edinburgh, in possessing a succession of dis- 
tinguished men, who have kept up this salu- 
tary connection between the learned and the 
fashionable world ; but there never, perhaps, 
was any one who contributed so powerfully to 
confirm and extend it. and that in times when 
it was peculiarly difficult, as the lamented in 
dividual of whom we are now speaking : And 
they who have had most opportunity to ob- 
serve how superior the so.ciety of Edinburgh 
is to that of most other places of .the same 
size, and how much of that superiority i« 



60 



.JAMES WATT. 



owing to the cordial combination of the two 
aristocracies; of rank and of letters,* — of both 
of which it happens to be the chief pro- 
vincial seat, — will be best able to judge of 



*In addition to the two distinguished persons 
mentioned in the text, (the first of whom was, no 
ioubt, before my time.) I can, from my own refl- 
ection, and wiihout referring to any who are siill 
iving — give the names of the following residents in 
Edinburgh, who were equally acceptable in polite 
.society and eminent for literary or scientific attain- 
nents, and alike at home in good company and 
n learned convocations : — Lord Hailes and Lord 
Monboddo, Dr. Joseph "Black, Dr. Hugh Blair, 



the importance of the service he has thus 
rendered to its inhabitants; and through them, 
and by their example, to all the rest oi the 
country. 



Dr. Adam Fergusson, Mr. John Home, Mr. John 
Robison, Mr. Dugald Stewart, Sir James Hall, 
Lord Meadowbunk, Mr. Henry Mackenzie, Dr. 
James Gregory, Rev. A. Alison, Dr. Thomas 
Brown, Lord Webb Seymour, Lord Woodbouse- 
lee, and Sir Walter Scott; — wiihout reckoning 
Mr. Horner, the Rev. Sydney Smith, and Mr. 
George Wilson, who were settled in Edinburgh 
for several years, in the earlier part of the period 
referred to. 



NOTICE AND CHARACTER 



JAMES WATT.* 



Mr. James Watt, the great improver of the 
steam-engine, died on the 25th of August, 
1819, at His seat of Heathfield, near Birming- 
ham, in the 84th year of his age. 

This name fortunately needs no commemo- 
ration of ours; for he that bore it survived to 
see it crowned with undisputed and unenvied 
honours; and many generations will probably 
pass away, before it shall have gathered "all 
its fame." We have said that Mr. Watt was 
the great Improver of the steam-engine : but, 
in truth, as to all that is .admirable in its 
structure, or vast in its utility, he should 
rather be described as its Inventor. It was 
by his inventions that its action was so regu- 
lated, as to make it capable of being applied 
to the finest and most delicate manufactures, 
and its power so increased, as to set weight 
and solidity at defiance. By his admirable 
contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous 
alike for its force and its flexibility, — for the 
prodigious power which it can exert, and the 
ease, and precision, and ductility, with which 
that power can be varied, distributed, and ap- 
plied. The trunk of an elephant, that can 
pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to 
it.. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses 
of obdurate metal before it — draw out, with- 
out breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, 
and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. 
It can embroider muslin and forge anchors, — 
cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded ves- 
sels against the fury of the winds and waves. 

It would be difficult to estimate the value 
of the benefits which these inventions have 
conferred upon this country. There is no 
branch of industry that has not been indebted 
to them ; and, in all the most material, they 
lave not only widened most magnificently 
the field of its exertions, but multiplied a 
housand-fold the amount of its productions. 

* First published . in an Edinburgh newspaper 
t "The Scotsman"), of the 4th September, 1819. 



It was our improved Steam-engine, in short, 
that fought the battles of Europe, and exalted 
and sustained, through the late tremendous 
contest, the political neatness of our land. It 
is the same great power which now enables 
us to pay the interest of our debt, and to 
maintain the arduous struggle in which we 
are still engaged, [1819], with the skill and 

: capital of countries less oppressed with taxa- 
tion. But these are poof and narrow views 

[ of its importance. It has increased inde- 

j finitely the mass of human comforts and en- 
joyments; and rendered cheap and accessi- 

| ble, all over the world, the materials of wealth 
and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand 
of man, in short, with a power to which no 
limits can be assigned ; completed the do- 
minion of mind over the most refractory qua- 
lities of matter ; and laid a sure foundation 
for all those future miracles of mechanic 
power which are to aid and reward the la- 
bours of after generations. It is to the genius 
of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing! 
And certainly no man ever bestowed such a 
gift on his kind. The blessing is not only 
universal, but unbounded: and the fabled in- 
ventors of the plough and the loom, who were 
Deified by the erring gratitude of their rude 
cotemporaries, conferred less important bene- 
fits on mankind than the inventor of our pre- 
sent steam-engine. 

This will be the fame of Watt with future 
generations: And it is sufficient for his race 
and his country. But to those to whom he 
more immediately belonged, who lived in n's 
society and enjoyed his conversation, it is 
not, perhaps, the character in which he will 
be most frequently recalled — most deeply 
lamented — or even most highly admired. In- 
dependently of his great attainments in me- 
chanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and 
in many respects a wonderful man. Perhaps 
no individual in his age possessed so much 
and such varied and exact information, — had 



JAMES WATT. 



761 



read so much, or remembered what he had 
read so accurately and well. He had infinite 
quickness of apprehension, a prodigious me- 
mory, and a certain rectifying and methodis- 
ing power of understanding, which extracted 
something precious out of all that was pre- 
sented to it. His stores of miscellaneous 
knowledge were immense, — and yet less as- 
tonishing than the command he had at all 
times over them. It seemed as if every sub- 
ject that was casually started in conversation 
with him, had been that which he had been 
last occupied in studying and exhausting; — 
such was the copiousness, the precision, and 
the admirable clearness of the information 
which he poured out upon it, without effort or 
hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and 
compass of knowledge confined in any degree 
to the studies connected with his ordinary 
pursuits. That he should have been minutely 
and extensively skilled in chemistry and the 
arts, and in most of the branches of physical 
science, might perhaps have been conjectur- 
ed ; But it could not have been inferred from 
his usual occupations, and probably is not 
generally known, that he was curiously learn- 
ed in many branches of antiquity, metaphys- 
ics, medicine, and etymology, and perfectly 
at home in all the details of architecture, 
music, and law. He was well acquainted, 
too, with most of the modern languages — and 
familiar with their most recent literature. Nor 
was it at all extraordinary to hear the great 
mechanician and engineer detailing and t»i 
pounding, for hours together, the metaphys- 
ical theories of the German logicians, or criti- 
cising the measures or the matter of the Ger- 
man poetry. 

His astonishing memory was aided, no 
doubt, in a great measure, by a still higher 
and rarer faculty — by his power of digesting 
and arranging in its proper- place all the infor- 
mation he received, and of casting aside and 
rejecting, as it were instinctively, whatever 
was worthless or immaterial. Every concep- 
tion that was suggested to his mind seemed 
instantly to take its proper place among its 
other rich furniture ; and to be condensed into 
the smallest and most convenient form. He 
never appeared, therefore, to be at all encum- 
bered or perplexed with the verbiage of the 
dull books he perused, or the idle talk to 
which he listened ; but to have at once ex- 
tracted, by a kind of intellectual alchemy, all 
that was worthy of attention, and to have re- 
duced it, for his own use, to its true value and 
to its simplest form. And thus it often hap- 
pened, that a great deal more was learned 
from his brief and vigorous account of the 
theories and arguments of tedious writers, 
than an ordinary student could ever have de- 
rived from the most painful study of the ori- 
ginals, — and that errors and absurdities be- 
came manifest from the mere clearness and 
plainness of his statement of them, which 
might have deluded and perplexed most 
of his hearers without that invaluable assist- 
ance. 

It is needless to say, that, with those vast 
♦"o^oi'rces. his conversation was at all times 
on 



rich and instructive in no ordinary degree : 
But it was, if possible, still more pleasing 
than wise, and had all the charms of famili- 
arity, with all the substantial treasures of 
knowledge. No man could be more social 
in his spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his 
manners, or more kind and indulgent towards 
all who approached him. He rather liked to 
talk — at least in his latter years : But though 
he took a considerable share of the conversa- 
tion, he rarely suggested the topics on which 
it was to turn, but readily and quietly took 
up whatever was presented by those around 
him ; and astonished the idle and barren pro- 
pounders of an ordinary theme, by the treas- 
ures which he drew from the mine they had 
unconsciously opened. He generally seemed, 
indeed, to have no choice or predilection for 
one subject of discourse rather than another; 
but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopaedia, 
to be opened at any letter his associates might 
choose to turn up, and only endeavoured to 
select, from his inexhaustible stores, what 
might be best adapted to the taste of his 
present hearers. As to their capacity he gave 
himself no trouble ; and, indeed, such was his 
singular talent for making all things plain, 
clear, and intelligible, that scarcely any one 
could be aware of such a deficiency in his 
presence. His talk, too, though overflowing 
with information, had no resemblance to lec- 
turing or solemn discoursing, but, on the con- 
trary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleas- 
antry. He had a certain quiet and grave 
humour, which ran through most of his con- 
versation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, 
which gave infinite zest and effect to the con- 
densed and inexhaustible information, which 
formed its main staple and characteristic. 
There was a little air of affected testiness, too, 
and a tone of pretended rebuke and contra- 
diction, with which he used to address his 
younger friends, that was always felt by them 
as an endearing mark of his kindness and 
familiarity, — and prized accordingly, far be- 
yond all the solemn compliments that ever 
proceeded from the lips of authority. His 
voice was deep and powerful, — though he 
commonly spoke in a low and somewhat 
monotonous tone, which harmonised admira- 
bly with the weight and brevity of his obser- 
vations; and set off to the greatest advantage 
the pleasant anecdotes, which he delivered 
with the same grave brow, and the same calm 
smile playing soberly on his lips. There 
was nothing of effort indeed, or impatience, 
anymore than of pride or levity, in his de- 
meanour; and there was a finer expression 
of reposing strength, and mild self-possession 
in his manner, than we ever recollect to have 
met with in any other person. He had in his 
character the utmost abhorrence for all sorts 
of forwardness, parade, and pretensions; and, 
indeed, never faWed to put all such impostures 
out of countenance, by the manly plainness 
and honest intrepidity of his language and 
deportment. 

"In his temper and dispositions he was not 
only kind and affectionate, but generous, and 
considerate of the feelings of all around him , 



762 



JAMES WATT. 



ind gave the most liberal assistance and en- 
couragement to all young persons who showed 
any indications of talent, or applied to him 
for patronage or advice. His health, which 
was delicate from his youth upwards, seemed 
to become firmer as he advanced in years ; 
and he preserved, up almost to the last mo- 
ment of his existence, not only the full com- 
mand of his extraordinary intellect, but all the 
alacrity of spirit, and the social gaiety which 
had illumined his happiest days. His friends 
in this part of the country never saw him 
more full of intellectual vigour and colloquial 
animation, — never more delightful or more 
instructive. — than in his last visit to Scotland 
in autumn 1817. Indeed, it was after that 
time that he applied himself, with all the 
ardour of early life, to the invention of a 
machine for mechanically copying all sorts 
of sculpture and statuary ;— and distributed 
among his friends some of its earliest per- 
formances, as the productions of "a young 
artist, just entering on his eighty-third year!" 



This happy and use. fe came, at las:, to 
a gentle close. He had suffered some incon- 
venience through th - summer ; but was not 
seriously indisposed till within a few weeks 
from his death. He then became perfectly 
aware of the event which was approaching ; 
and with his usual tranquillity and benevo- 
lence of nature, seemed only anxious to point 
out to the friends around him, the many 
sources of consolation which were afforded 
by the circumstances under which it. was 
about to take place. He expressed his sin- 
cere gratitude to Providence for the length 
of days with which he had been blessed, and 
his exemption from most of the infirmities of 
age ; as well as for the calm and cheerful 
evening of life that he had been permitted to 
enjoy, after the honourable labours of the 
day had been concluded. And thus, full of 
years and honours, in all calmness and tran- 
quillity, he yielded up his soul, without pang 
or struggle, — and passed from the bosom of 
his family to that of his God. 



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